Zoho vs Salesforce | Top CRM Comparison

Zoho CRM is a more affordable option than Salesforce. Zoho CRM’s free-for-life edition is a great option for small business owners who want the basic features of a CRM, such as contact management and standard reporting. Upgrade to paid tiers for tools such as sales forecasting, marketing automations, and social tabs, or to enterprise-level plans for advanced features like territory management, AI-backed suggestions, and deeper customization options.

Salesforce is a more expensive choice than Zoho CRM, especially if you factor in the potential outside costs of hiring a Salesforce administrator, which is typical for medium to large businesses attempting to get the most out of the software’s Enterprise or Unlimited editions. However, Salesforce Sales Cloud’s Starter plan is $25 per user, per month — only $11 more than Zoho’s Standard plan. Salesforce offers a 30-day free trial for those looking to test it out.

Zoho CRM has a large feature set to help businesses effectively track leads, contacts, and deals. It even ties in social media data regarding contacts, and allows you to communicate with contacts in-platform through live chat, email, and other channels. Zoho also offers marketing capabilities, like its ability to run email nurturing campaigns. Users can opt for Enterprise and Ultimate plans to personalize customer journeys and leverage business intelligence tools.

Salesforce, however, reigns supreme when it comes to the range and depth of features it offers. All plans offer robust contact, account, lead, and opportunity management functions. Users will also get great 360-degree views of their contacts’ demographics, communication history, and past actions. Its Enterprise and Unlimited plans shine brightest, boasting workflow tools that allow you to easily automate almost any CRM task, including lead scoring and distribution to reps.

Zoho CRM is known as one of the more user-friendly CRMs with its no-frills and wizard-guided setup, which makes it easier to get the software up and running. Subscribers also enjoy how easy it is to customize compared to Salesforce Sales Cloud — albeit this is in part because the customization options are less complex. While its knowledge base isn’t as vast as Salesforce’s, Zoho’s interface is more straightforward, so users might need less guidance.

Salesforce offers tremendous functionality and the highest level of customization, but it comes with quite the learning curve, which prompts many businesses to hire an in-house Salesforce administrator to manage the system. Setup is a cumbersome process due to the software’s flexibility, and mistakes can lead to issues later on. However, fans do often state that once you’ve learned the platform, it offers endless possibilities and easy navigation.

All Zoho CRM users have access to live chat and phone support during local business hours. You can pay extra for Premium support, which bumps support access to 24/5, but costs 20% of your license fee. Businesses with 25+ users can pay 25% of their license fee to get a dedicated account manager and 24/7 support. Still, Zoho’s customer service staff is notorious for delays. If you need an answer in a pinch, you can turn to their community forums or self-service portals.

All Salesforce plans come with email, live chat, and phone support dedicated to business-stopping issues. Thanks to the software’s ubiquity, even the most niche questions have likely been answered. Premium support plans can be purchased separately for additions like 24/7 assistance, one-on-one coaching, and advanced diagnostics. Although you need to pay extra, users can still opt to sign up to Trailhead for free CRM implementation resources.

Zoho CRM includes 40+ standard pre-built report types that users can run, along with unlimited custom reports in the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate plans. All paid plans allow you to schedule reports to automatically run on certain dates. Plus, reports can be easily represented visually in charts and graphs. While Zia AI offers real-time recommendation analytics, this feature is only available in the two highest tiers and requires a certain number of user licenses.

Salesforce offers pre-built and custom reports in every plan. Building your own reports is simple thanks to the drag-and-drop editor; just pick your filters, fields, and visualization type and you’re done. Higher tiers include advanced reporting tools like cross filters and bucketing that enable users to organize data in an easy-to-find manner. Salesforce gives you all the tools you need to track key CRM metrics and also investigate how to improve a team’s sales performance.

Zoho CRM’s sales automation features are primarily focused on communication and follow-ups with leads or clients. For example, it can automate email follow-ups to be sent after a certain number of days. It can also be configured to create new contacts when you’ve received an email from an unfamiliar email address. If you want to create workflows for other processes (like approval for requested discounts), you’ll have to purchase the Enterprise or Ultimate editions.

Salesforce’s automation extends beyond those found in Zoho, especially with its latest development combining the Lightning Flow automation tool with Einstein GPT’s generative AI feature and the Data Cloud platform. Users can standardize and automate their most common CRM routines, as well as recommend next steps to their reps based on changes in customer behavior. Plus, you can design self-service wizards for more efficient task management.

Zoho CRM's mobile app enables users to access data from their iOS or Android devices while on the move. It offers time management features like a daily planner, map, and alerts to help you stay on track. Plus, top plans offer task automation; simply text the actions you want taken to Zia, an AI assistant, who’ll perform them for you. When offline, you can check and amend contact info, and even leave voice notes that’ll be reflected in the CRM when you’re back online.

Salesforce’s mobile app is essentially the entire Salesforce CRM in the palm of your hand. Its most notable feature is its offline mode, which, compared to Zoho, enables you to see and update more information, including dashboards and opportunities. Online, the mobile app gives AI-powered insights that foster smart decisions and the ability to customize your mobile experience by personalizing navigation and selecting favorites for even greater productivity.

Zoho CRM and Salesforce both support a large number of third-party applications. The Zoho App Marketplace currently has over 1,000 integrations spanning business applications, document storage, marketing tools, and more. Many of the most popular integrations are free (Google Workspace, PandaDoc, Microsoft 365, Mailchimp, Dropbox). While its app plugins cost extra, users can integrate free versions of some of the best apps in the Zoho ecosystem with Zoho CRM.

Salesforce AppExchange, on the other hand, allows for the implementation of over 7,000 pre-integrated apps that can help you improve your performance in a variety of key areas, from document management to automation. The integration with these apps is seamless and enables you to customize your experience more than you would with Zoho. Although the majority of the apps cost money, users can access 1,200+ free integrations like Zoom, Trail Mail, and Yesware.