Hi there,
I was looking for a CRM program for my really small business. (Ok - the business is just me) I don’t have any experience with computer programming at all. I downloaded the Suite CRM zip file, but I don’t know what to do now. Am I in over my head?
I looked at the install instructions and it mentioned that I need to have PHP and some other stuff. I don’t really know what that means.
I was really just looking for a simple program I could use to log my interactions with my customers, and maybe integrate with Outlook since that is how I currently organize everything. Maybe this is the wrong program?
Any suggestions or assistance would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Marc
SuiteCRM is a web application so would require a web server to run. There are many providers out there that will help you host your instance if you require some help. There are also some that will manage everything for you including maintenance, set-up etc and all you would have to do is put in some of your company information and the instance would be up and running. This however would usually come at an small cost depending on the size of your business.
For example we(SalesAgility) offer a few options here, this also includes support however.
I also know of people in the community also using options like Bitnami or GoDaddy, but there can sometimes be a few issues with those. If you have a quick look around the forums you may be able to find something that might suit you best.
If you are looking to self host the best place I can point you is our installtion wiki
Hope this helps a bit 
Before starting the installation process, read carefully the wiki suggested by Camo and, if you are installing on a Linux machine, pay special attention to the permissions/ownership of files and folders BEFORE you proceed (and possibly also during and after).
Thanks - my installation is on a computer running Windows 10. I have managed to create my account and login through Bitnami. I think for my purposes this seems like it will work but probably only when I am on my computer at home. If I want to login from my laptop (a different computer) or from my phone will I have to go through the entire installation process again?
Flipside,
I have the Bitnami stack installed on a Linux Mint system, and I can access SuiteCRM from the other computers on my home LAN. You will need to setup your server so that you can access it remotely from a different location.
Some info from the Bitnami installation text.
https://bitnami.com/stack/suitecrm/README.txt
That will start Apache service. Once started, you can open your
browser and access the following URL on Linux or OS X:
http://127.0.0.1:8080/suitecrm/
And you can access the following URL on Windows:
If you selected an alternate port during installation, for example 18080, the
URL will look like:
http://127.0.0.1:18080/suitecrm/
If you are accessing the machine remotely, you will need to replace
127.0.0.1 with the appropriate IP address or hostname.