Zoho CRM is a cloud-based, integrated customer relationship management platform that caters to the needs of businesses and industries of all sizes and types. Over 150,000 companies worldwide use Zoho CRM to build lasting customer relationships and maximize team productivity. Our expanded omnichannel support for phone, email, live chat, social media, and in-person meetings make Zoho CRM the most tightly integrated system in the market. In addition, Zoho’s AI-powered sales assistant, Zia, provides advanced interpretations, solutions, and predictions for salespeople. As a result, your sales team can spend more time selling instead of entering data with the help of workflow automation, lead scoring, real-time notifications, and built-in gamification.
Accelerate your sales team’s productivity with accurate forecasts of potential revenue, and use productivity games to exceed your sales quotas. Set up multiple currencies, use AI predictions to prioritize leads and deals likely to convert, and track website visitors to convert more prospects. Zia is an AI assistant included in Zoho CRM who can help you manage your CRM data. Zia can fetch the information you want, take notes, predict the future of a sale, detect anomalies, automate tasks, and more! Stay on top of every activity with Zia.
Get your marketing and sales teams on the same page. Generate new leads, execute targeted email marketing campaigns, and compare ad spend to sales revenue using the Google Ads integration. Your security is our top priority. We understand that every organization needs to strike the right balance between protecting their customers’ data and giving employees the freedom to get their work done. Zoho CRM succeeds in meeting both of these requirements. Use Zoho CRM’s developer platform and SDKs to build and deploy secure, scalable, and enterprise-ready solutions. Build integrated systems, offer personalized user experiences, and develop apps for both web and mobile.
Zoho CRM was first released in November 2005 as a product of AdventNet, a company based in India. AdventNet quickly followed up on launching Zoho CRM with cloud-based apps ranging from Zoho Creator and Zoho Sheet in 2006 to Zoho Invoice and Zoho Mail in 2008. In May 2009, the company was renamed Zoho Corporation. In the 2010s, Zoho Corporation made a name for itself in the CRM business by releasing a slew of new apps, eventually totaling more than 40 SaaS offerings. These tools do more than act as a CRM system; they also assist businesses in managing projects, managing finances, and recruiting new staff, among other things. Even yet, Zoho CRM has always been at the heart of the company’s offerings. Businesses can expand out to explore these extra goods once they’ve joined the Zoho ecosystem, whether they’re new small businesses or established organizations. Zoho’s array of reasonably priced solutions (usually free at the entry-level) has spawned a devoted user base known as Zoholics. More than 15% of Zoho’s engineers come from the company’s Zoho University program, which has almost 7,000 employees worldwide.
Zoho CRM Features Review
Zoho CRM Lead Capture Review
A lead is a person or company interested in your products or services. Lead capture is the process of gathering information about a potential consumer to convert them into a paying customer.
Forms for capturing leads: Forms are the most straightforward lead collecting strategies because they allow leads to input their information. Zoho CRM integrates with Zoho Forms to capture and create leads instantly.
The Zoho CRM and Zoho Forms interaction are far more seamless than form integrations in CRM platforms such as Copper. This is because you won’t need to use a third-party program like Zapier. In addition, as seen below, you can readily identify which fields in Zoho CRM refer to which fields in Zoho Forms.
Zoho CRM Social Media Review
Users may monitor brand mentions on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter using Zoho CRM’s social media tools and post straight from their CRM page to their social media pages. It also allows companies to create process triggers that add leads and contacts from social media based on customer engagement and allocate them to the right sales professional.
You may link your Twitter and Facebook accounts with Zoho CRM. This feature is essential since it allows you to manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts from your CRM directly. Commenting, liking, retweeting, and direct messaging are some activities. This feature is also simple to operate. In many circumstances, Zoho CRM will automatically import user data from their social network profiles.
Zoho CRM Live Chat Review
Zoho CRM integrates with Zoho SalesIQ, which allows you to add a live chat widget to your website or mobile app. This function is essential; conversing with website visitors in real-time increases your chances of obtaining a lead’s confidence and contact information.
You may assign leads to sales personnel within the chat window, which is a valuable function. Your conversation transcripts are also saved in Zoho CRM for future reference.
Zoho CRM Email Review
Zoho CRM provides two options for capturing lead information from emails automatically.
One way is to use automation. For example, if the subject of an email contains the word “plumbing,” you may set up an automated to build a lead using the email sender’s information.
A Chrome add-on from Zoho CRM can harvest lead information from anyone you’ve emailed. Depending on your emails, the extension can record a sender’s job title, phone number, firm, and website.
Zoho CRM Contact Management Review
It’s critical to get a lead’s contact information if you want to turn them into a paying customer. However, the value you get from your CRM is determined by the type of data you can record and how it’s saved and maintained. Contact management is the term for this.
Zoho CRM Contact Profiles Review
For each lead you capture, Zoho CRM produces a profile. In general, the more data you have on contact and the more distinctive a shape is, the greater your chances of converting a lead are. Overall, Zoho CRM outperforms rival CRMs in this area, allowing you to build a more thorough profile than Copper and Pipedrive.
The standard contact information like phone numbers, emails, related transactions and files, and social media profiles can all be included. You can also give contacts unique tags and provide information about their sales orders, quotes, and invoices. In addition, Zoho CRM will track a contact’s activity, such as social media and live chats.
You can also personalize contact profiles with Zoho CRM by adding new sections and fields. Checkboxes, picture uploads, currencies, dates, and times are just a few of the areas you can use.
Zoho CRM Contact Storage Review
You must have simple access to your contacts and organize them. Although Zoho CRM has a lot of contact storage, it can be unclear for first-time CRM users because it isn’t the most user-friendly.
You may segment your connections based on discounts, internet behaviors, and contact information such as companies, emails, addresses, and account names using various filters. Depending on email, contact owner, tags, and contact ratings, you may even design custom displays. You may also utilize the search box in Zoho CRM to find a specific contact.
Zoho CRM Contact Activity Feed Review
In Zoho CRM, each contact has a feed that follows their activities. Contact activity tracking keeps you informed about where someone is in the sales process, allowing you to take the necessary steps to ensure that they proceed through your sales funnel. Tracking also lowers the likelihood of losing a lead.
As seen above, you can track the tasks, meetings, and calls that the contact is involved in. In addition, you can construct list views based on inactivity. However, one drawback of Zoho CRM is that it does not allow you to track email activities such as email openings.
Zoho CRM Contact Scoring Review
Contact scoring is the process of assigning a numerical score to contacts that describes how engaged they are with your company. This allows you to focus your resources on the most promising leads and figure out how to engage each potential customer effectively. Overall, Zoho CRM’s feature is simple to use.
Multiple contact elements, such as a contact’s name, email, phone number, the first page a connection visited, and account names connected with a reference, can be used to generate score criteria. You can also specify various conditions, such as is, isn’t, contains, starts with, and isn’t empty.
Zoho CRM Communication Channels Review
To turn your leads into paying customers, you must regularly keep in touch with them. You can communicate with leads using Zoho CRM via the following channels:
- Email Marketing
- Social Media
- Phone
Zoho CRM Email Marketing Review
From within Zoho CRM, you can send emails to your contacts. You may also connect Zoho CRM to Zoho Campaigns, which is Zoho’s tool for sending out campaigns. Both of these features are simple and effective to utilize.
You may send mass emails or email campaigns to a specific contacts list using Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns. Both can be used to construct email templates that you send frequently.
Different elements such as photos, text, widgets, and buttons can be readily dragged and dropped on both platforms. You may also alter your email templates’ layout and color scheme with Zoho Campaigns.
In addition, Zoho CRM provides email analytics, which you can utilize to improve the quality of the emails you send. You can look at:
- When you open or click on an email
- Analytics for your templates’ performance
- Email tracking
You may incorporate merge fields in Zoho CRM and Zoho Campaigns, which benefit. Merge fields take data from your CRM or Zoho Campaigns, like deals and contacts, and insert it into the body of your email.
Zoho CRM Phone Review
Zoho CRM allows you to connect your phone system to its platform. This tool saves time by allowing you to call contacts without leaving Zoho CRM.
In addition, Zoho CRM automatically logs calls and provides call analytics to help you track team performance. You can see your call data using the built-in charts and reports, which can help you uncover operational improvement opportunities.
Zoho CRM Deal Management Review
You’ll need a strategy for handling your deals after leads become sales-qualified leads. Effective deal management will deliver the most up-to-date information and allow sales reps to develop solid relationships with potential customers.
Zoho CRM Pipelines Review
You can graphically track the progress of potential clients through each negotiation stage with pipelines. Some pipeline technologies aren’t designed to handle many deals at once; however, Zoho CRM is more scalable than most and can take over 50 deals at once.
You may design and adapt different pipelines in Zoho CRM to match your company’s sales funnels. You can put as many levels as you like in any order, and you can even make your own. You can also provide a “win probability” percentage for each group.
You may also utilize a variety of filters in Zoho CRM to view specific deals. This comprises filters based on various fields and actions performed on records. Sales may also be readily dragged and dropped between phases, making it easier to keep track of their progress.
Zoho CRM Task Management Review
Tasks are the acts that must be completed to achieve a deal in a CRM. You or others in your organization can be in charge of these. This Zoho CRM function is simple but valuable.
Task names, due dates, and reminders can all be customized. In addition, to tasks, you can also add notes, attachments, and links. You can also include task reminders.
Task reminders are essential since they help you avoid losing a possible deal. You may specify a custom date and set reminders for any day and time in Zoho CRM. You can also set reminders to recur daily, weekly, yearly, or on a specific date. Reminders are sent through email or appear as pop-ups within the CRM.
Zoho CRM Lead Scoring
The technique of assigning a numerical value to a lead is lead scoring. This indicates how likely the information is to become a paying customer. Lead scoring also allows your sales reps to focus their efforts on the most profitable deals.
The lead scoring function in Zoho CRM is more advanced than similar tools in other products like Copper. Lead fields, email analytics, campaigns, and Facebook and Twitter actions can all be used to assign points. In addition, you can define conditions that add or deduct points for lead fields. For example, if a lead has a specific owner, you can get an extra ten points.
Zoho CRM Workflow Automation Review
Workflow automation is the process of using tools, apps, and technology to automate routine tasks. Automating your workflow saves you time and eliminates the possibility of human error. Triggered events are Zoho CRM’s lone workflow automation capability.
Zoho CRM Triggered Events Review
You can create rules in Zoho CRM to have events trigger a specific action. For example, if the topic of an email is “truck vendor,” you can automatically mark the sender as a lead. This tool can be a little overwhelming to use for first-time CRM users, but it is beneficial.
You can automate a range of CRM features in Zoho CRM, including leads, contacts, deals, tasks, and Facebook and Twitter actions. In addition, multiple activities, such as field updates, email notifications, task creations, and comments, can be defined for a single trigger.
Zoho CRM Predictive Analytics Tools and AI Review
Zia, Zoho CRM’s AI companion, provides users with a conversational AI gadget that helps them carry out and finish tasks more quickly. Zia assists with daily tasks such as taking notes and calculating sales figures. Users can promptly contact Zia by dialing her from their phone app or the lower corner of their computer screen.
Zoho CRM Reporting Review
CRM reporting provides critical information that assists individuals and enterprises in making strategic decisions and making tactical changes as needed. This contains reports on deals won and lost, pipeline progression, your sales funnel, and sales forecasting, among other things.
All of these insights and many others are available in Zoho CRM reports and analytics, which include email, meeting, vendor, and product reports. However, the lack of data visualizations in Zoho CRM’s reporting feature is a drawback. This is where Zoho CRM’s analytics tool comes in handy.
Sales, marketing activities, leads, deals, and tasks can all be tracked with Zoho CRM. You can also choose from a column, donut, pie, bar, or funnel chart to represent your data.
Zoho CRM Integrations Review
Zoho CRM has integrations that let you get more out of your CRM. They also reduce the need to switch between different systems.
The following are some of Zoho CRM’s necessary integrations:
- Google Workspace
- Zapier
- Slack
- Zoom
- Intercom
- Shopify
Zoho CRM Mobile Review
Both Android and Apple users can use the Zoho CRM mobile app. With a mobile CRM, you have the best opportunity of providing the most satisfactory service possible to your clients at all times.
The mobile app for Zoho CRM allows you to see and create a range of CRM modules, such as leads, contacts, accounts, deals, tasks, meetings, and calls. However, you cannot access reports or send email campaigns from your mobile device.
Zoho CRM Legal & Security Review
For your CRM, adequate security and data protection are essential. Data breaches can harm your company’s reputation and be costly to fix. To ensure that your data is secure and protected, Zoho CRM includes critical security features and compliances.
Zoho CRM Ease of Use Review
Zoho CRM is easy to use and can be used right away. It offers a user-friendly interface with simplified administrative controls, ideal for users who don’t have advanced technical abilities. It also provides online training for anyone who wants to learn more about the platform and get the most out of their membership.
Zoho CRM Customer Support Review
In general, we thought Zoho CRM’s customer service was above average. This is because Zoho CRM provides a wide range of customer assistance options. In addition, the live chat tool in Zoho CRM was likewise speedy and responsive.
Zoho offers three service plans: Classic, Premium, and Enterprise. The Classic plan is free and provides live chat and toll-free help seven days a week, eight hours a day. Remote assistance, product onboarding, setup aid, and 24-hour support are included in the premium option five days a week, which costs 20% of your licensing fee. The Enterprise option costs 25% of your licensing fee and provides help within one hour, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. You’ll also have access to a technical account manager as well as quarterly reporting and recommendations.
Customers of Zoho have access to a wealth of resources, including free webinars and paid courses for administrators, developers, sales reps, and sales managers. In addition, E-books, guided step-by-step instructions, helpful suggestions, and a self-service request site are all available. You can also hire a concierge to act as personal counsel for any concerns you may have.
Zoho CRM Pricing Plan Review
Zoho has a transparent price structure based on monthly and annual terms. There are four different service bundles to choose from. Each subscription level offers a free trial period. The Standard package includes all of the features found in the free version, plus some more. (Everything accessible in the bundles before it is included in each subsequent tier.)
Zoho CRM Free Plan: The Free plan allows for up to three users. It includes features such as contact, lead, and account management, several standard reports, workflow rules, web forms, e-mail templates, the ability to track website visitors, and access to Zoho’s basic customer service. Individuals on your team can also collaborate via organization calendars, direct messaging, and status updates.
Zoho CRM Bigin Price Plan: You will be charged $9 per user per month for this plan. Bigin by Zoho is the company’s new small business CRM solution. It provides small businesses with a cost-effective CRM software program to help them manage their client interactions. It is the most affordable package in our Best CRM ranking and an excellent alternative for small groups looking for a CRM that can be easily operated via a mobile app. In addition, you may easily upgrade to Zoho’s Standard CRM package as your company expands.
Zoho CRM Standard Plan: When invoiced annually, standard pricing is $14 per user each month.
Automated workflows, custom dashboards, bulk emails, prospect scoring, sales forecasts, email analytics, reminders, 50 custom modules, 1GB of storage, and more are among the additional features.
Zoho CRM Professional Price Plan: When invoiced annually, professional pricing is $23 per user per month.
Real-time sales notifications, blueprint business processes, inventory management, validation criteria, web-to-case forms, up to 10 GB of data storage, and more are among the additional features.
Zoho CRM Enterprise Price Plan: The monthly fee for this plan is $40 per user if billed annually. The Enterprise plan gives you more customization options to tailor Zoho to your company’s needs, as well as access to additional marketing tools like autoresponders, customer segmentation, and marketing attributions for ad campaigns and lead creation. In addition, the Enterprise plans include access to Zoho’s AI sales assistant Zia (which may provide predictions, suggestions, and alerts) as well as the CommandCenter. The CommandCenter enables your business to create unique paths for your products, services, and clients, which Zoho defines as “journeys.” This plan is promoted as Zoho’s most popular.
Zoho CRM Ultimate Price Plan: For large and enterprise-sized businesses, Zoho’s Ultimate plan is ideal. The Ultimate plan offers the most customization of the four most popular paid plans, including forms, templates, webhooks, email notifications, and other features. Additionally, the subscription includes Zoho Analytics, which allows you to mine data from many sources within your system (and outside of the CRM using various APIs) and analyze it. These reports can then be distributed and shared in various ways, both within and outside your organization. This package is $52 per month per user if billed annually.
When you sign up for a year’s worth of service, you’ll save 20% on all month-to-month costs. Users of Zoho CRM can cancel or transfer plans at any moment. You’ll want to choose the Premium or Enterprise plans if you require more than the free Basic or Classic tiers of customer assistance. The Premium plan will cost you 20% of your licensing fee, while the Enterprise plan will cost you 25%.
You’ll have to pay an extra fee to send more than the daily mass email limit, which allows your company to send up to 2250 emails.
Pros & Cons of Zoho CRM
Pros of Zoho CRM
- The significant benefits of Zoho CRM, according to users, are the ease of customization, the quality of integrations, and the low pricing. The system is easy to configure right out of the box, but the Zoho CRM Developer Edition allows developers to go even farther. In addition, other Zoho apps work well with Zoho CRM, and third-party system connectors are simple to set up and maintain.
- Zoho is intended to be your company’s one data repository. So they’ve consolidated all of their apps, including surveys, forms, and campaigns, into one location that’s easy to access and utilize.
- Zoho has a superb user interface. The primary page was sleek, user-friendly, intuitive, and uncluttered in general. The smartphone apps were also simple to use.
- There are now eleven components on the home screen, with a navigation panel at the top for searching for other apps. The screen can be customized to fit your company’s or industry’s needs. Overall, the system is simple to use and navigate.
- The software’s potential for third-party connectivity is a standout feature, especially in this day and age when so many businesses use tools like Mailchimp and QuickBooks. These and additional apps like CloudWork, ConstantConnects, and Google apps can be integrated.
Cons of Zoho CRM
- ACCORDING TO USERS, Zoho CRM has two significant flaws: long load times and limited customizability. While this system performs admirably, it is slower than other CRMs. On the other hand, the system’s ease of modification works in its favor, although it doesn’t offer as much flexibility as Salesforce, for example.
- Though the free version is a terrific place to start, you won’t get very far with it because there are no financial commitments. Zoho’s features are only available with the more expensive subscription levels.
Zoho CRM Review: Final Verdict
For most sorts of organizations, Zoho is a good CRM. Their pricing is very competitive, and they are less expensive than Microsoft CRM and Salesforce. However, even for larger businesses, Zoho’s capabilities remain strong.
They’re an excellent fit for small to midsize enterprises, but with so many capabilities, there is plenty of potential to expand with Zoho as your company grows. What’s the benefit? You can always take advantage of the free trial.
If you’re seeking a comprehensive collection of sales and marketing functions, as well as increased efficiency through automation and customization choices, Zoho CRM is definitely worth your consideration.
The drag-and-drop Kanban or self-designed Canvas interface makes managing and editing leads and deals simple. Advanced automation and workflow rules can be used to categorize leads, assign tasks, and more, but doing so quickly may be difficult.
In general, Zoho CRM’s customization capabilities offer both efficiency benefits and a challenging setup. However, the extensive tutorial library and email support will assist you.
We found them to be a solid alternative for practically any size company, with numerous tiers of plans ranging from free to their Enterprise solution. Because Zoho has so many tools and services in one place, it’s worth looking into for practically any business.
We discovered that Zoho’s principal use is lead and contact management. However, the system also works well for sales pipelines, data reporting, and analytics.
Zoho is one of the most significant customer relationship management software alternatives available on the market. Small to medium-sized firms will benefit from the lower tiers of the pricing plans. In contrast, larger organizations with greater needs and a larger budget will benefit from the highest levels, such as Ultimate.
Another reason Zoho got it to the top of our list is its adaptability. It is used by a wide range of businesses in a wide range of industries. Furthermore, Zoho is simple to use, thanks to a design that emphasizes the essential elements on the main screen. This makes it easy to find the information you’re looking for.
Inbuilt email marketing and client management features, including invoicing, set Zoho CRM apart from competitors who focus on niche parts of sales management. Furthermore, interfaces with other Zoho products and third-party solutions increase the software’s capabilities.
Overall, Zoho CRM’s plans encompass a wide range of capabilities, from the most basic to the most advanced, making it suitable for small, medium, and even big enterprises looking to boost sales efficiency.