Reselling Sugar

[mike177]

Hello,
We are considering making Sugar our CRM choice for our real estate website. We would turn around and sell our services including the CRM component to the real estate agents.

I did find this thread, but it does not address the concept of upselling:
http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showt...ight=reselling

I am wondering if it is possible to run multiple "tiers" of service where we can offer a free CRM but always be trying to upsell them to a higher level. I know Sugar has its open source level, which is free under the GPL license I believe and then there are higher levels that incur a cost. Ideally, i would like the process of uptiering the service to be a touch of their button (ie, 100% automated from my perspective).

The easiest way to upsell someone is to use the "puppy dog" approach and let them take it home and try it so that it leaves them wanting more. So, is there some way to make this sales approach work using Sugar? My goal would naturally be to pass on any costs plus my margin to the real estate agents so their choices do not impact my profitability.

Many thanks for any thoughts for how best to achieve this result.

Many thanks,
Mike

[damonr23]

Mike

I'm interested if you ever found the answer to your question. I too am looking to do something similar ---

[crmsiva]

ASFAIK, you cannot resell SugarCRM. But you can charge your customers for the customization services you provide.

[jules2009]

Please someone knowledgable verify.

As long as you provide hosting and support for your customized product it is ok?

Example Can I do the following:
customize sugarcrm os for a particular industry even a particular company within an industry that has thousands of independent franchises across the country. Offer the new product to franchisees as an On Demand product hosted on my server with support and a website package to go with it?

this is my plan. I am trying to compare Sugarcrm to tig!! for this project. Some of the features of Sugarcrm are integral to the project such as truely cutomizable web to lead forms but much of the system is not really designed for B2C so signifgant customization is required.

Actually like the look of the other software better but community support and integration appears to be an issue.

I would greatly appreciate any advise

[roblaus]

Sugar is under GPL3 and this means you can use, change, distribute or SELL the product as you like. But you have to provide the source, Thus there is no protection for your investment.

But there is also something known as the SaaS loophole. Meaning you are NOT obliged to provide the source code if you offer hosted services without providing the customer with an actual copy of the product (as in download). This paragraph is a bit fuzzy but I believe nobody challenged it so far (that's why the AGPL - the Affero Gneral Public License exists).

So (afaik) the answer to your question is yes - you can customize and offer Sugar as SaaS without giving out the source code.

[edit] This article http://www.linux-mag.com/id/3017 is two years old but pretty much hits the nail on the head...