Why Are Users Migrating from SuiteCRM to HubSpot or Zoho?

[pstevens]

I started a whole thread about this a while back:

Why are people leaving SuiteCRM?

I’ve had a few (enough to worry) clients this year and just another one today who are making the decision to move to Hubspot and the like. Even to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year instead of stay with SuiteCRM. Many of them didn’t even start with a CRM. Once they became educated on how awesome a CRM is and all setup on SuiteCRM, they tend want something better. I’m not sure if this is the right place for this discussion, but is anyone else seeing this? What are some of the features…

Here’s some of my perspectives, because, yes I noticed the exact same thing. Mostly, bringing in SuiteCRM is an IT led adventure. Simple to install. They install it and go, “here you go CRM job done”. Then no one knows how to use it or how to get their data in. Then they hire someone like me. I take a company using spreadsheets to SuiteCRM. You show them what it can do, organize their data, import it and they love it and then they start using it. Then they start to extrapolate to all the things it could do now that their eyes are open about how great it is.

Immediatly, there are problems. They don’t get the data visibility they want. They demand calendar and email integration with O365 (most of them were used to using their inbox as a defacto CRM).

Then they start flooding IT with requests for changes, updates, reports and features that are not easy to implement. Then IT realizes they just bought themselves a full time job supporting an OpenSource CRM that is now a cornerstone of the company’s business. They don’t have the resources. The smart ones integrate someone like me more (I have clients like this where I’m essentially the IT department when it comes to CRM). Others, just want to wash their hands of it and “outsource” the entire thing to Zoho or Salesforce and then it’s no longer their problem. “I need a report of XYZ…. call Salesforce”.

There are two issues at play here as I see it:

1. Lack of visibility (that’s why I’m building Kanban and Sales stats dashlets like a madman!), Also O365 calendar and emai integration is a big one. They want to schedule calls an meetings right in O365 and it be reflected in CRM and visa versa.

2. IT/Sales tension. When IT installs CRM, they think it’s a one off job and did not realize they signed up for a lifetime of supporting a critical business system.

I’ve reviewed the key factors for switch of many of my past clients and it pretty much boils down to the above two factors that justify the change. They spend tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes up to $100,000 in inital startup costs) to relieve themselves of the responsibility for maintaining a day to day cornerstone business system.