“Machines take me by surprise with great frequency”
— Alan Turing
A powerful REST Provider
The Backend that powers SpiceCRM is SugarCRM in its latest Community Edition Release. Nevertheless, we took the liberty to add some additional capability and are also continuously cleaning up some core elements. Yet the base is proven and up and running n thousands of companies as core CRM Systems that powers systems serving partially even very different purposes. It is built on PHP as the core framework supporting the latest PHP releases and all major database systems. It best runs on Linux but also can be of course run on Windows. Various Web servers are supported and open flexibility there. And with PHP being one of the backbones of the internet this is here to stay.
Contrary to SugarCRM we have removed all UX components and the backend serves as a true REST/SOAP Service provider.
In any case, we want to highlight that we are not an affiliate or partner of SugarCRM and that SpiceCRM does not leverage any commercial version or products of SugarCRM as a company. This is purely leveraging the Open Source Project of SugarCRM Community Edition that is the base and has been significantly enhanced and is continuous further developed as part of the SpiceCRM Project.
SugarCRM is amongst the various Open Source CRM Systems the widest deployed and most proven one. The core functionality is robust. It is also deployed worldwide and there is a wide community using it and understanding it available. It has been on the Market for 10+ years. The benefits and also the shortfalls every product have are well known and understood. This makes it a perfect and reliable Platform to build on.
The Platform is highly scalable. With the underlying technology and the wide support of databases the system can be deployed on a single instance for a small community or scaled up with separated database, search and application servers for large user groups of thousands of users. It can also be deployed in HA Scenarios ensuring it to be run as mission-critical Platform.
The old saying is that you do not need a CRM System that fits your current needs but rather a system that will fit your tomorrow’s needs. Flexibility with the capability to extend and adapt is key. With the SpiceCRM we even took the concepts SugarCRM did further and are continuously making it easier to customize the systems yet still stay on a secure upgrade safe path.
PHP – the Power of the Web
Our backend supports PHP8. This ensures performance, stability but also safety and security since staying up to date guarantee the latest safety patches as well. Especially in a world where cybersecurity and data security are gaining importance, this is a must.
PHP is the de facto standard for backend development. An estimated number of roughly 80% of the world’s websites are running on PHP. Still, only about 20% of those are on PHP 7 – so we are ahead of the bunch and build on proven and reliable technology. Given the fact that the Core is also Open Source, this also ensures you investment protection and the capability to manage and extend the backend on your own.
Databases – Freedom of Choice
When it comes to databases you also have the choice. SpiceCRM is natively built and developed on MySQL. This also scales up for large deployments and offers the highest flexibility. Given the open-source model behind MySQL, this also is the typical database of choice. MySQL is supported in its various releases and flavors (including Maria DB). Optional we also support MSSQL and Postgress.
At costs, we can also provide an Oracle Connector to run SpiceCRM on Oracle. In the case of large deployments (several 1000 users) and large datasets (several tens of millions of records) this might the proper choice or in case that there is significant Oracle-specific know-how and operational skills in a company available.
RESTful and flexible
SpiceCRM provides a full range of restful services based on the SLIM Framework. All these are based on an internal REST definition mechanism that can be customized, overwritten and extended. An integrated API Browser allows easy viewing of all rest endpoints and also an easy export as Swagger files.