Ontraport vs. Sugar Sell (SugarCRM)

Starting a business you have enough stuff to deal with. Ontraport takes the headache out of the tech side. Everything works together and you don't ever get left alone to figure things out. I would beg any new business to invest in Ontraport. Or if you want to grow and scale an existing business it would be great. I think it more for service-based business.

Incentivized

The way Community Tax uses Sugar from a users point of view is, it can house a lot of information for either a company or individual with the option of adding additional sub cases . The down side is there are licenses issued per user and 1 per user is not enough because most of the time we are multitasking. Therefore a program/software would be more suitable instead of using a URL.

Incentivized

• Campaign builder. The visual campaign builder is very easy to use and feels pretty modern.
• CRM: customizing what type of data I'd like WHERE has been great. Custom fields, being able to move them around.
• Task Management: one of the things that set ONTRAPORT apart from other similar automation platforms is the tasks. You can trigger automated tasks that cause your salespeople to take action, and the tasks stay in the queue until the salesperson takes that action and checks it off. This is great for putting together a web of accountability.

• Very easy to set up and configure reports among teams. Very customizable and allows me to build reports that illustrate how the team is performing.
• Exporting granular reports into excel for in depth analysis and actionable measures.
• Ability to mass upload lots of information and leads. Important for our team to import lots of information on prospecting clients.

Incentivized

• Ontraport is a very powerful and robust system capable of a great many things. The time it takes to get to know the program is a little intimidating. Don't get me wrong, you can get started right away, but a year in I know I am still not making the most of all Ontraport can do. I am UK based so access to their advanced trainings means international travel, maybe some online events could be initiated.

• The back-end programming (logical hooks) for advanced customizations could benefit from a more user-friendly interface
• General layout could be improved by the addition of modern templates to customize the standard look and feel
• Support communities could be further improved with the addition of videos on how to do specific configuration, modules.

Incentivized

My client was already using Ontraport and had a decent investment in the tool. As soon as we turn around the revenue situation with my client's products, we will be ditching OAP immediately, despite the significant re-implementation cost we are going to face moving to a new system. I am part of a high-end, professional marketing group, and the overwhelming sentiment with these other professionals is that one should run away from this as fast as humanly possible. I thought their words were just ungrounded opinion, and I deeply regret that I did not heed them more closely before sinking still more time and effort into OAP.

Our organization will continue to use Sugar as long as it remains cost effective and it addresses the majority of our needs. I will, however, recommend looking into other options once our needs increase and there is additional budget for some bigger named and more robust platform options. I feel if the application was friendlier to end users we would get better productivity as well.

The software is just easy to use. The UI is fairly intuitive. The help system is pretty good. I find it is pretty quick to get my work completed and if I don't document my things well, I can always figure out how I did something when I need to make changes. When I have a problem the tech support is easy to deal with and when things need to get escalated they are resolved quickly.

In the overall usage of the system I still give it a 10 out 10 because it's our day to day system that we use here at work. We all have come to love it because it's quick and easy to use. New updates are given to us by our supervisors or managers and it's easy to do new things in the system. The only Issue like I said before that I'm having is that once I put a payment date and want to modify the dates, it will only allow me to eliminate the date but not put a new one back in.

Incentivized

SugarCRM has never been down for us.

Most of the time OP runs fine. But I've had to submit more support tickets this year do to messages, seq.'s or rules not running correctly. Also experienced slow response times moving in and around OP.

No response time issues ever. Very productive due to its ease of use.

The techs are reasonably savvy, highly courteous and want to do right by their customers. Unfortunately, the product they are supporting is so deeply flawed that there's only so much they can do when your legitimate business requirements are simply not supported.

Because it provides us with the necessary support and with the updates that are being made in the system, it allows us to improve our work experience and makes it easier for the entire team. When requesting some type of support it is effective and immediate and with this, it [does not] stagnate our productivity.

Incentivized

I went to their Ontrapalooza event, and it opened my mind as to how the software can be used.

We feel clasroom training is essential to ensure user adoption and buy-in. Video and on-line training courses gave their place but being in a classroom setting enables the Team to make any potential CRM issues visble right up front.

Only part of an implemementation as noted previously.

If you know your business, ONTRAPORT is easy

Study, study, and study. Be prepared to train everyday until all processes are flowing nicely. The CRM is the elephant and figuring out where to take the first bite can be a challenge. But there is only one way to eat this elephant, one bite at a time. Systematic planning is very important.

Incentivized

We used it because it was recommended by other coaching companies. It meets well the need we have which is mostly about creating different type of access based on when the clients joined our program. You can easily create automations and rules to be notified when clients evolve in the program. It allows us to send them our messages at the right moment.

Incentivized

SugarCRM does not stack up well against Bloomreach; we moved away from SugarCRM to Bloomreach, which was much more suited and easily integrated into many different platforms. Bloomreach has a much nicer user interface for debugging and simpler screens for less technical audiences to utilize 3rd. Party support is rarely required, and lots of easy-to-understand documentation is available.

Incentivized

With the new lower priced options, it's now easier for newer businesses to start with a more basic version and upgrade as they need more features.

Works from 2-300 Users in our experience.

• ONTRAPORT has helped us as we continue to segment our users - we're able to quickly determine what messaging is working and what isn't.
• Their form loading is so slow at times that it negatively affects signup conversion rates on our website.
• They have an open API that let's us connect to other productivity and marketing tools without hiring programmers.

Incentivized

• I know that SugarCRM has made a positive impact on my day to day work. Since we have made the change to SugarCRM (over a year ago) it has made life easier, more productive, and efficient.
• Organization is key and this CRM has done this exceptionally for me.

Incentivized