Zoho is one of the popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms available on the market today. But, if you’re clicking on this article, you’re probably looking for an alternative to Zoho that works for your team.
You’re either moving away from Zoho or walking the high street, window shopping project management tools before diving in — and there are a lot of them out there…
To save you the endless research and scrolling, our team of software experts put together a complete overview of the best Zoho alternatives.
We’ll break down exactly what Zoho offers as well as what’s provided in the team collaboration sphere by a leading Zoho CRM alternative, before showcasing the differences between the two.
What is Zoho? A cloud-based CRM
Zoho is cloud-based CRM software designed to help companies take care of business. Ideal for small to mid-sized teams, Zoho offers a variety of integrated options and customizable CRM solutions for growing companies.
Zoho is focused on a few primary features:
- Mail – Secure business email
- Desk – Context-aware help desk
- Projects – Project planning and tracking
- Creator – Custom app builder
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoho also introduced a “remotely” feature, which is common among today’s CRMs. The “remotely” feature allows newly remote teams to work together with a suite of intelligent web and mobile apps.
How about a good Zoho alternative? (Hello, monday.com)
Zoho is designed to help growing teams and enterprises manage their daily business operations. It’s flexible and scalable enough so teams that are growing rapidly get a variety of solutions to their changing needs.
But, when it comes down to catering to a multitude of differently-sized, cross-functional teams in different industries, monday.com may better fit your wide-ranging needs.
Many other CRM platforms have similar strengths (and a lot of the same weaknesses).
Fortunately, there are hundreds of other options out there. And a leading alternative (one we happen to recommend) is monday.com.
What is monday.com? A Work OS
monday.com is your workweek’s dream solution, manifested.
It’s the simplest way to keep daily projects more organized and streamlined.
As a Work Operating System (Work OS), monday.com allows teams of all sizes to run projects and manage workflows confidently.The platform is intuitive and straightforward enough to help you simplify your work and make your daily duties easier without a steep learning curve.
A Work OS makes it possible to create workflows, adjust to changing needs, generate transparency, and connect collaboratively.
In other words, monday.com makes teamwork easy. Thanks to ample customization options and 24/7 customer service, the platform is also ideal for nearly every use case or team.
Like Zoho, monday.com offers a variety of product features, including budget management, project management, collaboration, client portals, cost-to-completion tracking, customizable templates, milestone tracking, portfolio and resource management, time and expense tracking, and traditional methodologies.
monday.com vs. Zoho: flexibility and integrations
The main differences between monday.com and Zoho are the structure and usability of the software, along with the availability of app integrations.
We understand that every team is different and has its own unique needs, which is why monday.com allows for full customization of boards and offers different templates for various industries.
monday.com: focus on flexibilty
Zoho focuses on delivering 4 standard plans designed to cater to different types of businesses. If your company doesn’t necessarily fit into one of those boxes, you may find it difficult to find something that truly works for you.
monday.com, meanwhile, is more focused on flexibility and providing the right solution at the right time for a given team.
To promote accessibility and affordability, monday.com offers a free trial and 4 progressively more adaptive SMB and enterprise pricing plans for users to choose from. This makes it easy to find a plan that caters to your business right now and scales with you as you grow.
monday.com: lots of integrations
Zoho is designed to work with app integrations, however, the library of available integrations can seem a little sparse for some teams. For example, if your team is working on an email campaign and you want to use Hubspot, you may find it difficult to get Zoho to communicate and cooperate with your platform of choice.
monday.com, alternatively, is an open API system, which means that developers can use monday.com to build customized connections and integrate the platform with any imaginable third-party application or system.
If you can dream it, you can do it with monday.com apps framework.
The platform is designed to form itself around your company and provide a solution that feels custom-made.
While premade integrations include popular project and task management tools like Asana, Slack, Gmail, Google Drive, and JIRA, you can customize the dashboard to suit your exact needs.
Zoho alternatives FAQ
What are other Zoho alternatives?
Salesforce
Salesforce is a CRM platform from one of the world’s leading tech companies.
Salesforce provides a clear, shared view of every customer for every team member, automates workflows with AI, protects and secures business data, customizes and scales for the needs of any company, and integrates easily with existing systems and data.
Salesforce has a higher base price than monday.com. This may make it price-prohibitive for some teams.
It also has a larger learning curve than monday.com, and users have complained about its lack of automation.
It does not offer marketing automation integration and cannot be installed on Windows.
Salesforce also does not offer 24/7 live service reps, making it difficult to get the help you need if you run into a problem with the platform.
Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is a comprehensive, no-charge CRM platform available in a self-hosted or online format.
Bitrix24 offers access to open source code for people who want to install the software on their own server.
The cloud version of Bitrix24 limits companies to 12 users and 5 GB of online storage, but offers unlimited contacts, leads, companies, products, deals, invoices, quotes, and email marketing, which many customers love.
Bitrix24’s has a higher per-month, per-user starting price than monday.com, which may make it difficult for small teams to afford.
Its ideal user load also starts at 50, which may make it unsuitable for small teams, freelancers, or anyone else operating on a very limited budget.
Users have complained about a lack of responsiveness from the customer support service and a steep learning curve associated with getting familiar with the platform and its various functions.
While Bitrix24 offers available applications, some users report those applications are difficult to navigate and lack an intuitive interface.
AgileCRM
AgileCRM is a powerful, affordable, all-in-one CRM solution. This platform allows users to automate marketing, sales, and services from a centralized dashboard.
While monday.com scales to suit everyone from small teams to enterprise-level clients, AgileCRM is best suited to SMBs that need simple marketing, service, and sales automation platforms. AgileCRM has an average 4.2 out of 5-star rating, compared to monday.com’s 4.6-star rating.
Part of this is because, although AgileCRM is a powerful platform, it’s missing a large library of templates that can help make planning projects faster, easier, and much more intuitive.
There are dozens of intuitive CRM platforms out there, and finding the right one for your company involves a lot of legwork.
After all, it’s an important decision, and you want to make the right choice. The CRM you choose ultimately impacts a lot of other elements of your business, and it’s essential to have one that provides the functionality and integrations you need.
If you’re looking to make a change from Zoho, monday.com is an excellent option.
The advanced flexibility, customization, and integration options of monday.com make it the best Zoho alternative CRM platform for your business.
Give monday.com a try!
Get started