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SAP CRM vs Salesforce Sales Cloud vs SugarCRM Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 2.0%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP CRM is 2.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SugarCRM Platform is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Salesforce Sales Cloud2.0%
SAP CRM2.1%
SugarCRM Platform0.9%
Other95.0%
CRM
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user128490 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 18, 2016
 

Featured Reviews

Jonny Katz - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Business Operations at PeerSpot
Uses data-driven insights to improve workflows and highlights a need for simpler automation tools
Salesforce Sales Cloud can be improved in several areas. First, the UI is an area for enhancement. Even though they've launched Lightning, it's clunky at times with page load speeds. It also needs to be made extremely more user-friendly. For new people using Salesforce Sales Cloud, there is a steep learning curve. Additionally, giving non-admins the ability to make changes on the fly is something that I feel is necessary. Currently with Salesforce Sales Cloud, you need to have a consultant. It's hard to build the flows or workflows. Making it easier for that end-user who's not so technically minded to help themselves is essential. I choose seven out of ten because I think you need a consultant or a consulting company to help you build it out. Certain changes should be made much easier and more user-friendly where an admin can do it. The automation processes need to be much simpler. If you're looking at other tools out there, for example SalesLoft or HubSpot, it's much easier to build those workflows and do automation.
FA
CRM administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Customization and automation drive effective user training and insights sharing
Recently, the price of SAP CRM has increased, which is one concern. Another issue is that sometimes we experience slow performance. Reports in SAP CRM itself can become very slow. Other than that, it is a very good CRM system. I am happy with SAP CRM because whenever we have requirements for changes or customization as per our needs, we get them, and the downtime is minimal. We are getting very good support from the incident team and the in-house support team who are responsible for customization. Some customer centers have moved to Salesforce, but I don't have any experience with Salesforce to make a comparison.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The dashboards and dashboard customization are great."
"This solution offers a good user experience. It is easy to learn and use, even for those who are using it for the first time."
"I've found lead management to be the most valuable feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud. It helps capture, track, and manage leads throughout the sales process. The tool is easy to learn."
"It is an open the platform with API integration with other systems. Salesforce, it is not a software. It is very famous and available. When you are creating leads, generating leads, opportunities, it is wonderful in the reports as well. Dashboards are amazing."
"The product is very fast and responsive. There's no lag time when you are on the platform."
"You can capture all the contacts that relate to an account or business, including personal details."
"Salesforce Sales Cloud is very reliable and provides good stability and security."
"You can adapt Salesforce for all customer needs."
"We use SAP CRM for customer service improvement. The main idea is to make sure our team has the right information when talking to customers. This helps them process things like price approvals for quotes faster. The goal is to make the product more efficient, and faster, and, in the end, provide better customer service."
"The stability is good."
"The most valuable feature is real-time data. You don't have to go to the finance team for information. On one screen, you can see if stock is available and check the customer's outstanding balance, and then you can process the order. SAP CRM's integration with other applications is easier."
"We get very good support from SAP."
"The most valuable feature for me is the flexibility to consolidate the products."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The flexibility to design the portal and customize it according to the needs of the clients is valuable. The integration with SAP ERP is also valuable."
"The solution's contract management and product hierarchy features of SAP CRM are the most beneficial for our business operations."
"The most valuable feature is relation capability, which allows us to relay customers with invoice orders."
"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."
"It has sales email campaigns, plus integration with Active Directory."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost."
 

Cons

"The areas revolving around archiving and backup in Salesforce Sales Cloud are not as advanced as some of the other solutions in the market."
"We have a very broad set of products at our company. The process to get that information accurately into the Sales Cloud system could use improvement. It shouldn't take weeks of time. The process of identifying products that are being sold for forecasting purposes and sales tracking purposes is too hard."
"Even though they've launched Lightning, it's clunky at times with page load speeds and needs to be made extremely more user-friendly."
"One area where the solution could improve is with handling feature requests."
"Sometimes, it is difficult to integrate it with my emails. I've had trouble integrating it with my emails. There were a couple of things I did try as well, but I wasn't able to do so. I've had difficulty in other areas too with integration. It was related to syncing my calendars. I want the tasks that I put in to automatically sync to my calendars and update my calendars, but I couldn't figure out how to do it."
"One consistent comment about the product internally is that it has a steep learning curve, especially for some sales executives. Simplifying the interface would be a big leap forward. Like a chatbot, fewer clicks and more direct AI interaction could help. A simplified interface with AI support would make things much easier. We need an AI feature like ChatGPT that helps us to hold conversations."
"As a presale team leader, I see a need to better understand the platform because our current knowledge is limited. This makes it difficult to explore possible extensions of its use. We also want more detailed information on commercial opportunities included in the tool. It needs to include better documentation on the functions it offers."
"The user interface could be better in Salesforce Sales Cloud because it feels a little heavy."
"The solution is expensive."
"What I see as a challenge against our competitor is that Salesforce comes with more flexibility, for enhancement purposes, whereas the SAP CRM Cloud is more robust and rigid. It's not flexible to implement any bespoke solution."
"CRM is costlier than its competitors."
"The solution needs more flexible customization, tender request, and they need to think about some of the localization aspects."
"Content management is one area where SAP CRM could use some work because we were seeking a CRM solution that could store BLOB data, like PDF and email data, which takes up a lot of space in the database. Recently, we migrated to a content server, but it would be nice if CRM had built-in BLOB data management because BLOB data is a challenge we've been dealing with since last year."
"As SAP CRM is still in its pilot version in my company, and my team is still experimenting on it, there's little room for exploration, but its setup is not as straightforward, so this could be an area for improvement."
"The implementation and integrations could be better. After we went into the production environment, we had some issues. Most of them were with the ERP integration. Many other issues were around the client's integrations between the ERP and CRM platforms. It could be more user-friendly. It wasn't very user-friendly initially, but now it's easier for them to use. Now, the users can use that platform better than at the beginning. We would like to see reports with more analytic features and artificial intelligence in the next release. For example, show more metrics and KPIs and more dynamic dashboards. Because the platform has some models, but it's not easy to use. It's a little complex."
"The product's pricing could be better."
"It lacks customization, and this is the main reason that we are switching to a different solution."
"In the next release, I would like to see personalization of information about customers or specific businesses or opportunities."
"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."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a yearly license, and there are no hidden costs. Considering the Indian market, the pricing is reasonable. I don't consider it to be on the high side."
"You need to pay for the license per user per month. For example, you need to pay $100 per user. If you have 200 users using your Salesforce, that would be multiplied by a hundred, that's $20,000 per month and a quarter million per year."
"The price is fair."
"The licensing fees are reasonable."
"My understanding is that Salesforce is a little bit expensive, but in terms of the efficiencies, automation, and visibility, I think it's definitely value for money."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"It is alright for now because we ended up getting a discount off the base price. So, for now, it is okay. We may have to renegotiate when we get more users, and I don't know if the price would stay the same or increase. It has just a standard licensing fee. If you end up hiring a consultant for implementation, you will have to pay for the implementation. Other than that, there are no additional fees."
"Sales Cloud is quite expensive."
"There is a license required to use SAP CRM."
"The product is costly."
"We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for SAP CRM, which is expensive."
"SAP CRM is an expensive solution and is the most challenging aspect of the solution."
"There is a license required for the solution and most of my clients purchase an annual license."
"SAP CRM costs approximately a couple of thousand a month."
"The company has seen an increase in revenue."
"SAP CRM is an expensive product."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Answers from the Community

it_user128490 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Leader at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016
Hello Pratyush. Now that you are 1.5 years out from this post, just wondered how the project is working for you. Sounded like you were leaning towards Salesforce with custom development. Is that where you ended up? Are you meeting your goals? Looking forward to your reply. Steve
2 out of 11 answers
it_user131094 - PeerSpot reviewer
Change & Delivery - Prog Lead / CxO at SJS Access Limited
Jun 26, 2014
I will respond over the weekend
it_user105723 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Jun 26, 2014
Hi, I can only really comment on Oracle Siebel, interesting why it isn’t on your list? Regards Simon Collins
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Engineering Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise40
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Salesforce Sales Cloud?
The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Sales Cloud?
Salesforce Sales Cloud can be improved in several areas. First, the UI is an area for enhancement. Even though they'v...
What is your primary use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud?
Salesforce Sales Cloud serves as our primary tool for our sales team and reviews team to document and keep all our in...
What do you like most about SAP CRM?
Getting the right information at the right time across different programs is important. These programs lack interacti...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP CRM?
SAP CRM is not suitable for small companies because of the cost. It is suitable for medium and large enterprise compa...
What needs improvement with SAP CRM?
Recently, the price of SAP CRM has increased, which is one concern. Another issue is that sometimes we experience slo...
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 wa...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coca-Cola Enterprises, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Financial Times, Just Eat, Jobsite, H.R. Owen, PlayerLayer, O2, DMGT, Philips, Xtreme.ie, Business Stream, Remote Asset Management, Dialogue Group
Brau Union Osterreich AG, Nu Skin Enterprises Inc., AOK Bundesverband, RAK Ceramics, NHS 24, Wholesale Sports Outdoor Outfitters, FC Bayern Munchen AG, Tumi, The Kellogg Company, MVV Energie AG, Anglian Water Services, German Football Association (DFB), Nebraska Book Company Inc.
Redglaze Group, TengoInternet, Hilco, Bancvue, Vet Adivsor
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in CRM. Updated: February 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.