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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
26th
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 (10th), 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 March 2026, in the CRM category, the mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho CRM is 1.8%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zoho CRM1.8%
SugarCRM Platform0.9%
Other97.3%
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 aspect of this solution is its low cost."
"The most valuable features of the SugarCRM platform include its flexibility in customizing fields, layouts, and dashboards."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"It works well with Jira. You can customize it to fit your needs."
"The most valuable features of Sugar Enterprise are the exports of graphics, statuses, complaints, and tasks."
"Affordable and commercial open source solution is good for organizations with budget constraints."
"Good, basic out-of-the-box solution, however, in my estimation not a long term play as the design flow and user interface make it a true chore to enter data."
"I think the whole pipeline tracking is most useful for us."
"What I appreciate about Zoho CRM is the customization."
"The most valuable solution of Zoho CRM is lead management and analytics. It has a powerful analytics tool."
"What I like best about Zoho CRM is the web form feature. I find Zoho CRM forms excellent."
"The solution is always stable."
"The most valuable feature I have found in Zoho CRM is custom functions—you can achieve anything with it, from integrations with other applications to automating complex tasks that the inbuilt features may not handle."
"Zoho CRM has a location-based feature where if I'm visiting certain customers in a day, it can indicate to me the most efficient route. However, this is if the location of all the offices or places is updated, it saves my time. The calendar in Zoho CRM is synchronized with Google Calander which is very useful for me."
"Zoho CRM by contrast is easy to use, customizable and you don’t need training to use it."
 

Cons

"Functionality and features are well suited for small business companies only."
"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."
"The UX was such that it limited the use of it."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"I would appreciate it if SugarCRM could support us in on-premise implementation."
"I would like to see more integration on a mobile platform in the next release."
"The product's scalability and stability need improvement."
"The tool is hard for people who have worked with Microsoft Office for a long time."
"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."
"The solution can improve by having a policy that allows us to integrate with the cloud."
"The login process could be improved as some users find it unfriendly. The documentation could also be more user-friendly and better organized."
"There should be easy access to feature recommendations in the solution"
"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."
"If the client's requirements involve managing large datasets, I would go directly to Salesforce due to its capability to store and structure big data, but it tends to be more expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"We consider it a good value and found it to be cost-effective."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"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 licensing is the subscription, where we pay $50 per month per user."
"The product costs $35 per user per year."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"This solution is less expensive than Salesforce."
"Compared to other CRMs, it is very cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Engineering Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business45
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?
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...
 

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: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.