Sugar relies on partners to implement, and when the partner’s contract is done, they are done. It’s a transactional relationship that puts the partner in control. Sugar has disbanded their services organization so many customers feel trapped in costly 3rd-party relationships. 

Partners will encourage customizations vs. best practices. Extensive customizations will break an upgrade path and customers often end up paying to redo the customizations. 

Sugar has a lot of features, but most of them (80%) are never used by customers, in part because they are clunky to use, and in part because they are not usually needed. Instead of focusing on key features for their market, Sugar crammed dozens of overly specialized features into the same UI without discrimination or design. You just have to scroll through reviews or see a demo to know how hated Sugar’s user interface is. 

Sugar is owned by a private equity firm and the product release cycle has slowed down since 2017. Their current plan is buying products to add features. These integrations add to the complexity and poor page by page performance of Sugar and are not designed into the product well, they are clear “add-ons” that look and feel different.”