Zoho CRM vs Salesforce

CRMs are used by businesses to store customer information, track sales and service activities, anticipate income, and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. As a result, CRM software has evolved into one of the most vital business tools available, akin to a Swiss Army Knife for customer-facing staff.

When it comes to CRM, many people automatically think of Salesforce. This is due to the fact that Salesforce was one of the first cloud-based systems and has continually held the majority of the industry.
However, Salesforce isn’t the only CRM on the market, and it’s not always the greatest option for your company. We’ve previously compared Salesforce to a number of competitors, including Microsoft Dynamics, SugarCRM, Infusionsoft, and others.

We’ll compare Zoho vs. Salesforce in this post, contrasting the smaller, less-priced competition against the cloud CRM industry leader. If you’re reading this, you’re presumably considering one of the two options. Because this decision will have a long-term impact on your productivity and profitability, it’s crucial to consider all of your possibilities.

Salesforce Company Overview

By market share and revenue, Salesforce is the most popular CRM on the market. They were one of the first software as a service (SaaS) businesses, having been launched in 1999. Salesforce was headed for exponential development with a $110 million initial public offering and the ticker symbol “CRM.” They presently have a revenue of over $13 billion and employ over 36,000 people.

Zoho Company overview

Zoho began in 1996 as AdventNet Inc., an IT management company. They started out focusing on enterprise clients and didn’t release the Zoho online suite we know and love until the 2005 SaaS boom.

Zoho is still a privately held corporation at the time. They have their global headquarters in Chennai, India, and are planning to relocate their US headquarters from Pleasanton, California to Austin, Texas. Small businesses in the technology, consultancy, media, and real estate industries make up the majority of their customers, although they provide solutions for businesses of all sizes and industries.

Pricing and systems

Salesforce bills itself as a “customer success platform,” which means that all of its products are interconnected. Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud are their most popular offerings, and each is priced separately. Because marketing and service applications are typically ancillary, we’ll concentrate on Sales Cloud for the majority of our comparisons.

Essentials (out-of-the-box CRM for up to 10 users), Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited (which includes 24/7 support and setup services) are the four editions of Sales Cloud. These enterprise editions are famously pricey, even though they are charged per user per month.
Standard, professional, and enterprise are the three product tiers of Zoho CRM. The pricing is computed per user, per month, and each tier differs in terms of features and support. Zoho’s enterprise tier is about 90% less expensive than Salesforce CRM’s Unlimited edition. In addition to annual paying, Zoho is unique in that it enables month-to-month billing.

Features

It’s critical to think about functionality while developing a business solution. It’s evident that a solution isn’t a suitable fit if it can’t function as expected, support the workflows that matter to your team, and offer outcomes that line with your objectives.

We’ll compare Zoho vs Salesforce based on some of the most mission-critical (and popular) CRM features, like as contact management, reporting, and mobile capabilities, to help you decide.

Apps and integrations

CRM software’s horizontal integration can be a big selling feature. As a buyer, you want a solution that can seamlessly interchange data with your other business systems while also giving you the flexibility you need. What if you wish to give your support team case management capabilities? A team collaboration project management add-on? You get my drift.

Zoho’s online product portfolio includes a good number of business apps as well as pre-built connectors with the majority of common office products (Google for Work, Outlook, etc.). Salesforce, on the other hand, takes the cake in terms of raw integration volume. Over 2,900 apps built on the Salesforce platform are available in their AppExchange, which are meant to extend functionality in sales, marketing, customer support, IT, finance, human resources, and other verticals.

Contact management

One of the most crucial aspects of any CRM is contact management. When it comes to campaign execution and sales development, the ability to store firmographics and build rich data profiles around clients, prospects, and accounts will save your company money. Contacts, leads, accounts, and business prospects can all be added and managed on both platforms.

For each contact, the Salesforce database holds customer information, communication history, connected activities, and more. For insights such as predicted lead scoring, you can leverage Einstein AI (Salesforce’s virtual CRM assistant). The contact management features of Zoho won’t let you down either. Because Zoho connects with most major office apps, you can keep track of phone numbers, emails, meeting notes, to-do lists, documents, and much more without ever leaving the system.

To effortlessly import contacts from other third-party business systems, use the Zoho Import Wizard, Web Forms, or the Zoho CRM API. You can track social discussions involving your leads, prospects, and customers using a built-in social CRM function that collects data from Google+, Facebook, and Twitter (an advantage over Salesforce, which would require an add-on for this feature).

Reporting

Both platforms offer a variety of tools to assist decision-makers in slicing and dicing data related to revenue, customer acquisition, marketing initiatives, and other topics.

Salesforce includes dashboards and reports that allow you to track lead volume, conversion rates, sales projections, and other metrics without having to rely on your data analyst to alter and merge large spreadsheets. You can choose from a variety of pre-built reports or use the Report Builder to create your own. Simply drag and drop the fields and filters you want, then choose a chart type.

Your final decision

Get a quote for Salesforce if you’re searching for a highly complex system with plenty of opportunities to grow (price can vary depending on your user intent, team size, and implementation needs). If you’re just getting started with the basics and want to save money, Zoho is a great option.

The inquiry is not, as is customary, “Which is better?” “However, which is better for your requirements and budget?” We’d be happy to assist you if you’re having problems deciding. To get a personalized software recommendation, contact us for a free five-minute consultation, or fill out the form on our CRM software page.