What are the top open source crm software vendors?

Open source CRM is really all about Sugar. The other vendors aren't even worth mentioning. Sugar has experienced some turmoil as of late which seems to be a recurring theme for many open source vendors in a variety of different markets. Their CEO, John Roberts, recently left the company with Larry Augustin of VALinux fame assuming the helm. And a couple of years ago, there was some controversy over their "open source" license. They recently moved to a GPLv3 for their community version.

http://www.opentaps.org/ - 'Opentaps' Open Source ERP + CRM

http://ofbiz.apache.org/ - 'OfBiz' Open Source ERP, Open Source CRM, Open Source E-Business / E-Commerce, Open Source SCM, Open Source MRP, Open Source CMMS/EAM, and so on.

Why I offer platforms that can consist more that CRM ? Because in more cases only naked CRM is not good for most companies. This solution is not effective as it could be, because sometimes it adds more work on putting in records into user interface than it saves your work time when you using them. Instead of this you can automatize record input from others companies parts, then your work will be faster and cleaner. Consider if the lonely customers/projects/task input is effective for you.

Hi,

We are integration and customization provider for SugarCRM and few other open source ERPs and other software. I shall only mention major features and short comings.

In my perception vTiger is losing grounds (my statement may hurt few people. For this I apologies). Therefore, I do not feel worth mentioning it.

Sugar comes in community (free) and somewhat expensive commercial flavors. Its the best of the breed and even community edition is better than many expensive commercial software. If you are a small to medium sized company, you shouldn’t even look at commercial editions.
Basic functionality difference between community and commercial versions… commercial version supports teams. That is if your sales force work in a team, I mean more than one person is assigned to a single task/lead/opportunity, then you will require commercial edition. Or you’ll have to do some trick like creating multiple similar tasks, assigning multiple people to those tasks etc. Which is not a proper way for doing things? There is no other big big major functionality difference between community and commercial edition.
Sugar has a big community who are working on various open source and commercial versions related to SugarCRM. You just think a functionality and this would be available in those projects http://www.sugarforge.org/. There are also team’s related projects for community edition, but mostly discontinued or not working as per desired ;). So you may have to modify those according to your requirements (if you don’t buy commercial version).

Compiere is more commercial now and major community left this project. ADempiere is a recent fork of Compiere and working better than Compiere (as community open source). Both projects provide excellent CRM capabilities as part of the integrated ERP (almost similar to SugarCRM). But the problem with both projects is… these are Java Swing based interface (although run from browser). ADempiere is converting its UI to thin client and almost done with its efforts (doing it for last 1.5 yrs). And now in alpha stage with beautiful GUIs (looks very similar to OpneBravo).

I would also like to mention another great opensource ERP (another fork of Compiere) with excellent CRM capabilities and that is OpenBravo with very neat browser based UI. Easy to learn and implement. Major drawback of this ERP is its lack of HRM and payroll capabilities (you may see an alpha payroll in another 5-6 months… but not sure).
All these CRMs or ERPs come with excellent features and support and lots of companies providing commercial support and customization according to your requirements.

Hi Tim,

All the answers that have been given are good suggestions. Before choosing, you need to take time to understand your use case and high level requirements. What are the business objectives of implementing the system? What features/functionality do you need? Once that is completed, you can use process of elimination to narrow down the options.

Another option to consider is intelecrm. intelecrm is built on an open source CRM framework and is a fully web based CRM system which includes hosting, functionality on par with the Salesforce application, and support for unlimited users. There are packages that fit nearly every organizational need, and costs range from $240-$3360/yr for unlimited users.

As a CRM consulting firm that offers best practice business process and CRM advisement, we generally recommend starting with a Pre-Workshop Discovery Session, which is a consulting engagement where we spend an hour talking through both technical and business aspects of introducing a new application. This allows us to get a better idea of what you are looking to accomplish, and best recommend an approach and next steps. This also allows you to get a better feel for our expertise and methods, and decide if you wish to move forward. If this is something you are interested in, please fill out our CRM Analysis Questionnaire at http://www.intelestream.net/en/contact/crm-questionnaire.html