“Fake news” is a rather unfortunate phrase that’s entered the common lexicon. Fake news is made possible by the unfettered publishing mechanisms afforded by the Internet. Anyone can write and publish anything. As long as it’s not criminal, it’ll get airtime somewhere. The more popular the site it’s published on, the more airtime it gets. Veracity is not an influencer in this model.

If you search for “open source CRM”, many of the results returned are for “free and open source CRM” comparison articles. The authors of the articles rarely take time to explain the difference between open source CRM, which is truly free, and “free” CRM from traditional proprietary vendors, which is anything but free. We’ve coined a phrase for the latter offerings – “Fake free”.

CRM from traditional vendors is expensive. Over a five year period, a ten user mid-range CRM application will cost considerably more than an average executive car. In order to entice the unwary into this alluring world of expensive software, many vendors offer “Fake free” versions of their software.

If car manufacturers started offering free cars like CRM vendors offer free CRM, the small print for the “free” car would be extensive. It might read “This is a special offer : Our free car does not include wheels, seats, seatbelts, windows, air-conditioning, doors, radio, steering wheel, chassis or headlights. These optional, but essential, extras are charged separately.”

Similarly, the small print for CRM vendors “Fake free” CRM would typically read: “This is a functionally useless version of our software. It does not include more than 1000 leads, or modules such as reports, workflows, quotes, cases, email, marketing, activities, documents or calendar. These optional extras are charged separately.”

To save you the trouble of working out what’s removed from the “Fake free” CRM offerings, we’ve done it for you. Here’s the small print for “Fake free” CRM:

SuiteCRM versus Hubspot and Insightly

SuiteCRM

$0per year for unlimited users
  • Free
  • Access to source code: Yes
  • You need to pay for: Nothing! SuiteCRM is open source and free!
You get complete access to an enterprise class CRM as used by some of the world’s large corporates, access to the user, admin and technical documentation and access to the support forum.

Try the SuiteCRM online demo

HubSpot CRM

$18,000per year for ten users (approx)
  • Fake free
  • Access to source code: No
  • You need to pay for:
    • Reporting
    • Sales automation
    • Products
    • Smart notifications
    • Custom form fields
    • Required fields
    • Email marketing
    • Ticketing
    • Customer feedback
    • Knowledge base
    • Email tracking & notifications
    • Email sequences
    • Meeting scheduling
    • API use increase
    • And more…
We were surprised about the amount of features unavailable from the free version! This is their own small print: “Every account includes a free version of HubSpot’s sales tools at a limited capacity, and you can upgrade to full use for a monthly fee.” So, be prepared to pay if you want to really use the CRM, because almost everything is optional.

Insightly

$11,880per year for ten users (approx)
  • Fake free
  • Access to source code: No
  • You need to pay for:
    • Removing 2 users limit
    • Custom Dashboards
    • Custom Reports
    • Card-to-Lead & Card-to-Contact
    • Workflow Automation
    • Lead Assignment Rules
    • Role-Based Permissions
    • Profile-Based Permissions
    • Custom Branding
Insightly removed a set of essential features from their “free” version and limits the number of users to just 2

SuiteCRM versus Bitrix24 and Apptivo

SuiteCRM

$0per year for unlimited users
  • Free
  • Access to source code: Yes
  • You need to pay for:Nothing! SuiteCRM is open source and free!
You get complete access to an enterprise class CRM as used by some of the world’s large corporates, access to the user, admin and technical documentation and access to the support forum.

Try the SuiteCRM online demo

Bitrix24

$2,149per year for ten users (aprox)
  • Fake free
  • Access to source code: No
  • You need to pay for:
    • More than 12 users
    • Custom fields
    • Meetings
    • Sales targets
    • Recurring invoices
    • Multiple Sales Pipelines
    • Automation rules (workflows)
    • CRM record conversion
    • Duplicate search
    • RestAPI
    • Records management (reports)
    • Own logo
Bitrix24 is free for just 12 users, and you need to pay for a long list of features, such as being able to use to the API, create custom fields or add workflows! You cannot even add your own company logo!

Apptivo

$2,400per year for ten users (aprox)
  • Fake free
  • Access to source code: No
  • You need to pay for:
    • More than 3 users
    • Custom views
    • Filters
    • Adding and sharing files
    • Custom fields
    • Workflows
    • Multiple sales pipeline
    • Mass emails
    • Campaigns management
    • Marketing automation
    • Email templates
    • API calls
    • Data export
    • Schedule reports
    • Custom reports
    • Standard Dashboards
    • Web to lead capture
Apptivo follow the tried and tested method of reducing the functionality of the “free” version to near zero so that users need to pay to access anything of real value.

SuiteCRM versus CapsuleCRM and AgileCRM

SuiteCRM

$0per year for unlimited users
  • Free
  • Access to source code: Yes
  • You need to pay for:Nothing! SuiteCRM is open source and free!
You get complete access to an enterprise class CRM as used by some of the world’s large corporates, access to the user, admin and technical documentation and access to the support forum.

Try the SuiteCRM online demo

CapsuleCRM

$1,500per year for ten users (aprox)
  • Fake free
  • Access to source code: No
  • You need to pay for:
    • Removing 2 users limit
Capsule is a small business CRM and perhaps does not withstand comparison to a fully featured enterprise-ready CRM, like SuiteCRM. Rather than remove a lot of functionality, Capsule restrict the number of users for their free application to just 2 users.

AgileCRM

$5,758per year for ten users (aprox)
  • Fake free
  • Access to source code: No
  • You need to pay for:
    • Removing 10 users limit
    • Removing 50,000 contacts and companies limit
    • Increasing the 500 API calls limit
    • Email Campaigns
    • Form Builder
    • Email Templates Builder
    • Web-to-Lead
    • Service module
    • Helpdesk module
    • Canned Responses
    • Service Reports
    • Basic & Email Reports
Agile limits features and sets maximum users and Contacts and Accounts numbers. The free version only allows 10 users.

The other killer is that you can only make 500 API calls per day.

In conclusion, free CRM from proprietary vendors does not bear scrutiny. It’s fake. In order to approach the functionality delivered by an open source and truly free CRM application like SuiteCRM, you would need to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we didn’t even start about security or vendor lock-in yet…

So, next time you see the phrase “free CRM”, unless it also has “open source” in the product description, move on. It’s fake free and you must not waste your valuable time on it.

Want to see how a real free CRM looks like, and explore all the features? Try a SuiteCRM demo or download it for free (yes, really free).

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All trademarks, product names and company names cited in this post are the property of their respective owners.