Bigin The Cheapest Sandbox to Validate Your Sales Process Before You Swipe a Credit Card
September 24, 2025

Bigin The Cheapest Sandbox to Validate Your Sales Process Before You Swipe a Credit Card

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

Software Version

Express

Overall Satisfaction with Bigin by Zoho CRM

We’re complete CRM newcomers and have just started rolling out Zoho Bigin in our startup-support organization. Right now Bigin feels refreshingly simple: the interface is clean, dragging deals between stages snaps like a magnet, and all the key contact data fits on a single screen. We didn’t need any training to begin adding our first leads. We already see that, whenever we’re ready, we can expand the pipeline, add custom fields, or layer in automations—comforting proof that the tool can grow alongside us.

Pros

  • Zero-friction onboarding
  • Imported 200 Google-Sheet leads in under 5 min via copy-paste wizard; field mapping was drag-&-drop, no CSV-headache.
  • Email templates – yes, but the editor is limited.
  • Merge-tags work, yet you can’t drop in advanced HTML; our logo had to be linked from an external URL. On the plus side, a bulk send of 25 emails went through without a hitch and none landed in spam – big win for us.
  • Reports – fast but shallow.
  • The dashboard quickly shows “deals closed” and “average stage duration,” yet you can’t pull conversion rates by lead source without digging into an export. Good enough for the board, too thin for an analyst.
  • Automation – paywalled only.
  • We wanted Bigin to auto-send a survey when a deal moved to “Won,” but workflows are a paid feature. You can test them during the trial; once it expires it’s back to manual clicks.

Cons

  • No multi-select bulk move in pipeline After a webinar we had 42 cold leads that qualified → wanted to drag them all to “Interested” in one go. You can’t; moved them one-by-one like playing Solitaire.
  • Workflows hidden behind pay-wall We needed an auto-survey when deal = “Won”. Works in trial, the day licence dropped back to free the rule simply stopped – zero warning.
  • Offline mobile = read-onlyMentor met founder in co-working basement (no Wi-Fi). Took paper notes, re-typed into Bigin back at office → duplicate risk.
  • Pick-list values can’t be deactivated, only deletedWe miss-typed “Refferal” instead of “Referral”. To fix, must delete; history of 60 old records then shows empty source.
  • Zero deals closed yet – earliest expected close is +6 weeks away.
  • No marketing-source conversion data – will need 2-3 months of traffic to quote real CAC or ROMI
  • No paid automation – manual follow-ups still dominate, so time-saving metrics are anecdotal, not measured.
I set it right in the middle because Bigin is equally helpful and frustrating. On the plus side, the import wizard and drag-and-drop pipeline are genuinely intuitive—new users need no manual. However, the free plan blocks custom fields, bulk-update is one-by-one, and offline mobile is read-only. Those limits surface daily once you pass ~200 records, so “easy to start” clashes with “harder to scale.”
Why we selected Bigin for now0 USD cash-burn during 100-day extended trial.Same login token as Zoho Flow – single sign-on, single invoice path later.Good-enough mobile app for field mentors (offline note cache would seal it).Migration path: if we outgrow it, one-click upgrade to full Zoho CRM keeps all data & Flow links intact.Verdict: Bigin is the lightweight MVP that lets us validate the sales process without swiping a credit card. Once first revenue lands we’ll re-check HubSpot or jump to Zoho CRM proper – but for the setup & learning phase Bigin is the cheapest sandbox that still looks professional.

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

Yes

Are you happy with Bigin by Zoho CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Bigin by Zoho CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Bigin by Zoho CRM go as expected?

No

Would you buy Bigin by Zoho CRM again?

Yes

I’d gladly recommend Bigin to a micro-team that needs a CRM yesterday, but I’d warn anyone who lives inside dashboards or needs deep automation.”

Where Bigin is spot-on0-to-CRM in 48 hCopy-paste Excel, drag columns to match fields, hit import → 200 leads alive in under five minutes. No consultant, no YouTube university.Coffee-shop follow-upsMobile kanban + one-click call icon = log outcome while the cappuccino is still hot. Perfect for mentors who hate admin.Two-person hand-offFounder manager sees full history, student intern sees only “her” tagged deals. Roles & profiles are dead-simple; no 300-line permission matrix.

Where Bigin starts to creakMarketing wants source ROIDashboard shows “deals closed”, not “Facebook leads → 12 % conversion”. You’ll export CSV every Monday and pivot in Excel until the CFO screams.Post-sale automationYou dream: deal = Won → send NPS + create invoice task. Reality: workflows live behind the paywall, so you manually copy-paste e-mail addresses into Mailchimp.Bulk actions at scaleAfter a webinar you qualify 60 leads at once. Prepare for sixty individual mouse drags—there is no “select all → move to Interested”. Your wrist will sue you.

Bigin by Zoho CRM Feature Ratings

4.0
Customer data management / contact management
5
Workflow management
5
Opportunity management
3
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)
5
Contract management
3
Interaction tracking
3
Customer Service & Support ()
Not Rated
3.5
Lead management
4
Email marketing
3
4.0
Task management
4
Reporting
4
3.5
Pipeline visualization
3
Customizable reports
4
2.0
Custom fields
2
3.5
Role-based user permissions
3
Single sign-on capability
4
4.5
Social data
5
Social engagement
4
3.0
Marketing automation
3
1.0
Mobile access
1

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