ERP Consultant Blog

Zoho vs. Salesforce: 3 Reasons Customers Choose Zoho Over Salesforce

Written by Dan Champ | Tue, May 14, 2013

If you are looking into online CRM options, you are most likely looking at Salesforce. Did you know that when you compare Zoho vs. Salesforce, you’ll discover another online CRM option that is just as good as Salesforce at a fraction of the cost?  Let’s compare Salesforce with Zoho Online CRM and review 3 key benefits  of Zoho vs. Salesforce that will help you avoid overpaying for an online CRM solution.  In our comparison of Zoho vs. Salesforce, we will look at; 1) overall features 2) the total cost of ownership and 3) the ability to integrate with your back-office accounting software.


1)    Zoho vs. Salesforce: Overall Features  

In our opinion, Zoho has superior inventory management functionality when compared to Salesforce.  In Zoho your sales team has real-time access to open quotes, invoices, vendors and products. The bottom line in Sales is: if your product isn’t available to ship then you can’t book it. Zoho Online CRM gives you instant access to your inventory quantity on-hand and what is available to ship from what warehouse. Visibility into your inventory availability is just one example of how Zoho helps your Sales team gain a competitive edge to meet or beat sales quotas.  


Here are some additional benefits of Zoho vs. Salesforce:

  • Feature rich set with an intuitive web-based interface
  • Affordable CRM solution at a fraction of the cost
  • Available as an on-demand service accessible from anywhere – including your mobile device
  • Easy to use and fully customizable user interface to match any organization’s CRM workflow process
  • Export your Zoho data anytime
  • Increase your business productivity by automating key aspects of the customer lifecycle
  • Continuous Zoho product updates without service disruptions and extra costs
  • Dedicated customer support during implementation and deployment
  • Local Zoho CRM certified consultants available for additional training and integration work

Please contact us for a more in-depth feature by feature comparison of Zoho vs. Salesforce.


2)    Zoho vs. Salesforce: Lower Total Cost of Ownership: 

Zoho Online CRM is 75% less than the cost of Salesforce and has similar features that you would expect from a leading online CRM solution. Salesforce has a big reputation for being one of the market leaders for leading online CRM solution.  Did you also know that Salesforce is the more expensive option?  It’s not only costly, but also hard to manage and implement.  If you have the money to spend, then Salesforce is great but beware of low adoption. 

If Salesforce is too hard to use or customize, then your internal teams are unlikely to use it as intended.  Most Salesforce users are only using a fraction of the features in the system .  Why pay for features your teams will not use?  Zoho’s business model is to provide growing businesses with an affordable, easy to use CRM solution that offers the flexibility to run your business the way you need to run it. Zoho is easily customizable to capture the data you need to help your Sales and Marketing teams increase sales and profitability.  

When you compare Zoho vs. Salesforce, Zoho wins with their “pay-as-you-go” model. Zoho's payment model gives customers the flexibility of shorter or longer-term commitments minimizing the risk of being forced to use a system also known as software “vendor lock-in.”  This diagram below illustrates how a 5 year investment of Zoho vs. Salesforce.  Clearly, the Zoho versions in blue and red are at a fraction of the cost of an investment with Salesforce.

 

3)    Zoho vs. Salesforce: Accounting System Integration

Are you using QuickBooks?  Zoho offers Zoho QuickBooks integration.  Are you using another leading ERP software solution like Sage 100?  We have developed a seamless Sage 100 Zoho integration. Our Zoho consultants are available to help integrate Zoho with your system. Zoho also integrates with a number of robust Zoho Business Apps and the Zoho Office Suite (Mail, Meeting, Sheet, Writer, etc.).  Zoho is available on your mobile device so you can take your data on the road.

Would you like to have a more in-depth comparison of Zoho vs. Salesforce? Our experienced CRM consultants will be happy to help you with your Online CRM selection process. If you already own Zoho, take some time to learn more about our Zoho training options! Zoho Online CRM users can join our monthly classroom training sessions and request individual appointments both on-site and remote via webinar.

If you’re just starting out, we suggest attending one of our free monthly webinars. We offer Zoho Online CRM customer’s free bi-monthly training sessions every other Wednesday at 11:00am – 11:30am Pacific Time. You can register for our next complimentary Zoho training session. We offer both basic user level and admin training so you can harness the full potential of the software. Our classroom training courses cost as little as $995 per person for an all-day session with one of our experts. Remote training of our boot camp as a webinar is also available at $595 per half day and $795 per full day.