27 Mar Zoho CRM Review

Zoho CRM is a cloud-based solution, rapidly growing in popularity and sophistication. Upon looking into the product, it is obvious that Zoho are incredibly difficult to overlook, due to just how cost effective their packages are. At a price of only $25 per user per month for their enterprise edition, the service offers a highly functional system at a very low price, and is particularly effective for existing Zoho users as well  as current Google Apps customers.

There are three basic packages available from Zoho:

Firstly, there is the free edition, which is free for up to three users, has a broad and basic inclusion of features such as basic sales force, marketing, and customer support automation with reporting, forecasting, and Web form. The professional edition ($12 per month) builds on that, and adds inventory management, plus custom data, security, and workflow management.

The Enterprise edition, which is Zoho's top-level edition ($25 per month), includes group chat, Web tabs, auto-responders, case escalation rules, and some additional data manipulation tools.

The professional edition is more catered towards small to medium-sized businesses, whereas the Enterprise Edition is tailored for those businesses who require a software with more capability.

Whilst these packages are rather comprehensive, there are additional extras available such as Zoho Mail, and Outlook; the prices vary depending on the package you have selected.

One thing that Zoho have considered is the tumultuousness of modern business, and therefore runs on a pay-as-you-go basis.  This makes it possible for businesses to upgrade or downgrade their packages, and whilst the additional costs do add up, they are still more cost-effective than CRM behemoth Salesforce.com by $100.

Initially, the Zoho interface does seem somewhat prosaic, however it is incredibly easy to get to grips with. It also comes with plenty of pre-built dashboards that you can set to appear on the home page, as well as customise the interface so as to have specific sets of data appear on the homepage too.

Those who become familiar with Zoho will come to realise that Zoho is simply brilliant in terms of organisation, and managing leads and contacts.

Zoho can also import Excel, CSV and VCF data and convert it into information. One massive development is that as of March 2010, Google Apps customers now have the ability to access Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects from within Google Apps.

The system of web-based forms is very capable and simple to comprehend. With Zoho, a customer can input their name, their address, or other key info onto your site; whatever they transmit is then transferred into a CRM contact. These forms are easy to create within the Web to Lead CRM.

Since Zoho is cloud-based, it is incredibly easy to embed the HTML into your site.

In conclusion, Zoho does what it promises: provide a robust and reliable CRM for the price it demands. Obviously, the trade-off here is that it lacks the levels of sophistication offered by others such  as Salesforce.com; however the trade-off is indeed worth it due to  the price difference. Therefore, Zoho is ideal for businesses  looking for an incredibly organised interface due it's database-like  nature, which renders sorting through various data incredibly easy.