A review of Espo from the CEO of SuiteCRM

[sdesp]

During the search for CRM I did take a look, I think at all software mentioned. Now using EspoCRM for more then a year. I have to say, I'm impressed. Maybe for new users it could be nice to specific:

• It's stable & reliable
• It's fast.
• We find it easy to use.
• There are upgrades
• Forum is active

Challenges are:

• Installation (but you could use the hosted/cloud feature)
• Documentation

And if you run into a problem. Then the forum is of great help. And if that doesn't work, you can still rely on support directly from EspoCRM. We love the fact that we can run the software ourselves.

[esforim]

Aren't all CRM boasting those few first point? Stable, Fast, Easy, etc.

For me, EspoCRM does something that doesn't do. One of the reason was the Phone Number and Email field, secondly it was server compatibility was my reason for using EspoCRM. Sure EspoCRM has it flaws but it something that can be slowly fixed.

Yes, Forum is one of the highlight of EspoCRM for me also. Other place don't really have a community to get back to get information, but the forum also an indication of how inactive the community is as well. Perhaps only a small amount of people use the forum but there may be countable numbers of Users and server and business that use EspoCRM. I see many guests on the forum Online section so that is a good sign that there are lurker out there who rely on information posted on the forum. Hopefully they are not just bunch of bots or crawler.

[danieldids]

I've been using EspoCRM since 2014 (at least) and I also tried all the other open source ones cited (Suite, Vtiger, even Odoo).

I was impressed from the very first moment. Ease of use, ease of customization, ease of fixing things (server side) when shit goes bad - this last feature is, in fact, the most important for me (system administrator). I've never had a single problem upgrading or migrating an installation.

Web interface is blazing fast.

I think what EspoCRM lacks is... marketing. :-) Very few people in Brazil (where I live) knows about it.

About documentation: yeah, it was not really comprehensive a while ago, but EspoCRM is somewhat so easy to work with that this is not an issue at all for me.

I've never tried any of the paid packs (but soon i will), so i can't comment on that.

[item]

Hello,

first to know.. suitecrm is a fork of sugarcrm.
sugarcrm was opensource until 6.5 (+-) and then decide to stop opensource.

but what nobody or a little person know, Yuri give "Calendar" extension/code to opensource sugarcrm..
i think if remember in version before 6 or end of 5. Yuri have contribuate to sugarcrm and then his fork.

I know, i have try to contact him at this periode for make some extension for us .. but...
Then i retreive him with espoCRM.. and i see ..what's incredible crm fondation he do !

I can say too.. espoCRM in belgium is not know .. we have actually in ours entreprise a audit consultant with big reputation, he don't know espoCRM.. he say "SaleForce/Odoo/MicrosoftCrm.. and soo" .. incredible (or maybe because % comission !)

Regards

[esforim]

I thought SuiteCRM came from vTiger fork as well. I didn't like to use EspoCRM because of paid extension and opt to stay with YetiForce. Only moved because YetiForce server requirement.

Totally agree with Marketing or public media support, EspoCRM is rarely mentioned in Blog post and the like.

That an interesting history note you have about Calendar code.