Zoho Invoice – Best Invoice Customization

Zoho Invoicing offers three paid tiers, and one free tier. The three paid tiers are the Basic plan ($11 per month), the Standard plan ($22 per month), and the Professional plan ($33 per month). All of these plans offer the same features, with the only difference coming in the amount of clients and users.

There are a fair few invoicing software options on the market, but Zoho stands out as one of the best. Its most radiant accolade is its customization options, which let you create and modify invoice templates before they’re sent to clients.

We recommend the Standard tier. As all the plans come stocked with the same features, the decision really comes down to how many clients you’ll be invoicing on a monthly basis. With 500 clients offered by the Standard plan, you’ll likely be able to meet an average business’s invoice total without having to spill over into the Professional plan’s unlimited invoices.

On this page:

• What Is Zoho Invoicing?
• Zoho Basic Plan
• Zoho Standard Plan
• Zoho Professional Plan
• Zoho Free Plan
• Alternatives to Zoho Invoicing
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Zoho Invoicing?

Taking a step back, what does Zoho Invoicing do?

Zoho Invoicing is one of the best invoicing software, and the jewel in its crown is its customization options.

With a massive 16 templates (for reference, the runner up, Invoice2Go, offers eight templates), you’ll be able to tweak and customize your invoices to match your business’s branding.

On these invoices, you’ll be able to customize cosmetic things, like your logo or certain colors, but you’ll also be able to add more substantial details, like tracked hours, multi-currency, taxes, and discounts.

That’s not all, though, as they offer a lot of features that other software lock behind higher tiers, like recurring invoices and customizable analytics reports. Truthfully, the only area of Zoho Invoicing that could use some work is their customer support, as they don’t offer 24/7 support, nor do they offer live chat options, meaning anyone looking for help is stuck with phone lines and email.

Zoho Invoice Pricing Plans

Zoho Invoicing offers three paid plans and one free plan. Unlike a lot of tiered software, however, Zoho Invoicing doesn’t have much variation between their plans, with the only differences hinging on the amount of clients you can invoice every month.

You can mix it up yourself by adding integrations and add-ons, but these might come with additional costs.

Taking a step back, what does Zoho Invoicing do?

Zoho Invoicing is one of the best invoicing software, and the jewel in its crown is its customization options.

With a massive 16 templates (for reference, the runner up, Invoice2Go, offers eight templates), you’ll be able to tweak and customize your invoices to match your business’s branding.

On these invoices, you’ll be able to customize cosmetic things, like your logo or certain colors, but you’ll also be able to add more substantial details, like tracked hours, multi-currency, taxes, and discounts.

That’s not all, though, as they offer a lot of features that other software lock behind higher tiers, like recurring invoices and customizable analytics reports. Truthfully, the only area of Zoho Invoicing that could use some work is their customer support, as they don’t offer 24/7 support, nor do they offer live chat options, meaning anyone looking for help is stuck with phone lines and email.

Any feature included in Zoho is standard across every tier. Some highlights include:

• 16 premade templates
• Ability to add tracked hours to invoices
• Display discounts and attach files
• Setting up payment reminders and recurring invoices
• Third party payment processing (like PayPal or Stripe)
• The ability to create customizable reports of your invoice data

Basic Plan – Best for Businesses Just Starting Out

Limits:

• 50 clients
• 1 user
• Unlimited invoices
• Unlimited estimates

Zoho Invoicing’s Basic plan costs a monthly $11, or $9 if you opt to pay on a yearly basis. This plan offers a single user the ability to send invoices to 50 clients.

This isn’t a massive amount of recipients, so obviously if your business needs to send invoices to more than 50 clients, you’ll want to boost your plan. This is also the case if you’re looking to expand your business over time. If you only send around 40 invoices a month, but project your business to grow within the next few months, it might be worth springing for the next level up, the Standard plan.

However, if your business is only just starting out, and you need no more than ten to 20 invoices a month, then you’ll be comfortable with the Basic plan for quite a while.

Standard Plan – Best for Businesses on the Rise

Limits:

• 500 clients
• 3 users
• Unlimited invoices
• Unlimited estimates

The middle plan, the Standard plan, costs $22 a month, or $19 a month if you pay annually. You’ll be able to send 500 invoices a month, and allow three users onto your company’s platform.

This plan is great for businesses that are growing significantly. 500 invoices is a large limit to sink your teeth into, and will be able to support any business on their rise to the top, especially if you’re upgrading from the Basic plan.

You’d need a lot of clients to outgrow this plan, and the range between 50 and 500 clients means that the Standard plan will be enough for a vast number of businesses, making it our most recommended tier.

Professional Plan – Best for Established Businesses

Limits:

• Unlimited clients
• 10 users
• Unlimited invoices
• Unlimited estimates

Zoho Invoicing’s most expensive plan is the Professional tier, costing $33 a month, or $29 a month if you pay it all annually. This plan offers you ten user profiles, and unlimited invoice sending.

As you can tell from the unlimited invoices, this is a plan for businesses with substantial client bases. You wouldn’t want to opt for this unless you’re pushing 500 invoices a month, as the boost in user profiles would probably only benefit a business with a dedicated accounting team – a business that likely already has well over 500 clients.

Zoho Invoicing Free Plan – A Nice Demo

Limits:

• 5 clients
• 1 user
• Unlimited invoices
• Unlimited estimates

Zoho does offer a free plan, which comes stocked with everything from the other tiers. While there’s no monthly cost, it does limit you to only five clients, accessible to a single user, which is a very small amount.

This tier would only serve two practical functions. Firstly, if you were the owner of a small business that was just starting out and didn’t have much capital or a client base, this is a non-committal way to invoice the few clients you do have under your belt.

Secondly, if you were shopping around different invoice services, this is a good way to demo Zoho Invoicing. There’s no cost involved, yet you can still get to grips with the software and all of its features before you opt for a more accommodating paid plan.

Zoho Hidden Costs: Add-Ons and Integrations

To get the most out of your Zoho account, you might want to look for some integrations that allow you to expand your horizons.

Zoho is home to a lot of software, not just invoice software. And almost all of these software options can be linked up and integrated into each other, which can be a huge help when it comes to staying on top of your finances.

For example, Zoho CRM is a Zoho product that allows you to keep in touch with your customers and maintain relationships with them. If you pay the monthly $14-$52 per user, you’ll be able to connect your Zoho Invoice to your Zoho CRM.

Zoho also have an analytics software, starting at $30 a month. This software will allow you to create useful and visually engaging reports that include all of your company’s data. These can be shown to clients or investors in order to give a good summary of your business.

And it’s not just Zoho products. You can also integrate your Zoho Invoice account with your email account, G Suite, or your business’s Slack network. These can help you stay on top of communication within your company, as anyone who needs to be informed of invoice activity will be notified.

You will need to pay the standard prices for these services, however. For example, G Suite costs businesses between $6 and $12 per month for each user, and Slack costs between $6.67 and $12.50 for each user. Linking these products up to your Zoho Invoices, however, is completely free once you pay for each software independently.

Alternatives to Zoho Invoicing

Zoho is one of the best invoicing software options out there, so it’s tricky to find a competitor that is objectively better than them in certain areas.

While Zoho isn’t incredibly expensive by any means, it’s always a good idea to find areas where you can cut costs, as long as you’re not missing out on any crucial features. If you’re looking for a cheaper option, Oneup’s cheapest plan, the Self plan (costing $9 per month), is a good place to start.

The only things missing from Oneup’s Self plan when compared to Zoho are a library of preset invoice templates, customizable reports, invoice tracking, and recurring invoices. However, Oneup does still beat Zoho in some places, as even this lowest tier offers unlimited client support, and the ability to add sales taxes to your analytics.

One reason you might not want to opt for Zoho is simply because they don’t offer the most comprehensive support network in the world, as their support isn’t live 24/7, nor is there a live chat option, meaning you’ll have to resort to phone lines or email support.

If you’re not the best with software, and already feel like you might need a bit of help with your invoicing, you might want to consider Wave invoicing. They’re free (but do skim a bit off of every invoice made) and offer a live chat option, while still supporting email. They miss a couple things offered by Zoho, like tracked hours on their invoices or customizable reports, but otherwise are still a solid choice.

Zoho Invoice vs QuickBooks

If you’re looking for support options, another choice might be QuickBooks’s Advanced tier. It offers every support option you could want, while also packing a massive amount of features. However, at its monthly cost of $150, it’s not an investment to be made lightly.

QuickBooks does offer cheaper options (albeit without their robust support network), notably their Simple Start plan and Essentials plan. Putting the support options aside, the Simple Start plan ($25 per month) offers almost everything that Zoho does, missing only multi-currency support and the ability to add tracked hours to an invoice.

The Essentials plan ($40 per month) patches both of those holes, adding multi-currency and tracked hours, and giving you three users instead of one. Also, while Zoho exclusively uses third-party payment processors, like PayPal and Stripe, QuickBooks uses a first party payment processor, which may influence your decision if you’ve already become accustomed to a third party option.

Frequently Asked Questions