this is my first post here, so please allow me to briefly introduce myself: I’m currently in the process of selecting a CRM solution, and over the past few weeks I’ve been learning about SuiteCRM. I have been testing versions 7.14.5 and 8.8.1, and I plan to try 8.9 soon.
There are a few questions I haven’t been able to clearly answer on my own — I guess they might be quite common among people who are new to SuiteCRM:
What functionalities are missing in SuiteCRM 8 compared to SuiteCRM 7?
Does SuiteCRM 8 include any features that are not available in SuiteCRM 7?
Would it be recommended to start directly with SuiteCRM 8, or would it be wiser to begin with SuiteCRM 7 and migrate to SuiteCRM 8 later on?
It’s possible that these questions have already been discussed in other threads. If that’s the case, I’d really appreciate it if you could share the links.
I think it might be useful to have a pinned post addressing this topic, since questions about the differences between SuiteCRM 7 and 8 - and which version to start with - are probably quite common, yet the information about this isn’t easy to find.
Thank you very much in advance for your time and any insights you can share. Even though I haven’t been here long, I can really appreciate all the great work you’re doing in this community.
I hope to contribute back to the community by sharing my own experience in the future.
I start most of my customers / new projects currently on Suite 8.x
There are some missing features in 8, compared to 7.
On the other hand, there are quite nice features and a lot greater joy of use in 8 compared to 7.
Eventually it boils down to your requirements.
There are some details in the github queue about missing features:
Paul has posted a short list of missing features:
But some of them are already fixed in newer versions.
So it’s great to see, that there is progress and Suite8 is getting more and more feature complete.
Try the approach the other way round:
Look at your processes, your requirements and then decide on a system and version.
7 is receiving security updates and heading into a LTS version - which had to be extended recently. But other than that, there are not great future improvements in Suite 7 - so I wonder: Why start going into a dead end (unless you have some very specific reasons to do so)?
Usually, you’d stick to your CRM for 5 - 10 years. If we assume SuiteCRM continues to develop over time and most standard business requirements are already met by Suite8, why not start there right away and be future proofed?
And keep in mind for the “upgrade”: Depending on what you want to do with your CRM (customization) you’ll have to invest into an expensive migration project from Suite7 to Suite8 in the future.
thank you very much for your quick and kind reply, I really appreciate it! Your explanation was very helpful and clarified several of the doubts I have.
If I may, I’d like to ask a few more questions:
It seems there are no official Docker images for SuiteCRM, and the official installation guide does not mention Docker. Is using Docker considered a bad or problematic approach for running SuiteCRM? Is it best recommended to not to use containers and follow the installation method described in the documentation instead?
Is there any guide for setting up a programming and build environment for SuiteCRM 7 and 8?
Are there any recommended development tools for contributing to the project, creating extensions, customizing it, etc.?
Which SuiteCRM branch (7 or 8) is considered the easiest for performing simple graphical customizations (such as colors, fonts, and general UI styling)?
Thank you once again to everyone for your time, help, and support. All the insights and guidance shared here are really valuable.
It’s not negative as such. It’s just a not a “Docker native”-feeling.
The latest during the next upgrade, you’d need to have / execute command line, composer, PHP etc. which is tricky inside a docker container.
If you have a container environment, try to use the standard PHP + Apache and another container for MariaDB.
Once you have to upgrade, just migrate your stuff out of the live container into a standard LAMP environment, upgrade, test and build a new container (probably with a new PHP version or so in the future).
Depends a bit on your skillset. Suite 7 is PHP mostly with templates etc. Suite 8 is a PHP back end with an Angular front end.
So far, there is not much documentation on Suite 8 development and themes are not yet officially supported as they have been in Suite 7.
You’re sure, you absolutely need custom development?
Depending on your company size and project, it might work entirely without development and maybe just one or two modules from the store.
thank you very much again for your quick and kind reply, I really appreciate it! My question about changing colors, fonts, and other visual elements was intended to explore how to align SuiteCRM with the look of other tools we have, in order to give it a consistent appearance, Since SuiteCRM 8 is the branch of SuiteCRM you’ve recommended me, I will try to explore the existing possibilities for making these color changes there, even though there is no official support for templates. I will share my conclusions once I’ve had a chance to explore this matter.
i’d also pointing out that the Security Suite plugin isn’t yet compatible with SuiteCRM 8: https://store.suitecrm.com/addons/securitysuite/compatibility
Its starter plan which is offering Filter search results by groups
could be a must.
Like @BastianHammer said, it depends on your business needs…
Thank you very much LionSolution for the clarification, Since I’m still in the early stages of getting familiar with SuiteCRM, I don’t yet know the pros and cons of each version, and it’s difficult for me to tell which one might suit me best. I guess I’ll need to go through the process of learning more about each version before I can make a decision. And accept that I might get it wrong along the way.
There is a plugin on the store to customise colours for Suite8, generally backend development is pure PHP so whatever IDE etc you use and upload to the correct place, frontend development is Angular and needs setting up correctly (see the Suite8 dev docs).
I would recommend starting with Suite 8 for all the reasons that @BastianHammer has mentioned as well as all of the additional features, only really consider Suite7 if some of the missing/not working things are crucial for you.
