Trying to pick a self hosted CRM (vTiger & EspoCRM)

[Rectee]

Hi everyone. I'm currently evaluating self hosted crm systems, in the last week I've tried:

vTiger

SuiteCRM

EspoCRM

I'm looking for a solution that has products/services, ticketing system (maybe a knowledgebase too) and reporting, contacts, calendar, and a note section.

So far, vTiger almost fits the bill, it's updated now and again by a team of developers. Reading some comments, I can see a few users are saying vTiger is starting to wind down the self hosted system, pushing people to their online platform now.

EspoCRM is nice, quite a slick interface, but by default it doesn't have product/services sales, nor reporting for IT tickets and appears to need an extension pack for that.

SuiteCRM, I struggled with installing (but managed), tried to upgrade and gave up, reading the forums, the developer seems to have issues with users struggling with help.

slope game

I wondered, those who chose vTiger and EspoCRM, how happy you are with them in your business, and those to chose another self hosted system, what did you go for?

Many thanks everyone.

[rabii]

I have used vTiger in the past (never liked the UI - very messy) UX is not satisfying and they are pushing users to use their cloud. SuitCRM not worth it for me, a lot of issues and also no new features.

Espocrm is the best - very clean UI a good UX and i understand your point about reports and products/services (you can create your own if you know how to) documentation is clear for developers and you can customize and build anything on top of espocrm. Personally i would 100% purchase Advanced Pack which offer (Reporting - Workflow and BPMN) it is affordable and help support this amazing team. Sales Pack has full pack of features to manage everything in sales and i would definitely encourage you to go for it. You can check all of this in the demo. vTiger has a workflow but to be honest not close to what espocrm's advanced pack offers, the BPMN is a very powerful tool that can literally automate all of your business process.

Purchasing the extensions is essential to help support the work the team do. Espocrm is very powerful system and we have a beautiful community that would help you with anything just have a look at the forum here and you can see the spirit of collaboration.

[shalmaxb]

I can repeat the words of rabii. I never collaborated with a community of this quality, generosity and kindness, very hard to find these days.
espoCRM itself is a jewel.

[esforim]

I won't be bias to any system, if it fit what I need to do I use it.

Test out all 3 system demo and see what fit you. There is a few thread asking the same question which I state my opinion.

Instead of saying how good each one is, I will write how bad* each one is instead

1. vTiger - Many feature need extension and the price is not affordable. Forum seem marketing portal.
2. EspoCRM - Some feature is available in other system but it is a paid official extension in EspoCRM.
3. suiteCRM - Haven't use this, only played with Demo and brief test on an installation. So I will just write lackluster to end this post.


*Disclaimer: In my opinion, and what I dislike about it.

[harrytruman]

I've tried every open-source CRM out there. I was just trying the demo for Suite CRM this morning and found my way back to this discussion thread. Suite CRM is interesting but becomes quickly expensive when you consider all the needed add-ons that don't come standard with the core software.

I have to say that everything I try keeps pointing me back to EspoCRM. I've purchased the advanced pack and a couple extensions over the past year to support the team here and get more needed capabilities. The Workflow tool in the advanced pack is incredibly valuable, especially for someone like me with limited coding skills. I also appreciate the active community here and all the help others have offered me. On a personal note, I love working with and supporting a Ukranian based company and team like Espo! They deserve all the help we can give them!

I'll stick with EspoCRM and here's my wish list for future updates that will make Espo even better:

-Threaded or nested comments in the Stream (allow users to reply to other comments). This will be a huge help and allow for better (topical) organization of stream comments.

-A more beautiful UI. EspoCRM is functionally amazing but looks dated. I'd love to see a new, cleaner theme and user experience.

-A mobile app

[esforim]

Mobile App... never-ever. It been discussed with many 3rd party one but still waiting.

[yuri]

Thank you for feedback.

I can't think of anything that could make the Espo UI look cleaner than it's now in the upcoming v9.0. We receive feedback from customers that they appreciate particularly the UI being clean. For me, it does not look dated.

The recent trends that we do not incorporate are much larger fonts and more rounded corners. Both are not suited well for business apps with many fields on a screen.

No matter how well-designed a UI, about 10% of people will dislike it. It would be valuable for us if there were more details in a feedback, some examples of 'good' and what exactly is felt as dated.

[lifecrane]

yeah, I do agree with you on this.. never perfect for everyone.. I did enjoy krayincrm layout a lot, but the kanban is not that flexible.. and min features i need are not that easy to achieve. Have you looked into their UI?

[rabii]

They use Tailwind css, espocrm has built their own styles and i guess that in future they will be dependent from even bootstrap as it is barely used in the system now.

[esforim]

My only irk (maybe just me cause of my poor configuration) but it very difficult to use in Portrait mode, aka Mobile Phone web browser view.