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SugarCRM Platform vs Zoho CRM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
4th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (8th), Marketing Automation (10th)
Zoho CRM
Ranking in CRM
3rd
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Opportunity Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the CRM category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho CRM is 2.0%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zoho CRM2.0%
SugarCRM Platform1.1%
Other96.9%
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

"Saying that, it has a small server footprint and is easy to set up."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"By default, it comes with a really good model where you can start working with it without having a lot of developers in your team."
"The performance and stability are fine."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."
"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."
"I think Zoho CRM's automation capabilities are really good and better than almost any other application."
"Complete customer relation management with the ability to add further apps if needed."
"There are many features that capture customer data."
"The user interface, especially the dashboard, offers good navigation."
"Zoho CRM is very simple and easy to use."
"Zoho CRM is easy to use and easy to understand."
"Zoho CRM's best feature is its reporting."
"Zoho CRM has been a really good product. From a basic CRM perspective, we use it to maintain the details of our company's customers."
 

Cons

"The interface could be more user-friendly."
"Putting so many things into SugarCRM became a much-hated task, mainly because of the horrible UI."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"Pipelines, forecasts, and reporting in general, are not that good in the free version."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"There are at least two big pieces. One is just the ability to reorganize the data and clean it up to eliminate duplicates and things like that. It is very manual at the moment. It only gives us certain fields that we can check on. Because of our particular database, it creates a problem. We deal with hospitals, and there are 50 hospitals. It is tough to figure out which one is which. Is it this one or the other one? So, trying to clean things up is very difficult. I'd like to have more ability to share data fields. The data is structured into different buckets, and I frequently have to create the same field in two different buckets. It would be nice if I could just do a view-only field in another bucket. In my contact bucket, I would like to be able to have just a view-only of the account information so that I don't need to enter it again, which is what I have to do currently."
"Sometimes, there are technical glitches. When we add product details, the information disappears. It can be improved from this aspect. Some of the bugs also need to be resolved."
"It would be useful to have some way of mapping organizations that could add more value."
"The solution can improve by having a policy that allows us to integrate with the cloud."
"Customer Service: Only chat is available, connecting over the phone is impossible."
"The process of creating reports is not very user-friendly - it takes time, and it's confusing."
"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."
"Since Zoho CRM is not made for the enterprise kind of company, its stability for enterprise businesses could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"Professional plans cost $35 per user in the USA and EUR 35 in Europe."
"There is an annual license."
"If you compare the pricing with SAP, it is well priced and you are able to pay as you go."
"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."
"Its price is lower than the other software."
"Compared to other CRMs, it is very cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Construction Company
15%
Engineering Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

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 Business46
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 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?
I think areas of Zoho CRM that need to be improved or enhanced include the permission structure, which can be easy to set up custom permissions within Zoho Creator using different filters and runni...
What is your primary use case for Zoho CRM?
I describe the usual use cases for Zoho CRM that I mostly work with as related to sales flow. Most of my clients are involved in that; the lead system allows leads to flow into our system, which ar...
 

Comparisons

 

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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.