Zoho vs Salesforce: 2023 Comparison

Zoho vs Salesforce: 2023 Comparison

Zoho CRM or Salesforce CRM, which is your personal preference?

NO!! No!! Wait…Lemme put the question this way, in between Zoho and Salesforce, which CRM is the necessity of your company?

Zoho is one of the best CRM in the market by sharemarket and revenue and so is the Salesforce. Both are very reputed and trusted CRM in the global business market.

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You must be here because you might have already made up your mind to purchase one of them. So, we are going to give you an overview of Zoho vs Salesforce.

Zoho vs Salesforce Comparison

Both Zoho and Salesforce are best in their usability and features. They both offer the best Customer Relationship services and comprehensive solutions for contact management, reporting, sales enablement, and team collaboration. They both are the top CRM in the market. Yet they have their own limitation and disadvantages.

Keep reading to know Which one is the best for your company.

Company Overview

Zoho is an Indian multinational technology company founded in 1996. Zoho is one of the best CRM that you can purchase to boost your company. It has a revenue of $690 million (according to 2021) with 12000 plush employees.

Salesforce is an American cloud-based software founded in 1999 in California, United State. Salesforce is one of the leading CRM with fiscal revenue of $26.49 billion in the year 2022 which is a high record. Being the largest company, it has 77,000 employees globally.

System and Pricing

Zoho CRM is comparatively cheaper than Salesforce. Zoho comes up with three products tier:  standard, professional, and enterprise. Each tier has different features and costs accordingly. Its price is calculated per user, per month.

Standard: $14 /user/month billed annually.
Professional: $23 /user/month billed annually.
Enterprise: $40 /user/month billed annually.

Salesforce is a “Customer Success Platform” meaning their different products integrate with one another. Their most popular products are Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, and they are all priced separately. We will focus on the Sales cloud for our comparison points.

Sales Cloud comes in four different editions: Essential, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited. It is very expensive compared to Zoho. Its price is calculated per user, per month.

Essential: $25 /user/month (billed annually)
Professional: $75 /user/month (billed annually)
Enterprise: $150 /user/month (billed annually)
Unlimited: $300 /user/month (billed annually)

Comparison In Features

Ease of Use

Zoho CRM is one of the best CRM for Customization. It provides extensive customization options when it comes to choosing features and changing the user interfaces making Zoho more user-friendly and easy to use. Menus, icons, and buttons are well placed apart. You do not need the training to use Zoho. It is simple and easy to use. 

Salesforce CRM provides extensive customization options for adding new features that are not available. Salesforce allows you to create a custom setting in its user interface. In comparison to Zoho CRM, Salesforce is difficult to implement and work with. It takes time to implement and to set everything up and customize the way you want. It also needs the training to be able to use all its features, unlike Zoho.

Ease of Customization

Zoho is way easier to customize, set up, and implement compared to Salesforce. With Zoho, you can customize standard modules and add other additional functions in those modules according to your requirements to meet your sales team’s needs. You can customize page layouts, add multiple components, create custom modules, configure layouts, and so on all without the help of a technician.

Salesforce also offers customization features similar to Zoho. It can be configured and customized as well but with the help of a technician. Customizability is one of the powerful features of Salesforce. It lacks inbuilt features for layout rules. So if you have to create a dynamic layout, you will need to use integration or implement a code-based solution. The drag and drop system of Salesforce helps to create custom records and page layout which is highly customizable.

Contact Management

Zoho vs Salesforce: 2023 Comparison

Contact Management is one of the key features of any CRM. Both Zoho and Salesforce have done excellent work in their contact management feature. Either of them offers features for adding and managing contacts, leads, accounts, pipelines, and business opportunities.

Zoho helps to keep the records of the contacts, phone numbers, email addresses, notes of to-do-list, documents, meeting notes, and many more in its system database without leaving the system for Zoho easily integrates with many office applications. With the help of Zoho import wizard, web forms, or API, you can also import your own leads, documents, or notes from the external database.

You can integrate social media with Zoho, which is one of the important features of Zoho, helping you to keep track of social conversations involving your leads, prospects, and customers.

Zoho Social integrates with the following systems and applications:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Google
  • Instagram
  • Chome and firefox extension.

Salesforce stores the contact information of every client, customer, or prospect, their communication history, information regarding them, related activities, and many more in its database. Einstein AI which is a virtual CRM assistant of Salesforce can also be used for insights such as predictive lead scoring. You can view the timeline of customer activities through Salesforce Pipeline Management features.

Salesforce Social integrates with an array of apps in-app exchange.

Analytics and Reporting

Both Zoho and Salesforce provide a number of tools for analyzing and decision-making. Both provide a powerful dashboard helping with reporting and decision making.

Zoho comes with a strong pre-built dashboard and reports. It helps in an in-depth analysis of leads and sales rep performance. Important data such as your monthly revenue, leads, accounts, deals, documents, and sales rep performance can be easily accessed through Zoho’s analytics. You can view different reports and create your own report with the help of the report tab. It also allows you to schedule your report.

Salesforce’s built-in dashboard and reports allow you to track lead volume, conversion rates, sales forecasts, and other metrics very easily. There are a number of pre-built reports helping you with your reporting and also you can use Report Builder to create custom reports. But what confusing about Sales Cloud is you cannot create analytics components like comparators without first creating reports which makes creating analytics components more time-consuming.

Apps and Integration

Zoho vs Salesforce: 2022 Comparison
Image Credit: Salesforce (Many third-party apps in the app exchange that can be integrated with CRM )

Both of the software does their best at their level to integrate with other apps. Let’s know between Zoho and Salesforce who stand out as the best.

Zoho has its own app and integration. It integrates with different social media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and so on and with important office programs like Google for Work, Outlook, etc. Zoho also integrates with other Zoho products like Mail, Desk, and Workplace. But while battling in terms of integration, Zoho could never beat Salesforce. Why? The reason is down below.

Salesforce Appexchange which is an online application marketplace of salesforce connects customers with third-party and consulting services. There are over 3,000 third-party apps (way more than Zoho) in the App exchange which can be easily added to your CRM to increase its functionality. App exchange is one of the reasons why Salesforce is more flexible and suited for large business organizations.

Mobile Capabilities

Zoho vs Salesforce: 2022 Comparison
Image Credit: Zoho (Zoho Mobile App)

Zoho app is available for download for both android and ios.

Zoho apps include features such as global search, dashboard, app permission, customization, and so on. It also includes calendars and scheduling, geolocation, meeting check-ins, and a team newsfeed.

Salesforce mobile app is available for download for both android and ios. We can access all information accessible from our mobile from anywhere at any time.  Mobile apps put all the information like dashboards and reports, meetings and tasks, notifications, approvals, leads, and so on at our fingertips.

Marketing Automation

Zoho vs Salesforce: 2023 Comparison
Image Credit: Salesforce (Keep track of all the metrics that matter most to your business in Salesforce)

Automation features are one of the important features of any CRM which saves time and enhances efficiency. Both Salesforce and Zoho offer their AI features with their higher-priced Enterprise tiers.

Zoho CRM workflow makes your business hours productive by completing tasks in a scheduled time period or lesser than that. All the complex tasks can be done through a drag and drop interface all thanks to Zoho’s drag and drop interface.

It allows us to run email marketing campaigns, manage leads, record contacts, automate emails, map leads with the marketing campaigns from where they were captured, and ever segment your customer so you can target them well, and many more. Most of the marketing features cost an extra charge in the context of Salesforce while Zoho offers it free of cost.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is the main hub for automation. It associates leads and contacts with campaigns, adds notes, and keeps updated with member status. Many features such as lead nurturing, survey campaigns, email, and survey analytics are available in paid plans which might cost you up to $ 2,000 a month according to your usage. Google Adwords integration which is free in Zoho requires an additional payment in Salesforce making it win the crown of the most expensive CRM.

Omnichannel support

Zoho helps to connect with your customer through different channels and empowers your sales team with a healthy flow of information and communication between the sales team and between the sales department and others departments. Live chants and social media integration helps you to connect with your customer and prospects through social media platform improving customer relationship.

Despite Salesforce’s App exchange application allow you to integrate with over 3,000 third-party apps, it does not support live chat. To be able to do it, you’ll have to buy Digital Engagement SKU. And you will again need to purchase Social Studio Plugin, to be able to respond to social media posts, monitor customers’ activity, or analyze social media posts.

Zoho vs Salesforce: Support

Zoho and Salesforce, both of them provide support from their sides to answer all your queries and also help you while you have problems maintaining your CRM.

Zoho provides customer support or service management feature such as cases, solutions to problems, answer to queries, Case Routing & Escalation through Workflow rules, and so on. Its help center also includes FAQs, start-up guides, tutorials, developer space, webinars, and a community forum. You can submit tickets for questions you can’t find answers to your answer in Zoho’s self-service portal. If you want training, you can get it either but it is not free of cost, unlike the Salesforce Trailhead.

Salesforce has Trailhead. Trailhead is Salesforce’s free customer learning platform that allows both users and nonusers to gain knowledge on CRM. It is a free learning platform. A community forum is also available where you can ask other users questions. If you want to access 24/7 customer support and configuration services, you will have to purchase its unlimited plans.

Language Supported

Zoho supports only one language i.e. English

Salesforce supports multiple languages.

  • English
  • Spanish
  • French
  • Italian
  • Dutch
  • Portuguese
  • Swedish

Making Your Final Decision

Zoho vs Salesforce: 2023 Comparison

If you are asking Which is better among the two? You are asking the wrong question.

The question should be Which is better for your need and budget? and Yes!! the right question leads to the right answer.

If you are looking for highly advanced, with room for high customization, and with a large room to scale, and you don’t have a problem with the budget then go for Salesforce.

If you are a small start-up company and want to save money then Zoho is surely for you. Zoho has a lot to offer with its overwhelming features at a very budget-friendly price.

Also Read,

Best CRM Software in 2023

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