As the title suggests, I was recently searching for a free open-source CRM with a good API, which actually proved to be trickier than I initially thought. Many of the "open source" CRMs tend to offer the majority of their code as open source, but the really useful features are proprietary and require a monthly subscription to use. Tut tut tut... The Open Source Initiative has more details of this kind of practice here...

After jumping down from my high horse I managed to find a good overview and review of existing "open source" CRMs http://www.insidecrm.com/features/top-open-source-solutions-121307/

SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/ looks very comprehensive, especially from a business/end-use perspective, although the "free" open source Community Edition only offers approx 85% of what is on show. The full product (of which there are 3 flavours) is chargeable on a monthly basis....

SugarCRM does offer an API, but I couldn't get as much detail as I would like in a quick scan (although I've found this to be the case with a lot of open source products which charge for support) The core engine appears to use the LAMP stack, which means it is built using PHP with a MySQL backend.

Another CRM that looks interesting in HiperGate http://www.hipergate.org/ which is a genuinely open source and free application. This CRM doesn't appear quite as "flashy" as SugarCRM, and I would recommend that anyone interested has a look at the business/end-user functionality in order to ensure it has all of the desired functionality.

A big plus is that HiperGate is written in Java and has an excellent programmatic API, which was exactly what I wanted for bi-directional communication between existing bespoke JEE applications and the CRM (more info @ http://www.hipergate.org/docs/api/4.0.0/ )

I don't know if anyone else has any better suggestions?

Daniel

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Daniel Bryant (Director) | Tai-Dev Ltd
www.tai-dev.co.uk - IT Consultancy Services Specialising in JEE, Web 2.0 and RDBMS