Zoho CRM Plus Expert Review, Pricing, Alternatives - 2022

Zoho CRM provides a comprehensive mix of features for customer relationship lifecycle management. It includes useful integrations and a compatible suite of products at a reasonably competitive price, making it a solid pick for multiple organization sizes.

Zoho Corp is one of the leading providers of ticketing, knowledge management, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer experience management (CEM) solutions.

Their CRM Plus solution is a high-quality account management system that works for every industry, providing crucial tools to help both SMBs and enterprises grow. Their lead management capability is top-notch, with gamification modules that help encourage teams to work on their quotas.

As with most Zoho Products, Zoho CRM is also available as a free version which companies can use for up to three users. This allows teams to test out the product if it suits their needs. This can also be a fantastic gateway to more features for smaller companies.

Through enhanced administration, multi-channel customer engagement, social media marketing, customizable NPS and CSAT surveys, detailed analytics, powerful AI, and intelligent chatbots, Zoho CRM allows you to gain a better understanding your customers, segment them, detect anomalies in their behavior, create efficient workflows, develop retention strategies, forecast revenue, and much more.

Zoho CRM likes to put its best features behind more expensive tiers, like putting their social media offerings behind the Professional level of their bundles. Hence, some smaller businesses with higher requirements might not find their best match with the current offering.

Zoho CRM boasts more than 250,000+ customers worldwide from every company size, industry, and region around the world. Their customers include Purolite, Abu Dhabi Aviation, Bose, Tassal, Hotstar, and more.

• Over 250,000 customers in 180 countries
• 65% increase in sales pipeline (Sherpa)
• $100,000 saved annually (Purolite)
• Over 300% revenue growth (Quest)

• Social CRM: Zoho CRM integrates real-time social media updates into your CRM, allowing you to see conversations and interactions with customers on social media.
• Lead management: Zoho CRM offers a powerful lead management system. It allows you to create sales opportunities, track leads, and organize them by lead sources, so you can better manage your sales team’s activities.
• Custom fields: Zoho CRM allows you to create custom fields to collect and organize the exact information you want. This feature will enable you to personalize your CRM to fit your business needs.
• Dashboards: Zoho CRM allows you to set up customizable dashboards that display essential metrics and data relevant to your business. This helps you track sales and predict sales trends.

Zoho CRM also offers:

• Workflow automation
• Canvas drag and drop editor
• Sales process builder
• Sales enablement tools
• Performance forecasting
• Omnichannel customer engagement
• Customizable NPS and CSAT surveys
• Anomaly detection
• Customer sentiment analysis
• Customer segmentation
• Customer insights
• AI assistant
• Inter-team communication
• Marketing automation
• Webforms
• Mobile access

Zoho CRM offers more than 500 extensions. For a more detailed view of their integrations, we recommend checking out their website, but we’ve listed some per product category here:

• Online meetings: Zoom, GoToMeeting and 12 others
• Telephony and PBX: Ring.io, Amazon Connect, Zoho PhoneBridge and 106 others
• Team collaboration: Slack, Teams, Zoho Cliq and 9 others
• Office productivity: Trello, Zoho Flow and 26 others
• Storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoho WorkDrive and 4 others
• Analytics: Google Analytics, dotConnect and 10 others
• Email marketing: Mailchimp and 4 others
• Customer Service: Zendesk, Zoho Desk and 15 others
• Finance: PayPal, Quickbooks, Pay U, Zoho Finance Suite Integration and 18 others‍
• Business operations: Amazon Seller Central, FedEx Rate Comparator and Shipment Tracking and 15 others

It is also worth nothing that further integrations can be made through Zapier and Zoho CRM’s API.

Zoho CRM uses a per-user/month pricing strategy, billing either monthly or annually on discounted value. It also offers a free edition for three users and basic features like leads, documents, and mobile apps. There are four paid plans (with free trials) for the software:

• The Standard plan is priced at $14 per user per month. This includes everything in the free version as well as scoring rules, workflows, multiple pipelines, mass emails, custom dashboards, and a single-view canvas.
• The Professional plan is priced at $23 per user per month. This includes everything in the Standard plan in addition to sales signals, blueprints, web-to-case forms, validation rules, inventory management, and a three-view canvas.
• The Enterprise plan is priced at $40 per user per month. This includes everything in the Professional plan, plus the Zia conversational AI assistant, command center, multi-user portals, advanced customization, custom mobile apps, and a five-view canvas.
• Lastly, the Ultimate plan priced at $52 per user per month offers everything in the Enterprise plan in addition to enhanced feature limits, the Zoho Analytics bundle, and a 25-view canvas.

Zoho CRM Plus is a pay-as-you-go service (monthly or yearly). This means there are no long-term contracts.

Zoho CRM is best-suited for small to medium-sized businesses and enterprises looking for an all-in-one solution. Companies that already use products within the Zoho ecosystem can also take advantage of Zoho CRM as an easy way to sync their information.

If you’re looking to get started with Zoho CRM, it’s best to visit their bundle pricing and pick the tier bundle you want. You can also start a 15-day free trial to test the software.

Zoho CRM Plus is cloud based which makes it easy to implement. To get started, head to Zoho CRM Plus’ page and click the GET STARTED button at the top right hand corner. This will take you to a page where you can sign up for a 30-day free trial to test the platform’s features and offerings.

Zoho CRM offers customer support via live chat available 24x5 or through email. Case escalations are available for the two highest paid tiers (Enterprise and Ultimate). Zoho also has an extensive knowledge base and a Community page with guides and discussions on all Zoho products.Their help center is packed with articles, tutorials and technical documentation for customers to self-serve.

The Zoho story goes back to 1996, with the founding of AdventNet Inc. Back then, the company made a network management tool that was popular internationally, but mainly in the Japanese market. Then, in 2001, they launched Zoho CRM, which quickly became one of their best-selling apps.

Then, in 2005, the company caught up with the times and started offering cloud-based applications. They began with the Writer app, then Show (a presentation tool), Creator (custom application builder), and Zoho Sheets. It wasn’t long until they realized that there could be a Zoho tool for just about every kind of business app. If you’re curious, the Zoho ‘about page’ actually has an interactive timeline where you can see the evolution of the company year to year.

Nowadays, Zoho has over 75 million users worldwide, several offices across the globe, and more than 50 products for marketing, finance, customer and tech support, team collaboration, and of course, HR and recruitment.