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Self-host SuiteCRM

CRM
prices checked · Aug 2026

SuiteCRM is a long-established open-source CRM covering sales, marketing, and customer-service modules, forked from an early SugarCRM Community Edition. It publishes no official Docker image — self-hosters commonly run the release zip on the official PHP and MariaDB Docker Library images instead.

Salesforce / yr$300
Self-hosted / yr~$55
You keep$245/yr
Pocket the difference — spin it up on a cheap VPS in minutes.Start free on Kamatera →

Key facts

CategoryCRM
LicenseAGPL-3.0
StackPHP, MySQL
Min RAM2048 MB
Dockeryes
Difficulty
Our recommendation

Reach for SuiteCRM when you want the deepest feature set here — its SugarCRM lineage is the closest thing to Salesforce's own module depth (sales, marketing, support, workflow automation) — and you can give it a real box. If you don't need that depth, EspoCRM or Vtiger cover similar ground on half the RAM and a simpler LAMP-style deploy.

What you need

  • Any VPS with at least 2048 MB of RAM
  • A domain you control — most self-hosted setups need HTTPS in front of them
  • About an afternoon — budget time for troubleshooting

Install

Run these commands on your server:

# SuiteCRM ships no official Docker image — this builds a minimal one
# (stock php:8.2-apache lacks the extensions SuiteCRM requires)
mkdir suitecrm && cd suitecrm
cat <<'EOF' > Dockerfile
FROM php:8.2-apache
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
      libpng-dev libzip-dev libicu-dev libc-client-dev libkrb5-dev && \
    docker-php-ext-configure imap --with-kerberos --with-imap-ssl && \
    docker-php-ext-install gd imap intl mbstring pdo_mysql zip && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
EOF
cat <<'EOF' > docker-compose.yml
services:
  suitecrm-db:
    image: mariadb:11
    environment:
      MARIADB_DATABASE: suitecrm
      MARIADB_USER: suitecrm
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: database_password
      MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: root_password
    volumes:
      - suitecrm-db:/var/lib/mysql
    restart: always
  suitecrm:
    build: .
    ports:
      - "8080:80"
    volumes:
      - ./suitecrm:/var/www/html
    depends_on:
      - suitecrm-db
    restart: always
volumes:
  suitecrm-db:
EOF
# Download the release zip from suitecrm.com into ./suitecrm, then:
docker compose up -d  #  →  http://SERVER_IP:8080/install.php

What you take on

SuiteCRM is a bigger operational commitment than the lighter CRMs in this cluster, not just a bigger download:

non-negotiableIt's a multi-container deploy, not a single LAMP stack. 4 GB recommended and a difficulty rating above EspoCRM's or Vtiger's — budget real server time to stand it up and keep it patched.
non-negotiableIt's AGPL-3.0. Network-copyleft terms apply if you modify and offer it as a service — check that fits your situation.
non-negotiableThe codebase shows its age. SuiteCRM's SugarCRM lineage means some UI and code patterns are legacy-era PHP — powerful, but not as modern under the hood as Twenty or Frappe CRM.

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