Our opinion and complete test of the Zoho CRM

Did you know that CRM software represents the largest software market in the world? According to a recent study , the CRM market has recorded an annual growth of 15%.

Among these tools, Zoho CRM is very successful on the other side of the Atlantic. Want to know if it works or not? Check out our full review in this article.

Zoho CRM: What is it?

Zoho CRM is a Saas tool launched in 2020. It is a CRM that is highly appreciated by small and medium-sized businesses.

This tool gets high marks on review platforms like Captera . Out of 5400 votes, the software obtained a score of 4.3/5 .

On Trustpilot, reviews are more reliable (they are verified by the platform). Customer reviews are quite negative with an average of 1.8/5 :

The software offers many features. It allows for example to:

• Manage and optimize customer relationships

• Manage Contacts

• Automate sales operations

Zoho CRM in 2 words

In summary, Zoho CRM is a complete suite for acquiring leads and tracking your performance.

How to choose your CRM?

You probably already know that a CRM allows you to manage the customer relationship . But more concretely, what is this type of tool used for?

To achieve better results, a good CRM must take into account 3 essential concepts:

• The strategy : how should customer relations be managed in your company?

• Technology : Which solution should the CRM use for automated customer relationship management?

• The process : what are the different steps to be followed by your teams for better management of commercial relations?

Zoho CRM Features

Zoho CRM is a feature-rich tool. Here are the main features of this solution:

Contact, deal and lead management

Do you want to devote more time to listening to and satisfying your customers ?

The ideal solution is to resort to the automation of tasks that are time-consuming.

Zoho CRM allows for example to:

• Manage contacts : thanks to this feature, you can collect and centralize useful information about your prospects. Through the exchange centralization tool, you find all your different conversations (twitter, website, chatbot, email, etc.) centralized in one place. This makes it easier to communicate with your customers.

• Manage transactions : this feature allows you to initiate, track and finalize your various sales. This is possible thanks to a dashboard that details the real-time situation of each operation in progress.

• Generate and track leads : Zoho has a smart form for collecting leads. It allows you to have the contact details of your new visitors.

Marketing workflows and automation

Zoho CRM provides you with an automation system .

Workflow rules are established to enable automatic execution of marketing tasks. The tool thus allows:

• Automatic design and sending of emails

• Updating and optimizing mandatory fields such as the “subject” field for tasks

• Lead acquisition and follow-up

Email marketing

It is entirely possible to integrate email marketing with Zoho CRM. The tool gives you the option to manually manage your emails like all other CRMs do.

However, for best results, you will need to add an automated emailing tool. It can be MailChimp , Sendinblue or Zoho Campaign .

Without such a tool, you will not be able to do automated emailing.

Such an addition may require additional charges. In the case of Sendinblue for example, you pay a supplement of at least 19 euros per month.

Conversely, Twilead is the only complete CRM tool. A true all-in-one software that offers an integrated emailing solution.

Lead Scoring

Using sales forecasts, Zoho CRM assigns a score to every lead and every deal . The tool is based on its artificial intelligence “Zia” to determine whether a transaction can be concluded or not.

With this feature, you can quickly exclude leads that are too cold.

CRM Customization

You can customize the Zoho CRM tool according to the nature or needs of your business.

For example, you can create fields of your choice.

Reports and Analytics

Reports and analytics are things without which your business is blind.

Zoho offers you a CRM capable of creating quality reports and graphs . Their artificial intelligence “Zia” also helps you get the right reports: by sending a message to it, the AI presents you with the graphs you have requested, without having to build them yourself.

Who is Zoho CRM for?

Zoho CRM is for businesses of all sizes. She does not hesitate to highlight important customers, such as Amazon.

But for small businesses , a more simplified CRM tool like Bigin CRM would be more suitable.

It is a CRM solution designed by Zoho to directly address the needs of small businesses. It is the simplified version of Zoho CRM.

Although it is suitable for VSEs and small businesses, Bigin lacks features, which can limit its effectiveness. Twilead turns out to be a much more complete CRM solution, which remains accessible to small companies.

Compared to Zoho CRM, Twilead offers a complete offer. The tool incorporates features that are intended for all types of businesses.

For example, it is possible to use Twilead to create a website directly, as with WordPress , which is not the case for Zoho. Twilead is truly an all-in-one software.

Does Zoho CRM keep its promises?

Does Zoho CRM keep its promises or is it an overpriced tool?

Customer Support

According to customer reviews, customer support is not responsive at all, even for the most urgent cases:

Above all, the answers provided do not seem to be very convincing:

Ease of handling

According to several users, Zoho CRM has an intuitive interface that is easy to learn. Users appreciate the fact that no training is required to use this software.

Integration with other tools

Zoho CRM offers the possibility of adding other tools to make it more complete.

But apparently, the integrations are not easy to set up:

How do I cancel Zoho CRM if I’m not satisfied?

Here are the steps to unsubscribe from the service:

• From the program interface, click setup .

• Then select general , then click on company Details .

• Finally, click delete CRM account .

• Read the message carefully and validate.

If you are not satisfied during the 15-day trial period, you must unsubscribe: since subscription to the free trial requires a credit card, you may be charged for additional days.

Zoho CRM Subscriptions

Zoho CRM offers a total of 4 subscriptions, not counting the free version which accepts up to 3 users for around 30 features.

The Zoho CRM Standard Subscription

This formula allows an infinite number of participants to work for your company in Zoho. The subscription price is 20 euros per month for each user.

Zoho CRM Professional Subscription

The monthly plan for a professional subscription to Zoho is €35 per user .

The business subscription

It offers a better experience thanks to the 190 features it offers. The price for this subscription is 50 euros per month and per user .

The Ultimate Zoho CRM Subscription

The Ultimate Membership gives unlimited access to all platform features (over 200). All at a price of 60 euros per month and per user.

Twilead offers 4 subscriptions : the Start , Grow , Scale and Perform formulas. These plans cost €25, €45, €80 and €140 per month per user respectively.

What alternatives to Zoho CRM?

Looking for tools that offer similar functionality to Zoho? Here are a few :

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales management software that offers 3 main features, namely:

• Business relationship management

• Creation and customization of sales funnels

• The creation of different forms to facilitate the follow-up of leads

It has the advantage of facilitating the creation and association of contacts to promote better follow-up. All this on a single page.

Regarding the disadvantages, it must be said that Pipedrive has very few features. In addition, customer service is not optimized because it is not reachable by phone.

Customer reviews are quite positive:

hubspot

Hubspot is a very complete platform that makes 4 main features available to its users:

• CRM

• Lead generation

• Customer support

• digital marketing

You can for example:

• Automatically send emails.

• Animate your different communities on social networks.

• Design landing pages and contact forms.

Hubspot allows free use of some of its CRM features.

Customer reviews are quite mixed on this tool:

Twilead

Twilead is a CRM software that offers several features. It allows for example:

• Automate digital marketing

• Effectively manage customer relations (CRM)

• Create performance reports

• Connect and manage your Google My Business page while responding directly to customer reviews

• Centralize phone calls , emails and SMS

• To follow the activities wherever you are thanks to a mobile application

• To organize appointments, as with Calendly

• Manage e-commerce activities without integrating an additional tool

• Easily connect your various tools to the platform

Compared to Zoho CRM, Twilead is:

• About the same price – The first subscription is 20 € at Zoho, against 25 € at Twilead.

• More complete – It is an all-in-one software that offers all the must-have features.

• More Reliable – We don’t have bugs like those reported by Zoho users.

• More responsive – Our customer service will respond to you quickly, whenever you need them.

Should you choose Zoho?

Here is the summary of the pros and cons of Zoho CRM:

Due to various limitations of Zoho CRM, Twilead turns out to be better: it is an all-in-one tool.

No need to pay and integrate another tool for your email marketing, another for making appointments with your customers and yet another for creating your website: everything is available in Twilead !

You can now request a demo or try the tool for free .

These articles should also interest you:

• Our opinion on Hubspot CRM: is it necessary for SMEs and startups?
  
• Salesforce: does the CRM leader meet your needs?
• Comparison of the 9 best CRMs on the market