After installing SugarCRM email ids have to be configured for sending and receiving emails. Which can be a painful task if you don’t know the SMTP and POP3 servers of your host.

All the hosts provide the SMTP and pop3 server configurations which can be used to configure the email ids in the SugarCRM. I installed SugarCRM on 1and1.com shared hosting; there pop3 server works perfectly fine but for sending out the emails the SMTP server doesn’t work for some reason. Sendmail option can be used instead of SMTP but when you send emails using sendmail are marked as spam.

After researching for the problem I found out the solution. IP address of the SMTP server (74.208.5.2) must be used that means put 74.208.5.2 instead of smtp.1and1.com in the SMTP server configuration and it will work fine.

But now they can! thanks to SugarCRM – The open source customer relationship management (CRM) system. SugarCRM can be downloaded from HERE. It’s easy to install and configure all the documentation for using as well as for installing is available at HERE. It can be installed on a stand alone PC (using the stack installers) as well as on the webserver by downloading the appropriate installation package.

SugarCRM is one of the most popular Open Source CRM software systems. As per the SugarCRM community they have hit an exciting milestone on SugarForge.org. Over 5 million downloads across all 550+ projects! It is the most mature and arguably the easiest to use CRM product available. Most of all its free to use with almost all the required features from importing contacts to running reports.

It also gives you the option to customize the available fields, layouts etc. Even the available tab names can be customized according to ones needs. All this can be done inside the administration panel; users and administrators can be defined and managed. The ability to customize the system to such an extent without having to look into the code makes SugarCRM very powerful and adaptable.

SugarCRM Open Source is an excellent choice for any small or medium sized business that is considering implementing a CRM system. Businesses with little to no experience with CRM systems will find it an excellent choice among open source CRM’s available.