Need some help to choose the right solution

[volkania]

Dear all,

Hello to everyone, we are launching a new online company in Dubai.

It will be a Portal that will connect both parties Landlord and Tenant as well as Buyers and Sellers, we will charge them a fee for joining plus contracting etc etc etc.

Here is my question i have searched around for solutions that will handle the whole business.

from CRM to accounting to invoicing to payroll to marketing campaigns leads management prospect, ERP time management, support with ticketing, .

As you understood i need a full solution.

Here is the deal, I have been searching around for a week and I am still confused on which solution I should go with.


We can be considered as a E commerce website ( service based )

Basically my search brought me to this.


Zoho : amazing features and not very expensive. All in one fairly priced ( problem is that it cannot be integrated into our website and this might be a small problem )

Sugar CRM : apparently is the leader with their new release of all the features you can ask but CRM dedicated, can be integrated to our website but the problem is here that as i told you i need a full solution ----> Sugar Crm doesn't provide accounting, invoicing, time management etc etc etc .
Open source is a plus as you can integrate many modules

Sales force : expensive with great features but too professional for a start up of 4 employees ) open source too

Net Suite : looks nice but expensive. It has amazing features but very complicated to configure plus not super user friendly.

Work etc : Fairly priced, claiming that they have developed a software that has more features than all the other ones.
Compare Project Management Software and CRM from Basecamp, Salesforce - WORKetc 2011 ( check the link)


if you look on their website they are doing a test of features between all the providers listed, they are saying they are the best in terms of functionality and all in one.


Now i have to choose. i will test all of those this week but any help from the community would be amazing for me to make the right choice.


Please correct me if i said something wrong.


Waiting for your kindness help

[agcopley]

Hello volkania,
And good luck with your startup.
I have been using and recommending Sugar now for 4-5 years to my clients, and it has a number of clear advantages over the other SaaS options you mention

1. It has a large active community producing many modules and add-ons. This tends to render the SaaS comparison sheets as, at best ill-informed, at worst misleading.

2. It is flexible without limit. I have found that SaaS have a flexibility barrier after which your business model just wont fit in. Salesforce overcomes this to some extent but its not cheap.

3. Total Cost of ownership is lower over the 1-5 years period

4. There is a lot of competition in the Sugar services. Thus good developers cna be found at reasonable prices

I also attach a whitepaper, somewhat old, but with relevant info still, that may help with your decsion-making.

Rgds
Andrew