CRM
Which one is good to use and why? If you have to migrate the SugarCRM into SuiteCRM, what steps you should follow to migrate your data without losing any data?
2
Answers
Technology, Marketing, Communication & Influence
The first thing you're going to want to do is to make an export file from the destination CRM, in your case it's SuiteCRM, and pull it into Excel. What I mean is when you export from the new CRM you will have a comma delimited or Excel file with all of the fields required as column heads on a spreadsheet
Answered almost 8 years ago
Certified Power Platform CRM and ERP Consultant
I've worked on a number of CRM migrations over the years, and the SugarCRM to SuiteCRM transition is actually one of the more straightforward ones — largely because SuiteCRM is a fork of SugarCRM Community Edition. That said, there are still things you need to be careful about.
To answer the "which is better" part first: SuiteCRM is the stronger choice for most businesses today. It's actively maintained, fully open-source with no licensing fees, and has continued to evolve with features like AOS (Advanced Open Sales), AOP (Advanced Open Cases), and AOW (workflow automation) that SugarCRM CE no longer develops. If you're on SugarCRM's paid edition, you'll lose some commercial features, but for most SMBs, SuiteCRM covers everything needed.
For the actual migration, here's the approach I'd recommend:
1. Back up everything first — full database dump + all custom files from your SugarCRM instance. Don't skip this step.
2. Since SuiteCRM is based on SugarCRM CE, if you're running SugarCRM CE, you can often do a near-direct database migration. Export your SugarCRM database and import it into a clean SuiteCRM installation of a compatible version.
3. Check version compatibility. SuiteCRM's migration path works cleanest if you're on SugarCRM 6.5.x. If you're on a newer SugarCRM Pro version, expect more manual work on the data mapping side.
4. Custom modules and fields — use Module Builder exports where possible, and manually verify that all custom relationships and field mappings carried over correctly.
5. After import, run a full data integrity check: accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, cases, and especially any custom modules. Pay close attention to relate fields and parent record links.
6. Test all workflows and reports before going live — these often break silently during migration.
If your dataset is large, I'd strongly suggest doing a test migration in a staging environment first, fixing any issues there, then doing the production cutover with minimal downtime.
Happy to go deeper on any specific step or discuss your version situation if you want to schedule a quick call.
Answered 22 days ago