I'm also in the process of evaluating them. I've been using Sugar for about a year now and it works great from a Sales manager standpoint, but not so good from a project management / help desk standpoint.

Some strengths of Centric:
1) Much more evolved project management
2) Customer portal (can view their own projects)
3) More granular security
4) Better Help Desk (ticketing) functionality
5) Better work flow
6) Has built in Timesheet

Sugar Strengths:
1) Better look and feel
2) Easy deployment (php based)
3) More robust email marketing
4) Feels quicker (response time, getting things done)
5) Slightly better contact / lead management
6) Better layout of information

I think the topic of Centric vs. Sugar is a wonderful topic to address. I'm glad this thread was started. I'd like to add my two cents. While I obviously come with a bias (I'm a member of the Centric team) I'll try and comment only on factual differences that I believe are worth noting. I'll leave it to others to address more subjective things like which is easier to install, look and feel, etc. All valuable but you'd probably guess where I come down on them.

Several of the major differences worth noting that do affect many companies willingness to adopt one product over the other are the differences in underlying technology, licensing, and business model.

First the underlying technology. Centric is based on Java while Sugar is PHP. Interestingly, we began Centric on PHP in 2000 and switched to Java in 2002 beginning with Version 2.0. Why? We liked the cross platform nature of Java, we believe security is handled better, generally development is more rigorous by those who add code, and finally, we were told by large company users they didn't feel comfortable with a large (+1,000) user system based on PHP. And as we are in the process today of pilots and deployments that will likely well exceed the 1,000 user level -- and know for a fact that most other Open Source CRM vendors were eliminated from consideration for "technical architecture" reasons -- we know many CIOs have a clear viewpoint on such issues. My point isn't that PHP isn't a good and evolving language. Rather, that the vast majority of large IT shops, that look at things very rigorously, and whom are a significant target of ours clearly favor Java and .Net today.

Second, licensing. Sugar is actually an Open Source and a proprietary company bundled together. They have an open source version you can use, but if you want many or most of the sexy features you have to pay for them in one of the supported packages. They're not available in the Open Source release. I'll say it again: You "must" pay. At least that part looks/is like a proprietary model to us. We, Centric CRM, also want companies to pay for maintenance and support. But if for some reason you can't or don't want to, ALL of our features are available in the open source edition. We make no distinction between editions of the product. We totally eliminate the "lock-in" risk that proprietary vendors build their business models around via the way we license. If you use an advanced package with Sugar that lock-in risk is still there.

Third, business model. Sugar is heavily backed by Silicon Valley VCs and, at least to date, Centric CRM is not. The owners of Centric CRM are almost entirely the founding managers and executives -- the exception being some close friends. We have not taken any institutional money to date. Having said that, we're actually very grateful to Sugar in that their millions have raised the visibility of the Open Source CRM space for everyone. That's good for all of us. However, we believe there are pluses and minuses to accepting VC money early on in terms of how it affects your business model, how you price, etc. Some companies will only deal with vendors if you have $10 million of cash in the bank. If that's the case, pick Sugar. Others may only want to go with a company if all of their code and features are in fact available in a free version -- no customer lock in possible. In that case, Centric is the better pick. Pro's and Con's to both.

What is the general feeling on the speed in performing actions? I know one person mentioned that Sugar felt quicker but with the Java the tab navigation seems unparalleled in Centric. How much of a decision does speed alone play in your decisions?

From my point of view, if you're worried about speed I can tell you CentricCRM is fast. Faster than Sugar??? I can't tell neither Sugar users may... Now, systems performance would change depending on the available resources: Hardware, Operating System, simultaneous connected users and obviously The Technician expertise. For example I have tested a version of Centric on identical machines one running Proprietary Platform as Windows 2003 Server + SQL 2000 STD and the other Fedora4 + PosgreSQL . The resulting speed on the recommended open source platform is much more faster compared to the other, for sure because it is its natural platform. I would recommend to evaluate carefully comparing apples to apples and grapes to grapes. Would be interesting to find out an independent org who may offer to measure both CRMs performance running on similar platforms and circumstances.

I am running Centric and Sugar on the same box (fairly low end -- dual 800Mhz Zeon). Just from a window opening / search basis, they are about identical. I think the difference is it in the speed to get common tasks done in Sugar. That is mainly a matter of navigation and screen layout.

For example, in Sugar when you open the account screen, it automatically comes up with the last few accounts you were working on without having to search for them. When you open an account, you see a summary of their recent cases, emails, projects, etc on the main screen.

In centric, you have to click on each tab under the account to see if there are any further details -- there is no visual indication that those tabs contain any information so you have to drill into each to find out.

In the same vein Sugar has "Quick Entry" side sections to quickly create an account, contact, lead, etc when you are in that module. In Centric you have to go through the full screen which is at least an extra click.

Again, these are not big things -- mostly just extra clicks to get common things done, but it contributes to the perception of slowness.

From a developers standpoint, Centric's code base is much more approachable than Sugar's and the learning curve to add additional functionaltiy seems to be less. Maybe that is just because I'm more familiar with Java development though.

Reports, project management, Customer portal and workflow all seem more mature in Centric

One thing I've noticed is the lack of views and basic options such as:

Company-centric view (showing all contacts at a company)
Ability to add a contact from anywhere easily
Ability to customize the 'quick' bars

How are Centric users dealing with those missing features that seem so useful? Custom programming? Also, sugar seems to offer a great deal more flexibility in customizing the data fields where Centric offers the Custom folders but hasn't shown me a way to use them to build Action Lists(great feature) etc...

Great feedback, thanks.

I don't think we've spent much time thinking how to use "folders" in Action Lists. Interesting. Can you give a real world example of what you might do?

Some of the other issues raised above (e.g. more features in "Quick Actions") have been noted earlier and will be in the final 4.0 release. Similarly, additional flexibility to modify, remove and/or make fields "mandatory" will be in 4.0.

Please keep the ideas flowing. Otherwise you get what we come up with or what some of the larger users are sponsoring and those aren't always as much on mark to what the general community wants. :(

dr

David Richards wrote:
I think the topic of Centric vs. Sugar is a wonderful topic to address. I'm glad this thread was started. I'd like to add my two cents. While I obviously come with a bias (I'm a member of the Centric team) I'll try and comment only on factual differences that I believe are worth noting. I'll leave it to others to address more subjective things like which is easier to install, look and feel, etc. All valuable but you'd probably guess where I come down on them.

Several of the major differences worth noting that do affect many companies willingness to adopt one product over the other are the differences in underlying technology, licensing, and business model.

First the underlying technology. Centric is based on Java while Sugar is PHP. Interestingly, we began Centric on PHP in 2000 and switched to Java in 2002 beginning with Version 2.0. Why? We liked the cross platform nature of Java, we believe security is handled better, generally development is more rigorous by those who add code, and finally, we were told by large company users they didn't feel comfortable with a large (+1,000) user system based on PHP. And as we are in the process today of pilots and deployments that will likely well exceed the 1,000 user level -- and know for a fact that most other Open Source CRM vendors were eliminated from consideration for "technical architecture" reasons -- we know many CIOs have a clear viewpoint on such issues. My point isn't that PHP isn't a good and evolving language. Rather, that the vast majority of large IT shops, that look at things very rigorously, and whom are a significant target of ours clearly favor Java and .Net today.

Second, licensing. Sugar is actually an Open Source and a proprietary company bundled together. They have an open source version you can use, but if you want many or most of the sexy features you have to pay for them in one of the supported packages. They're not available in the Open Source release. I'll say it again: You "must" pay. At least that part looks/is like a proprietary model to us. We, Centric CRM, also want companies to pay for maintenance and support. But if for some reason you can't or don't want to, ALL of our features are available in the open source edition. We make no distinction between editions of the product. We totally eliminate the "lock-in" risk that proprietary vendors build their business models around via the way we license. If you use an advanced package with Sugar that lock-in risk is still there.

Third, business model. Sugar is heavily backed by Silicon Valley VCs and, at least to date, Centric CRM is not. The owners of Centric CRM are almost entirely the founding managers and executives -- the exception being some close friends. We have not taken any institutional money to date. Having said that, we're actually very grateful to Sugar in that their millions have raised the visibility of the Open Source CRM space for everyone. That's good for all of us. However, we believe there are pluses and minuses to accepting VC money early on in terms of how it affects your business model, how you price, etc. Some companies will only deal with vendors if you have $10 million of cash in the bank. If that's the case, pick Sugar. Others may only want to go with a company if all of their code and features are in fact available in a free version -- no customer lock in possible. In that case, Centric is the better pick. Pro's and Con's to both.

OK, me again with complaints about licensing :)

This text above is very nicely put, but completely wrong. As I do see, from your site, that you are really into opensource, and you are pushing and going into some formidable initiatives, I would really like to discuss your licensing/business plan again. Of course, the code, company and the product is yours to do what you want, but I'm afraid you are fighting windmills (sorry for my English, but I think that is the phrase).

Java part is true, and I cannot be more happy with your decision to go Java.

There are several levels of problems with your model. First of all, nobody understands it. People are just starting to accept GPL (or some other OSI approved licenses) and associated business model, and here you are with yet another. You cannot beat them, join them. Even if your licensing model is better for customers, you will ALWAYS have a hard time explaining that. You give whole functionality? Nice. But how does that compare to Sugar basic + plugins for 99% of customers? About the same. And for which product will customers hear first? For Sugar. Why? Because you don't allow distribution.

Three problems are killing you. Users base, community, users percepcion (global brand recognition, if you like). All three are a direct consequence of your "do not distribute" clause in license. How will you reach wider audience? How will people find out about you? How will they see that you DO have a very nice product? You have limited marketing budget, I suppose. And coming relatively late to a defined market is only possible with opensource product, as any good new VC will tell you. So you kinda ride the OS wave, but you are strangling your native distribution channels with license, and putting off people who would contribute, because it takes 3 seconds to see that you are actually completely proprietary product.

Why fight Sugar? They AREN'T competition to you. THERE ARE NO GOOD OS CRM's IN JAVA. Thats you HUGE chance. If you actually took the same model as Sugar, you would get all things that they have, in no time. User base, community, user percepcion.

If you really want to be even better then Sugar, why not going Alfresco route? They are GPL with FLOSS exception. And all editions with same functionality. If it works for them, why wouldn't it work for you? Actually, the most items from your Enterprise list could stay the same, just ASP one would have to go. You would get tens of thousands installs worldwide, vibrant community, lots of contributions, workforce. And loose ASP thingy. Does it really mean so much to you?.

It is great that you internally financed everything, but I assume that you actually want to make some money out of it someday. In OS world, it is all about user base. JBOSS was sold for 28 times its yearly revenue. MySQL is approx 1 bil dollars worth, with just $15mil revenue. Sugar will be sold for astronomical price.

Users base, community, users percepcion will get you VC and big money. Nothing else. You are in the middle of big vendors with big user base, and ultrafast growing OS vendor with huge user base. You can go with your current path, slowly, with few distributors/partners, slowly getting referential list, and with limited resources. Or you can fuck them all, with a great chance of being THE FIRST usable Java CRM. Just give us a chance to distribute the damn thing :)

Sorry for a big rant, this is the last time I will pressure you about your product. It is your product, after all :) I just hate to see great opportunities missed.

Think. Think about first truly OS and truly usable Java CRM. Think about not having to explain to every customer why your license is better than xyz. Think about not having to explain why Sugar is so strong and popular. Think about not having to explain anything, having others doing it for you. Think about 1mil downloads mark on your site. Think about all the partnerships and opportunities that number would create. Think about being in position that every IT manager on the planet knows about you. Think about snowball effect that true OS gives you. Think about why others with inferior technology are using that snowball effect to progress much faster on every single front than you.

You have a great chance, you just have to reach and grab it.

Filip Šelendić
Protenus
CEO

Filip, first thanks very much for your comments. It is very obvious that you are passionate about the topic, and your enthusiasm for Centric CRM comes through clearly.

You say that this will be your last post on this topic, but I'm hoping that isn't true since this is an important conversation. It is also important that we get the licensing part of the business right. You point out a bunch of downsides to our current licensing approach, and all of them have been discussed at length internally at Centric, and continue to be discussed on an almost daily basis.

However, you overlook some of the downsides to going with, say, the GPL. I would actually be very interested in your thoughts on this matter.

First of all, as regards SugarCRM, they do not have an OSI-approved license. Their open source product is licensed under a modified Mozilla Public License that includes a branding clause: every user page of the redistributed Sugar product must include their logo and a link to their website. This is an example of the "Badgeware" phenomenon that is reasonably controversial within the open source community because it is a clear attempt to limit redistribution without actually putting those words into the license.

Second, whereas there is really only one open source operating system (Linux) and one web server (Tomcat) and a few application servers and other middleware components like databases, there are hundreds of applications. It is not at all clear that the same licensing approach that worked for the infrastructure components will work for applications. In particular, there is the very real issue of forked code: witness Sugar with vTiger (forked before Sugar implemented its badgeware license) and the recent community fork of Compierre. As for the ASP issue, hosting is not currently recognized as a form of redistribution by the OSI or any of the OSI-approved licenses. In short, there is nothing to prevent a commercial entitiy from setting up a hosting service with software that they don't have the expense of maintaining.

I am genuinely curious as to your thoughts on these matters and hope that you will reply.

Thanks,
Michael Harvey
Chief Marketing Officer
Centric CRM

Gone the SugarCRM then Vtiger way and trying now CentricCRM (mainly because VTiger is lagging and sound stuck in a bad design/redesign/featuring/stabilisation loop).

I could tell that the feeling is not about the licence at all. But on the 'closeness' of the community edition for broader adoption by developers.

Quite all OSS, are using some standardized features/tools set for letting other developpers using and developing on the code base. Centric sound nice, but not having a trac like approach to look and participate to the developpement process, is like a show stopper.

I think developers for small IT shop, are willing to invest in a single seat support contract and on the mean time, add value for their shop uses, when (because its on every good developer blod) they see a factoring add-on, they usually want to push it in the common code base, because its a win-win situation, where their modifications are going to be backed-up latter along with other new added features.

After that licence issues are more concerning redistribution rights or what sound like the new mode of 'OSS reintegration' (coratech like) if you buy the value of the bundle you have no interest of parting from each and every feature. But if you like a specialized version, you have to work with the project owner and try to push your extension in the component, waiting for the integrator to 'upgrade'.

For now if only you good guys could come to a more 'usual' way of interacting with your fellow developpers, you have a VERY GOOD project, waiting to rise in front of other (and trust me I have tested a LOT!).