Zoho CRM Reviews

We use Zoho CRM to track business opportunities for our IT solution company and manage our sales pipeline. Our sales teams in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Singapore also use it.

The dashboards and visualizations help us see how different markets perform. I find the dashboard feature most valuable because it's easy to visualize data. I've been trying to use the built-in quotations feature, which could reduce turnaround time. We're not using many automation features for record management and opportunity tracking. I'm trying to integrate Zoho CRM with Zoho Flow for quotation submission workflow.

The login process could be improved as some users find it unfriendly. The documentation could also be more user-friendly and better organized.

I have been using the product for three years. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

Zoho CRM is a SaaS solution, and we haven't faced any performance issues. My company has seven users. We plan to use it up to 10 users and increase the use of Salesforce. 

The customer success team is very helpful, especially during the onboarding process, where they provide a good demo and assist with any questions. Although we have had only a few support queries, the responses have been very helpful.

Positive

Before using Zoho CRM, we didn't use a specific CRM solution but relied on manual Excel spreadsheets to capture opportunities. We didn't evaluate other vendors before choosing Zoho CRM. The decision to go with Zoho CRM was influenced by its ease of access, simple sign-up process, and effective trial system. The billing process is straightforward, as it can be handled directly with a credit card without going through a distributor, although we can work with one. These aspects made Zoho CRM a good fit for us.

The initial setup was straightforward and seamless, especially the onboarding process, which I found very user-friendly. I recently started a new trial, and the experience was smooth, from signing up to logging in and onboarding users. However, I faced some challenges when implementing more advanced features, like setting up territories. Although I was able to get support through online resources and documentation, the documentation itself could be improved. It could be more user-friendly, and sometimes, finding the right document or instruction is difficult, as information is spread across different places. This is an area where I think they could make improvements.

The deployment process for Zoho CRM typically takes me about two to three hours. I start by signing up as the master user, then proceed to set up privileges and permissions, especially if different territories are involved. After setting these up, I onboard users into the appropriate user groups. Following this, I train the users on how to create opportunities and the rules and logic they need to follow. Finally, we ask them to enter their data and customize the required reports. This is the typical flow I follow for most deployments.

One person can do the deployment since our use cases are not complex. 

We did the deployment in-house. 

Zoho CRM has provided organizational value. It has greatly improved sales productivity by eliminating the need for manual report creation and data updates. The CRM serves as a single source of truth, automating forecasting and reporting tasks.

I rate the product a four out of ten. The cost for Zoho CRM is not fixed; different editions are available, and the features depend on the edition chosen. Some capabilities, such as integrating with workflows, might incur additional costs, but these are well-documented and not hidden.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. If you are considering using Zoho CRM, my advice is to make the most of their trial period to explore the features and see how they fit your needs. You can extend the functionality with Zoho's support and determine the required version and features. For instance, these are available in the enterprise edition if you need AI capabilities. Testing the CRM with a small group of end users as a pilot before moving to full production is also a good idea. 

Another point to consider is the pricing plans; you can choose between monthly or annual payment options, so select the one that suits you best. Zoho CRM also offers credits that can be used to purchase additional add-ons from their ecosystem. The product allows you to download your data if you decide to move away, so it’s not a completely closed platform.

Basically, it handles the entire customer relationship management, from lead generation to creating workflows for assigning leads to other salespersons, generating reports, qualifying leads, etc. It covers the entire lifecycle.

It's easier to share information across the entire organization about prospective sales or ongoing pitches. It's also easier to collaborate with colleagues who have experience in specific industries. They can reach out to me directly, and I can search for relevant information. So it is easier to collaborate and find data across the organization.

It's easy to build workflows in Zoho CRM. It has a low-code solution that helps us create workflows based on our regional requirements and business configurations. That's pretty nice.

Zoho's chatbot feature could be improved. Currently, the chatbot is not very intelligent and lacks the AI capabilities that are now available. There's a need for better chatbots in CRM that would allow for easy data search and referencing.

There's a need for better chatbots in CRM that would allow for easy data search and referencing. The chatbot in Zoho CRM is not AI-enabled. It's a basic chatbot, making it difficult to search for data or perform FAQ searches. If Zoho could introduce an AI-enabled chatbot within the CRM, it would greatly improve the user experience.

I have been using Zoho CRM for a year. 

I would rate the stability a nine out of ten. 

I would rate the scalability of Zoho CRM an eight out of ten. I'm satisfied with how it scales up.

We have around 500 to 600 users. It covers our entire sales organization across different geographies, so the number could be even higher. We are using it to its maximum capacity. 

The initial setup was pretty straightforward and easy. I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

I would rate the pricing somewhere in the middle, around six out of ten, where one is low and ten is the high price.

I would advise you to clearly define their functional requirements before starting the deployment process. Having well-defined requirements makes the deployment much easier. If you are looking value-for-money, then Zoho is definitely worth the consideration. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We get different requirements and use cases because most of our clients use CRM for their businesses.

We can customize the solution the way we want to. We built a ChatGPT extension. It has some capabilities of building its own widgets with respect to CRM. We can integrate it with any web application. We also created SalesInbox, which is a mailing feature. We can set up our mailbox with Zoho CRM. We get updates from Zoho CRM whenever we send out an email. It tells us whether the person viewed the email or clicked on any links.

One of the best features of the solution is data sharing. We can create our own rules even if we have configured the standard rules. We can have a different rule setup where we can assign rules based on value and give data-sharing permissions.

Some of our clients could not develop their requirements using the product. Custom solutions made more sense than doing it on CRM.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The solution is stable. I rate the stability a nine and a half out of ten.

The product is scalable. If we have a large number of users and data, we can request Zoho for a dedicated server for an additional cost.

The initial setup is easy for a small business. A medium business will have to customize the product before creating it. An enterprise will have to look at a lot of things like integration with the data and third-party applications.

The time taken for customization and development depends on the business. If it is a small business, we can start within two or three days. Medium businesses that need more customization can deploy the solution within one to two weeks. Large businesses with a large number of users would take a couple of months to deploy the solution.

Zoho CRM provides Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate plans. We do not recommend Standard and Professional plans to medium and enterprise-level businesses because we cannot do customizations like integrations or writing custom functions in these plans. 

Standard plans start at $20 per user in the USA and EUR 20 in Europe. Professional plans cost $35 per user in the USA and EUR 35 in Europe. Enterprise plans cost $50 per user in the USA and EUR 50 in Europe. Enterprise plans cost $65 per user in the USA and EUR 65 in Europe.

We have a sales process. When we get a lead, we qualify the process based on our criteria, budget, time frame, and whether it is the right fit for us. If all the criteria match, we try to convert the lead into a prospect, do a business study with the development team, and send the proposal out once the requirements are closed and finalized. Then we get a confirmation on whether we are going ahead with the project. If we get the project, we will create a project on Zoho. If not, we will close the deal.

Some businesses have a lot of different requirements, but the clients I have dealt with, except for one, everyone is on Zoho. The product is deployed on the cloud. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Zoho CRM has been a really good product. From a basic CRM perspective, we use it to maintain the details of our company's customers.

In its entirety, I do not see or cannot really think of any specific feature I found valuable from the entire product. The product helps keep the sales cycle clean, and one can also get an entire snapshot of it.

Currently, there is no need for further improvement as the solution has successfully met our requirements. We have utilized it across various industries, effectively segregating them by different sectors, including enterprises and small businesses. It has proven to be a good solution.

The customization options for roles in Zoho CRM are currently limited. While the platform offers extensive coverage for various industries and business sizes, there is room for improvement in terms of providing more roles and enhancing customization capabilities within those roles.

I have been using Zoho CRM for a year and a half. My company is a customer of Zoho.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten since there have been no issues. It has been pretty stable.

In the case of adding leads, the solution is quite scalable because they have different modules for lead management, deal management, and account management. So it's quite easy to add leads, but from the perspective of adding users, we have had to keep it limited since it's a tight bunch of people who use it. So, I do not know about its scalability.

Around 20 people in my department use the solution.

I did not contact Zoho's technical support. However, there are some people who have contacted Zoho's technical support in our company. So, the response time was quick, but then they required a few iterations to resolve some of the issues.

There are a couple of CRMs in the market. I have used Salesforce CRM and Zendesk, apart from a few other solutions. My favorite ones till now have been HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho. Presently, I started using Microsoft 365, but then it's too recent for me to be able to compare it with Zoho.

The solution's initial setup process was simple. Zoho does provide a demo before helping with the setup process. Then, there are a lot of integrations that one can do. So it's been pretty simple.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the pricing a five. However, the pricing is fine because we chose the enterprise plan as a private limited company. So from a pricing perspective for enterprises, it's fine. Also, enterprise pricing has been, more or less, very similar for all CRM products. I can say this because we have always subscribed to enterprise pricing.

I rate the overall product an eight to eight and a half out of ten.

We've implemented this product for some of our clients and because of its flexibility, there have been several different use cases. I've implemented it as a true CRM where you capture leads, and convert them into your contacts, accounts and deals. You create proposals, and contracts, and then integrate them with some of the other Zoho packages. For other clients, we've taken the core concepts of the Zoho package and configured it for the healthcare industry. We are customers of Zoho and I'm a company director.

This product is highly configurable which gives it more of an edge over some of the competitors because a lot of software packages just have the contacts, the accounts, and the deals kind of functionality. But what Zoho allows you to do extends way beyond that, enabling graphically built workflows, and the writing of customized scripts if required. Within the Zoho ecosystem, there is a lot of different packaging that can be used quite nicely with the CRM solution and integrated with it.

The system is very secure with good scalability. Unlike many patient management systems, it's designed for contact and interaction with the customer. Other systems are generally designed for coding all of the episodes which doesn't add as much value to the customer.

There are certain functions that have occasional performance issues including workflow automation that can result in backlogs. It's been less of a problem recently.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

The solution is reasonably stable.

The solution is highly scalable. 

If it's a standard CRM implementation, then it's mid-range complex because there's almost too much functionality out of the box. Some customers try to implement all of the functionalities and it can get messy really quickly if it's not thought through properly from the beginning. It's best to have two or three people involved in a mid-size implementation. 

We have ROI which has come from improving performance without increasing the head count. The system has a lot of automation which means that you don't need as many people to run it, especially in the contact center environments and any health environments as well.

Licensing costs are pretty much in line with competitors such as HubSpot. It's way cheaper than the Saleforce's of this world in terms of what you get for your money. And as mentioned, Zoho has different pricing structures as well. Quite a lot of customers go for the Zoho One package which allows you to get your CRM as well as your financial system and your HR system. It has around 40 applications included. It's a big bundle and you pay around 35 pounds per user per month. The caveat is that if you want to get it at that price you need to have everybody in your business signed up to Zoho. If you don't do that, then I think the cost is 100 pounds per user per month. 

If you compare Zoho to Salesforce, for example, Salesforce process management engine is a little bit more powerful than Zoho. You can call from one workflow to another workflow within Salesforce, but you can't do that easily within Zoho.

When you're designing any integrations with CRM, you really need to think about your API limits so that you're not blowing those too quickly. It needs to be properly thought through. Arguably, that needs to be done for any system that you're designing and building.

It's important to think about your requirements and how you want to manage your data. As a tool, I think it's very good. Some people have bad experiences with it, but that's a result of bad configuration rather than the product. In my experience it's solid.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

We have around 500 to 1000 employees using this solution. The purpose of the CRM is to maintain relationships with our customers and to always stay connected in the most efficient way. Zoho CRM helped me to manage leads and opportunities and to use the dashboard and reporting features for better sales and growth.

The most valuable features are the lead, opportunity and task management as well as dashboard creation, reporting, contact management and campaigns.

We would like to always email users as soon as any new features are launched. 

I have been using this solution since 2016.

This is a stable solution. 

It is scalable solution.  

Our IT team usually handle issues first before we contact their support team. When we have contacted them, they have responded quickly. 

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. It took between six to nine months. 

If you are using this solution for the first time, I would recommend that you start in a separate sequential manner with the contact management and then move onto leads and opportunities. This logical approach will drive you the proper use of the software.

In a future release we would like to have this tool available on an app based platform so thats users can update data in real time. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten because it functions well.

It serves as a centralized system for capturing and managing client information, tracking sales opportunities, and monitoring the sales pipeline. It also provides robust reporting capabilities to analyze and report on these key aspects of customer relationship management.

I appreciate how adding customer information and tracking progress is a straightforward process. The super user can access the central information hub, and reports can be shared with business leaders.

The level of customization required can be quite extensive, especially considering it is a compact product, which can lead to spending a significant amount of time on fine-tuning. Custom development is often necessary to make such extensive changes, and it does come with associated costs.

I have been using it for eight months now.

When it comes to stability, it stands out as one of the most reliable options. It's close to perfect in this regard, and we have experienced no issues at all.

It is highly scalable because it's designed with the potential for expansion, and with the right APIs, it can be seamlessly integrated with various other systems and applications. It's not limited to a single version; rather, it's adaptable and customizable to suit the needs of any organization. This scalability often requires additional financial investments and time to achieve your desired level of customization and integration.

To the best of my knowledge, many of the issues have already been addressed. While the solutions may not have been immediate, they were eventually resolved successfully.

While the initial setup is not overly complex, attempting to make these adjustments alone may not be the best approach. It's advisable to seek assistance to avoid potential mistakes, such as selecting the wrong base revenue or adjusting the conversion rate.

It's beneficial to consider a deployment service, even for just a few hours, to receive guidance and customization support. Having an expert who understands your specific business requirements can make a substantial difference in optimizing your CRM system.

We consider it a good value and found it to be cost-effective.

After evaluating both Salesforce and Zoho, we found Zoho to be the superior choice. It offers a rich set of ready-made features and is highly scalable, providing more opportunities. In contrast, Salesforce, despite its long history, can be seen as overpriced and underutilized, particularly by smaller companies. While Salesforce has greater functionality and power, it may not always be the most cost-effective or efficient solution for all businesses.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

As a user, I use the product to manage client relationships. We have long-term relationships with clients, so keeping up with all the information and our conversations about their necessities and needs is really useful. We want to have a record of the proposals we send to the clients and our negotiations before the project is initiated in one place.

The best thing about Zoho CRM is that it is integrated with other Zoho applications. Before using Zoho, I worked with different systems that were not integrated. Zoho charges only one license. With that license, you can access 55 different applications. It's really easy to connect Zoho CRM with Zoho Campaigns. For example, if I want to have lists and make follow-up campaigns, I can do that. There’s another application called Zoho Flow, which allows us to connect Zoho with third-party applications. It is really easy to do. So, the ability to connect Zoho with other applications that our business needs is really useful.

Zoho CRM’s customer service can be a little difficult to reach sometimes. They have a very large community. We can find answers in the community blog. However, sometimes we see articles of people asking for a new feature, and it has been sitting there for two to three years without an official answer or letting us know when we should expect the feature to be launched. The product could improve its customer service.

I have been using the solution since 2020.

Overall, the solution is very stable. I remember having trouble with the connection once or twice. The connection is a little bit slower, very early in the morning. We could not connect to our emails and Zoho CRM two years ago. It happened once. In general, the product is very, very stable.

Something that I like about Zoho is that they are very transparent. They have a page where they publish all the new reports. If I feel that the connection is a little bit slow, I can check their page to see if there are any issues.

Close to 1000 people use the solution in our organization. We expect to almost double the number of licenses by the end of 2024.

The initial setup was very easy. The solution is really intuitive. I had very less knowledge of CRM before I started using the product. I knew it in theory, but very little. When I started using Zoho, it was very intuitive to understand what each module does and what was the use of every single module that Zoho CRM offers. The navigation from one module to another doesn't change much. It's nice because once you understand how to navigate in one of the modules, the navigation for all the other modules will be pretty much the same.

I work with companies here in Europe. Compared to other solutions, I would say Zoho CRM is very, very affordable because we can use different applications with one license. I'm from Brazil, so I know companies in Brazil. Zoho is charging almost the same price in Brazilian currency. For a lot of companies in Brazil, it's not a very cheap solution. One Zoho One license costs $444 for one year. The cost benefits are way more if you compare it with having a Zoho CRM license separately.

We chose Zoho CRM over other products because it gives us the ability to connect with different applications. It is worthwhile to have one license for 55 applications. It is one of the main advantages of the product. The product is very customizable. Zoho has its own programming language.

If someone wants to use the tool, I would ask them about the size of their company. Zoho has a different solution, which is a basic application called Bigin. It is less customizable. The process is very intuitive, very simple, easy to use, and is meant for small companies. A small company can consider Bigin. If I were a freelancer, I would have considered Bigin. CRM is the way to go if a company wants to scale.

Even though the tool has to improve its customer service, I like Zoho’s vision. They're very careful in how they launch new features and the quality they provide while launching them. It is something that I value because I have worked with other solutions like Jira and other applications. Sometimes they launch a feature, and it doesn’t really work. We can find some bugs when navigating the new solutions, but Zoho is very careful. 

Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.