Blog series comparing CRM Core and Redhen

Robert,

After three years of discussion around CRM Core, RedHen CRM and the Party module, I feel like it's appropriate for the Drupal community to acknowledge the fact that RedHen CRM and CRM Core very clearly have risen as the two leading paradigms for providing CRM functionality natively in Drupal.

The work that you and the small group of committers on the Party module and OpenCRM is great, and I do not mean to discourage or belittle your efforts. But at the same time, I think that the way that you are communicating around these contributions is misleading and suggests that all three options (RedHen, CRM Core, and Party) should be evaluated as equally mature solutions.

RedHen and CRM Core have a combined install base of over 1,000 websites. The Party module, which underlies Open CRM, has 18 installs. Why is that? All three projects started 3 years ago within a month or so of each other. If these three solutions deserve equal consideration, how do you account for this divide? Frankly, reading these threads on the forums, you would think that Party had an equal foothold in the Drupal development community. But as in the Global Warming "debate," just because someone shares an opinion, it doesn't mean that it merits equal consideration when the data says otherwise.

Further, your statement that OpenCRM "is the only one that you can just install and use" is inaccurate at best. RedHen and CRM Core are the building blocks upon which other developers and companies have built a number of native CRM tools, such as Debut RedHen (part of the OpenOutreach distribution), Campaignion, and Able Organizer. OpenCRM should be compared with those solutions - not the contributed modules underlying them. In my opinion, it is this adoption of RedHen and CRM Core by other highly-established development teams that suggest that these two options provide a better starting point than the Party module.

Also, how can you say that OpenCRM can just be installed and used when you didn't even have a development release available for download until yesterday? RedHen and CRM Core have been downloaded and tested 31,022 times. OpenCRM has been downloaded 139 times. In no way has OpenCRM been vetted to the same extent as these other two options.

Again, I don't write any of this to suggest that the Party module and OpenCRM aren't superior tools and that they don't deserve consideration - but rather than just state that they do, prove it. And speak to the clearest difference first: Adoption.