While we may be a tiny biased, we hold NetSuite as the cloud-based ERP of selection, but for those of you new to ERP, there are many other choices you can recognize as well.

So, if you're in the market for new ERP software and are considering NetSuite, we've done all the heavy lifting for you!

In this guide, we've outlined all the most common considerations when choosing an ERP solution and honestly evaluated NetSuite's pros and cons in each area.

Feel free to bookmark this page and use the link below to continue exploring NetSuite.

Table of Contents
Section 1: Introduction - What is NetSuite?
Section 2: Industry Fit - Will It Work for My Business?
Section 3: Value - How much does NetSuite cost?
Section 4: Extensibility - NetSuite Integration
Section 5: Flexibility - NetSuite Customization
Section 6: NetSuite Support, Partners and Communities
Section 7: NetSuite Competitors

Section 1: What is NetSuite?
So what exactly is NetSuite anyway?

NetSuite is a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. In essence, ERP software integrates departmental functions and processes such as finance, planning, purchasing, invoicing, sales, marketing, inventory, human resources, and more to form the central nervous system for your business.

NetSuite Wheels Keeping all your data in one system, you have instant access to all your Vendor, Customer, Item/Inventory, and Transaction data at your fingertips.

Long gone are the days of inaccuracies and delays that result from uneven systems and excel!

NetSuite is deploy in a multi-tenant ecosystem hosted by NetSuite. You can imagine multi-tenancy as a residential building. Many people live inside the same building but each has its walls, doors, and protection.

This architecture and deployment method is the most economical because the cost of developing, deploying, and maintaining the software is spread across multiple customers.

NetSuite consultants is offered through a subscription model. Many small companies find the "pay as you go" nature of SaaS compelling, as it moves ERP investment from CapEx to OpEx and allows them to concentrate on their core business, not software and Management and maintenance of IT infrastructure.

Now that you have a high-level understanding of ERP software and NetSuite, we'll move on to six areas you'll want to learn more about.

Industry Fit - What is NetSuite good for?
1. NetSuite Cost - Can I Afford It?
2. NetSuite Extensibility - What about my other company applications?
3. NetSuite Flexibility - Can I customize the method to fit my needs?
4. NetSuite Ecosystem - Who Can Support Me When I Need Help?
5. Then of course, we'll quickly evaluate the NetSuite software against its primary competitors.

Let's do it.



Section 2: Company Size and Industry Fit
Will NetSuite Work for My Business?
One of the biggest things about NetSuite is how well it works for many diverse industries and business sizes. Whether you are a start-up with only a few employees or a large enterprise with thousands of users, NetSuite can be useful to you.

Currently, NetSuite provides solutions and functionality specific to the following industries:

software and technology
discrete manufacturing
wholesale distribution
Retail and Ecommerce
Apparel, Fashion & Accessories (AFA)
Advertising, Media and Publishing (AMP)
Non-profit organizations and social enterprises
professional services
For companies operating across multiple business models, NetSuite differentiates itself from all other types of solutions available in the market due to the breadth of offerings from a single application, platform, and database.

For example, let's take a construction company that sells physical products online and in brick and mortar stores.

At a minimum, this business will need the following types of software applications to support the organization's operations.

Accounting and Financial Management Software (FMS)
inventory management software
Warehouse Management Software (WMS)
manufacturing management software
Demand Planning / MRP Software
purchase software
CRM software for sale
CRM Software for Customer Support
eCommerce software
point of sale software
human resource management software

There are too many applications and integrations to contend with!
Let's take another common example, a SaaS-based software company with a professional services organization. In this outline, the software firm would need the following applications:
1. Accounting and Financial Management Software (FMS)
2. Revenue Recognition Software
3. Recurring Billing Software
4. CRM Software for Sales (Sales Force Automation and Commission Tracking)
5. CRM and Issue Tracking for Customer Support
6. Professional Service Automation Software (PSA)
7. Time and Expense Management Software
8. HR Software
NetSuite natively supports each of these types of business models and processes with out-of-the-box functionality in both of the examples above and requires zero integration.

If you go the way of the best of breed approach,

for the examples listed above then you will face multiple system integrations and will need an IPAS platform (eg Dell Boomi, Jitterbit, etc.) to assist with management. integration.

For large organizations, this is nothing new, although for small businesses and even medium-sized companies that want to reduce complexity in their IT environments, NetSuite may be a no-brainer.
But don't take our word for it, NetSuite was recognized by Gartner as a "leader" in its cloud core financial management suite for large and enterprise-sized companies in June 2018.
In addition to the Gartner report, G2 Crowd, a leading company software review Social Media Platform, came out with its "Best Accounting Software" review, which placed NetSuite in the "most powerful overall market presence" class for cloud-based ERP solutions. SMB and mid-market space.
Pro: NetSuite can compete and drive in both the SMB and enterprise areas in a variety of industries and business models.
NetSuite can be very suitable for many organizations but not for all. Historically speaking, NetSuite has not aggressively emptied R&D expenditures to help the following industries:
• Public and higher education (although NetSuite is run in hundreds of college bookstores)
• State and local governments
• Traditional banking and insurance


Section 3: Price - How much does NetSuite cost
As with all ERP software, NetSuite is a significant investment, but the value derived from that investment may be a no-brainer for many companies, especially those that have historically integrated and managed multiple "best of breed" applications. It's a bad experience to have.

A systems consolidation can easily save an organization a tremendous amount of money and headaches.
There are many options when it comes to licensing NetSuite, let's start with the basics; NetSuite is offered in three tiers for companies of different sizes.
• Limited edition for small and medium-sized businesses with less than 10 users.
• Mid-market version for medium-sized businesses with less than a thousand users
• Enterprise edition for very large (enterprise) sized companies with thousands of users.
Each version comes with basics (CRM and ERP) functionality such as customer relationship management, financial management, purchasing, order management, item and inventory management, and employee self-service known as Employee Center.

In addition to basic functionality, NetSuite offers a number of advanced modules that you can license based on your specific business needs. An example of these might include things like demand planning, fixed asset management, suit e-commerce, or warehouse management.

You may choose to license these advanced modules at any time during the duration of your NetSuite subscription period. You may also choose to revoke the license of these features during the anniversary period of your agreement.
Finally, when it comes to licensing NetSuite some companies choose to license only NetSuite Financial Management (No CRM) or just NetSuite CRM (No ERP).

The choice is completely up to you.
Pro: NetSuite offers a tiered and modular pricing model for companies of all sizes and budgets.
NetSuite Software Prices vs. Competition
NetSuite prices start at $999 (approx.) per month for the limited edition and $99 (approx.) per month per user.
• Intact - Intact starts at $425 (approx.)/month
• QuickBooks Enterprise - starts at around $880 per year.
• FinancialForce - starts around $9,000 per year
• SAP Business One - Cost approx $150-$200 per user

On the surface, it appears that NetSuite is significantly more expensive by a significant margin than the likes of QuickBooks or Intacct, although NetSuite starts to make a lot of financial sense once you apply real-world scenarios to the equation. pun intended!
Quick example, let's say you are a construction company that offers both physical products and services and you are in the market for a cloud-based solution to help you manage finances, projects, and inventory.

If you choose a stand-alone accounting system like QuickBooks or Intacct, you'll need to establish some other software vendor relationship to tie together a complete solution that might look something like this...
• Financial Management: Intact or QuickBooks
• Inventory and/or Warehouse Management: Fishbowl, QStock, or Rootstock
• Project Management: Projector PSA or Asana
• HR and Payroll: Paychex or ADP
Once you factor in dollars and time spent connecting these systems either technically through integration or manually via spreadsheets and employees, the total cost of ownership (TCO) starts to add up very quickly. It becomes

With NetSuite, it's a platform, a database, and an application. No integration is required!
Con: You can expect your price to increase over time.
It shouldn't come as a surprise but like most things, in life, they get more expensive over time. This is especially true with SaaS, as the intention is that the software vendor will provide you with incremental value in proportion to your increased investment.

Hire for Netsuite consultants
https://acapglobal.com/netsuite-consultants/

Section 4: Extensibility - NetSuite Integration
Many times potential NetSuite customers have specific applications that they want to have as part of their overall NetSuite solution. Examples may include, Salesforce CRM, Shopify eCommerce sites, in-house developed inventory, or billing systems.
The good news is that in addition to being a unified set of software applications, NetSuite is also a platform. This platform is called SuiteCloud. The SuiteCloud platform provides the tools and framework to enable customers, partners, and software developers to customize NetSuite to meet specific business needs such as systems integration.
Pro: Built from the ground up to support application integration
There are some situations where an existing software application already has a native NetSuite integration because it is built on the SuiteCloud platform. In instances where this is not the case, there are usually three approaches to NetSuite integration.
NetSuite Connectors: Connectors are integrations productized to solve common use cases. Celigo, FarApp, and others have developed connectors to quickly and cost-effectively integrate NetSuite with other commonly used applications such as Salesforce, Shopify, ZenDesk, Magento, Amazon, eBay, and more. This type of integration is typically sold as a subscription and has a "Made for NetSuite" badge which essentially ensures that the connector is thoroughly tested prior to the latest NetSuite release.

NetSuite Integration Platform: The integration platform, also known as IPaaS, enables the development, deployment, and governance of data flows between applications. IPAAS makes the most sense when companies want to link multiple systems together versus just one endpoint. Potential HIPAA vendors to consider on NetSuite include Jitterbit, Dell Boomi, and Celigo IO.

NetSuite Integrations (Custom): Custom integrations are just that they are developed on a case by case basis to meet specific business needs. SuiteTalk allows customers or developers to use any programming language or platform that supports the SOAP standard or lightweight REST-based applications.
While NetSuite greatly supports system integration, it's easy to overestimate the potential for additional cost and complexity for your environment. For smaller organizations that do not have the manpower or budget to support multiple system integration, it is advisable to take advantage of NetSuite's native features where possible.
Pro: Built from the ground up to support application integration

Section 6: Ecosystem (NetSuite Support and NetSuite Partner Network)
There are two primary paths to everything NetSuite-related within the NetSuite ecosystem.
The first, known as The Channel, consists of two programs: the NetSuite Solution Provider program and the NetSuite Solution Development NetSuite (SDN) program.
• NetSuite Solution Provider (SP): Sell, implement and support NetSuite license customers. NetSuite Solution Providers in short are ERP Resellers providing consulting to companies considering NetSuite for the first time.
• NetSuite Solution Development Network (SDN): NetSuite partners who develop software solutions designed to enhance specific functionality in NetSuite. These solutions are sometimes built on the NetSuite SuiteCloud platform and in almost all cases have some form of integration with NetSuite either natively or with a purpose-built connector.

Some NetSuite partners are both SP and SDN partners, for example, ACAP Global is part of the SDN program with our NetSuite Archive & Purge application, known as CleanSweep, as well as a NetSuite solution provider that helps new clients for the first time. Helps in licensing NetSuite. To further research visit SuiteApp for a list of NetSuite SDN Partners and solutions.
Another way is to connect directly with the NetSuite Professional Services and Support organization. NetSuite has its own dedicated sales team, professional services, and support organization, although since the acquisition of Oracle NetSuite has reduced its internal professional services organization and brought in more partners to help with professional services.


NetSuite Support via Solution Provider
Pro: Efficiency
In an ideal world, NetSuite users should use their NetSuite solution provider for issues and questions related to NetSuite support as they will have the most context regarding your NetSuite environment and possible customization and/or integration.

Con: Might cost more
NetSuite support is a fixed cost depending on your license agreement. There is no limit to the number of support calls you can make. Whereas a solution provider is generally based on a consumption-based model.

NetSuite community
Pro: Large User Network

You'll find NetSuite user groups located throughout the US.
For example, there is
• Florida NetSuite NetSuite User Group
• New York NetSuite User Group
• Atlanta NetSuite User Group
• Rocky Mountain NetSuite User Group
• San Francisco NetSuite User Group
Pro: Large NetSuite Partner Network
NetSuite has hundreds of NetSuite solution providers in North America and many more globally. Being able to take advantage of the vast network of advisors and developers ensures that you are never left on your own to maximize your NetSuite investment.
Pro: NetSuite Conference (Suiteworld)
NetSuite hosts an annual conference called SuiteWorld, which invites customers, potential customers, partners, vendors, and everyone involved in the NetSuite ecosystem for the better part of a week for executive keynotes about education, networking, and business unit direction. allows them to come together. and application.
Pro: Oracle Acquisition
Oracle's acquisition of NetSuite will only strengthen the partner network of solution providers, SDN partners, and the overall investment in the infrastructure surrounding these programs, ultimately benefiting the greater NetSuite community.

Section 7: Primary NetSuite Competitors
As you might expect, a powerful ERP system like NetSuite requires a significant investment. In response to the high sticker price of ERP software, small business leaders have attempted to piece together their own version of what is individually "low cost" using a variety of applications, connectors, and tools on the market. . The nickname for such a system is known as "Hairball". NetSuite has used this slogan over the years to get a lot of mileage out of it.
Truth be told, most companies today run a mess of systems for various departments. The cloud has risen to this position by simply aiming to solve common challenges with all types of freemium and low-entry/high-priced SaaS applications.

This approach begins to yield diminishing returns once companies reach a certain size. When you take into account all vendor relationships, maintenance, updates, integration issues, and custom development, you suddenly find yourself in a place where your data is everywhere and Excel and Headcount become your duct tape solution. Is.

There are many product offerings in the ERP space but those products only come from a handful of software companies such as SAP, Oracle, Sage, Microsoft, and Infor. Choosing the right ERP vendor for your ERP initiative can be challenging without the right information.
The NetSuite comparisons below are common software products companies evaluate when considering NetSuite.

Intact v/s NetSuite
In terms of pure financial management capability for a small single entity, you really can't go wrong with either software—both are seen as solid options for companies that are looking to overtake QuickBooks.

However for many companies have needs beyond accounting, such as inventory and warehouse management, project management, point of sale, eCommerce, project management, HR, etc. NetSuite is the more likely option.
Read the full Intact vs. NetSuite review here: Intact vs. NetSuite Ultimate Comparison Guide.

NetSuite vs FinancialForce (FF)
FinancialForce and NetSuite both have financial management, project and resource management, and billing management capabilities and both integrate easily with Salesforce CRM. However, this is the extent of the overlap. FinancialForce may have trouble competing, especially in the areas of wholesale distribution, manufacturing, retail, and e-commerce once you're out of the professional services industry.


Read the full NetSuite vs FinancialForce review here: NetSuite vs FinancialForce Comparison Guide

NetSuite vs QuickBooks
Hands-down QuickBooks is the undisputed winner when it comes to accounting solutions for startups and small businesses and meets many needs of users.
However, over time as the company expands and needs expansion, QuickBooks begins to run out of steam. Once a QuickBooks user needs the following features, it's time to seriously consider NetSuite...
• Multi-Currency/Language
• Multi-subsidiary Intercompany Transactions and Consolidation
• Multi-Book Accounting
• Real Estate Management
• Recurring/Subscription/Usage-Based Billing
• revenue recognition
Read the entire NetSuite vs QuickBooks review here: NetSuite vs QuickBooks Comparison Guide

NetSuite vs Microsoft Dynamics
The story is generally the same depending on the Dynamics product you're considering (AX, GP, NV, 365). Essentially all Microsoft ERP products are here because of acquisitions and they generally have a similar theme...rigorous, difficult or impossible to customize, and costly to deploy and maintain.

Read the full NetSuite vs Dynamics review here: NetSuite vs Dynamics Comparison Guide

NetSuite vs sap
Similar to Microsoft Dynamics, SAP has a long history of acquisitions to catch up in the cloud ERP space. Their primary ERPs that compete with NetSuite is Business One and Business ByDesign.

SAP Business One and ByDesign both have strong manufacturing capabilities, although both have serious drawbacks compared to NetSuite. We have provided an in-depth comparison of both platforms.

Read the full NetSuite vs SAP review here: NetSuite vs SAP Comparison Guide

Now, give it a test drive!
Now I'm sure you're thinking this all sounds great in theory, but the only way to know exactly what we're talking about is to try NetSuite for yourself.

Click the blue-button and we'll help you set up a 15-day unlimited trial of NetSuite and show you how to use it to achieve your business goals.