SugarCRM - Professional and Enterprise Editions

We are often asked if we either provide or support the Enterprise and Professional editions of SugarCRM.

In order to fully answer the question, you should understand that SalesAgility is committed to Open Source software.

The Professional and Enterprise versions of SugarCRM are not Open Source. They are conventional proprietary software offerings governed by restrictive licences.

But you might say, what's wrong with that?

Well, consider. Conventional software licences grant you the right to use software. Let's just imagine for a second that SugarCRM became large enough to be an irritant to SalesForce or Microsoft and were acquired. What would happen if those licences were revoked and all support, bug fixes and upgrades halted in order to persuade SugarCRM customers to migrate to the acquiring company's application? Well, it wouldn't affect the Open Source users, But the Professional and Enterprise Edition users would have an expensive choice .... to migrate to Open Source or to the acquiring company's application.

There's a real and fundamental difference between Open Source and conventionally licensed software.  With one, you the user are in control. With the other, you aren't. The destiny of your investment in a software application may be decided elsewhere and you won't have a choice in the matter.

Additionally, the difference between the proprietary versions and the Community Edition is blurring by the day as the Open Source Community develops the modules that were once available only in the Enterprise and Professional Editions. You can now get Orders, Products, Contracts, Invoices, Workflow, Reporting, enhanced Calendars, advanced Search and Selection functions  .... all available as Open Source. The innovation in the SugarCRM Open Source community already exceeds that of the SugarCRM management. The number of software engineers working on enhanced functionality vastly outweighs the core SugarCRM development team.

The few reasons for choosing Enterprise or Professional editions diminish by the day and may already have disappeared.