Recently PCQuest ran a comparison of a few open source CRM solutions.

"Even though the total cost of implementing open source solutions is comparatively lower than their commercial counterparts, this is not the primary reason for the growing popularity of open source solutions," the journal said, adding that "a packaged product, even if it follows the best practices, cannot facilitate every organization's needs and requirements."

Opentaps is an integrated ERP and CRM suite that offers modules to cover the majority of an organization's processes and functions, PCQuest finds: "The Opentaps suite is based on Apache's OFBiz project and is designed to tap the full power of OFBiz framework for offering feature-rich, out of the box ERP and CRM."

The modules that are offered can handle everything from leads, order management, and customer service to purchasing, production planning, inventory management, and manufacturing, to shipping and accounting, according to the review: "Opentaps also integrates e-commerce and point of sale."

It's primarily developed in Java by a US based company called Open Source (News - Alert) Strategies, has a strong foundation based on Enterprise Java J2EE and is domain driven architecture that embraces object oriented development model with Hibernate persistence and Spring framework.

Vtiger CRM is an Open Source Web-based CRM software. The PCQuest review found that it is "a complete package for your business needs and is developed over Sugar CRM."

Targeting enterprises, it has "a user-friendly setup process and an intuitive user interface," the review found, where "the focus is not only limited to sales, it includes features such as market automation, analysis and reporting, accounts and more."

The latest version of vtiger includes features like sales force and marketing automation, inventory management and more, PCQuest found, adding "the latest build also includes plug-in for MS Outlook & Office and the integration of Thunderbird.

And finally, Dolibarr is an Open Source project the review found "simple to install," and consisting of different features for Enterprise Resource planning and Customer Relationship Management.

"Meant for SMBs, this tool has a lot of modules that help in managing stock, contracts, shipping, contacts management and much more. Some of the features of Dolibarr consist of stocks management, bank account management, invoices, contracts, payment management and many more."