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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 (9th), Marketing Automation (12th)
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 May 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 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zoho CRM1.9%
SugarCRM Platform1.1%
Other97.0%
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."
"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."
"My advice to others is this is a good solution for importing or exporting any graphics."
"This solution's stability is very good, it runs almost without effort, and we don't have any support issues with it."
"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."
"Available source code, good documentation, training programs, and a relatively active community, provide the hallmarks for a successful open source effort."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is its low cost, and it works well."
"It is customizable. We have customized the CRM according to our needs."
"Zoho CRM is very simple and easy to use."
"The most valuable features are the lead, opportunity and task management as well as dashboard creation, reporting, contact management and campaigns."
"What I appreciate about Zoho CRM is the customization."
"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 solution is always stable."
"Some of the best features of Zoho CRM include the open architecture; it's fairly easy to modify it to your business process without having to get professionals involved."
"In general, the solution works well; it's great for keeping track of customers and adding in details."
 

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."
"At the moment, there is a complicated flow in regards to the user's permissions and what they can see."
"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."
"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."
"You cannot include all your entities under one instance at the moment."
"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."
"The mobile application is a little complicated and could be simplified."
"What needs improvement in Zoho CRM is the UI. It needs to be more user-friendly."
"We'd like the solution to be less expensive."
"The reporting for developers should be improved."
"Certain functions have occasional performance issues."
"The main area for improvement is how the solution handles leads. Leads are separated and always tied to a contact, which makes it difficult to maintain leads within a company. This could be handled better."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"I have no information about the pricing for Zoho CRM because the finance department handles that."
"Zoho CRM is an expensive tool."
"This solution is less expensive than Salesforce."
"Compared to other solutions, I would say Zoho CRM is very, very affordable because we can use different applications with one license."
"Zoho CRM has a subscription-based license, which is not too expensive."
"The product costs $35 per user per year."
"Its price is lower than the other software."
"It is around $1000 a month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Construction Company
14%
Engineering Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

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: May 2026.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.