hi, i am starting to use open source CRM, and i happened to choose vtiger CRM because it looked decent, i liked the interface, and the client/server via webbrowser design. more than CRM i needed sales management which not all CRM packages include. however its kind of new and a bit buggy, but gas a great development team that actually uses their user feedback. it seems like a good scalable solution for my company. but the main reason i chose vtiger over other open source packages is because im _lazy_ and vtiger has all the other software bundled in a package, ready to go, no tedious install process needing to hunt down lots of other software packages.


what CRM package do you use? why? and what do you like, not like about it?

Check out sugarCRM - it is great for call tracking and lead generation; I just wish it handled order/job fulfillment.

yeah, i looked at that one a while ago. i remember i liked the way it looked and had a nice interface, but it was a pain to install the open source version. lots of little things it needed. i could be mistaken though, its been a while since ive looked at it.
order full fillment would be nice.

i want some CRM software where i can keep track of all my sales leads, reminders to call back, etc etc. AND something where i could keep a database of all the timesheets for each work order and have it organized by client. that would be kind of nice i think. that might go beyond the scope of CRM though, i dunno.

BTW I checked out vtiger and it looked like it was based on SugarCRM so I read their "open source" statement, and sure enough:

"We have created a distribution consisting of Apache, MySQL, PHP and the CRM application from the SugarCRM SourceForge project; all of the above components are Open Source. The SugarCRM component carries the SugarCRM Public License SPL (Version 1.1.2) which is essentially the same as Mozilla Public License, except the fact that "SugarCRM" and associated trademarks cannot be used by other distributions."

That is not a bad thing. SugarCRM is an exception to the php open source norm: its code is very clean (compare to say, OS Commerce, which is spaghetti code) and easy to tailor and extend to your organization's invidual needs.

I'm thinking of trying vtiger - we haven't modified Sugar *much* so it might be a simple matter to migrate the data over. I was looking for task/incident management and didn't want a separate system, so it looks like vtiger might get us there more quickly with less work.

Not at all! In fact, most commercial CRMs do exactly that in organizations which centralize their data. It's only wise to not have to enter client info into 18 different databases and check multiple discrete systems to find out the status of an account.

Hi,

I'm interested in CRM because my intention is to study and compare one or more totally free CRM softwares with commercial solutions.

My study is in progress so at this moment I'm selecting the competitors following these steps:

- the software has to run on different O.S.
- the software open source has to be free
- the software could be or not only a CRM but also could be a CRM included in a ERP solution.

At the moment I think I'll go to compare vtiger and the CRM included in the Compière ERP (a Java-based solution)and maybe SugarCRM.

Obviously points I've written are only about open source softwares selection.

If anyone is interested in free CRM solutions or has some experiences in working on CRM please reply to this post.

Sincerely,

deadlinx

P.S. http://www.compiere.org/download/ here you can find the Compière suite.

I tried both Sugar and vTiger.
The previous post appears correct: vTiber is seems based on sugar.
Personally, I didn't care for either. The GUI was great. The install, for me, was a disappointment in both cases. I'll revisit them if they get to a stable RPM. Until any offering can demonstrate a stable (even limited function) open version, I can't justify spending all the time working around exceptions and tweaking, just to get a workable demo version. Doesn't make sense. Might as well get a copy of Ruby on Rails and dev my own. Seems like the same time investment.