Zoho CRM Review 2023: Software Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

The CRM scene is always getting more and more crowded. But some names stay stalwart among the rabble. One such software is Zoho, the mega-collection of business apps. 

This Zoho review will touch on several aspects of interest, namely, a rundown of its main features, a breakdown of its pricing buckets, and some more notes about its advantages and disadvantages. Aside from the Zoho CRM review, we’ll also look at some of Zoho’s other apps and bundles which may or may not be part of the core customer relationship management toolkit.

Zoho CRM review 2023: Is Zoho any good?

There are plenty of Zoho software reviews out there all vying for top spot to tell you if Zoho is any good. Well, feel free to check out the plethora of search results when you Google Zoho.com reviews. 

Yet, we invite you to save your time and effort, as this article is set to do the heavy lifting. Later, we’ll sum up a lot of the online Zoho reviews and ratings. For now, we’ll just hint at the fact that Zoho CRM is one of the most widely recognized names as one of the best CRM software options for a good reason: Yes, it’s good, very good!

Zoho CRM pricing plans

First of all, how much does Zoho cost? Let’s take at Zoho prices:

How much is Zoho for nonprofits?

Zoho offers a CRM platform for nonprofits. For exact pricing for this nonprofit CRM solution, you’ll have to contact Zoho directly through their website at zoho.com. Zoho CRM for nonprofits includes tools like omnichannel messaging, targeted campaigns, smart email forms and webforms, payment features, and of course, detailed contact overviews. 

If you run a charity, NGO or non profit organization and are interested, you can schedule a demo with Zoho’s experts which will be based on the Zoho CRM Enterprise edition. From there you can get further information on pricing.  

Are there any Zoho coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

As is the case with a lot of CRM software, it is possible to find Zoho CRM promotional vouchers or other coupon codes from 3rd party websites. These promotions can save you some money off the standard Zoho CRM ticket price, though you should always check to ensure the validity of the vendor and the voucher. 

What’s more, you could regularly check on Zoho.com to see if they have any promotions or deals.

What is Zoho CRM software? Zoho CRM overview

Zoho is the umbrella brand name of a massive set of tools. Zoho CRM is the cornerstone module that covers customer relationship management. This is among the best CRM platforms on the market, with many CRM features to streamline the flow of information between marketing team members, sales teams and customer support reps. On top of the basics, Zoho CRM has added functionalities to really boost your business sales process.

Overall, Zoho is a favorite CRM system for startups and small businesses. That being said, this business SaaS can probably impress salespeople in businesses of any size and scope, right up to enterprise-level organizations. This is partly due to the fact that Zoho CRM is very user-friendly. On top of that, there is great flexibility when it comes to choosing the best Zoho CRM package, which is highly customizable thanks to the impressive buffet of add-ons.
 

How does Zoho work?

Obviously, you’ll figure out how Zoho CRM works while you use it. Here is not the place to go over the instruction manuals for every single Zoho CRM feature. But, here are some of the basics to give you an idea.

The interface is very user-friendly, which makes it easy for you to figure out how to create and configure custom modules of contact databases or other databases (products, for example). You can then add custom fields and sections, and reorder them how you like to see them with simple drag and dropping. Your customizable layouts can be saved, cloned and shared. This customization also applies to your Zoho homepage as well as the CRM templates.

Finally, you’ll see how easy it is to set up rules-based workflows to automate simple tasks. For example, sending followup emails, delegating tasks and updating your records.
 

What does Zoho do?

So, what is CRM like Zoho used for? Well, like all the best CRMs, Zoho CRM is mainly used for spreading information about your company, brand and products, gathering the contact information from people who might be interested in becoming customers, nurturing those leads through a sales pipeline, and closing more deals.

In other words, Zoho CRM is used for growing your network, developing loyal and long-lasting relationships with your customers, and generating more money.

Zoho also does a slew of other things in and outside the CRM sphere of tools. Zoho does remote working, IT management, finance management, human resources and business intelligence too. And, if you’re looking for software that can cover your projects as well, Zoho’s got your back! Read our Zoho projects review to find out what we’re talking about.
 

Why is Zoho so successful?

Zoho is incredibly popular and successful, right up there with other major players like HubSpot and Salesforce. So the question is: what makes Zoho a successful CRM and maker of other business SaaS?

One reason Zoho is successful is because of its flexible and customizable range of products, which cover nearly every aspect of your business needs. Also, Zoho can be beneficial across various industries and can be used as construction CRM or hotel CRM or even by startups and sales teams across different types of companies.

Did you know that, in addition to CRM and project management, Zoho can help you take care of your accounting needs as well? Read our Zoho books review for all the details!

You can choose the package that’s right for you, and easily scale up to more robust packages as your business grows. When you include all the various add-ons and individual tools, you see how Zoho goes the extra mile to make sure every user gets just what they need without paying for additional features they won’t use.

On top of that, Zoho’s user interface and dashboards score highly for their nice aesthetic and ease of use. Even beginners to such CRM software will find it intuitive when figuring out how everything works.

Zoho free vs paid: what’s the difference?

One last thing to add before we get into the finer details. Zoho CRM does offer a free version. This free plan is built mainly for small teams of 3 users. It’s got your basic contact management, email marketing, lead generation, some basic workflow automation tools, and standard analytics. 

Compared to the Standard plan, the free plan may seem similar. But there are differences. The free version does not get you sales forecasting, and there are limits to your custom fields in your product organization database. The free plan also lacks email insights, and you cannot have multiple sales pipelines. However, if you’re just getting started with your company or you have a small team, the free version is undoubtedly one of the top small business CRM you can find.

Zoho software features & functionality list

The main features of Zoho are:

• Contact management

• Lead management

• Deal management

• Account management

• Workflow automation

• Email tools

• Marketing campaigns

• Project management

• Helpdesk tools

• Inventory management

• Accounting tools

• Mobile apps

• Zoho CRM APIs

1. Contact management 

Get full views on all your contacts in one single portal. With Zoho contact management you can communicate with all your contacts across all channels. This customer data feature is the cornerstone of CRM which unifies marketing, sales and customer service. You’ll also get real-time notifications when your contacts update their social media profiles.
 

2. Lead management

Here’s where you turn contacts into leads, and hopefully from there customers and clients. Zoho can pinpoint quality leads from a big list, and will give you tips on how to nurture them at every stage of the pipeline. You can keep engaging with leads at every touchpoint, and finally get analytics on the ROI of each lead. The idea is to maintain the highest satisfaction levels of the customer experience.
 

3. Deal management

Deal management follows closely from lead management. Here the focus might be more on cross-selling, up-selling and referral selling from your current closed deals. You can also build more customizable sales processes here, like custom pipelines. There is even more detailed analytics on past deals and future opportunities.
 

4. Account management

This is the salespeople’s major tool for managing their regular customers and accounts. It gives more power and flexibility to individual sales reps. Account segmentation occurs for metrics like how frequent an account engages, how recently, and what is the monetary value per account. Account management is where those loyal, long-lasting customer relationships are created and Zoho is one of the best customer management software you can find.
 

5. Workflow automation

Zoho’s workflows for marketing automation and sales automation function on a simple rules-based system. For example, when a triggering event happens, the workflow can automatically set in motion other actions. What’s more, Zoho’s artificial intelligence tool called Zia can look for patterns in your work activities and then suggest automated workflows to take them over.  Analytics shows you which workflows are giving you the best results. 
 

6. Email tools

Obviously emailing remains a key tool for sales and marketing. With Zoho’s series of email features, you can firstly connect with your email client (Gmail or Microsoft Outlook, for example). You can schedule emails for later, send mass emails, automate followup emails using email templates, and get notified when someone opens your email or clicks its links. There are also email integrations with tools like ActiveCampaign and MailChimp.  
 

7. Marketing campaigns

There are tons of marketing features with Zoho CRM. Customer segmentation makes it easy to send the right message to the right target audience. Webforms on landing pages are good for capturing customer information. Analytics measures the real-time efficacy of your marketing campaigns, including digital Google ads. There are also extra tools specifically for email marketing campaigns, as well as survey campaigns.
 

8. Project management

Sometimes sales needs to connect with the larger project team, and for that Zoho offers project management features. It combines views of your ongoing tasks and projects as they relate to customers and deals, which is great for customer feedback. You can also invite other 3rd parties like partners or vendors to chime in on projects. 
 

9. Team collaboration 

Collaboration begins with feeds where team members and managers can communicate high-level stuff together and keep each other up to date. You get chat features for more immediate communication. Notes and tags are easily added to communications, and there is a centralized document library for all to use. Managers can also group their teams and staff for further directed efforts.
 

10. Helpdesk tools

Zoho products include a dedicated Helpdesk module called Zoho Books. It’s not necessarily part of the standard CRM but is included in Zoho CRM Plus. It gives sales and support reps omnichannel communication, support ticket tracking, helpdesk automations, and self-service tools. You can also integrate your standard CRM with support tools like Zendesk and Salesforce Desk.
 

11. Inventory management

While Zoho inventory management is also not part of the standard CRM package, there is a free add-on which is good for up to 50 orders, shipping labels, and after-shipment tracking per month. It syncs seamlessly with Zoho CRM. This is good for keeping warehouses organized, creating purchase orders, comparing multiple shipping rates and companies, and end-to-end shipment tracking.
 

12. Accounting tools

Another one of the great Zoho products which works with Zoho CRM is Zoho Books. This does everything your typical accounting software does, like Quickbooks. You could manage overall finance and set up accounting workflows. End-to-end accounting covers deals, quotes, order, invoices and payments. It also integrates with payment tools like Paypal and Stripe.
 

13. Mobile apps

No CRM is worth it anymore if you can’t take it with you on the go. So naturally, Zoho CRM offers great mobile apps for iOS and Android. The user interface is clean and simple. There’s also a business-card scanner. You can use Zoho CRM mobile for team communication and collaboration, as well as for getting the latest analytics updates in real-time.
 

14. Zoho CRM APIs

To allow developers to make the most out of Zoho, there are many application programming interface (API) tools. These include rest APIs to integrate with other SaaS, bulk APIs for bulk data actions, notification APIs to customize your own notifications, and query APIs.

Zoho pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Zoho:

Zoho advantages

There are copious reasons why Zoho is good. One of the very first pros about Zoho is the cost. At $14 per user per month billed annually, you get a seriously solid standard CRM. And the more premium packages are not an incredibly large hike in ticket price either. This means Zoho is great for growth.

The massive library of Zoho apps is another benefit for this platform. Each individual app is highly geared toward serving a specific purpose, and therefore you can really create the bespoke SaaS your business needs. Some random Zoho apps, for example, are things like Zoho Survey, Zoho Books, Zoho Meeting, and Zoho Bugtracker. What’s more, the niche “Plus” bundles are also useful, like CRM Plus, Finance Plus, Marketing Plus and even IT Management.

Finally, a special mention goes out to all of Zoho’s marketing tools. You really get that marketing advantage when you combine Zoho’s marketing campaign tools like email templates, multichannel marketing, and brand management.

Zoho disadvantages

So are there any overt problems with Zoho CRM? You might have to dig quite deep to see why Zoho is bad. On our end, we’re really big fans and don’t have too many negative things to say about Zoho. If we had to choose one or two cons, they’d be the following: That while the user interface is clean and intuitive, it looks a bit outdated, and could use more aesthetic customization.

Another drawback about Zoho is the downtime you can expect in cleaning your data and migrating it to their CRM platform, as well as training everyone who will use it. Mind you, this is true of nearly all CRM systems, it’s just Zoho is not excelling at this either.

Zoho complaints & praise (from real Zoho reviews)

When it comes to online Zoho ratings, you get mostly positive feedback from its users and reviewers. Some common Zoho problems revolve around there being too many apps, though this is a plus for others. Other negative Zoho CRM reviews have complained about the system being buggy, especially around some integrations. 

But overall, Zoho criticism seems to be on the constructive side, with users eagerly suggesting new improvements to the software, which the people at Zoho seem eager to hear and possibly implement. So that’s a huge advantage. 

Overall, Zoho gets on average about a 4.7 out of 5 stars from an aggregate of online user review communities.

Is there a Zoho scam?

There seems to be some internet buzz about a possible Zoho scam revolving around a site called join.zoho.com. It seems that this supposed join Zoho scam is based on a semi-legit website called join.zoho, but that it is used by cybercriminals to steal one’s CRM data. The lesson is: Never log on to a strange website because you got a mysterious message telling you to. Only use your login credentials with sites that you knowingly have signed up for.

Zoho support review

Zoho offers many support plans. Before you feel the need to pick one, know that there is a comprehensive knowledge base and FAQ page for all of Zoho’s products. You can also call, email, text or tweet at Zoho with comments or questions. Live webinars take place regularly, covering topics like setup, customization and more. A Zoho user community is also there to help out with issues, and finally, you can submit a request to get help with a specific problem. 

That being said, one does feel that the Zoho support pricing tier means that the premium and enterprise users will get superior customer service, with the latter getting 24/7 multichannel quick response support and a dedicated technical account manager. Zoho also offers personalized product training and onboarding. 

To sum up, the Zoho community regularly expresses their satisfaction with Zoho’s support, giving it good reviews.

Is the Zoho CRM system worth it? Our conclusion

It’s about time we wrap up this review of the one and only Zoho CRM tool. Is Zoho worth it as one of the top CRM solutions on the market right now? It sure is up there. Zoho CRM is worth it, especially if you are a startup or small business looking to grow, and open to all manner of business needs down the road. Zoho will be there to meet those needs.

However, if you do feel that there might be something else out there that is more suitable for your customers and projects, make sure to explore other options as well. And, our Zoho alternatives and Zoho Projects alternatives articles are a great starting point.

Our final Zoho rating

We’re dropping an impressive 4.8 out of 5 on Zoho. Mic drop! 

FAQs

Is Zoho legit?

Zoho is a well-known and very popular business software company. It’s considered to be among the most legit CRM makers on the market. Aside from CRM features, Zoho makes a range of specialty apps for marketing, support, finance, team collaboration, human resources, and IT, among other business tools.

Can you use Zoho for small business?

Zoho CRM and other Zoho products are ideal for a small business, whether a small team or growing startup. Zoho One is a bundle which is particularly geared for small businesses. It integrates over 40 Zoho apps for marketing, sales, support, operations management, business intelligence, and more.