why vTiger sucks
by Thomas Hambach
Inspired by Peter Goodman‘s 12 Things You Should Dislike About PHP and15 Cool Things About PHP That Most People Overlook I’ve created a list of reason that make me dislike vTiger .
- Total lack of coding documentation. External and in-line! vTiger is a very complicated system and finding out how a simple module works can be quite a challenge.
- The coding standard comes close to “Just throw it in and pray noone will ever need to edit it”.
- User privileges are stored in a file. Can anyone tell me why?
- The main and sub tabs are defined in the database as well as in 2 files… and also the language files. which makes it tricky to add a tab.
- Too many duplicate SQL queries.
- Mixing of PHP & HTML. The vTiger team did their best separating PHP & HTML by using Smarty but they didn’t always feel like it. Examples given: The login page & the footer containing version information & copyright.
- Something goes wrong and the system will still smile at you and tell you everything has worked a-OK. For example, you try to import invoices and it crashes somewhere because of an SQL error, it will still tell you everything has been imported. Same story when using the CRMentity class to insert data.
- When I wrote my import invoices script, I checked the database for the correct date format… YYYY-MM-DD . It would be logical to pass the same date format to the CRMentity class? Right? WRONG! vTiger flips the date around and makes it DD-MM-YYYY . Resulting in having to provide the date in DD-MM-YYYY format so it’ll convert to YYYY-MM-DD. I’m guessing this is an old quick-and-dirty fix?
- (not really a vTiger issue) Lack of (good) themes. I can only hope someone will start creating vTiger themes in the near future. Should you be looking for a nice theme, I’d recommend “Softed theme“.
- All of the list views’ (eg: account list) data is fetched using AJAX. This results in not being able to use your back button, impossible to bookmark your current view and takes a long time to load.
- Overall, it doesn’t perform when handling a lot of data. E.g.: It takes a hell-a long time to load the calendar if you’re an admin and everyone has synced their calendar.
- vTiger has several quickfixes and most of them break other functionality, I quote: “modified by Richie as raju’s implementation broke the feature for addition of webmail to vtiger_crmentity.need to be more careful in future while integrating code“. Well Richie, thanks for fixing that but you broke something else!
Someone said something about complaining about “open source”. As open source code can’t be horrible… “Open source” says something about the licensing of that certain software, not the way it’s being made.
Remember: somehow it works (it’s a miracle, I know), but everything about it (except the “echo” statements) is wrong!
I have to work in this piece of sh*t. It’s revolting and insulting to the common-sense developer. And, as someone said before me, it WILL “impede your career as a web developer”.
It’s the best CRM there is? Well, f**k me! That doesn’t mean it’s good design; it’s just better than another crap: sugarcrm.
They work hard to implement new functionality? Hey, that’s good, but they should stop there. They don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doin’. Just because they know how to use cron, that doesn’t make them developers capable of creating a scalable and complex piece of software.
I’m thinking of making an open source CRM based on Zend Framework, designing the shit out of it for weeks, just to stop people from using this god-awful “software”. Maybe it won’t be me, but wait for it: the second a CRM with some backbone appears, this emetic php mambojambo will drop like a nun in a pron store.
I think it’ll save a lot of brainpower and grey matter.
PS: For those who said “it’s good, it could be better, don’t insult free software”… Go learn PHP! Better yet: go learn software engineering and design patterns! Free or non-free, that doesn’t protect them from ignorance.
I have just installed vtiger for the first time to give it a test drive, because the demos looked good on the face of it.
The first thing that was a little disconcerting was the installation step that states all files must be writeable by the web process user. That really is not good.
Having looked at the code base, it scares the living daylights out of me. It reminds me of code put together by PHP newbies using turn-of-the-century coding techniques.
Half me loves the front end, and the other half is screaming at me to stay well clear. The approach taken to coding in vtiger looks to me like one of “throw in some code, it seems to work, fine move on”.
And yet when you look closer, there are so many things wrong with the front end that is a consequence of a lack of coding standards. For example, no checkboxes or radio lists – or any form items for that matter – have proper labels. That means you have to click on tiny checkboxes and not the labels. Some may say that this is not a problem, but really, the web development community worked out that this kind of thing should be taken seriously ten years ago.
URLs with non-encoded ampersands – again absolutely everywhere, and hard-coded all over the place so that it can never be fixed without a complete refactoring.
That is before we even look at the overlapping and illegally-nested HTML tags.
These things all point to lack of understanding, lack of care, and lack of standards. Those always lead to security issues, so that is why it rings alarm bells with me.
So why am I bothering to write all this? Well, it has something going for it – it is being used and serves some people well. The development community seems to be hidden behind some kind of wall though. I don’t want to become a developer or require access to their config control system to be able to raise these issues (for the sole purpose that *someone on the development team really ought to know*). I looked at the forum to see if there was somewhere to discuss these things, but the forum is just full of spam – no-one is taking it seriously enough.
What a dilemma! I love the functionality of vtiger, but the code-base just looks like a big accident waiting to happen.
OMFG – over 430 tables. That is just insane. There are logical data structures, and there are physical database table structures, and they really do not have to map 1:1
With a one-line change to the adodb MySQL driver, all the *_seq tables can be dropped immediately. They are simply not needed, and only implemented for compatibility with databases that did not support either sequences or auto-increment datatypes, of where there really are none any more.
Jason, can you please be more specific on dropping the tables.
I love vTiger!!! As my clients do. In my case I have no problem with coding in vt and no problem of performance on the application and database.
Many Thanks to the vTiger Team!!!
Cheers Guys.
Here is the truth about vTiger. (1) It’s an absolutely great project and the best CRM solution out there. (2) Make sure you use a WEB-SCRIPT-FRIENDLY webhosting! You can break your balls several times trying to install it on a crappy webhosting with crappy settings. (3) Customize vTiger, for God’s sake! It’s not so difficult, unless you are retarded.
Most complainers are trying to install it on a cheap or old server, it doesn’t work, they spend hours and days trying to change settings, checking forums, posting questions, etc. If they manage to install it, then they are just f***ing lazy to customize it for their needs.
I’ve installed and customized it for a number of companies and everyone’s happy. Geez, people, you sound like those who make posts why MS Windows is bad!
Dear Thomas ,
for any future use please check out civiCRM.
OO design, quality code by a quick code review, highly customizable, integrated to either Joomla or Drupal (means you can get add-ons).
It is made for non-commercial organizations, but like stated early, it is customizable.
If you a developer dealing with vTiger and SugarCRM – well, good luck.
@Yup. CiviCRM sounds good. As a developer coming from Drupal background (orderly environment), CiviCRM sounds inviting – only that I dont like the non-profit notion of it. I have a bit used Vtiger, and I must admit there are no good standards as MVC is not clearly implemented. I would like to see an Enterprise targeted DrupalCRM.
Vtiger works well, till u start customizing anything and the first baseline for customizations start with theme. While its easy to copy existing theme rename it and change the css styles to override, its not easy to track the templates where the elements are defined leave alone finding the elements of the home page(before login). Clients like to see visual changes before functionality comes in.
Vtiger is poor in documentation – it reminds me of XOOPS, a CMS I used to use before going to Drupal. GOOD IN PERFORMANCE BUT POOR IN CUSTOMIZING. I have come to realise that proper documentation lacks in all opensource projects which are not based on good patterns because its just another hell of #$*&&* to document from unorderly crap.
Nevertheless, kudos Vtiger team – it works BUT I DONT KNOW WHY I FEEL LIKE YOU DELIBERATELY make sure that the project is not easily customizable despite the contributions sent by the community.
Vtiger = XOOPS
CiviCRM = DRUPAL
DruCRM (Enterprise) = WHAT AM WAITING FOR
I’ve been trying to work with the vTigerCRM team for about a year- with UX/UI improvements. They seem receptive- but, they aren’t going to be able to implement anything major till this time next year (2012).
The simplest thing a crm should do is display the history of “contacts” or “touches” with a client- be they phone calls, emails, quotes- etc.
The current version of vTiger can’t- they are suggesting it may happen by 5.4 due in a few months.
The reality is- it’s a long way from what it needs to be.
In the mean time Sugar 6 is out- and has many of the features that I’ve been discussing with the vTiger people- with a much cleaner interface.
I’m ready to chuck vTiger at this point.
As to other opensource CRM systems- right now- it’s called fat free crm- it’s a rails app, which unfortunately runs on rails 3.0 which cpanel doesn’t support.
Looks promising- if you know Rails- and if you like HighriseCRM from 37 signals.
We’ve looked at a ton of CRM offerings- both closed and open source- and found almost everyone of them overly complex- and not very user friendly.
We did find a gem of a project management tool: http://www.teambox.com which is open source (although they hide that on the site) and it works beautifully.
It’s also a Ruby on Rails solution.
Rumor has it that the next version may include some CRM functionality- since large projects require some CRM functionality. Look into it.
In the mean time, I’d be interested to hear what the people on this forum think of the new version of Sugar- and if anyone knows a way to port data from vTiger 5.2.x to Sugar 6?
I feel the vtiger team is deliberately making it extremely difficult and unpleasant to develop on vtiger (the code is barbaric to say the least). I can only assume that they make money by selling it to local clients and care little for the rest of the world. A quick search of the forums shows the same issues from 2005 cropping up in the latest version and (from my pod) they probably have the most number of unanswered questions of any open source project by far.
No documentation = no developer implication
bad coding = your better off paying for a commercial version than paying a programmer to fix it
good luck with that
Hi Thomas!
In Puerto Rico we have a saying that goes “a caballo regalado no se le mira el diente” which basicaly means “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.
Vtiger, and many other ready-made open-source web systems are powered by the community. You’re not paying for them, so don’t expect a “good service”. So, be bold, download, tweak and code, study if you have to, but don’t criticize. Thanks.
Thanks for point out these issues, but one thing bugs me. Is commercially written software any better? I was involved in a blue chip bespoke system a few years ago and horrified that the conultants (on £600 a day) were following no naming conventions and not commenting their code at all. They weren’t even giving functions and variables intuitive names. Their excuse? They were under severe pressure to deliver quickly because of previous problems on the programme. The prgramme was finally delivered, it was flaky and cost three times it’s originally budget of £20m. Eventually yet another team of experts arrived and declared that the whole system had not been built properly (by their consultants) and we would have to pay them to rebuild the system. Welcome to the wonderful world of professional programming.
Thanks for sharing your point of view on this CRM. Right now im trying to modify a bit Calendar module. The vTigers code is like a nightmare:-/ I thing I’ll move back to the SugarCRM..
@manu – “Vtiger, and many other ready-made open-source web systems are powered by the community. You’re not paying for them, so don’t expect a “good service”. So, be bold, download, tweak and code, study if you have to, but don’t criticize. Thanks.”
What about ZF? Symfony? Doctrine? Git? Svn? Uhm.. Linux?
You know there ARE top-notch open-source projects out there, right? I mean, I don’t pay when I’m using ZF neither, but I don’t cry and kill 3 little kittens when I have to modify something or enhance, as I would with vtiger.
Also, I loved the “don’t criticize” thinghy. Framework or man, if it doesn’t stand up to criticism, it made the first step to crappiness.
Folks, do get over the snobbery!
I’m a somewhere between user and techie and have no real clue as to whether the code is crap, great or the best in the world ever. What I can say is that I run three companies making money using Vtiger and it works bloody well and is easily customised.
If you want to provide your customers with a tool to grow their business then get over the geek crap and show them how to use it rather than moan about how it’s written. Alternatively you could move to a better FREE product (oh, I’m sorry all you great moaning free loaders can’t suggest one) or move to consulting on paid for products (oh of course you can’t because your customers want a fully functional platform without spending a fortune and you need to make consultancy fee’s). Someone could always write their own (I believe I even read a comment to that effect); I’m sure it would be great, well written to gold standards and shine like a new pin; but would YOU make any money ?
Perhaps you are trying to make a fortune in consultancy getting around all the slight UI hickups and your customers aren’t really interested in this?
I for one really don’t care if it uses 2 tables or 2000 tables; I have 1000′s of customers. I run free software, on a free operating system, using cheap 3 year old servers and I can make money with it.
And going back to ‘Indians don’t write good code’ A) Racist generalisation, B) maybe, maybe not, but they know how to make money using platforms written in crap code!
And for the record, I’m a white UK national not an Indian programmer.
Just my thoughts for the day!
For end users it’s heaven but for coders vTiger is hell . I agree, 1st) vtiger has no proper documentation and then 2nd) no proper coding standard – it’s worst! I love opensource and I love linux (slackware, debian and centos) but vtiger ruins the good name and reputation of opensource softwares.
@GetOverIt, the issue is not about race and are you trying to convince yourself being white? Dude, better sentence construction and get a life!
vTiger is great tool as for a customer and total crap for programmers.
Even thou it looks way better than SugarCRM and it does better job, vTiger still need some improvements such as: Total value of invoices with and without date range, same with quotes, and sales/purchase orders, import/export still needs improvements. I am using it without any problems except for my server load while retrieving data.
Database structure is the worst I have ever seen.
It would be nice to use some sort of the structure in programming, some sort of consistency in it. Also Object Oriented Programming in vTiger is a foreign concept. Simply speaking MESS.
I am truly amazed that it is still working and how well it is working seeing the code.
I do strongly suggest to do some brainstorming and create simple and well thought structure of the application (Look at Zimbra mail server)
Create a database with minimum amount of tables and improve security.
For me Open Source doesn’t mean worse that commercial, in the contrary having so many coders available free at your fingertips vTiger should beat up any commercial product on the market. Same as Zimbra, ZenCart, WordPress, Libre Office and many more…
If any one guide me how to connect mssql instead of my sql…
If you want to install it on MS Sql Server or Oracle database you can use VTE (www.vtecrm.com)
Thank you, everyone, for your invaluable feedback. We have come a very long way since this post was created (a few revisions into Vtiger 5) and I’d like to take a brief moment to chime in discuss how Vtiger 6, which is slated to be released around February of 2013, addresses many of the concerns raised above regarding Vtiger 5.
For starters, Vtiger 6 launches with a completely revamped UI, employing JQuery, Bootstrap, and other newer libraries that simplify and modernize the user experience. From a code perspective, we have rebuilt Vtiger’s directory structure, separating PHP and HTML elements and now adhere to an MVC model. This new code structure, which is still improving as we work through the beta development phase, has allowed us to optimize for speed and quality, far exceeding that which was possible with Vtiger 5. Developers can see a beta preview of the Vtiger 6 source code, which is still under development, at http://trac.vtiger.com/svn/vtiger/vtigercrm/branches/6.0.0/
We encourage you to evaluate our new source code and to reach out to us with any suggestions, questions or concerns that you might have. We look forward to hearing from you!
Warmest regards,
Kieran Kay
Vtiger
Dear All! Thanks for the Comments. I m looking for vTiger since v5.1./5.2/5.2.1. I never put it productive for my small Company. But, it is a good Application in Terms of FUNCTIONALITY. Easy to adopt and configure, even its a lot to do.
I m now on v5.3 and plan to go for 5.4.
My last ISSUE is the latin1 / uf8 problem.
Some parts of vTiger work under utf8, others are not. Example: UI can be translated in utf8 Languages and work. PICKLIST VALUES for PRODUCT became unchangeable, undeleteable if you have used some Character like this: ‘nên sử dụng loại’. You can enter them in Picklist values. It will beshown correct. But Database shows something codd. Maybe because of the ‘latin1′ defaults in mysql for the Server? Even if DB+Client+Conn. is set to utf8.
Is vTiger6 addressing this problems?
And many thanks for the great application.
Hi Kieran, so you’re saying the codebase has been revamped — for the BETTER? I hope so!
How MANY tables is version 6 using?? Just curious. I’ve been peeking this thread off & on.
Any light at the end of the tunnel?
Any other ALTERNATIVES to vTiger in Feb 2013??
I’m using vtiger 5.4.0 and still missing a maintenance-mode. Think of that:
12.Users Wirkung at the CRM. And me, the Admin have to fix some Bad issues, corrupt Database entries, etc.
This needs just half n hour. But how to Log Out the workung Users???
OpenERP with a base system and adding the required modules will do the same to be fair.
Problem I have are a few basic problems. Like dropdown lists not being able to be tied to other data. Their subscriber online paid version, having features the open source version does not.
I worry this is going the way of calemeam.com did years ago. All open source, community was good. But then their branch for enterprise became more important, the open source version died. They just used open source community to build a nice product and then sell it. I see this sometimes and I fear this is where vtiger is heading.
Though as a product I still like it.
I agree on the possible enterprise preference. As an example, this bug has just been fixed in the vTiger cloud environment:
http://trac.vtiger.com/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/7130
because I reported it from a trial version.
The new forum is also not a great choice for building a community, because I cannot find auto mail functions and stuff that phpbb has.
My biggest concern is security. The messy code is hard to maintain and thus less secure. I would not want to be responsible for it.
.
I also had a lot of issues changing stuff, like simple company info on a bill and getting layout and numbering properly. That said, I really like the tool, in terms of usability and understanding of use, it is great!
Also customizing on a lower level is not too hard, your just on your own
I do believe vTiger 6 has great potential, I would just like to give the devs some tips:
– get your forums straight! make sure the community keeps alive!
– blog more about the v6 release and make sure once it there, the base is solid – great job on the interface!
– release more frequently and have security audits to make sure your’re safe
– choose a good collaboration tool to involve developers to contribute and improve like other succesfull open source projects (I did not find how to access the vTiger trac)
At the end, thanks for a wonderfull product, keep op the good work