Zoho CRM alternatives: 6 CRMs for sales and growth 🌱

When something seems too good to be true, it's time to check the user reviews.

For those who haven’t heard of Zoho—well, you probably have and just weren’t aware of it. Zoho is a multinational technology company that provides web-based business solutions ranging from slide decks to recruitment to inventory management, and just about everything in between.

Zoho was founded in 1996 under the name AdventNet, back when the internet made your computer emit cartoon noises, and data was stored on things called floppy disks (which weren’t even floppy) that held a couple megabytes. Adobe Photoshop, for example, required over a dozen floppy disks to install on your computer.

So back then, in the days before Google Docs, it made sense to pay a company like Zoho for a web-based word processor: It meant fewer floppy disks to stuff into your computer. Or, for an enterprise, fewer floppy disks to stuff into 1,000 computers.

And Zoho’s growth continued. In 2005, it released Zoho CRM, followed by Projects and Sheets in 2006, and Zoho Meeting in 2007. The next year it reached one million users, and would reach 50 million users in 2020.

The purpose of this article is to outline Zoho CRM specifically, as it pertains to comparable CRMs in terms of pricing and features.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is Zoho’s magnum opus in the Saas world, and is relied on by over 150,000 businesses across 180 countries. It offers basic contact management functionality, including automation, like converting website visitors into leads automatically.

Its pipeline management features aren’t lackluster either, offering users a choice between a standard list view, or an easily-readable chart view as well. Its users also enjoy the ability to create multiple sales pipelines, customize reports, and integrate with third-party software through native integrations and Zaps where the integrations fall short.

But Zoho CRM also has its limitations. For instance, companies are only allowed 1GB of data for the entire organization, and additional data costs extra. The pipeline doesn’t feature a drag-and-drop board, which would make quick pipeline management much easier.

Additionally, personalized onboarding costs organizations a starting price of $600, which actually dissuades small-to-medium businesses from enrolling. For contrast, Nutshell’s live support, onboarding, personalized webinars, administrator demos, etc., are always free, because Nutshell wants its users to get the maximum value out of its CRM.

Starter: $14/mo

Full package: $52/mo

Notable features:

• Integration with other Zoho apps
• In-CRM emailing (limited #/users)
• Dashboards and reporting
• Integrates with Microsoft and Outlook
• Workflow management

Watch out for: The resounding user complaint is that Zoho’s support is not very good. Due to this, users report purchasing the software and still not being up-and-running after weeks. Furthermore, getting full use out of the software “requires custom development,” even after enrolling employees in Zoho’s expensive training.

See also: Nutshell vs. Zoho, a head-to-head comparison

Zoho alternatives

Nutshell

Starter: $20/user/month (billed annually), $27/user/month (billed monthly)

Full package (Pro): $42/user/month (billed annually), $49/user/month (billed monthly)

Notable features:

• Automated sales pipelines
• Interactive map view and drag-and-drop lead board
• Comprehensive contact filtering and sorting
• Automated personal email sequences
• Native email marketing suite (additional cost based on your number of contacts)
• Embeddable webforms
• Integrations with Gmail, Office 365, Outlook, QuickBooks Online, and Slack (among many others)
• Free onboarding and live support

Summary: Nutshell is an all-in-one sales and marketing platform that helps sales teams close more deals faster. Powerful enough to support any element of your business and simple enough to implement without a paid admin or IT department, Nutshell is favored among small to medium-sized companies who know better than to overpay for software they’ll never use.

Furthermore, Nutshell's features often outshine the competitors’ in terms of both usability and comprehensiveness, according to customer reviews.

The Nutshell Marketing "hype trailer." ^

Nutshell also offers a fully-fledged email marketing suite that integrates directly with CRM data, meaning no copying and pasting email addresses back and forth. In Nutshell, email marketing recipients’ activity is displayed directly on their timeline, making communication between sales and marketing teams completely built-in.

Watch out for: Users indicate that the feel of the mobile application doesn’t match the PC interface with which they are familiar.

🎉 New in 2022: Nutshell Forms now allows users to create beautiful, custom forms to be hosted on any website or landing page. All information captured by Nutshell Forms is beamed directly into the CRM, completely hassle-free. How will you use forms?