There are a couple of threads on here with a few hacks to inject CSS. If you can make that work, itās pretty easy to inject a ::before rule and add an icon.
@tapio ā āthis is what you get when people ask LLM:s an advice or compare CRM systemsā is a testable claim, and it turns out I had most of what it needs already measured. So rather than argue about it, here is the measurement, including the half that surprised me.
Two boards. Same two engines, Gemini and Perplexity. 44 differently-worded questions each, 88 answers each. No product name appears in any question ā every name below was volunteered by the engine. The only difference between the two sets of 44 is that the second one contains the words āopen sourceā or āself-hostedā.
question family: "CRM for small business"
44 phrasings, 88 answers, 53 products named
1 HubSpot CRM 79 mentions named in 43 of 44 phrasings
2 Pipedrive 75 mentions named in 42 of 44 phrasings
3 Zoho CRM 48 mentions named in 32 of 44 phrasings
4 Less Annoying CRM 22 mentions named in 15 of 44 phrasings
....
52 Vtiger 1 mentions named in 1 of 44 phrasings
-- SuiteCRM 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
-- EspoCRM 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
-- Odoo 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
-- Twenty 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
-- SugarCRM 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
question family: "open source self-hosted CRM software"
44 phrasings, 88 answers, 29 products named
1 EspoCRM 82 mentions named in 43 of 44 phrasings
2 SuiteCRM 81 mentions named in 44 of 44 phrasings
3 Odoo (Community Edition) 43 mentions named in 31 of 44 phrasings
4 Twenty 41 mentions named in 32 of 44 phrasings
5 SugarCRM 16 mentions named in 16 of 44 phrasings
6 Vtiger 16 mentions named in 11 of 44 phrasings
-- HubSpot CRM 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
-- Pipedrive 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
-- Zoho CRM 0 mentions named in 0 of 44 phrasings
The top 20 of those two boards have no product in common. Not one. That is the part I did not expect, and I think it changes what this thread is worried about.
The engines are not weighing SuiteCRM against HubSpot and putting HubSpot first. Ask without the words āopen sourceā and SuiteCRM is not in the running at all ā one open-source CRM is named on that whole board, Vtiger, once out of 44. Add the words and SuiteCRM is named in 44 of 44 phrasings, the only product on either board that appears in every single one, essentially tied with EspoCRM at the top. It is not losing a comparison. It is not in the comparison.
That is a different problem from most of what is above in this thread, and I think a harder one. A better installer, a modern UI and Outlook integration all move you up a list you are already on. None of them puts you on a list the engines only reach when the buyer already typed āopen sourceā ā and a buyer who typed that has largely decided already.
It also sits awkwardly against @juliocastroās point that ājust being open-source is business wise not enough to gain market shareā, because on this evidence open source is currently the only frame in which these two engines will name SuiteCRM at all. Whatever the answer is, ādifferentiate on something other than open sourceā is not obviously it.
Four things I would rather say myself than have someone find:
- Two engines: Gemini and Perplexity. ChatGPT is not on either of these boards, so I have nothing to tell you about what it answers, and I am not going to imply I do.
- This is a level, not a direction. Each board has a second independent run, taken minutes after the first, to check the numbers repeat ā and they do. That is repeatability, not history. Nothing here says anything is rising or falling, and I would rather state that flatly than hedge it into sounding like a trend.
- Zero mentions is a fact about what two engines said, not a verdict on software. Odoo, Twenty and SugarCRM are all absent from the first board too, and nobody thinks they donāt exist.
- The second phrasing family is mine, not a real buyerās. I wrote those 44 questions. I do not know what share of actual CRM buyers ever type āopen sourceā into anything, and if the honest answer is āalmost noneā, then the good news in the second table is worth much less than it looks. That is the objection I would raise if somebody showed me this.
Both boards, all 44 questions each, and the full verbatim text of all 176 answers are published, so none of the above has to be taken on my word. This forum wonāt let a new account post links, so they are here as plain text to paste:
connexion.me/c/crm/?v=ca120f01befb
connexion.me/c/oscrm/?v=ca120f01befb
Disclosure, so nobody has to work it out: those are my pages. I run the measurements and publish them, there is nothing for sale on either, and I am posting here because this thread asked a question I happened to have the numbers for.