Zoho CRM Review Is it Time to Move on?

Zoho CRM’s interface design isn’t the most user-friendly. The two menus, which run down the left side and along the top, are a lot to process. There are also various items (live chat, reminders, etc.) at the bottom of the screen, but these are so tiny you can hardly see them. The platform can be slow to load and complete tasks.

List, kanban and canvas view are available. Your sales team can move deals around using drag and drop technology.

Every business’s sales process is different, meaning you’ll want to edit the pipeline stages. However, setting up pipelines is not a simple process; you’ll need to dig around in the setup settings, which isn’t very intuitive.

Managing your customer relationships is made easier due to the fact that you can store everything from notes and invoices to social media accounts. Adding custom properties is done in the setup settings (again, slightly hidden) and the amount you can add depends on the plan you’re on.

You can import contacts/deals from a file or from other CRMs. The ‘company’ field is mandatory for importing leads, which could cause issues if this is not a field you use.

Zoho CRM’s own email marketing software, Zoho Campaigns, is a nice addition to the suite. You can send up to 12,000 emails p/m to 2,000 contacts for free. (See how it compares to Mailchimp in our comparison.)

You can also send email notifications and engage in SMS marketing – the allowance depends on your plan. Find out more about Zoho CRM’s email marketing features here.

Workflow automation rules can be set up across all plans. When you import new contacts, you can trigger configured automations and processes for new and updated records. Set up automations for segmentation, scoring rules, assignment rules, and other actions.

Email marketing automation is available through Zoho Campaigns.

There are tons of ready-made reports. You can edit these, but be careful, as there is no back button. Add up to 10 custom dashboards on Standard plan and unlimited dashboards on higher plans. Strangely, there is no Google Analytics integration.

Lead management is facilitated by Zoho CRM’s automatic lead scoring. You can set the rules and automate this based on your own criteria.

Though this isn’t a feature of the Zoho CRM product, you can sign up to Zoho Desk, which offers a free plan for up to 3 agents.

Website visitor tracking available across all plans.

2-factor authentication available on higher plans. SOC 2 compliant. I couldn’t find a way to set up alerts. Various roles and access levels available.

Zoho CRM’s platform is available in 26 languages. Support available in 11.

Good range of integrations with third-party tools. 50+ apps available through Zoho Marketplace.

In terms of Zoho’s customer support, you’ve got live chat, email and phone support, available 24hrs, Mon-Fri in 11 countries. The community forum is more helpful and had more relevant results than the knowledge base, but I found the live chat support very fast and helpful.