Zoho vs Salesforce : Which one is the best CRM?

Zoho vs Salesforce in a nutshell

If you’re here, you’re certainly interested in knowing more about CRMs, and finding the best tool for your company. If you’re considering Zoho and Salesforce, you’re on the right track. Both tools are very strong options. But what are their major differences?

Salesforce is a comprehensive tool. It’s good at everything. Given its price range, I’d say it’s rather adapted to the needs of large companies. Zoho emphasizes sales force automation. It’s more affordable and more adapted to the needs of small and medium companies. But these tools have other specificities. Let’s explore them more in detail. 

Zoho vs Salesforce : The complete comparison

Below is a table summarizing the main features of Zoho and Salesforce:

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As you can see, Salesforce is more comprehensive in terms of features. However, Zoho is equipped with the main features you’d be looking for if you don’t want to use your CRM for a very specific case.

What is Zoho?

As I explained, Zoho is a quite recent CRM that is increasingly popular as it’s very powerful fand available for a moderate price. But let’s see the pros and cons of the  tool in detail.

Zoho’s main advantages

• User-friendly interface: Zoho is an intuitive tool that you can quickly master. It’s always better to be able to use the tool you pay for at its full potential.

• Sales automation: Zoho is excellent for enhancing your sales process with features like lead and deal management. It comes with Blueprint, which helps you define and standardize best practices for your sales team. However, to further boost your sales efficiency, consider testing Claap!

• Actions automation: Zoho CRM offers basic automation features. You can easily set up instant actions with Standard plan. More advanced plans include features such as scheduled actions, webhooks, custom functions, auto-responders, and segmentation. 

• Advanced AI features: Zoho’s top-tier plans include advanced AI capabilities, helping you find necessary data and identify anomalies based on sales trends. It includes conversation intelligence features, and Zoho is for instance able to automatically populate client information based on your communications.

• Amazing price/quality ratio: Zoho’s pricing is definitely one of its main advantages. You can use a limited version of the CRM for free (that is already valuable), and the paid plans are very affordable, starting at $8/month.

Zoho’s limitations

• A relatively basic tool: Zoho is a comprehensive CRM with many features, but compared to HubSpot, it can be considered a more basic tool. However, this is reflected in its pricing.

• Support issues: Zoho's support system is free but not the fastest. You might experience long wait times for responses, which can be problematic and frustrating when dealing with critical issues.

• Frequent bugs: Some users have reported encountering bugs, particularly with new updates.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is simply the leader of the CRM market. It’s the most famous CRM, and there is a reason for that: it’s arguably the best one. But this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best for YOUR company. For that, you need to know what are the pros and cons of this solution. Let’s see that together. 

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Salesforce’s main advantages

• Comprehensive management of customer relationship : Salesforce provides a comprehensive platform to manage all customer interactions, from the initial contact to closing the sale. You get an overview of all interactions and can leverage advanced features to personalize your approach.

• Marketing automation : Salesforce offers powerful marketing automation features to help you create targeted campaigns and track the performance of your marketing efforts. For instance, you can create automated emails and workflows to boost your productivity.

• Advanced automation capabilities :  You can easily create processes to standardize and automate CRM operations using Salesforce Flow tools. You can also create workflows to guide sales team through each step of the sales process.

• World-class customer service: Salesforce delivers world-class customer service with features like ticket management, request tracking, and service level agreement management. This enables you to provide quick and efficient support to your customers, enhancing their satisfaction.

• More than a simple CRM : Salesforce not only provides numerous native applications but also integrates with thousands of third-party apps. You can accomplish almost anything with Salesforce, thanks to its incredibly wide range of products, including net-zero sustainability management, custom analytics solutions, and connected experience integration.

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Salesforce’s limitations

• Initial learning curve: Due to its advanced features, and its heavy interface, Salesforce might require a longer learning curve for new users.

• Quite expensive: I wouldn’t say  that Salesforce is unaffordable. But in the context of a comparison with Zoho, I have to say Salesforce is more expensive. It’s a fact. For instance, Zoho’s Ultimate Plan is priced at $52/user/month while Salesforce’s is priced at $330/user/month. But let’s see that more in detail in the following section.

What about the price?

Zoho’s price

• Free : With 3 users and essential features like leads, documents and mobile app

• Standard : $14/month/user with basic features like sales forecasting and scoring rules

• Professional :  $23/month/user with additional features such as email integration and social CRM

• Enterprise :  $40/month/user with AI functionalities

• Ultimate : $52/month/user with all the features

Salesforce’s price

I already talked about Hubspot’s pricing before, but let’s summarize the different plans offered:

• Starter : $25/month/user with limited features (mainly custom reports)

• Professional :  $80/month/user with more features (lead scoring notably) and a larger storage capacity

• Enterprise :  $165/month/user with larger customization capabilities

• Unlimited:  $330/month/user with Generative AI capabilities
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• Einstein 1 Sales:  $500/month/user with all the features, and third party integrations facilitated

I’d say Salesforce isn’t overpriced. You pay more but obtain a top tool in exchange. If your company has an important budget or advanced needs, I’d recommend going for Salesforce. However, Zoho’s price value must not be overlooked. If you are a SME or want to test a CRM, it could be a really good idea and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Why you should also consider Claap

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What is Claap?

I know, we were talking about CRMs. And Claap is not a CRM. But I bet you’d be open to hear about a tool that can supercharge your sales team’s productivity… So let me talk about Claap.

Claap is an audio and video transcription tool. And it also has a recording feature in case it’s not sufficient. As a salesperson (who doesn’t know Claap yet) you’re certainly doing tons of calls everyday. So think about how it could change your life. No note taking anymore, and no need to summarize your notes as Claap also does it for you.

Claap increases your conversion rate

With these features only, Claap would be a great tool. But wait till you hear the best part. Claap is an asynchronous meeting tool. It completely changes your way of communicating with prospects/clients. Using its interface, you can record your screen while having your camera on. In 5 minutes, you’ve recorded your first claap, and you can send that to your prospects instead of sending a boring e-mail. And you won’t believe the impact it has on your conversion rate: 

“Every time I was doing that I had like 40% conversion rates compared to like 3, 4, or 5% with normal approaches.”  (Guillaume De Nacquard, from Surfe)