How to Install EspoCRM Open Source for Customer Relationship Management

In today’s business environment, managing customer relationships effectively is essential for growth and success with today’s business and tech advancements. But managing all customers, queries, and interactions efficiently can often become a challenging and time-consuming task.

That’s where a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool can come into play. CRM software helps you organize contacts, track sales, support customer inquiries, and analyze your performance—all from a single platform. From small businesses to large teams, using a CRM can make your daily tasks easier and help you connect better with your customers

There are many popular options available, such as EspoCRM. EspoCRM is an open-source CRM solution that’s flexible, highly customizable, and free to use. Designed to adapt to your specific needs, EspoCRM enables you to tailor its features and interface to match your processes. From managing contacts and automating sales workflows to generating insightful reports, EspoCRM empowers your team to work smarter.

There are other popular that may fit your needs, such as SuiteCRM or TwentyCRM which also have open source

Benefits of EspoCRM

Common customer management features are included such as calendar management for scheduling appointments, email integration for tracking communication, activity streams to stay updated on recent changes, and customer support portals to manage cases and allow customers to create tickets or search knowledge bases.

Benefits of EspoCRM include its extensive customization options. You can modify views, create custom entities and fields, set relationships between data, and even change message templates and labels using its intuitive managers. This flexibility ensures your CRM meets your unique requirements and grows with your team or business, not the other way around.

Advanced automation features also make it a powerful tool. With built-in workflow and Business Process Management (BPM) tools, you can design sales pipelines, automate routine tasks like updating records and sending emails, and set up follow-up actions. This reduces manual effort, speeds up sales cycles, and helps ensure consistency across your team.

Security features allow you to assign roles and permissions, controlling who can access what down to individual fields or modules, ensuring sensitive customer data is protected.

And EspoCRM’s reporting and analytics features are comprehensive. You can transform raw data into visual insights, helping you monitor team performance, track opportunities at various stages, and forecast future sales.

How to Install EspoCRM Open Source

Getting EspoCRM up and running is straightforward, and there are multiple ways to deploy it depending on your environment and technical comfort/preferences. You can also find the official download steps including requirements on their website.

Installing via Docker

For those familiar with containerization, deploying EspoCRM with Docker offers a quick, isolated setup. You can pull the official EspoCRM Docker image, run it on your server, and configure it through the container’s environment variables. Feel free to review our article on installing Docker to learn more about it and setting up.

This method is ideal for quick testing or production environments that
prefer container-based deployment, as it simplifies dependencies and
updates

To pull, you’ll run:

docker pull espocrm/espocrm

Using the Manual Installer Script

Some hosting environments support automated scripts that can set up EspoCRM for you. This method involves uploading the installer script to your server, then running it through your web browser.

wget https://github.com/espocrm/espocrm-installer/releases/latest/download/install.sh
bash install.sh

If not root user, you may need to run the script with sudo:

sudo bash install.sh

You can also use the “–ssl” flag if your domain is configured properly to point to the server you are installing on:

sudo bash install.sh --ssl

The script will guide you through configuring the database and system settings, making the process fast and user-friendly. This approach is suitable if you have server access and prefer a guided setup.

From Source (Download, Extract, and Run)

The most flexible method involves downloading the source files directly from EspoCRM’s website. After completing a small form, you’ll be able to grab the latest package.

Then upload and extract it onto your web host using FTP or your hosting control panel.

You will need to need to create a new MySQL database and user via your hosting control panel.

Once the files are in place, in your browser navigate to yourdomain.com/install. The web-based wizard will prompt you through basic site settings including database credentials and system configurations.

With just a few clicks, your EspoCRM instance will be set up and ready to customize.

With a CRM tool in place you can take advantage of their powerful features—automation, security, reporting, and more—to build a custom dashboard that truly works for your business.

Ready to get started? Explore the installation options that best suit your environment, and additional configurations in the official documentation.