SugarCRM Info For Insurance Agents

[Crabcake Johnny]

I feel your pain - I'm also right in the middle of a complete site re-design using Wordpress as our front page.

 

[jb60]

Interesting info on Sugar. I've been looking into using it and have installed it with the help of some scripts offered by my ISP which made that pretty easy.

I haven't been using a CRM at all, so I'm more challenged in how to use it instead of things I've used in the past. Its a project.

I'm wondering though as someone said there was a phone plugin, if this could be used in place of some of those $100/month dialers, esp if only planning to dial one number at a time. Anybody know anything about this?

Thanks,

Jb

 

[360]

Interesting info on Sugar. I've been looking into using it and have installed it with the help of some scripts offered by my ISP which made that pretty easy.

I haven't been using a CRM at all, so I'm more challenged in how to use it instead of things I've used in the past. Its a project.

I'm wondering though as someone said there was a phone plugin, if this could be used in place of some of those $100/month dialers, esp if only planning to dial one number at a time. Anybody know anything about this?

Thanks,

Jb

The phone plug in is for Vocalocity the provider of my office phone, not to be confused for a dialer. That being said we also use a dialer from Brook Jolley that uses Sugar as a crm. The marriage between the systems is perfect.

 

[maksim]

Ended up doing a custom Vtiger. Love it so far. While not as huge of a community, feel it is a more complete package.

 

[mangroveman]

Great Post al3. Would WAMP be sufficient to run? (hope you haven't answered this already)

 

[Guest]

Great Post al3. Would WAMP be sufficient to run? (hope you haven't answered this already)

There are a number of what we call "LAMP stacks" out there. LAMP stands for:
Linux
Apache
MySQL
PHP

Substitute a "W" for Windows instead of Linux and you have WAMP.

The only stack I have experience with is XAMPP as it has a version for Windows, Linux and OS X. I looked at the specs for WAMP and I'm sure WAMP will work just fine as I don't see any differences.

Of course, these stacks are for your local machine. Most of you will be on web servers running Linux or FreeBSD and will have all of this stuff already installed. All you have to do is create an empty MySQL database via your hosts control panel... easy peasy.

If you are on a server running Microsoft IIS, no doubt there will be a version of PHP and mySQL as well so SugarCRM will work fine on that platform... just create an empty database and install SugarCRM.

 

[Convert Likes]

I also use vTiger. I love the simple 1 click installs.

What's the biggest advantage of SugarCRM versus vTiger? Does anyone know?

 

[Guest]

I also use vTiger. I love the simple 1 click installs.

What's the biggest advantage of SugarCRM versus vTiger? Does anyone know?

Understand that vTiger is a "fork" (in the road) of Sugar. I won't go into the details, but some guys (I believe in India) got a copy of the open-source version of Sugar and cloned it and put it out there.

There was some bad feelings on both sides, but it was several years ago and all seems well between the two camps. (Open source developers love to fight long and protracted verbal flame wars with each other... but eventually they all kiss and make up.)

When you are looking at vTiger you are looking at Sugar (more or less.)

The vTiger community has added some features like expanded user management and invoicing into the basic package where in Sugar this are add-ons.

The two companies have a different biz model but both have the same foundation... they put out their free community edition as a "beta" of their commercial package. Thus, you and I get a full-bore CRM for free and basically serve as testers for the company. That's another way of saying that some things don't always work in either Sugar or vTiger... but they get fixed quickly in both.

Sugar goes after large corporate clients selling subscriptions to their software installed on user machines as well as support. While they have a hosted service, it is not their prime directive. vTiger targets smaller business with a low-cost monthly fee for a hosted service.

As I say, both offer their source code for free so you can install it on your own webserver or local machine.

I know for a fact that the Sugar community is huge and is worldwide. I get the feeling that vTiger is a smaller company with a smaller developer/user community.

Some folks like BMW and others like MBZ. Both are fine cars and with Sugar and vTiger it is not about advantages but personal preferences. I prefer Sugar over vTiger, other don't.

Try them both and see what you like. Both install pretty much the same way and if you can use one you can use the other (actually the same with all CRMs... Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Projects, Campaigns, etc.... they are all about the same.)

HTH.

Al
My tech cred: I wrote and own this.

 

[maksim]

For me, the biggest reason to go vTiger over SugarCRM in the open source versions... vtiger has workflows built in. Sugar does not. Also, vtiger just looks nicer.

 

[iiinycboi]

i've actually used both and customized both for p&c agency. i never finished since things started picking up and i had less time tinkering with it.

vtiger out of the package comes with more features that a p&c agency would use. but sugar has the same features via add ons. it depends on how you want to build it.

vtiger has a bunch of extra features you dont need, and sugar is kind of a basic foundation for you to add what you only need.

both does the job well. i've gave a copy of what i've customized to someone on the site who was suppose to develop it further. I havent spoken to him for a while, so im not sure if he is still working on it.