Zoho vs Salesforce: Which CRM Software Is Best?

Both have their merits, but according to our research, Salesforce is the better than Zoho because of its industry-leading features, notable scalability, and robust data analytics. Zoho, however, still has an ace up its sleeve – compellingly affordable plans for smaller businesses compared to Salesforce.

If your business is deciding on which CRM platform to use, you'll definitely have come across Salesforce. As the market leader, and a company with healthy marketing and PR teams behind it, Salesforce is one of the first destinations when researching a CRM.

Zoho is an admittedly popular competitor though, well known for its Google Docs competitor: Zoho Docs. It offers a comparably robust package at a more reasonable price point, and our research shows that it's the best CRM for small businesses and the best CRM for sales, although Salesforce makes it a close competition. You'll definitely miss out on some of the more advanced customizability found with Salesforce, though, so make sure you can part ways with that.

Honestly, both providers have their pros and cons, so let's take a closer look at both platforms below, and don't forget you can compare Salesforce, Zoho, and other CRM platforms with our helpful comparison tool to get the right price for your business.

In this Guide:

Of course, these aren't the only CRM tools to consider. Check out some of these further alternatives, below. Or, scroll on to learn more about Salesforce and Zoho.

Both Zoho and Salesforce are capable services that have a lot to offer – however, the question really isn't which of these companies is the best choice, but whether either of them is the right fit for you. A good way to discover a CRM that can be customized for your needs is to use our handy CRM Quotes Tool to receive tailor-made, zero-obligation CRM cost quotes, which take into account your company's individual needs and scale.

Basic Layout

When you first sign in to Zoho and Salesforce, you are greeted with a dashboard containing large rectangular tiles that display key information such as current quarterly performance, open tasks, and deals closing this month. What you see on either CRM's dashboard is customizable to a certain degree, although the “quarterly performance” tile is specific to Salesforce's default view.

Both CRMs use navigation menu tabs at the top of the screen and basic headings such as Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Deals/Opportunities, Documents/Files, Reports/Dashboard, and so on. Both also have a social networking style section where team members can share information in the form of posts.

Integrations

Contacts is a key section for any CRM, and both Salesforce and Zoho cover the basics here. Zoho, however, has some nice integrations that are available by default – the key one being if a salesperson adds their Twitter or Facebook account, and then adds the corresponding social account for their contacts, they can view their contacts' social activity within Zoho's CRM. This is a great feature if you run a business where most of your interactions happen on social media.

Salesforce can do something similar with a lot of powerful tools for social media monitoring, but it requires Marketing Cloud, which is a service beyond Sales Cloud, Salesforce's basic CRM. Plus, with Salesforce and Microsoft teaming up, you can seamlessly add functionality to the platform through Microsoft Teams.

Additionally, Salesforce has announced a few great add-ons that could really bolster your online offering. For one, Salesforce Anywhere is the company's answer to the pandemic, offering a team collaboration platform that allows for real-time messaging and document sharing for remote workers. It has also announced that its new analytics platform is called Tableau and offers aa 360-degree view of customer interactions to give you all the information you need.

Overall, we give the advantage to Salesforce due to the massive number of web conferencing and VoIP integrations available through the platform. During a pandemic that has seen increasing numbers of employees working from home, the ability to remotely communicate with team members is more important than ever.

Ease of Use

Looking at both services from an ease-of-use perspective, there's no question that Zoho wins this face-off.

Salesforce has a ton of features and options to tweak. The basic categories are easy enough to understand, but there are many ways to customize the service and many extra features to explore – not to mention a thriving third-party app marketplace.

Zoho is more straightforward, with a cleaner look and about the same number of menu tabs as Salesforce. Zoho's third-party integrations aren't as deep as Salesforce, but if you're looking for simplicity, then that may be less of an issue unless there's a particular third-party tool you absolutely must use.

We tested both platforms for usability. Our research found that the experience of completing basic actions such as managing contacts and sales pipelines was largely similar between the two. However, Zoho had a far better onboarding experience which only took 17 minutes whilst SF took 35 minutes due to a more complicated data import process.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

If you're interested in harnessing computing power with your CRM to help provide insights into your business, improved workflows, and other suggestions, both services offer this kind of powerful feature in the upper pricing tiers. Zoho's is called Zia AI, and you can use it as a chatbot to surface key data on demand, including record data, dashboards, and reports. Zia can also predict the probability of success for leads and deals based on historic performance.

Salesforce, meanwhile, has Einstein AI, which can also surface predictions and recommendations based on the data saved in the CRM. Like Zia, Einstein has predictive capabilities to examine the likelihood of successfully converting leads and opportunities, as well as forecasting sales data.

During testing, we found Zoho's automation builder easier to use. This is because Salesforce's automation builder is far more extensive, allowing you to automate almost anything within the system. Conversely, Zoho keeps it to the basics, like contacts, leads, deals, accounts, and products, so it's easier to get the hang of.

Both Salesforce and Zoho offer their AI features with their higher-priced Enterprise tiers ($150 per user per month for Salesforce; $40 per user per month for Zoho CRM), though Zoho does offer Zia's automation intelligence features starting with its Standard package ($14 per user per month).

Zoho Desk

While it might not be one of the best options out there, Zoho Desk provides an affordable option — starting at $14 per user per month — that is geared towards small businesses. You'll get a lot of customer service features, although it is lacking a bit when it comes to customer feedback and the number of communication channels you can take advantage of.

Still, Zoho Desk provides great ticketing channels, plenty of contact focused features, and a lot of data so you can hone your strategy a bit more effectively. Here are a few pros, cons, and screenshots to get a better idea of how these customer service-focused CRM operates.

Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce is ideal for sales businesses, as the name implies, but it also offers a wide range of other options, and the Service Cloud is the best for customer service-focused companies. While it isn't our favorite CRM for customer service — an honor that goes to Zendesk — it definitely holds its own for larger businesses in need of a robust option that costs a bit extra — specifically $25 per user per month.

You get all the data visualizations and features found in other Salesforce plans, and adds some customer service specific features, like offline customer service functionality and solid team infrastructure. It's notably lacking any customer feedback options like surveys, but that's certainly not a dealbreaker if you're looking to improve your team.

Take a look at some pros, cons, and screenshots of Salesforce Service Hub to get a better idea of what you're in for with this platform.