Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SugarCRM Platform vs Zoho CRM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SugarCRM Platform
Ranking in CRM
25th
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
6th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (11th), Marketing Automation (10th)
Zoho CRM
Ranking in CRM
4th
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Opportunity Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the CRM category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho CRM is 1.5%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Zoho CRM1.5%
SugarCRM Platform0.8%
Other97.7%
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1345677 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager / IT Planning & Architecture Services at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Easily customizable, automation enhances the marketing campaigns but support is the main hiccup for us
It has been effective in managing customer relationships. It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory. And there are centralized reports for the CEO and the general managers. We work with automation for these marketing and email campaigns. It sends out emails to prospective customers related to sales offers automatically. And it copies the sales team so that they can follow up. They are tracking the sales leads. So, the automation within SugarCRM enhances the marketing campaigns. For now, my work is done because I am the IT strategy and planning manager. I just try to deliver the solution according to the requirements of the business. From my side, it's implemented already, the requirement related to the sales funnel. But if they have any other requirement from the business side, they will submit it to me, and then I will look for a suitable solution.
NaveenKumar S - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Maximus
Zoho CRM improves lead conversion with AI assistance but could have better technical support
Zoho Zia has helped our lead conversion process by serving as a private AI of Zoho CRM that assists in boosting lead conversation by analyzing customer data, predicting outcomes, and automating workflow follow-ups. Regarding how Zia helps with lead conversion, there's lead scoring and conversion predictions, sentiment analysis, and workflow suggestions. For lead scoring, Zia analyzes past lead conversation patterns and assigns scores to new leads, and high score leads get prioritized for faster follow-up. In terms of conversation predictions, Zia predicts the probability of lead conversion based on demographics and engagements, helping the sales team focus on the most promising leads. Another point is sentiment analysis, where Zia scans customer emails, chats, and notes to detect tones such as positive, negative, or neutral, guiding us on how to approach the leads better. For workflow suggestions, it recommends automated workflows such as sending emails and assigning tasks to agents, improving our engagements. Additionally, the conversational AI feature through Zia chatbot can interact with leads via website chat or capture details and push them into Zoho CRM automatically. The analytics and reporting features in Zoho CRM helped me understand sales patterns and customer behavior through standard reports that include pre-built reports for leads, deals, sales activities, and campaigns. We can customize reports as well, creating reports based on any module fields, and we can integrate with Zoho Analytics for direct capture of reports from our modules. We can merge leads reports to contact reports using SQL, allowing for effective sales funnel tracking to identify drop-offs and optimize conversation strategies. Auto-generated reports are also available for daily scheduling, ensuring that admin receives daily basis reports through automation. With advanced BI features such as drag-and-drop dashboards and predictive analysis using pivot tables, we can create insightful dashboards while pulling CRM and external data from sources such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads for unified analytics. The automation capabilities in Zoho CRM have helped streamline our organization's sales and marketing tasks by handling repetitive tasks such as sending follow-up emails, assigning leads, and updating fields. For example, if a lead score is greater than 80, it automatically assigns that record to the senior sales representative. There are also blueprint options to define the step-by-step sales process, ensuring every sales representative follows the same process. Automation includes assignment rules, lead scoring, priority load options, sales signals, macros, and territory management, which automatically routes leads based on geography, revenue, and industries. Additionally, deal stage automations trigger actions when a deal moves stages, such as sending a contract when it moves to negotiation. For marketing, there are tools for email campaign automation, behavior-based triggers, campaign to lead sync, and social media automations. The overall benefits I have seen from using Zoho CRM include centralized customer data, where all customer interactions are visible in one place, providing a 360-degree view. Improved lead conversations through AI-powered scoring and automation helps us focus on the right leads, with end-to-end sales automation managing tasks from lead capture to deal closure, thereby saving time on repetitive tasks. This leads to better marketing ROI, as we can track campaigns, ad spend, and lead sources, connecting marketing efforts to revenue. Enhanced collaboration through shared notes, tasks, and role-based access enables teamwork within our internal users and sales teams, contributing to customer satisfaction. Moreover, Zoho CRM is scalable and customizable, adapting to startups, SMBs, and enterprises with its flexible modules and fields. Lastly, it is cost-efficient compared to Salesforce and HubSpot while including a wide range of features.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost."
"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."
"One of the most important features is that it's a cloud base and, it's also quite cheaper when compared to other solutions. Zoho CRM is customizable as per your requirement and, the Zoho team is able to help you to customize the CRM based on your requirements, and you can integrate to any third-party solution."
"The login and logout times of each employee of our company are recorded by Zoho CRM for productivity calculations"
"What I like most about Zoho CRM is its configurability. We can adapt it to our needs in terms of the sales process. It has automation capabilities, but we mostly use it as a static system, except for sending emails and information about updated products."
"Improved lead conversations through AI-powered scoring and automation helps us focus on the right leads, with end-to-end sales automation managing tasks from lead capture to deal closure, thereby saving time on repetitive tasks."
"Highly configurable, enabling graphically built workflows, and the writing of customized scripts if required."
"I like that it is easy to get data in and out of it. We can export and import CSV files. I also like that the database is hierarchical, which allows me to be able to look at a parent and multiple children."
"The dashboards and visualizations help us see how different markets perform. I find the dashboard feature most valuable because it's easy to visualize data. I've been trying to use the built-in quotations feature, which could reduce turnaround time. We're not using many automation features for record management and opportunity tracking. I'm trying to integrate Zoho CRM with Zoho Flow for quotation submission workflow."
"The most valuable feature of Zoho CRM is emailing. You can send emails to customers directly from Zoho CRM. The marketing team in my company uses this feature, and it's effective."
 

Cons

"Sugar Enterprise could improve by removing bugs and glitches. For example, a comment was made but in the comment section, it was never displayed. However, the problems we faced might not be the fault of the solution."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"While it is already user-friendly, a slight enhancement in UI design, especially in terms of color combinations, could make the platform more visually appealing and comfortable to use."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"The integration should be more user-friendly."
"Adding a new contract to the solution is quite complicated."
"There are two things I would like to see from Zoho CRM. The first would be to include a calling feature that is connected to our call center. Second, I would like financial targeting and how to measure targeting for the sales agent to be connected better with bookings."
"Custom development is often necessary to make such extensive changes, and it does come with associated costs."
"The solution can improve by having a policy that allows us to integrate with the cloud."
"What needs improvement in Zoho CRM is the UI. It needs to be more user-friendly. I like Salesforce better than Zoho CRM in terms of the UI, so if Zoho CRM can make some UI changes, that would make the tool better."
"When writing code that exceeds 500 or 700 lines, if you forget to save it and haven't run it once, the entire function can be lost."
"Zoho CRM could benefit from predictive analysis based on historical trends to forecast future performance over the next two to three years, particularly from a sales pipeline perspective."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"Compared to other CRMs, it is very cheap."
"The price of Zoho CRM is already competitive, but we would always like to have a better discount. Most of the features are included in the price but if we want the extra features then we have to purchase them."
"This solution is less expensive than Salesforce."
"There is an annual license."
"I rate the product a four out of ten. The cost for Zoho CRM is not fixed; different editions are available, and the features depend on the edition chosen. Some capabilities, such as integrating with workflows, might incur additional costs, but these are well-documented and not hidden."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"We consider it a good value and found it to be cost-effective."
"The tool started out quite cheap. It's had some changes with small and medium business subscriptions, but it's still worth the price. I'd say it's priced a bit below the medium range."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CRM solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Engineering Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sugar Enterprise?
All are almost the same pricing. Maybe the cheapest is Salesforce, I believe.
What needs improvement with Sugar Enterprise?
The only challenge was that we implemented it in our on-premise data center instead of using it in the cloud. That was a little bit of a challenge. But it was overcome with the help of SugarCRM com...
What advice do you have for others considering Sugar Enterprise?
To start with, SugarCRM is a very good platform. It's easy to implement and easily customizable. Might be later when you want to scale, then I would recommend Salesforce. Overall, I would rate it a...
What do you like most about Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM integrates easily with customer service workflows.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM and all of Zoho's software are quite affordable because they are specifically designed for small and medium businesses.
What needs improvement with Zoho CRM?
The main improvement needed for Zoho CRM is introducing SQL code for reports, similar to what's in Zoho Analytics. Zoho CRM's support can improve significantly, although it's designed to require mi...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
JetHub, Anderson Sales Advantage, ActionCoach, Milagro Advisory Group, TECO Pneumatic, Proteomics Consult
Find out what your peers are saying about SugarCRM Platform vs. Zoho CRM and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.