Zoho CRM Reviews

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.

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

Zoho is a good alternative for clients who don't want to shell out money for Google Workspace. It accomplishes its purpose. My satisfaction with their efforts is based on the fact that they are attempting to make their platform accessible to everyone. Much of it is configurable and we were able to put it up 90% of the way we wanted. It's a breeze to use and keep track of.

I'd like it if the platform's many sections were made a little easier to configure and understand. In my opinion, they are attempting to mimic Google Workspace, although I am more familiar with Google Workspace's features. I'd love it if I could make my email software look and work just like gmail.

Zoho was the first CRM implemented at Chevron Editing, so I didn't have much of a benchmark to compare it to (previously, we'd used Asana for lead management and deal tracking). Having a proper CRM where we could easily keep track of all clients was incredibly helpful; from that perspective, Zoho's basic features around contact and account management were very useful.

The overly complicated interface and lack of easy integration led to us eventually switching away from Zoho. While I'm sure the convoluted layouts and feature-dense setups are useful for larger organisations, they weren't necessary for us.

It is a layered product that you can use with ease, without flooding your screen with more information than you need to follow customer cases. If you want to drill down to more functionality, you can enter it without changing too many screens and wasting time back and forth.

It does not offer a direct integration with Zoho projects and the ability to create more layers of information in action items and assign project teams for client cases.
The registration process does not have an import function from emails or the web browser - something that could be very helpful when registering a lead from an email or the contact section of a web page.

The email tracking really helps understanding engagement. The ability to send small mass-emails directly from the CRM without having to use a third party email is great for a startup.
We also like the ability to automatically schedule a web meeting from the CRM.

The interface is a little bit old fashioned. It would be great if the system could be a little more flexible in terms of sales activities that can be recorded.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Zoho CRM makes it easy to manage basically an entire database for our business. The editing features are extensive, allowing you to tailor-make just about anything to fit your needs. We've altered most of the pre-set sections to fit our industry-specific programs which has massively increased the effectiveness of our business.

Because it offers so much flexibility there is a fairly large learning curve to setting it up how you'd like it to be, and some aspects can get a little finicky. For example, it takes a lot of tweaking to get the visuals and functionality correct on specialized views if you've done a lot of editing.

Functionality: Mail merges, email templates, customization, reporting

White the new version has some great new features (seeing when a client opens an email), it is also harder to find the customization modules and I hate that Events I create automatically are marked as closed when the date arrives. Sometimes events do not actually occur, or I have to get to them the next day - I use events to do important tasks. I want to be able to mark it closed. I want to be able to mark any activity closed in a very fast, easy way... just a check, done. Also, wish the activities would show in the calendar, not just events. Wish I could see what my team member sees on her calendar, especially when we share an event.

The creating a call function is too cumbersome and too many steps, you have to scroll down, etc. Make it faster, easier... takes too long. Wish there was a faster way to even log a quick call... reminders need to have more options like 1 week out or 2 weeks out, even 1 month out.

Really do not like that I cannot see my screen (lists) of prospects or clients at a glance as it only shows a few at a time, you have to go to next page - font is too big, too. Dashboard is not very customizable and doesn't give me the ability to put in the reports I created and want to see... getting help is ridiculous. I have to "chat" - send a message basically, then I have to wait for a response. Need to be able to get answers and help faster.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Good Zoho CRM, is a very useful tool to manage the relationship with customers, helps us to inspect the commercial work with customers, provides us the option of making reports which allows us to streamline the process of buying and selling with our suppliers, On the other hand, another fundamental and important aspect of Zoho CRM is that it is economical and thanks to its easy handling of the platform it helps us to increase our turnover and revenues to the company.
In general, it is a very robust software when it comes to monitoring purchases and sales and something very significant is that it allows us to interact and link with social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. This is important since nowadays all companies have these platforms. social networks, additional account also with a mobile application that allows us to be connected to our operations outside the office.

What can be said about this application is that it should improve a bit in data security, since I work in the banking sector and because confidential data can be vulnerable because it is a software that is in the cloud. Also to be in line with the application, if you do not have an Internet connection you can not enter, but the minor details are this kind of problems. I would like to find a solution with which you can work online, but somehow maintain the data locally.

Zoho CRM is a tool that we have found quite critical in the management of our sales, marketing and customer service aspects of our business. It's setup and implementing process is uncomplicated and comes with a user friendly interface which simplifies the utilization experience. Being a web based app it is compatible with our computers and even available in a mobile app making it's accessibility such a breeze. We have experienced lots of benefits from Zoho CRM. From being able to connect with our customers through the various channels. It provides emailing for easier record keeping of responses from email, calling through the telephony feature that allows us to schedule calls and follow up with clients through calls and social media where we are able to manage our different page profiles and check on clients feedback. Also we are able to segment customers for ease of recording and appointment scheduling. Events management is easy, we are able to invite clients to any events from the customer database. Lastly Zoho CRM perform deep analysis on the different facets of the business and generate reports that help us track progress of the business

Honestly Zoho CRM is a blend of lots of benefits. I really have nothing against it

One system that provides extensive capabilities. Zoho CRM plugs into the more than 50 other Zoho Apps with a single Zoho One license. Instant integration (as instant as it possibly can be).

No more cobbling together system after system. I have all of the following in use from Zoho: CRM, spreadsheets, documents, file storage, security, marketing, social media, HR Management, accounting package, email, surveys, signatures, project management, notes, appointment management, presentations, webinars, online meetings, web hosting and design, online chat for web site, mobile expense capture, business analytics. I have used much more, that's just what I use on a day to day basis. These are the applications of business today. Nothing much out of the ordinary but if you are using anything else other than Zoho, you probably have a patchwork of applications to navigate.

Bleeding edge software development comes at a cost. Zoho brings out releases fast and often so sometimes there are annoying things that happen. This does not consume a large portion of my time but if you need consistency and 100% predictability then Zoho is probably not for you. If you are okay with 99% predictability Zoho is a good option.

An example is the design of the Contact view in Zoho being changed recently without notice. If you are like me then you go with it. Some people who need things to be the same day in and day out can be rattled or frustrated by something like this.

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

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

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

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

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