System Setup or Bugs? Which is it?

[baigeman]

Grand Masters of Sugar,

Can you tell us, are the majority of problems with Sugar due to:

- Bugs in the core of all Sugar versions
- Bugs in the core of only Sugar Community Edition
- Stability issues based on User owned (and installed) copies (versus Sugar hosted)


Basically, how much more stable is a hosted Sugar Pro or Ent over a user installed Pro or ent, and what about Sugar CE?

I am sure there are many small companies (including mine) that don't need 5 licenses or a lot of the extra Pro features, but if you could prove that Pro hosted, faststack, etc. were more reliable than a user installed version or a CE version you may have a flock of people upgrading.

After all 5 users of Sugar pro is only $1375, the fastStack is an extra $499 bringing it to $1,874

Or Pro hosted for 5 is $2,400 a year

If you break this down into IT costs of $50-$100/hr then these solutions need to save you:

Pro + FastStack - 37-18 hours of IT time
Pro Hosted - 48-24 hours of IT time

So, are any of these solutions guaranteed to be more stable than installing CE or Pro without the faststack, and if so, how much more stable?

Thanks

[SugarDev.net]

No. The code base is 95% the same. There simply are a few gaps in CE's codebase (white lines), and in Pro/Ent, those lines are filled with some code for some feature only available in ent/pro. The editions share the same bugs and stability issues. Also, faststack isn't much more then saving you some time installing your server software and making sure you get the right stuff . Again, no change in the bugs there.

I believe hosted versions by SugarCRM are the same ones that can be downloaded and hosted yourself. So again, same.

I can also point out, that user installs probably are a bit less stable then hosted ones, because of the inability to modify core files with hosted environments. A few of the fixes/features on this forum/wiki are just core hacks which cause problems later on. So hosted versions are probably somewhat more reliable.

[clint]

As SugarDev points out, the Sugar Professional Edition and Sugar Community Edition share a lot of the same code. Professional Edition is just more modules on top of the Community Edition.

We chose from the beginning not to differentiate the community and commercial editions on quality, but rather on features. This means that the Professional Edition is the same quality as the Community Edition. That's one of our commitments to the Sugar Community et al, that we will drive the quality of the Community Edition at the same pace as we drive the Professional Edition.

Now going with Sugar On Demand versus hosting yourself comes with a lot more benefits than just the extra features in the Professional Edition. Sugar On Demand provides extremely high performance hardware, secure network connections, daily backups, automatic upgrades and the ability for our support team to directly log into your production environment and help you with any issues.

Hope that helps with your analysis.

[sugarcane]

Hello baigeman,

As you can tell from the responses, the open source versions and the Pro/Ent versions are identical except for a few added modules and features. So any bugs in the Open Source version will also be found in the Pro/Ent versions as well.

One of the more important issues that most people do not consider is how to get their users to adopt and use the system. More so than bugs (which can be fixed), what really deters users from using the system effectively and efficiently is lack of training and ease of use.

[SugarDev.net]

From a development viewpoint, it would also be inefficient to maintain 2 or more products. SugarCRM's decision to extend the CE base to make Ent/Pro is the right one.

sugarcane makes a very interesting point. I've seen many good suggestions for improvement here on the forums, but sometimes users just don't get that what they want is *bad*, or that it's already possible. User training is key, as well as the willingness of the business owners to instruct their employees.

[baigeman]

Ok, Thanks everyone for the quick response. Good to know the code is the same, too bad though I can't pay to fix the bugs!

It would BE GREAT if when you signed up for a pro or Ent account you could dogear your money for certain tasks or get a vote per year per account on the most important fixes/changes/upgrades. This would allow those who are actually paying Sugar to fix what they prioritize whether it is bug fixes or a Sugar wristwatch!


I think people would be much more willing to coughing up some dough if they knew they were directing the development with their money.

just a thought.


Thanks again.

[baigeman]

Hello baigeman,

One of the more important issues that most people do not consider is how to get their users to adopt and use the system. More so than bugs (which can be fixed), what really deters users from using the system effectively and efficiently is lack of training and ease of use.

I definitely agree that user adoption and best practices are major issues. But all I use Sugar for is targets, campaigns, leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities. Its pretty hard to go against a standard workflow here, besides want a few extra variables and wish that you could sync outlook contacts into somewhere besides contacts (who doesn't have leads in their outlook???)

But if a campaign module is not really robust at sending mail and tracking it then call that section beta or something. (the campaign section runs pretty good except for outbound gmail and bounce handling)

IT would be great if Sugar could track usage statistics for design purposes. I would be happy to let them track my use of Sugar in order to see which modules are used the most and improve user efficiencies. Any reporting tools built in?

So there are Two issues at hand, Stability, and User Best Practices. Unfortunatley I can only fix best practices on my end and not bugs (they can be fixed, but when?)

A lot of people use google not for all the advanced features, but the ease of use and stability. Same thing with the people shelling out money for the base version of salesf0rce that can't do half of what Sugar can.

As a company we are probably at the point where if we could pay to make Sugar more stable we would, instead of using the free version.

[SugarDev.net]

Interesting thought .

However, one must also understand that not all bugs are functional, and not every bug will seem that logical to non-technical users.