Zoho CRM vs. Salesforce.com

Takeaway: Zoho is a great choice for small businesses wanting to choose from a variety of plans to meet their business needs and want monthly payments. The Salesforce Essentials plan is a solid choice for businesses with less than 10 users that need basic features and monthly pricing. The Professional plan is better for larger teams needing unlimited users, can pay annually, and want advanced features such as lead scoring, forecasting, and permissions.

Both Zoho CRM and Salesforce can be used on both a desktop or mobile device, and provide plenty of flexibility for setting them up according to your sales process for a seamless user experience. Both provide users with tools that:

Takeaway: Zoho is far easier to get setup with a simple user experience, and for that reason it’s a great choice for small businesses that don’t have a dedicated tech team. While Salesforce’s Lightning interface is updated and easier to use than the legacy version, it’s still a bit more complicated than Zoho if you’re new to using a CRM.

Both Zoho and Salesforce offer a variety of integrations, extensions, and plugins. For example, both offer Outlook and Gmail plugins to bring CRM capabilities to your email, and both integrate with a wide range of third-party sales, marketing, and productivity applications.

Takeaway: While Salesforce offers the most integrations, they are geared toward the most expensive plan, which is only available with annual billing and which isn’t an option for many newer or smaller companies. Therefore, Zoho is the best choice for small businesses as it offers a robust software ecosystem and provides plenty of third-party integrations most companies use.

One of the important aspects when comparing Salesforce vs Zoho is the training and support provided by each company. Both include extensive training materials, customer service reps, and online support communities.

Takeaway: Both Zoho and Salesforce offer an array of customer support options. However, Salesforce provides the most comprehensive customer support with their Trailhead learning programs, guided online training, support tickets, and success communities.

Both Zoho and Salesforce have large user bases, which means that there are plenty of reviews to consider when making the choice about which CRM is best for your business. We looked at what users had to say about what each service does well and what it doesn’t, and considered case studies and testimonials available for each software.

Zoho users like the comprehensive feature set that is flexible enough to fit most sales organizations. However, some users say it can be frustrating and cumbersome to customize, wished there were more robust support features available, and noted that interactions with support reps can be slow.

Salesforce users like the customization features, wide range of third-party integrations, and that it includes both sales and service features. However, many users feel there is a long learning curve and implementation can be complex and challenging.

Takeaway: Overall, users who reviewed Zoho find it a better option with a lower learning curve. You can find more about what users think on our Zoho CRM reviews page and our Salesforce reviews page.