SuiteCRM

What SuiteCRM does

SuiteCRM is one of the longest-running open source CRMs and also one of the broadest. Out of the box it covers the whole commercial cycle: accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities; a product catalog with quotes, invoices and contracts printed from PDF templates; and marketing campaigns that send tracked emails to target lists, with events and web surveys that can be part of a campaign. Customer service teams get cases with a threaded history and a knowledge base, and projects, tasks, calls and meetings sit alongside.

Reports can query any module, show tables and charts, sit on dashboards and be emailed on a schedule. Workflows automate field updates, record creation and emails when conditions are met. Administrators shape modules, fields and layouts in Studio.

SuiteCRM 7 and SuiteCRM 8

The repository listed here is SuiteCRM 8, a rebuild with an Angular interface and a Symfony backend. SuiteCRM Ltd still maintains SuiteCRM 7 in a separate repository, which has more GitHub stars because it is the older and longer-used code base. The SuiteCRM 7 README still says version 8 is not yet as feature complete as 7, while the 8.x README presents it as the current platform, so check the release notes for any module you depend on. Moving from 7 to 8 is a migration into a new installation, and it requires the 7 instance to be on the latest 7.14 release first.

Licensing

All of SuiteCRM is released under the AGPL-3.0. Unlike most CRMs in this category, it has no paid edition that holds back reports, workflows, quoting or single sign-on: those are in the open source code. The company earns money from hosting, support and services, and third parties sell add-ons in the SuiteCRM Store.

Self-hosting SuiteCRM

SuiteCRM 8 is installed from a pre-built package on a LAMP server, through a web installer or the command line. Version 8.10 needs PHP 8.2 to 8.4, Apache 2.4, and MariaDB 10.6 to 11.8 or MySQL 8.0 or 8.4; other databases are not supported. The scheduler must run from cron for background jobs such as email import and calendar sync. Node.js and the Angular toolchain are only needed if you develop the frontend. Uploaded files can be stored on AWS S3 or Azure instead of local disk, and LDAP and SAML can be connected for sign-in.

Hosted version

SuiteCRM Ltd offers SuiteCRM Hosted, a managed service on shared or dedicated resources that includes backups, point upgrades and security patches. The vendor advertises a 30-day free trial and says there are no per-user license fees.

Limitations

Much of SuiteCRM’s module structure comes from its older code base, so it feels more traditional than newer tools, and the breadth of modules means more configuration before a small team is productive. Having two maintained major versions adds a decision, and a later migration, for new users. Only MySQL and MariaDB are supported.

Who it suits

SuiteCRM suits organizations that want sales, marketing campaigns and customer service in one system with no proprietary tier, and that have an administrator or partner to configure it. It is a natural candidate when replacing a full Salesforce setup on your own servers. Smaller teams that mostly need a pipeline may prefer a lighter option from the CRM guide.