Freshsales vs. Zoho CRM

If you are a smaller organization you are probably ok to use [Freshworks CRM (formerly Freshsales)] vs Salesforce - you will save money and still get some great features. I would not recommend for a very large enterprise. It is also challenging to have the support come from another region although they do try to be very responsive.

Incentivized

For customizing a CRM without needing specialist support, Zoho CRM is great. The admin UI is pretty intuitive and easy to use. Zoho CRM also works great for tracking contact records and relationships to other records. For instance, we run 10+ different programs, and we need to track every contact's relationship to any and all of our programs. Besides the program relationship, we also track organization/employer relationships, host site relationships for interns, team relationships for several of our programs, and we are starting to track grant disbursement as well. Zoho CRM's "joiner modules" handle all of these different connection points fairly well, though the data import process can be a pain.

Incentivized

• It helps you automate your onboarding process for new leads.
• It has lots of integrations with other apps, so you can interact with other things like calendars and calls.
• It's pretty easy to set sequences so the platform automatically follows up with people for you. This is not only helpful for your sales pipeline, but also for client communication when working on a project that requires their input.

Incentivized

• Zoho CRM has so much space to capture lots of information.
• Zoho CRM can be customized for your organization's needs.
• Zoho CRM is great for running reports to help make business decisions.
• We love all the different dashboards we can create.

Incentivized

• Persistent and pervasive down time
• Lack of scalable integrations with data source (e.g., their Segment integration is barely functional and they won't improve it)
• Slow and unhelpful customer service
• Account management doesn't understand our business or what we're trying to accomplish
• Email campaign feature is barely functional and only allows you to have 10 campaigns, even with the most expensive plan
• Lead and contact records have gone missing and FreshSales is unable to recover data

• our team found it very challenging to integrate directly to our wordpress site
• while there may be a way to integrate to the SMS system, we have not discovered how a sales rep would be able to get an sms when customers leave their contact info (not through the app)
• we have one team member who still works with outlook calendar. it was easy to integrate with google calendar, but a second calendar, depending upon the user

Incentivized

Zoho has been a wonderful tool for us for several years and there is so much more we can do with it. New features are released often which give a team like us the option to further fine tune our business process management techniques. I honestly couldn't imagine running our business not on Zoho.

Incentivized

I would give Freshworks CRM's overall usability a 7 out of 10. Although the software has improved since we first obtained it, it still could use improvements to make functionality more intuitive and easier for the average user. It is not that challenging but there is definitely a learning curve

Incentivized

The methodology of the 'out of the box' user interface is fairly easy to learn. In some cases however, the interface is not consistent throughout the software. Upgrades to the interface has certainly improved some of this--- but now we are seeing the same kinds of inconsistencies across Zoho apps, particularly those more recently added to their platform. This issue is not major in that everybody on staff seems able to learn how to work the programs--- it's just annoying and less than efficient when inconsistent user interfaces or inconsistent terms are used in the programs and/or the requisite documentation.

Incentivized

When you initially log in to Freshworks, you get snippets to guide you on how to set up. You have a chat option on every page so you can reach out to the support agent and get your issues resolved in real time. The agents are fast, responsive, and experienced in handling even a person who introduced CRM to the world...

We did the training and that was a huge waste of money. The information provided was basic and the instructor was sloppy (he even forgot to turn off his mic when he used the restroom - no one should ever hear what we heard). I offered up a 9 because we were able to find what we needed on your website.

Incentivized

It was harder to learn when there were mostly real estate users in the room. We are sales solely.

Incentivized

Online training is tough, but Zoho and their partners do a good job of explaining things.

Incentivized

When you switch CRMs, you can automatically assume everything isn’t going to match up correctly. We had used Salesforce for 10+ years and had a ton of data and customizations. It was not a clean transfer, but we were able to sort it all out. The only issue that really bothered me was Zoho support. Even simple questions couldn’t be answered over chat, and we would have some team members try for hours to find the right answer

Incentivized

Close.io has less features, costs more, and equally has an inside sales team focus, rather than being just as suitable for both inside and outside sales. Having said this, Close.io has important features and smart automations, a cleaner interface (easier for non-techs to use), and has very strong integrations using Zapier, plus SMS-based support. Where Freshsales won for us is that it ended up being nearly half the cost of Close.io, as well as included telephony support for our local country (Australia), whereas Close.io comes with USA/Canada numbers and requires the top pricing tier to include calls to other countries. We needed a telephony system that worked well for making and receiving from Australia. Freshsales won for us because their pricing is at a good point, had the telephony requirements we needed, and all the features that we required were good enough, or we found a workaround.

Incentivized

Zoho is the only product we have used. Our company is fairly new and before purchasing Zoho a few years ago, client files were only saved and looked at through our company server. Because of how great Zoho has been, we have never considered looking for another product because there really is no need

Incentivized

I think Zoho CRM is priced at a reasonable amount. Simply put, you get what you pay for and Zoho does not disappoint. My organization is comfortable with what we pay and pleased with continually renewing the software. The billing frequency is just right. There are no complaints on our end

Incentivized

In addition to being a user of Zoho CRM, we are a reseller as well. Often, at times our Partners request for on-boarding the platform configuration for them. During such requirements, we have utilized the Professional services team directly from the Zoho CRM team. Our partner feedback was quite positive, throughout.

Incentivized

• It is too soon to make a determination on ROI, but I do think it will help me be more efficient.
• The reporting functions help me stay on track of sales opportunities.
• The task reminders help me accelerate how quickly deals come together.

• ROI is good, providing your entire team is involved with the program and uses it
• During busy season, Zoho keeps the flow going with reminders for quote follow-ups
• Our company saw an estimated 20% gain in closing sales that went through Zoho as compared to quotes not answered through Zoho

Incentivized