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ZOHO CRM - A DECENT CRM TOOL AT A VERY AFFORDABLE COST. IT'S VERY GOOD, BUT NOT BRILLIANT.
Updated May 13, 2024

ZOHO CRM - A DECENT CRM TOOL AT A VERY AFFORDABLE COST. IT'S VERY GOOD, BUT NOT BRILLIANT.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Professional

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho CRM

Zoho crm is used for all lead management, sales stage funnelling, and customer invoicing.
  • Forecasting is improved
  • Live website lead chat function - can reach out directly to site visitors
  • Customer insight record - shows leads social details for connecting
  • REPORTING DASHBOARD IS LIMITED
  • SYSTEM NOT AS SLICK AS HUBSPOT
  • HAVE TO PAY FOR OTHER ZOHO PRODUCTS, IF TRYING TO BE TOO AMBITIOUS WITH CRM
  • Ease of doing business with customers
  • Great tool for lead conversion
  • Forecasting is improved
ZOHO CRM is great, but it always feels like it's been cobbled together into the system it is today - as opposed to being built to a pre-determined end-goal.
It is a great tool for customer relationship management. It's a very good system to manage leads to customer advocates.
ZOHO CRM is not as good as HubSpot but it is much easier to use than Microsoft Dynamics.

Do you think Zoho CRM delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho CRM again?

Yes

Zoho crm is great for lead-gen campaigns that attract visitors to website. It also provides functionality to turn this lead into a client. It's an end-2-end system that works well, albeit with some limitations. Zoho crm is not as clean or easy to use as hubspot, but it is so much cheaper.

Zoho CRM Feature Ratings

7.4
Customer data management / contact management
7
Workflow management
7
Territory management
7
Opportunity management
8
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)
7
Contract management
8
Quote & order management
8
Interaction tracking
8
Channel / partner relationship management
7
7.0
Case management
7
Call center management
7
Help desk management
7
8.0
Lead management
8
Email marketing
8
6.7
Task management
7
Billing and invoicing management
7
Reporting
6
7.0
Forecasting
7
Pipeline visualization
8
Customizable reports
6
8.0
Custom fields
8
Custom objects
8
Scripting environment
8
API for custom integration
8
7.5
Role-based user permissions
7
Single sign-on capability
8
8.0
Social data
8
Social engagement
8
7.0
Marketing automation
7
Compensation management
7
Not Rated
Mobile access
Not Rated

Using Zoho CRM

3 - Sales, Marketing, Accounts
3 - - Technical Workflow skills, to setup and maximise CRM system
- Sales Management, for monitoring sales progress.
- Financial Controller, for invoicing and payment control
  • Invoicing
  • Sales Prospecting and Cycle Management
  • Account Based Marketing
  • Building data capture / lead gen forms, marketed via Ads, which allow the start of a CRM relationship to commence.
  • Competitions to regain appropriate GDPR consent of existing records
  • Building new applications and business units directly from the data captured inside CRM
  • Real time payment capture
It's a very good application for the price.

Evaluating Zoho CRM and Competitors

Yes - Microsoft Dynamics - ZOHO CRM was more suited to our business model
  • Scalability
  • Integration with Other Systems
  • Ease of Use
  • Other
Functionality and price.
I would use pretty much the same evaluation and selection process, but this would obviously benefit from some 'unknowns' now being better known.

Zoho CRM Implementation

ZOHO CRM is a good, simple system and this makes implementation very intuitive. However, when the system has features / functions that arent right (e.g. Lead record doesn't 'data populate' contact record, which wasn't clear or intuitive), this can cause some serious issues with using the system. So, it is vital that ZOHO CRM remains functionally perfect, in order for users to maximise usage of the system.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes - CRM System Functionality Requirements Capture
CRM System Design
CRM Build / Customisation
Use Case Testing
Update System based upon Testing
Ongoing Review
Change management was minimal
  • Having to create a 'Test System', while using a live system
  • Migrating the live system data / functions into the new system
  • Running with 2 systems when issues with new system prevented it from fully replacing the existing system. Then data gets messy caught between 2 systems.

Zoho CRM Training

  • No Training
Yes. Very intuitive. No extensive training required for simple basic usage.

Configuring Zoho CRM

Configurability is just right for this product.
Yes, I would first speak to an extensive user of ZOHO CRM to understand its capabilities and best practices for configuring. Like any tool, a thorough knowledge of the tools core functions are first required before extensively configuring it to do more.
Yes - we have customized the interface extensively - It is VERY easy to customise the Interface to achieve most of the functional views that any business administrator will require.
No - we have not done any custom code
Yes, we used the Zoho CRM lead module as a front-end 'lead generation' form on a public website. This was linked directly from Google Ads. This meant leads were already directly in the CRM System and could be marketed/sold to with subject data already in the system. It is an impressive CRM system for further customisation.

Zoho CRM Support

One issue with ZOHO CRM is when you need to use support! Support is an element of ZOHO that still feels like you're dealing with a company in India rather than the West. It feels less professional, less punctual, and less confident.
ProsCons
None
Problems left unsolved
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
Support doesn't seem to care
Slow Initial Response
No, i didnt buy premium support as i would expect the support i receive for my monthly subscription to already be premium.
Yes - Unsure. The bug (or poor functionality) related to the fact that the Zoho CRM 'lead gen' module didn't automatically populate the contact records, meaning that if a lead became a customer - the data would have to be re-entered.
Yes. When we were building our Lead Gen capture form, the support teams helped with our understanding (and thus our project design) as to what data capture could be achieved, before having to upgrade to a different ZOHO product that would enable better usage of our data.

Using Zoho CRM

It's an outstanding system. Nice and simple to use. Highly functional in what you can do with it. UI is very good. Moreover, the ability to customise the UI is excellent.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Creating Sales Records
  • Creating Invoices
  • Financial Control
  • Lead to Customer records are cumbersome and make you want to skip this module.
  • Invoice scheduling should be provided in all subscription packages and not just premium
  • Invoicing should be available as default on lower cost packages - CURRENTLY IT IS NOT!

Zoho CRM Reliability

It's a very scalable tool as it can be used to manage thousands of customers, managed by teams of business administrators.
I've not yet experienced any unscheduled downtime with Zoho CRM. Furthermore, planned maintenance is really well communicated in ZOHO CRM, and a 'banner ad' is prominently positioned on the ZOHO CRM system notifying of times/dates when maintenance is scheduled and the system may be down for a period.
Very fast system with no negative performance experience during my many years of using it.

Integrating Zoho CRM

Very easy to integrate standard systems wth Zoho CRM.
  • Google Drive
  • Xero
Integration on all of these 3rd party systems was simple (as they are all standard systems).

Google Drive allowed extensive documents to be shared with contacts as part of the sales/billing cycle.

Xero was very simple to integrate to ensure invoicing could be reconciled with billing.
No plans. No knowledge of capabilities.
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
No.
Speak to a ZOHO CRM user who has already performed a similar integration.

Relationship with Zoho

Seamless sales process. No human interaction is required.
Very easy. System and vendor are very easy to use.
The vendor allowed me to use an 'older version' of ZOHO CRM until we were ready to move to the new version. This was excellent customer service.
Be patient as English isn't typically the first language of Zoho CRM custom support team members.

Upgrading Zoho CRM

Yes - Zoho CRM Support teams were excellent in this situation. They allowed me to use an older version of ZOHO CRM for a long period until we were ready for the upgrade.
  • None.
  • Not much difference.
  • I suspect updates create 'discreet obsolescence' thus forcing users to upgrade on a package. For example, i believe 'Invoicing' may have been included as a module in the 'free version', but this is now no longer available.
  • none.
Yes - I'm considering a downgrade to reflect changes to our organisation.
Yes - Changed editions to unlock functionality only available with a paid/premium edition.