Struggling to pick the right CRM? You’re not alone.
Insightly vs SugarCRM both promise to boost your business, but which one actually delivers?
It’s confusing, right? How do you know what’s best for you?
Imagine choosing wrong. Wasted money. Missed opportunities.
This article cuts through the noise. We’ll break down Insightly vs SugarCRM, plain and simple.
Find out which CRM truly fits your business. Let’s make this decision easy.
Overview
We’ve put both Insightly and SugarCRM through their paces, testing features, usability, and real-world application.
Our hands-on experience allows for a direct, practical comparison, moving beyond just spec sheets to provide you with actionable insights.
Need a CRM that goes beyond sales with robust project management tools? Insightly’s got you covered.
Pricing: It has a free trial. The premium plan starts at $29/month.
Key Features:
- Project Management
- Workflow Automation
- Relationship Linking
SugarCRM’s tools like Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, and Sugar Market can help! Automate marketing today!
Pricing: Book your demo plan. The premium plan starts at $19/month.
Key Features:
- Sales Force Automation
- Customer Support
- Reporting and Analytics
What is Insightly?
Insightly is a CRM and project management tool.
It’s designed for small to medium-sized businesses.
Think of it as a hub for your sales and projects. It keeps everything organized.
Also, explore our favorite Insightly alternatives…
Our Take
Insightly is a solid choice for businesses that need a scalable CRM with project management capabilities.
Key Benefits
- Scalable for growth: Adapt the platform as your business expands.
- Project management features: Keep your projects organized and on track.
- Customizable dashboards and reports: Get the insights you need to make informed decisions.
- Integrations with popular apps: Connect with your favorite business tools.
Pricing
- Plus: $29/user/month.
- Professional: $49/user/month.
- Enterprise: $99/user/month.
Pros
Cons
What is SugarCRM?
SugarCRM is a flexible CRM platform.
It’s built for businesses that need customization.
It lets you tailor the system to your needs.
Also, explore our favorite SugarCRM alternatives…
Our Take
Want to boost sales by 20% in 2025? SugarCRM’s tools like Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, and Sugar Market can help! Automate marketing, manage customers and close more deals.
Key Benefits
- Open-source platform: Gives you greater flexibility and control.
- Robust sales automation: Streamline your sales processes and boost productivity.
- Excellent reporting tools: Gain valuable insights into your sales performance.
- The mobile app includes access to your CRM data on the go.
- Large community: Tap into a wealth of resources and support.
Pricing
SugarCRM offers a free trial to test things out. Their paid plans start at $49 per user per month. Here’s the breakdown:
- Essentials: $19/user/month, three users minimum.
- Standard: $59/user/month, ten users minimum.
- Advanced: $85/user/month, ten users minimum.
- Premier: $135/user/month, ten users minimum.
Pros
Cons
Feature Comparison
This analysis evaluates two powerful crm platforms: Insightly CRM, known for its unique blend of integrated project management tools and sales.
SugarCRM, the leading crm known for its enterprise customization and modular components like sugar sell and sugar market.
This comparison will clarify which crm software offers the superior solution for optimizing your sales process and maximizing sales opportunities.
1. Core Focus and Modularity
- Insightly CRM: A versatile crm system and affordable crm solution that targets small and medium businesses (SMBs) by integrating sales, marketing (insightly marketing), and task management. Its core strength is its unified approach.
- SugarCRM: Designed for enterprise and large organizations, offering a modular suite composed of separate clouds like sugar sell (sales), sugar market (marketing), and sugar serve (service). It is the leading crm for robust, componentized functionality.
2. Project and Task Management
- Insightly CRM: Excels with built-in integrated project management tools, allowing users to assign tasks and manage projects directly from a customer record. This is a core crm feature that boosts sales team efficiency.
- SugarCRM: Focuses on the core sales cycle. While it has some task management features within the sales/service modules, it generally requires third party integrations for full-scale project management.
3. Sales Automation and Efficiency
- Insightly CRM: Provides effective sales automation and workflow automation to streamline the sales process. Its features help sales teams track sales opportunities and deals from start to finish using rich customer data.
- SugarCRM: Offers powerful, enterprise-grade sales automation through sugar sell, including advanced forecasting and analytics to drive higher sales performance. It supports complex drag and drop workflows better than other crms.
4. Marketing Capabilities
- Insightly CRM: Offers insightly marketing as a separate, fully featured module. This allows marketing teams to run campaigns and nurture leads, integrating closely with the core insightly crm for centralized customer data.
- SugarCRM: Provides sophisticated marketing automation through its sugar market cloud. This module is aimed at high-volume, complex marketing campaigns for large organizations.
5. Service and Support
- Insightly CRM: Offers insightly service, a dedicated tool for managing customer support operations, handling customer queries, and providing support services.
- SugarCRM: Features service automation through the sugar serve module, providing enhanced support and robust tools suitable for large, specialized service teams.
6. Pricing and Target Market
- Insightly CRM: Positioned as an affordable crm solution, with pricing that insightly starts at competitive rates. It targets growing small and medium businesses (SMBs) who need a cost-effective, yet integrated crm solution.
- SugarCRM: The sugarcrm pricing is significantly higher and generally structured per user with tiered access for sugar sell or sugar enterprise features. It targets mid-to-large enterprises and is considered a leading crm.
7. Data and Contact Management
- Insightly CRM: Offers comprehensive contact management features, allowing sales teams and marketing teams to track all customer interactions and data, enhancing customer relationship management.
- SugarCRM: Provides deep contact management and robust data management capabilities essential for sugar enterprise operations, handling large volumes of customer data and ensuring data integrity across the crm platform.
8. Analytics and Forecasting
- Insightly CRM: Features strong reporting and analytics tools, including an opportunities dashboard and the ability to track sales forecasting metrics for the sales process.
- SugarCRM: Excels in this area, offering specialized sales performance and sales forecasting tools within sugar sell. These features provide executives with deep, actionable insights across the entire enterprise.
9. Protocols and Ecosystem
- Insightly CRM: Offers native integration with Google Workspace and Microsoft apps. Its API allows integration with many other insightly products and external services for enhanced productivity.
- SugarCRM: Operates on a strong, open architecture. Its components (sugar market, sugar sell, sugar serve) integrate seamlessly but users may seek crm alternatives if the sugarcrm cost for multiple modules is too high.
What to Look For in a CRM Software?
- Scalability: Will the CRM grow with your business? Can it handle increasing data and users?
- Ease of Use: Is the interface easy for your team? How much training is required?
- Specific Industry Needs: Does the CRM cater to your industry’s unique demands? Are there industry-specific templates?
- Integration Capabilities: Does it connect with your existing tools? Can it connect to custom software?
- Customer Support and Training: What level of support is offered? Are there training resources available?
- Data Security: How secure is your data? Does it meet compliance standards?
- Reporting and Analytics: Does it provide actionable insights? Can you create custom reports?
Final Verdict
Choosing between Insightly and SugarCRM isn’t easy.
But, Insightly wins for most businesses.
It’s user-friendly, and it helps you manage customer data well.
Plus, it can integrate with many tools.
Insightly helps businesses streamline tasks.
Its workflow automation is good for everyday use.
We’ve used both. Insightly is easier to tailor for most needs.
If you need a solid CRM, Insightly is a good choice.
More of Insightly
Here’s a brief comparison of Insightly with these software solutions:
- Insightly vs Pipedrive: Insightly focuses on CRM with integrated project management; Pipedrive specializes in visual sales pipeline management, often preferred by sales-centric teams.
- Insightly vs GoHighLevel: Insightly is great for combining CRM with project management. It helps track sales and projects together. GoHighLevel is an all-in-one platform for marketing agency needs. It offers strong marketing and sales automation tools and can manage multiple clients.
- Insightly vs Keap: Insightly offers a robust CRM with project tracking; Keap provides powerful marketing automation, email campaigns, and comprehensive sales features.
- Insightly vs ActiveCampaign: Insightly merges CRM with project management capabilities; ActiveCampaign excels in advanced marketing automation, email sequencing, and lead scoring.
- Insightly vs HubSpot: Insightly offers a strong CRM with project management, while HubSpot provides a vast all-in-one platform for marketing, sales, and customer service.
- Insightly vs Clickfunnels: Insightly is a CRM with project management; ClickFunnels is primarily a sales funnel builder for creating landing pages and automating sales processes.
- Insightly vs Folk: Insightly is a comprehensive CRM with project management capabilities; Folk is a more streamlined, collaborative contact management tool.
- Insightly vs Instantly: Insightly offers a robust CRM and project management solution; Instantly focuses on automated cold email outreach and lead generation.
- Insightly vs ClickUp: Insightly integrates CRM and project management; ClickUp is a versatile work management platform that can be configured for CRM tasks.
- Insightly vs Monday: Insightly combines CRM with project management; Monday CRM is a highly customizable work operating system, adaptable for various CRM needs.
- Insightly vs Capsule CRM: Insightly is a more feature-rich CRM with project management, while Capsule CRM is a simpler, straightforward contact and sales opportunity tracker.
- Insightly vs Freshsales: Insightly offers a robust CRM with project management; Freshsales CRM provides advanced sales automation, AI insights, and multichannel communication.
- Insightly vs Salesforce: Insightly is a comprehensive CRM with integrated project management; Salesforce is an enterprise-grade, highly customizable, and expansive CRM solution.
- Insightly vs Zendesk: Insightly is a CRM with project management features; Zendesk primarily focuses on customer support and service ticketing.
More of SugarCRM
Here’s a brief comparison of SugarCRM with these software solutions:
- SugarCRM vs Pipedrive: SugarCRM provides broad customization and flexible deployment for various business needs; Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM with a visual pipeline, prioritizing ease of use for small to medium businesses.
- SugarCRM vs GoHighLevel: GoHighLevel vs SugarCRM: Which CRM Platform is Best in 2025?: GoHighLevel is an all-in-one platform for marketing agency needs. It helps them manage multiple clients. SugarCRM is a custom CRM for larger companies. It helps them analyze data and tailor their sales process.
- SugarCRM vs Keap: SugarCRM offers robust, highly customizable CRM features for sales and marketing automation, scaling for larger teams; Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is a marketing automation and sales CRM designed primarily for small businesses.
- SugarCRM vs ActiveCampaign: SugarCRM focuses on extensive sales management and customization for complex pipelines; ActiveCampaign excels in user-friendly marketing automation, email campaigns, and lead segmentation.
- SugarCRM vs HubSpot: SugarCRM provides deep customization and flexible deployment for tailored solutions; HubSpot offers an intuitive, integrated suite of marketing, sales, and service tools known for its ease of use.
- SugarCRM vs Clickfunnels: SugarCRM is a robust customer relationship management platform; ClickFunnels is a specialized tool for building sales funnels, landing pages, and automating sales processes.
- SugarCRM vs Folk: SugarCRM is a powerful, customizable CRM for comprehensive business needs; Folk is a modern, collaborative contact management tool that emphasizes simplicity and ease of use.
- SugarCRM vs Instantly: SugarCRM offers a broad CRM solution for sales force automation and customer management; Instantly specializes in automated cold email outreach and lead generation campaigns.
- SugarCRM vs ClickUp: SugarCRM is a dedicated CRM for sales, marketing, and service automation; ClickUp is a versatile work management platform that includes CRM functionalities alongside project and task management.
- SugarCRM vs Monday: SugarCRM offers extensive customization and robust automation for sales and marketing; Monday CRM provides highly visual, customizable workflows for various business processes, including CRM.
- SugarCRM vs Capsule CRM: SugarCRM delivers a highly customizable and scalable CRM with advanced features; Capsule CRM is a simpler, more affordable contact management solution for small to medium-sized businesses.
- SugarCRM vs Insightly: SugarCRM offers extensive customization for complex sales processes and reporting; Insightly combines CRM with project management, focusing on ease of use for small to medium businesses.
- SugarCRM vs Freshsales: SugarCRM provides deep customization and advanced automation for sales and marketing; Freshsales CRM offers an intuitive interface with AI-powered lead scoring and integrated sales automation.
- SugarCRM vs Salesforce: SugarCRM offers an open-source option with significant customization potential; Salesforce is a leading cloud-based CRM with extensive features, broad integrations, and a vast ecosystem, albeit at a higher complexity.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the main difference between Insightly and SugarCRM?
Insightly is known for its ease of use and integrated project management. It’s great for smaller to medium-sized businesses. SugarCRM is more robust, offering extensive customization for larger, enterprise-level operations.
Which CRM is more affordable, Insightly or SugarCRM?
Insightly generally has a lower starting price point, making it more accessible to smaller businesses. However, the total cost depends on your needs. For the most accurate information, check the current 2025 pricing for both Insightly and SugarCRM.
Is Insightly CRM suitable for large enterprises?
While Insightly is powerful, it’s best suited for small to medium-sized businesses. For larger enterprise needs, SugarCRM’s advanced features and customization options are generally preferred. However, unsightly CRM has enterprise solutions.
How does SugarCRM compare to Insightly in terms of customization?
SugarCRM offers far more extensive customization options than Insightly. You can tailor almost every aspect of SugarCRM to fit your specific business needs.
Which CRM offers better customer support?
Both Insightly and SugarCRM offer customer support, but the level and type of support can vary depending on your subscription. Insightly is known for its responsive support, but SugarCRM has more resources for advanced users.
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