Zoho CRM Reviews

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

Omg i love zoho crm. I run a virtual call center and its the ONLY tool that does it efficiently to recruit agents. I integrate with so much of what I need and i love that they have mobile friendly option

Cons

Zoho itself does have a bit of a learning curve that you have to get used to but if you keep at it itll be the best tool you've found.

Alternatives Considered

Google Forms

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Zoho is less expensive and also feature rich with MOBILE friendly features unlike the competition. I felt it was more my speed amd safer. The other felt like navigating a foreign video game. This feels like for a business

Pros

Emails linked to the CRM which was all in one place.

Cons

The support team leave you going around in circles. When you give and instruction they always come back with but can we help you. This is always the response leaving you with no answers or resolution. They take your money and do not refund or offer any compensation. You get ignored and basically sent to the beginning every time so you go away.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Platform

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Because the glitch was never fixed and I needed to get my business working again, the IT company went 4 weeks back and forth with no resolution. 8 months later still nothing, request to cancel subscription ignored. Got the but let us help you and they still take the payment and then won’t refund.

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

It was within my budget at the time. Don’t I regret that now.

Pros

I like zoho cause it enables me to organize and manage projects efficiently through its customized features and user friendly interface. Its seamless integration with other application is also top notch and its pricing is very affordable.

Cons

Its customer support system is less efficient.

Pros

Best CRM tool with alot of features both online and offline that has helped us organzie and manage office duties

Cons

support team lacks customer lanagage and tend to be tough when responding

Pros

There are very useful task automations in Zoho CRM which has helped us get our work done easily and more accurately. It also has powerful analytical functions for generating insightful performance reports that help optimize our customer engagements during sales. Zoho CRM team collaboration tools help us to work together on our customer journey.

Cons

All features in Zoho CRM are perfect. We have not come across anything about Zoho CRM to dislike.

Pros

Zoho CRM provides a comprehensive and flexible customer relationship management solution that has significantly streamlined my business process. It has a user-friendly interface that can be easily configured with easy accessibility to all information with simple clicks. Zoho offers a lot of customization options ,this ability to customize it to your needs makes it much easier to slot into your existing processes. It helps me to create various dashboards stats and see how their performance is for a particular time duration. Also a thing that i like about zoho is that it integrates seamlessly with a wide range of third-party applications which allows us to connect various systems and helps in enhancing overall productivity.

Cons

So far, I don't have any dislike about Zoho CRM but a thing i would like to add on is that some features are not easy to implement it requires some time and learning, which could be a challenge for new users and businesses with limited resources. Also the free and lower-tier plans offer basic functionality, which might not be sufficient for growing businesses.

Pros

What I liked most about Zoho CRM is its user-friendly interface and customizable features. The ability to tailor the platform to specific business needs, such as automating workflows and creating custom reports, made it very efficient. I also appreciated the integration with various third-party apps, which streamlined processes and enhanced productivity.

Cons

What I liked least about Zoho CRM was the occasional complexity in setting up advanced customizations. While the platform is highly customizable, some features require a steep learning curve or technical knowledge to configure properly.

Pros

I like the way the UI is designed, the way it is curated to address scenarios where the user is a non coder, has no or basic coding ability. I like the GUI based workflow management and its ticketing system

Cons

The costing is slightly high, implementing it requires skilled professionals and some training. The forms can be more expressive and features can be improved

Pros

Zoho CRM is very easy to use. It has a great user-friendly interface and is easy to navigate. But the best thing about it is that it offers you the ability to customize its features to fit your business goals.

Cons

The Zoho CRM reporting tool is not sufficiently competitive compared to other platforms. The data it provides is often delayed and does not capture real-time information.

Pros

I am using Zoho XRM for more than 3 years and found it a really amazing platform for customer relationship management. I like their simple yet effective user interface the most. I can use it very easily. Zoho CRM helps us to manage our all databases and related information at one place with amazing security. Overall I can say that this is an amazing CRM.

Cons

There is one thing that I want to highlight about this CRM that I dislike about it which is Zoho CRM is a little bit expensive compared to others but on the other hand, I can say that it is worth to spend on it.

Alternatives Considered

SugarCRM

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

We choose Zoho CRM over SugarCRM because of their strong customer focus nature which is the most important thing that we always keep in mind and on the other hand, there is a lot of amazing features that Zoho CRM is providing and in SugarCRM, these features are missing.

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 support@ 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

The customer service is the best I have ever experience, they are friendly, very knowledgeable and super fast

Cons

Do not have a con they literally surpass my expectations every day .

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

Social, email and CRM functionality are all housed in one place.

The email campaign section makes it easy to warm leads up before sending them to the CRM module.

Easy to set tasks for the sales team and then report on what has or has not been followed up.

Cons

There's a lot of functionality and application within Zoho, I don't believe we will get around to using them all.

The email Campaign section doesn't always pull the correct stats back through to the CRM module.

There is no ideal process of qualifying leads, we had to seek external support.

Alternatives Considered

NetSuite and Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

We wanted more functionality and Zoho was very competitively priced.

Switched From

Act!

Pros

In my view, Zoho CRM is the most effective and flexible CRM I have used yet, considering that I use it at work and in my own business. As an Agent working in a mid-sized agency, it was easy for us to set it up for our agency because Zoho also provides a how-to guide. The features we have set up include but are not limited to:

Automating email campaigns for new and existing leads and maintaining relationships with our long-time clients for repeat business.

We are able to integrate WordPress Forms (Elementor API through Zoho Flow), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google My Business using Zoho Social.

Managing Leads and Clients and setting automated reminders when a contact has not been touched for a certain period. Allow being able to view and track a contact's activities on the timeline.

Not forgetting the overall collaborative ability to centrally manage all contacts as a team. Making sure that all potential business can be attended to if a colleague is not available for one reason or another.

Cons

As much as I love Zoho CRM, these are its limitations and areas of improvement:

Zoho CRM needs to provide options on Graphic User Interfaces. As a visual person, that is really important, and I might not be alone. You are not even able to change the fonts.

A user is not able to convert a client back to leads, unless they recapture the contact as a lead, export multiple clients and import them leads or write and run a Deluge script. This feature must come standard.

Zoho CRM is a powerful app if you lack intent you will find yourself overwhelmed and unable to set it up for your business.

Alternatives Considered

Odoo and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

AppTivo lacked flexibility and features I considered critical.

Switched From

Apptivo

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Flexibility and cost.

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

Very easy to use compared to other systems I have tried! Easy to integrate, mass update records, export information and access via app.

Cons

Would prefer stronger integration with Zoho Sites and Bookings to add more functionality in automation but this likely could have been achieved with more technical knowledge.

Alternatives Considered

Sage CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Choosing Zoho CRM

Have used Hubspot, Sage and Salesforce among others historically and Zoho provides a more mid market option between these three. It is simple, reliable and has good features for its price range.

Switched From

Sage CRM, Salesforce Sales Cloud and HubSpot CRM

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM was part of Zoho One package so offered good value for money with features that integrated with other Zoho software that we use. The support is also great with Zoho, I can message and receive a response back fairly quickly.

Pros

Zoho has all the features you need to manage the A-Z of your sales operations. The automated workflows and sequences have been especially helpful for us because it used to take forever to send our opening sales emails to hundreds of prospects, whereas now, we don't ave to spend a single second to send these emails, and they're standardized and have automated reports on their performance. This alone has probably saved us a dozen hours each week from sending them manually.

Cons

It was difficult for us to get off the ground in the beginning, we even questioned whether it was actually going to be the right fit because of that. It might be good to have better onboarding to get ahead of that.

Alternatives Considered

Less Annoying CRM, Pipedrive and HubSpot Sales Hub

Switched From

Microsoft Excel

Reasons for Switching to Zoho CRM

Zoho had an edge above most of the other options, but it also had all the features we really wanted. So, it was probably a balance of price and functionality that moved us to Zoho.

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.. :/

Pros

Beyond the basics of contact management, workflows and custom fields, Zoho CRM makes it especially easy to find the last communication and pick up right where you left off with any lead, deal, or client. It syncs with other Zoho products, as well as many external systems, making it perfect for a connected workflow. It also has an available API for creating custom application integrations.

Creating custom workflows and approvals with Blueprint is a straightforward process, and the power that it provides for process management and automation cannot be underestimated.

Self service portals for clients are another great addition to the power of the CRM.

There are multiple billing levels available, so the system will scale with your business, or even better check out Zoho One for a simple and affordable solution to even more of Zoho services.

One final Pro is that Zoho is consistently looking to make their product better, and has shown an extraordinary commitment to improving it's design and functionality. If you don't like something now, submit feedback and wait a little while, and it might appear.

Cons

Integrating the CRM with other Zoho products can be complicated, and the integration experience is not completely consistent yet. It is clear that this is something that is being improved, but some of the products are not at the same level of polish as Zoho CRM.

Zoho's introduction of an AI assistant is certainly cool to see, but it isn't quite ready for prime-time and much of what it can do doesn't seem to add a lot of value versus not having an AI. However, this will certainly continue to improve with feedback and it is good to see AI as a focus of future innovation in the product.

Pros

Overall, Zoho's CRM is about as robust as I've seen. It has a crazy amount of connectivity with other Zoho apps and integrates really well with G-suite apps too. Of all the CRMs I've tested, and I've tested dozens for at least 4 business models, Zoho seems to be the most flexible and cross-vertical friendly. There's plenty of competition and many that are designed for specific types of businesses, but what I'm finding is that just about any type of business (i.e. project management, online or web-based business, consulting, marketing, photography, etc) it can be customised to fit very well. You do have to be ready to put the time to set up your business though and that's true for any CRM. Yes, maybe some are a bit easier and faster, but if you're like me and like to bolt on new services, you'll appreciate that Zoho is likely going to still work for you, meaning less time having to start all over again.

Cons

So here are the things you have to remember when choosing Zoho. Go for Zoho One! It's worth it to get all the other apps for the difference in cost. Chances are, you'll spend a lot less by staying with Zoho and dumping all the other API'd apps that Zoho can already handle.

Another thing that you have to be aware of is that their service and support can be excellent, but that depends on the rep you get at the other end of the line. My advice is to be very thorough in explaining your request and don't let them start solving issues until you know for sure they really understand what you want.

Another issue is that they don't support on weekends. For many that may not be an issue, but when you live and work in a time zone or business area that needs that, time to solve issues and not get in the way of daily work, that may matter to you. But overall, I can say that from the time I started using Zoho's suite, their customer support has improved vastly!

You will also find you have the need to figure out some workarounds on issues that are core to your business. Sometimes things can be customised, but not always. For example, it's a pain to have it set up for people or contacts who are associated with multiple businesses, something that's rather common in my space. Again, if you get the right technical help, you can solve issues like these.

Their documentation and help videos are just OK at best. I find them very confusing and too technical at times, and I'm a pretty technical person, so once again, this means you'll be depending on their support team and you'll want to be ultra clear on what you want to accomplish.

Pros

- Easy to customize: The product is extremely easy to customize, at the point that unless you are going to do something very specialized, you might need external support, otherwise, the ramp up curve is easy and fast. There are different versions to subscribe, the higher the version, the more you can customize. They also let you try the product for a 30 day period and you are able to switch between different versions to compare them. The bottom line is that you will not need to spend extra money.
- Language: My customers needed the product in spanish, Zoho allows you to switch between one language and another seamlessly.
- Price: There are different versions, that are very affordable, one of the difference against the leaders is that the price up to 5 users might be the reasonable, but above 5 the prices goes really high. In the case of Zoho below 5 is free with its limitations, and then you have a reasonable step up depending on the versions.
- Mobile Client: Simply amazing, once you have the product running, literally, every task or query you can do in your desk, you can also do it in your smartphone. The interface is clean, nice, intuitive and easy to use.
- Tracking and follow up: One the strongest features I found is the tools to remind you of the follow up of tasks, meeting, calls, etc. You can get advise by email, phone, etc.
- Sales methodology and Pipeline review: If your company has a black & white sales methodology, it is very easy to set it up in the CRM, also the way to view the pipeline is very intuitive and visual. It makes very easy to do pipe review and lets you drill into any module with just a click.
- Views: You can have the report & the view you need, the product comes with a lost of sample reports but also lets you do your own (The higher the version, the more you can customize)
- Workflow for triggering events: This is a great feature where you visually can determine which tasks are needed to execute after one event happens. Amazing feature.

Cons

There are many "add ons" that can be very useful once you have your CRM, by example ZOHO Projects, . My only advise is that from the beginning you have a clear understanding of what your company will be needing as this modules are priced separate from the monthly fee. Depending on the modules, you might end spending more dollars per user on them than on the crm fee.