As it’s usual with all of Zoho's product, Zoho Recruit is quite robust and feature-rich. It also has a free plan, which includes the ATS, and supports 26 different languages, allowing recruiters to cast a wide net.
Ratings
Ease of Use
Best For
Key Differentiator
Price
Free Trial
PROS
- ATS + CRM in one platform
- Backed by a company like Zoho, notable for reliability and good customer service.
- 24/5 support
- Priced quite modestly after the free version
- Certain features like video interviews are available as optional add-ons.
CONS
- The free plan only allows 256MB of storage.
- Additional features, such as the client portal, mass email, workflow alerts, and API calls cost extra.
- Some users have complained about the quality of some of the integrations.
- The career site is not fully customizable until past a certain paid plan.
Need Help? Talk to an HR Software Advisor!
Tell us more about your company & an HR Software Advisor will help you find the right software
Can a platform pack an Applicant Tracking System and a Candidate Relationship Management tool into a single hub? This is what the guys at Zoho set out to do with their recruiting product. Notably, this is only one of Zoho’s products that has become popular with many HR teams, along with Zoho People and Zoho Shifts. Zoho Recruit is only one of Zoho’s 50+ products helping businesses not only in recruitment but also in finances, sales, marketing, support, and collaboration.
That being said, Zoho Recruit is notable for being tailored to the needs of staffing agencies, internal HR teams (at big and small companies), and even freelance headhunters alike. At each of those use cases, and the many iterations therein, Zoho can source candidates from over 75 job boards and keep track of every touchpoint; from application to hire.
Typical talent acquisition tasks like email management, interview scheduling, and updating candidate’s status, can be automated. Although used by bigger companies, this is part of what has made Zoho Recruit popular with small companies and startups, where time is of the essence and maybe recruitment is a shared responsibility across roles.
Although we cover this in more detail on our pricing section, Zoho Recruit has always been a popular bet for its value too. Their free plan is good enough for small recruiting firms or freelancers focusing on one job opening, and it just keeps getting bigger after that.
To give you an idea, the Standard plan includes 250 active jobs, AI candidate matching, advanced analytics, automatic screenings and assessments, background checks, and assignment rules you can set up. A nice thing about their pricing is that popular modules like video interviews (one-way or live) are available as separately-priced add-ons. This ability to mix and match is something that has always made Zoho stand out. You can switch as you go, according to your needs. This is especially worth considering as their plans have evolved over the years to include the features that start making waves in the market.
At my organization, we use Zoho Recruit as our primary applicant tracking system (ATS) to manage our recruitment process. We use it on a daily basis to streamline our workflows and improve our recruitment efficiency.
One of the key workflows we use Zoho Recruit for is managing job postings. Zoho Recruit allows us to create job postings and post them on various job boards and social media platforms, all from within the tool. This saves us time and effort and helps us to reach a wider pool of candidates.
- Customizable workflows: Zoho Recruit provides customizable workflows that allow organizations to create tailored recruitment processes that match their specific needs.
- Integrations with other Zoho applications: Zoho Recruit is part of the larger Zoho suite of business applications, and it can integrate with other Zoho applications such as Zoho CRM and Zoho People, which can help streamline overall business processes.
- Collaborative recruiting: Zoho Recruit allows for collaboration between team members, making it easier to work together during the recruitment process.
- Candidate tracking: Zoho Recruit provides tools for tracking candidate progress throughout the hiring process, including interview scheduling and email communication.
Zoho Recruit helps my organization manage job postings, applications, and candidate information in a single platform. This streamlines the recruitment process and helps my HR team save time and effort. Zoho Recruit allows my organization to centralize all candidate data in one location, which can make it easier to manage and track candidate progress throughout the hiring process. It also provides features for collaboration between team members, which can help improve communication and coordination during the recruitment process. I've been using Zoho Recruit for the last 2 years.
- While Zoho Recruit offers integrations with other Zoho applications, it has limited integrations with other third-party applications, which may limit its functionality and usability for some organizations.
- While Zoho Recruit offers customizable workflows, some users have expressed that there are limitations to the customization options available, which may not fully meet their organization's needs.
- Some users have found that Zoho Recruit has a steep learning curve, which may require additional training for some users to fully utilize the platform's features and functionality.
Zoho's tiers are very rigid, and I would hope they would make their product more modular and allow customers to buy modules separately. For a small startup, the professional and enterprise-grade turn out to be very expensive, and we could easily trade some features we don't use for features we would like to use.
- Consider the specific needs of your organization and the recruitment processes that you need to support. Evaluate the features and functionality of Zoho Recruit to ensure that it meets your organization's specific requirements.
- Evaluate the user interface of Zoho Recruit to ensure that it is easy to use and navigate and that it does not require extensive training for users to get up to speed.
- Evaluate the customization options available in Zoho Recruit to ensure that you can tailor the recruitment process to match your organization's specific requirements.
Zoho Recruit has expanded its customization options, enabling users to create workflows tailored to their specific needs. The customizable workflows allow users to create automated processes and custom stages for candidates.
Zoho Recruit has introduced artificial intelligence (AI)-powered automation features that help automate tasks, such as candidate matching, resume parsing, and lead prioritization.
Zoho Recruit offers a cost-effective solution for small and medium-sized businesses that need to manage their recruitment processes without investing in expensive HR software. Zoho Recruit has features specifically designed for staffing agencies and recruiters, such as candidate submittal tracking, resume parsing, and sourcing tools, making it an excellent choice for these types of users.
While Zoho Recruit can handle recruitment processes for small to medium-sized businesses, it may not be as well-suited for large enterprises with complex recruitment processes and a large number of open positions.
Zoho Recruit is a general-purpose recruitment software and may not be the best fit for industries with specialized recruitment needs, such as healthcare, finance, or technology. These industries often require specialized recruitment software in addition to an ATS that can handle their unique requirements.
Manatal
Manatal
Zoho Recruit
Zoho Recruit
GoHire
GoHire
Tellent Recruitee
Tellent Recruitee
Teamtailor
Teamtailor
Those wanting a simpler tool sharply focused on certain parts of the recruitment process— for instance, video interviews or career site design— may find Zoho’s Recruits offering too general. Since they cover such a broad spectrum of needs, it can take them time to get the design up to modern standards, in some cases.
Bosch, Deloitte, Saint-Gobain, PWC, Allianz
- Automated candidate relationship workflows: Create custom workflows that send alerts and triggers at specific candidate touch points, ensuring you never miss an opportunity to connect with job seekers.
- Background screening: You won’t need an additional software for background checks, as Zoho Recruit has this as a built-in feature.
- Resume extractor: Use a Chrome plug-in to parse resumes from most websites.
- Resume parser mapping: Standardize parsed resumes to a structure preferred by your company.
- Parsing review: Review the parsed resume for inconsistencies.
- Client Portal: Your staffing agency can provide a portal for your clients to input their open roles, provide feedback on candidates up for review, and even make interview decisions.
Zoho Recruit also has capabilities for:
- Resume inboxes (get resumes from emails)
- Candidate import from documents
- Duplication checker
- Assessments and feedback
- Candidate management
- Interview scheduling
- Note taking tool
- Career site
Zoho Recruit integrates with the top products on several categories, for instance:
- Job boards: Indeed, Monster, CareerBuilder and over 70 more
- Recruiting: DaXtra, LinkMatch, Hiretual, SignalHire
- Background checks: Checkr, Verified First, HireRight
- Collaboration: Slack, Zoho Cliq, Zapier
- Social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
Also, Zoho Recruit has open API capabilities and the Zapier integration; so you can integrate seamlessly with your tech stack.
For corporate HR and staffing agencies, Zoho Recruit provides plans with a 15-day free trial and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Here are the detailed pricing options for annual billing:
- Corporate HR can choose from three plans: Free, Standard ($25/month), and Enterprise ($50/month). Add-ons like Employee License ($10/month), Vendor Portal ($6/month), and Video Interview ($12/job opening) are available to paid plan users.
- Staffing firms have access to four plans: Free Forever, Standard ($25/month), Professional ($50/month), and Enterprise ($75/month). They can also add features like Video Interviews ($12/license/month) and Client Portal ($6/license/month) to their plans.
Zoho Recruit is ideal for startups and small to medium-sized companies across various industries.
Zoho Recruit’s most recent updates highlight a dual focus: building intelligence directly into candidate evaluation through Zoho’s own large language model, Zia, while also making efforts to improve user experience on everyday workflows.
- AI-Powered Assessments and Zia LLM: Recruiters can now generate ready-to-use assessments tailored to each role, with Zoho’s native AI model powering the process. The goal is fairness, consistency, and structured recruitment without the manual legwork.
- Profile Summary by Zia: Scanning resumes one at a time is giving way to instant AI summaries. With Zia’s help, recruiters can expect to save time and effort on shortlisting, as they can now view key candidate highlights in either bulleted or descriptive form.
- Numerical Rating in Interviewer Assessments: Candidate evaluation has gained more precision with a numerical rating system. Interviewers can score answers by number, set thresholds, and even switch between rating styles (star, thumbs-up, or numeric) with results converting automatically for consistency.
- Real-Time Notifications in Vendor Portal: Vendors now get instant alerts when jobs are shared or edited, notes are added, or candidate statuses change.
- Smarter Cooling-Off Periods: The cooling-off functionality has been extended to cover the Career Site, Vendor Portal, and Employee Referrals. Recruiters can set durations, trigger alerts, and ensure candidates and vendors enjoy a smoother process.
- Bulk Action Buttons: Custom buttons in List View allow teams to act on multiple records at once, such as candidates, jobs, or clients, from the toolbar.
- Custom Buttons and Links in Portals: Portals for candidates, clients, and vendors now support custom actions. Recruiters can design experiences where users trigger specific workflows themselves.
- CV-Library Integration: UK-based hiring is expected to become easier with this new integration, as it lets recruiters tap into millions of resumes, refine searches, and unlock CVs with credits within Zoho Recruit.
With the Zoho Recruit platform, you only need to set up a Zoho Recruit account to get started. After that, you can now post a job and start sourcing candidates.
For bigger teams, based on complexity of customer requirements and the amount of requested features, Zoho Recruit’s implementation time can vary widely, from a couple of weeks or even up to several months.
Customer support caters to new and existing customers who have questions about pricing, licenses, and other services. In addition, Zoho has offices worldwide, so you won’t have to worry about your concerns getting lost in an email inbox. Their support is typically handled on a 24/5 basis.
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.
Company HQ
Austin, Texas and Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Number of Employees
13,000+
Year Founded
1996
Amount Raised
FAQ
About SSR
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. However we may earn a small fee if you click on vendor links on this page.
