Zoho CRM Reviews

Pros

This is a very low-cost CRM for Small Businesses that are interested in tying out to see if this can really work for them.
It beautifully and seamlessly integrates with Outlook and you can use ZohoCRM for most (if not all) your communications with clients and prospects.
The interface is easy to understand and you can get most things done intuitively.

Cons

Extracting out a list of all your prospects/customers into ONE Excel sheet became a painful experience because as simple as we assumed it to be it actually become fairly cumbersome. Maybe we didn't have the in-depth experience.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Dynamics CRM was just too HUGE and complicated. So was Salesforce. I feel those Enterprise CRMs rely on hiring a team to work out the operational logistics and create their dream-CRM from scratch. Zoho had so much out-of-the-box. THAT truly won us over.

Switched From

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Zoho was just way simpler to implement and launch. We literally started working on it on day One.

Pros

Customer relationship management (CRM), accounting, project management, email marketing, and other business software solutions are all offered by Zoho. Businesses may now manage their operations more effectively from a single platform thanks to this. Aside from it being a comprehensive suite, the features of Zoho software can be specifically adapted to a business's needs and are extremely adaptable. This makes it possible for enterprises to design a solution that is tailored to their particular needs. Lastly, the pricing options for Zoho software are flexible and reasonable, making them suitable for small enterprises. Moreover straightforward and without any additional fees or costs for the pricing plans.

Cons

Despite the fact that Zoho CRM is user-friendly, some users could find it difficult to become familiar with all the features and capabilities of the software. While Zoho CRM integrates with many popular software tools, some users may find that certain integrations they need are not available. Some users can find it difficult to acquire the assistance they require when they run into problems with the platform because Zoho's customer care staff occasionally responds slowly.

Pros

Invoicing, stille valuating Lack of info of actual cost

Cons

Lack of info of actual cost Invoicing, stille valuating

Pros

Easy to use every day, and options are simple to manage.

Cons

Customizations can be tricky, and it does have certain limits that you will need to increase, but Zoho support is great to work with.

Alternatives Considered

Quickbooks Online

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Wanted to have a single CRM for contact management, invoicing, tracking etc.

Switched From

FreshBooks

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Ease of use, flexibility, and pricing.

Pros

Zoho CRM offers a wide range of features that help businesses manage their customer relationships effectively, such as lead and contact management, sales forecasting, marketing automation, and analytics. Additionally, Zoho CRM has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and use its various features. The platform also allows for customization, allowing businesses to tailor it to their specific needs

Cons

Zoho CRM include its limited mobile functionality, occasional technical glitches, and a steep learning curve for some of its more advanced features. While Zoho CRM has a mobile app, sometime it lacks certain features and can be difficult to use on smaller screens. Additionally, I have experienced technical issues, such as slow loading times or system crashes, which can be frustrating

Pros

Good step up from conventional spreadsheets, shows robust user management capabilities, this product is also very strong in third party integrations. If you are looking to upgrade from spreadsheets, you can try its free version, it is limited but will show you his potential.

Cons

The user interface needs to improve to a more updated and nice UX, customer service takes too long to process and solve support tickets, weak in automation and sync information within other Zoho platforms.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot Marketing Hub, Less Annoying CRM and Pipedrive

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

The operational activity for the company was growing, and we needed to implement a CRM.

Switched From

Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Zoro CRM presented the possibility to implement successfully an integration with another services and third party applications.

Pros

The option to switch to a full-fledged online business software suite is a great plus. If you are on the lookout for more software in the feature that integrates well with Zoho, you can find all that in their complete suite.

Cons

Some features, like filtering and layout adjustments, are only available in the paid version. Not a huge dealbreaker, but something to consider.

Pros

Ability to create custom fields according to our business needs and ease to use the system we were able to accomplish everything we needed and our reporting was so easy after the implementation along with smooth workflows all around.

Cons

The implementation and training were challenging.

Pros

Zoho has done alot of improvements recently on the ease of use of their products

Cons

Its a massive system with alot of parts, so it can be daunting to setup

Alternatives Considered

ClickUp

Pros

I love Zoho CRM for its intuitive interface and vast range of features that make managing customer relationships easy and efficient. The amount of customization options, powerful analytics, and automated processes are unmatched in the industry.

Cons

Zoho CRM has been a great tool for managing customer relationships. However, I found the user interface to be a bit clunky and not as intuitive as I would have liked.

Pros

Most impactful featres of Zoho CRM :-
1) Sales & Marketing teams can use it together to capture leads, convert them to a successful customer.

2) Marketing tools, Sales tools and post sales tools can all be integrated with Zoho CRM, which helps in maintaing data for each customer accurately.

3) We can intgerate Zoho CRM with third party API's or tools by directly writing the code inside the Zoho CRM. We can also connect Zoho CRM with other tools using zapier, integromat aka make, integrately, pabble connect etc

Not all product is easy to use but with little effort I have figured out becausue they have Zoho Academy and the community for each application of zoho is good. Integration with the existing business was quite challenging but being a part of the good team makes it easy for us implement it.

One more recommendation, if Zoho can bring case studies of how different industries are making better use of Zoho, then it will help us understand and expand our business.

Cons

One thing which I would like to get improved in Zoho CRM, is the overall speed at which it refreshes. If this can be improved it will save alot of time and make us more money.

Getting custom coding and Blueprint is a little difficult but everything else is all good. Overall the integration was not tough for us with Zoho CRM.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

We were looking for a complete business operating system and Hubspot was not the write tool for us, because we have to purchase multiple tools and connect it with Hubspot and that will add exxtra cost. So, we have figured out Zoho One as one of the tools which will fulfill our thirst.

Pros

Zoho CRM offers a feature-rich platform to engage with your customers. You can manage contacts, send mass emails, notifications, manage inventory, implement an AI assistant, and even give your customers a mobile app to stay synced.

Cons

The software can not be self-hosted on your private server.

Alternatives Considered

Odoo and NetSuite

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM provided smooth data migration and a rich set of features.

Switched From

Odoo

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is easy to get started and integrate with existing business processes. Also, they offer a free plan and paid plans starting from just $14 per month.

Pros

The new analytics feature is one of the great option which helps us to visualize the details in a pictorial format like graphs, chart etc. The huge number of customized filed allowed by the platform make us agile in presenting and managing the data. Predefined reports is a plus and it reduce the TAT of creating everything from the scratch.

Cons

For some reason, I am not a great fan of new reports creation flow. The old ways of creating the reports has 2 columns and we can chose what we need and what we don't. Now also we have the same concept but in a parent and child flow. May be we are used to the old workflow and it might take for us to get used to the new reports.

Alternatives Considered

Bitrix24

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

When we were using sugar CEM we don't have much features which we get from Zoho.

Switched From

SugarCRM

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Initially it was free to use, so we chose to go with Zoho CRM

Pros

As advertised, you can run your entire organization from this enterprise platform that being Zoho One.
We heavily use the CRM for generating quotes emailing templates email and quotes and proposals and contact management.

Cons

Each module can speak to another but on a very limited basis directly out of the box. You'll need to customize each modules ability to speak to each other in the manner you want.

This will take some time for you to discover.. be patient, the product is not a "Magic Genie" but could be when you program it to be.
You'll discover what you need and want as your use and familiarity increase.

I recommend paying for the support from Zoho, it's not expensive if you don't have a lot of people, it's a percentage of your overall licensing fee. You can use the Zoho one support crew to give you any assistance that you need.

There are two levels of support you can choose a Zoho partner who has business sense and understands how you're going to use your Zoho product. These Partners are sharp, intelligent groups and know what their doing. Consequently your pricing matches their experience.
the Zoho support group has no business sense they're not intuitive they will fix whatever problem you have they will answer your questions, but they do not have business insight

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365 and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

We needed something more encompassing and flexible. ACT's firs failure was not being able to integrate with Ring Central. Zoho allows for a click to call and bingo, your on the phone with whomever you're calling.

Switched From

Act!

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

1. Chose Zoho One for pricing 2. flexibility 3. expandability 4. capability 5. functionality You can program this entire platform work together as one cohesive mechanism. It's truly an amazing platform once you get your head wrapped around the entire concept and you give yourself some time to work with it, I really think you will find it a very solid product. The downfall is it's all cloud based, it's not on premise. sometimes the website is a bit sluggish. Zoho on occasion takes a few moments to update. Salesforce priced themselves out of the market and I would have to hire a developer just to use the product. That's an immediate no go right out of the gate. Microsoft Dynamics I could manage on my own, however I still would be required to engage a partner and their minimum investment starts at $5000 another no go.

Pros

I recommend Zoho very often. A lot of companies go big earlier than they really need to and spend way too much on SalesForce & Marketo.

I worked for a very small company with some limited budget that pivoted to sell it's product to the Enterprise.

Zoho was incredibly easy to set up, intuitive to use, and contains all the most important features that most users need and seek in SalesForce. We integrated with MailChimp & Unbounce and were able to be incredible effective acquiring leads, nurturing them, and tracking pipeline in Zoho. Our small sales team found it very easy to use and loved it.

Cons

There's a point when you need a more robust integration eco-system and a lot of customization. This isn't really a con per se, but Zoho, by being not as complex and customizable as SFDC, will eventually need to be replaced. This should last you many years before you outgrow the functionality.

Alternatives Considered

HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Pipedrive was new and very limited in it's functionality.

Switched From

Pipedrive

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Functionality and cost

Pros

- Great ticketing / response help desk solution that's free for small IT teams
- Great automation for creating special filters, automation rules, and auto replies for anything that comes across your [email protected] address.
- Great CRM tracking for monitoring customer responses, reporting tools, SLA alerting when nearing SLA deadlines, agent tracking KPI metrics, and ticket history tracking.
- Great solutions archive and knowledge base which can be added to via the ticket itself
- Great notification options including (email alerts, webhook integrations, and SMS text messaging.)
- Nice tools for scheduling routine maintenance tasks which appear as tickets and count towards technician KPIs (as tickets).
- Very secure portal, customer portal, 2 FA authentication options, and easy to manage UI

Cons

- Takes some time to initially setup, defaults often aren't helpful.
- Hard to understand webhook integration instructions, uncertain if two-way functionality is available for a Slack integration (if so, it'll be manual).
- Need to watch for mail fetching often! If you aren't getting tickets after 6 hours, mail fetching is turned off and needs to manually be reset. No polling service, or automated mail fetching ping service so you need to make sure when doing exchange maintenance to remember to start this service when stopped.

Alternatives Considered

ConnectWise PSA

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

The cost for 5 or less technicians in a team was free so we opted for this over paid options. Has most of the features a help desk could need that was both a Cloud Hosted SaaS product.

Pros

I loved the numeber of features I got for the money. At the same time, my biggest concern was integration with third party mailing service. Zoho handled it perfectly.

Cons

It was a bit pricy for a small business in Mid-Europe. Especially that we were just starting off, and did not need all the functions that came with the package we had to acquire to get the ones we needed.

Alternatives Considered

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

The free, open-source CRM was clunky, lacked required features (which were hidden in the payed version) and for the money we would pay for Bitrix, we could get a better product: Zoho CRM

Switched From

Dynamics 365

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

It did not have smooth integration with cloud service we used and we did not want to swich all of our infrastructure to MS.

Pros

It is very easy to add fields/change fields and customize as you wish. For the most part, it is very intuitive and user friendly.
Integrates with many different programs.
We had a Zoho expert set up our account and do training with us and that was worth the time and money.

Cons

Features can be limited on lower priced tiers.
It can be difficult to find solutions to common problems.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

We were looking for a cloud based CRM that had more functionality.

Switched From

Act!

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Cost and value.

Pros

This is a free or very cheap email service depending on the plan you choose. I like this because my business is just starting out and I want to save as much as possible. Zoho is a great resource because it has all the functions I need. It integrates with my website, sends and receives emails and is fairly easy to use. It also comes with a calendar and a place to store notes and bookmarks.

Cons

I am on the free version, which means that I can only access it on my computer device. The paid plan is really inexpensive and something worth investing in if you want to answer emails in a more timely manner. It may take a bit of time to get used to the interface if you've never used it before or you are switching from another email service.

Pros

customizable, stability, easy to use day by day

Cons

At the beggining is complicated to understand how to set up, specially if this is the first time you use a ticketing software.

Alternatives Considered

Freshdesk

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Because we start using Zoho CRM and someone from Zoho advised us that Zoho Desk may cover our IT Support needs and we decided to try it.

Switched From

Freshdesk

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

To use just one Brand software that allow us to integrate another Zoho's products that we use.

Pros

The price is great. The customer service has always been helpful. It is easy to use.

Cons

I stopped using Zoho for a while and started using a competitor that has some newer features. I am back to Zoho because they now have those features and all the things that the competition didnt

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud and Zendesk Sell

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Zoho has better email and phone tracking abilities

Switched From

Zendesk Sell

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Price and familiarity

Pros

The best thing about Zoho is that it's free for up to a number of users. Great for a small business who doesn't have a budget for CRM yet and needs somewhere to store information and search it later. It can be simple to use. I always look for a system that you can enter a very minimal amount of information into in order to store a lead or prospect. Zoho is definitely capable of that.

I have used this in conjunction with inside and outside sales teams together. It was simple enough for the inside team to look up an account that calls in to see if they've had contact with an outside rep, and vice versa. It's nice that it has a mobile app, though when I stopped using it it was still the least intuitive/useful app I had on my mobile devices.

Cons

I've used other CRMs, and I noticed that using both Zoho and another (Salesforce) it is very common to happen upon duplicate prospects in the system. It seems like the way an account is entered is not as intuitive in detecting that the account already exists. I've used others that will suggest any contact, address, phone number, name or business that already exist in the company's pipeline literally as you're typing them. With Zoho it's more like you look up each data field first on your own to be sure the account doesn't exist before entering it.

That can be pretty tedious for an already tedious job like assisting our reps with data entry. The result is lost notes, because some are on one of the duplicates and some are on the other. I've seen this particular problem cause a lot of lost time and energy for outside reps in particular, who go out to an account not knowing the most up to date information about it.

I also found the other tools to be less useful than in other CRMs. For instance, generating a report on your pipeline and what stage the accounts are in. Other CRMs in a similar price range are easily capable of telling a user how many prospects are in follow up or final stages of the sales process. While using Zoho, I actually tracked my pipeline on my own separately using a spreadsheet. It was easier and more intuitive than the CRM offered. Now, leading a team, I would not use this CRM and this would be a big reason why. I can't imagine trying to track the progress of our leads via a team using this CRM's tools.

Pros

Product is somewhat OK if you're starting with the CRM but they are slow in adapting to new technologies. They are still learning and is a good tool if you're a nut bolt retailer.

Cons

Their support team is a bunch of absolute pathetic people. Clueless nincompoops who have no training, empathy or understanding of how customer support works!

When you call ANY support line for any cloud service, they first tell you their name, ask yours, and request details on the issue and provide you with a case reference.

NOT WITH ZOHOCRM SUPPORT CLOWNS.

They talk to you on the phone and DO NOT PROVIDE a support ticket number. Even if you ask them they fail to provide a support request number. Next, if you call them about the same issue, the same nincompoop would ask you for a ticket number which he previously didn't provide!!!

As a result, you waste time, explaining them again and again repeating the same thing to a useless clown who couldn't care less about the customer's issue and has absolutely no empathy. Their work ethic and attitude are probably worse than those working in the oldest profession.

Here’s what their support reps should have done, but they NEVER do all this. All of this is Customer Support 101:
a. Announce their name! When you ask the customer their user ID and name, why can’t you introduce yourselves too?? By default? What’s there to hide?? Why wait for the customer to ask? Even a domestic call center in India does this!
b. Take a call back number to call back in case the call gets disconnected!
c. If you can’t call back drop a 1 line email with the case reference number so at least the customer has a chance to pick up from where he left off!

WHAT A BUNCH OF LOSERS.
A rather crude bunch with absolute zero respect for paying customers. They fail to realize that they're employed because of paying customers!

I have posted an audio recording of their unprofessional attitude on a support call, on YouTube. Just look for it and have a listen yourself, so you know what can be expected.

ZOHO MANAGEMENT - Get your support clowns to signup for free trials of other cloud bases SAAS products and raise support requests so they can experience and may learn how to provide customer support!!

Pros

Zoho CRM can meet 90% of the needs for 90% of businesses. For most users, it's identical to Salesforce, except significantly less expensive. The UI has improved in the past few years so new users can be running within an hour for basic CRM tasks.

Key point: Zoho CRM is very generous with the free-tier, giving about 90% of the key features for up to 3 users. That's really important for small businesses and startups, so they can deeply evaluate the benefit.

Cons

At this level of software maturity, the main advantage Salesforce has is a large ecosystem of extensions. Zoho CRM also has third-party extensions, but far fewer. It largely makes up for that with tight integration to other Zoho products.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Price and simplicity

Switched From

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Price and simplicity.

Pros

First off, I own, manage & work at a Business IT and WebDesign business, located in the Kansas City, MO area...

The Zoho CRM platform is very intuitive and easy to use immediately. Plus, for the money, it's the best in my opinion. Now, dedicate a few days to learn the CRM, combined with their other products... You seriously have the best solution out there I've ever seen and I've tried them all. Additionally, Zoho is priced far below the competition for what you get. Third party integrations for big names like Google and Facebook are amazingly simple to add and configure. Spend a few days on the trial period, dedicated a couple hours a day to learning their CRM, combined with the other solutions they provide that fit your needs... and you'll be spoiled compared to any others. Customer support is rather good, although based in India. I never had a problem or experienced a debacle they were not happy to help me with. Also, the company Zoho.. Across the board is moving forward every week/month with new features and updates to not only the CRM here but, their entire plethora of SaS solutions.

If you are familiar with CRM's... I won't bore you with what it does. You already know what a CRM should provide and Zoho CRM does by far and then some. The learning curve really is not that bad, even then, there really is no limit you can take this platform to if you dedicate the time to learn and set it up.

Bottom line: Zoho CRM, combined with their other solutions... IS THE BEST

Cons

Honestly... I can not complain that much. The only complaint I have is this... Yes, they are far below the competition in terms of price when considering the big names out there.. However, if you are a power user like myself.. You want all the options. Even though they are cheaper than the others.. I really hate (across the board, all companies included) that their subscription pricing is a "per user" type setup. Being an IT business, you understand inner workings of resource usage... I really think all these companies should be tiered in groups of 5 - 10 users and the price will increase at that point but, I digress...

In the beginning of my startup phase (Having one employee besides myself), I really found it hard justifying the cost "per user" to use any CRM software. However, my end goal for the company was automation of anything Consumer Relations, related so.. honestly, I chose to save a couple bucks and went the open source route. Well, yeah.. It worked that way but honestly, it was open source but, closed. Anything I wanted that was not built by the community was insanely time consuming to implement. BUT.. It cost nothing that way and I didn't pay a per user fee. However, time is money AND... my implementations would have to be rebuilt anytime I wanted to update the core functionality.

So, long story short... These companies really shouldn't be implementing a per user subscription model. Truth be told, 1 - 10 employees takes the same resources on their end.. :/