Hi,
I’m very, very new to CRM’s and I don’t have very much database or server experience. I work for a very small classical music publishing company and I think we we have some unique needs that SuiteCRM can help us with.
We’ve experimented with SuiteCRM having a sandbox a smaller hosting company because they have an easy installation/setup tool and we think SuiteCRM will work for us. I don’t want to disparge the company by saying their name. They’ve done nothing wrong but we don’t have confidence in having sensative files on their server.
I have two big thoughts
The first is where should we host?
Synology NAS
Amazon AWS
SiteGround
Synology NAS because we have the hardware and it seems like it would be a great cost savings for us. Also the data would be safer. in our own environment. However I’ve been given the advice that it can work there but utilizing email maybe tricky.
Amazon AWS - We have an old Claris Filemaker application on AWS and it seems to work fine but it was setup and is managed by a third party. I don’t know the ups and downs of it.
SiteGround - We utilize SiteGround for our web hosting and have always been impressed by their suport team and professionalism.
I have no issue with the smaller hosting company that holds our sandbox and I don’t want to sound negative but my boss has had problems with small hosting companies shutting down and leaving him in the lurch. He would like to self host or be with a larger company that probably won’t fold unexpectedly.
The ability to email from SuiteCRM is a large selling point for us. As that we’d be able to send and track communication, proofs, contracts, etc with composers, retailers, performance venues etc.
Again, I don’t have very much experiance, the installation it’s self seems daunting to me but I’m curious what the community thinks is either a good direction or a poor direction and why.
Apologies if this is too long or in the wrong place but grateful for your experiance and wisdom.
Hello Steve,
it could be working on all three.
I’d start with SiteGround.
Setup a subdomain there, upload SuiteCRM 8, point the subdomain to the public folder and just try the installation.
It has the advantage of being a bigger hosting company, you can access the CRM from anywhere and an additional subdomain should not increase the current costs.
Synology NAS is a custom build Linux - so it could work, but doesn’t have to.
Maybe it would only make sense to try this route with solid Linux skills.
However, I believe one contact of mine has Suite running on their Synology. But I don’t know how smooth it works.
AWS will work as well. It brings plenty of (cloud) advantages like options for backups, scaling, etc. and probably the standard (cloud) disadvantages like costs and complex interface / AWS learning curve.
Have you seen the new environment check during the installation?
If you just upload it somewhere, the CRM will already tell you whether it is “happy” with the environment. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but a good early indicator for a working CRM.
Overall, a bit tech knowledge is very valuable to have.
The installation might work without much command line / Linux knowledge - but there might be more like permissions, debugging, scaling, security, backups and restore etc.
A CRM system is somewhat like the brain of your company that you’d stick to for the next 5 - 10 years, so it should be worth investing some time / thoughts / money into it.
Check out this video, which might help with some of the Linux commands:
Thank you so very much for such a thoughtful and well written reply. it was much more than I was hoping for.
As that I know I’m out of my depth but my organization needs to move foward I was intimidated to ask but I’m glad I did. I honestly appreciate you taking the time to respond to each of my points (SiteGround, Synology, AWS) and explain each of the factors to consider. It certainly helps to help clear my vision and prepare for moving forward.
Thank you again.
Just a quick note to say thank you again.
I wasn’t succesful installing SuiteCRM 8 but I was able to install 7.14.7 onto SiteGround and I think it’s going to be great. I still have a TON to learn but I feel good about finally getting to the place where I can take the practical first steps.
Thank you @BastianHammer for the great information!
Hello Steve,
thank you for your kind words.
I’m glad that it worked with 7.x at least.
Some people prefer 7 over 8 still, since 8 is missing a few features in the new UI that 7 contains.
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