Introduction

Zoho offers a couple of app bundles that are worth closer examination, Zoho One and CRM Plus. Determining which to choose is often a question of how to choose. When looking at these two options it can be difficult to know what elements to consider and how to make this important decision. This article is meant to help with that challenge.

Use Cases

It is often best when making decisions about new business systems to think about your use cases.

• What departments and roles in your organization are going to use the system?
• What do they need the system to do?

Maybe your users are your Sales and Marketing team and they need a system that helps them manage prospect and customer communication and track progress in a sales pipeline. Maybe your users are your Finance team and they need to be able to generate and send invoices electronically as well as produce monthly financial reporting. Maybe your users are in the field and need to know where they are in a given project and what the next steps are. Maybe your users are the whole org, front to back, and all of the above need to be considered in the solution.

When evaluating use cases for Zoho One vs. Zoho CRM Plus, consider the scale and scope of your business needs. 

Zoho CRM Plus is ideal for companies that prioritize customer-centric operations, with its strong focus on sales, marketing, and customer support. If you need an integrated solution specifically for managing customer relationships, CRM Plus might be the best fit. 

Zoho One, however, is more comprehensive, covering multiple business functions beyond CRM, such as finance, HR, and project management, making it suitable for organizations seeking full digital transformation across all departments.

CRM Plus

Zoho CRM Plus is an integrated suite designed to streamline customer-facing operations. Its focus is more limited and narrow as compared to Zoho One. Key features include advanced CRM capabilities for managing sales pipelines, Zoho Desk for customer support, and Zoho Campaigns for marketing automation. It also offers real-time analytics through Zoho Analytics, seamless collaboration tools like Zoho Projects, and social media engagement via Zoho Social. The platform’s focus is on delivering an enhanced customer experience by enabling unified team collaboration across sales, marketing, and support, making it ideal for businesses aiming to boost customer engagement.

Zoho One

Zoho One is an all-encompassing business operating system that offers over 45 integrated applications to manage various aspects of your business. Zoho One has an app for nearly any business use case making it ideal for that end to end solution that meets an entire org’s needs. 

Key features include: 

• Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, and Zoho Campaigns for sales and marketing
• Zoho Finance Suite for accounting
• Zoho People for HR
• Zoho Projects and Zoho Sprints for project management 

It also includes apps for marketing, inventory management, and collaboration tools. Zoho One’s unified interface and deep app integrations allow seamless data flow between departments, providing comprehensive control over business operations while automating workflows and enhancing productivity across multiple business functions.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing if you review the below list, it begs the question why would anyone use CRM Plus?? For $69/User/Month you can get 14 apps or for $45/User/Month you can have 45 Zoho apps. The caveat is that with Zoho One, Zoho expects you to buy a license for every employee in your org. If, in your use case, only some of your employees need access to Zoho, it may make more sense to buy them CRM Plus licenses. If all of your employees are using Zoho then it’s a no-brainer, buy Zoho One for everyone. If you have a subset of employees who need more than the 14 apps on offer in CRM Plus, Zoho does offer what they call Flexible User Pricing which is simply Zoho One for fewer than all of your employees.

Here again use cases are important and should be considered carefully.

• Do all of your employees need access to Zoho?
• What apps and features will they need?
  • Do they need more than what is on offer in CRM Plus?

CRM Plus Pricing

• Billed Monthly: $69/User/Month
• Billed Annually: $57/User/Month

Zoho One Pricing

All Employee Pricing

• Billed Monthly: $45/User/Month
• Billed Annually: $37/User/Month

Flexible User Pricing

• Billed Monthly: $105/User/Month
• Billed Annually: $90/User/Month

New Features

Zoho is constantly developing and releasing new features and integrations in all of its applications. Since we last wrote about CRM Plus vs Zoho One, in 2019, Zoho has announced hundreds and hundreds of updates in CRM alone. The same is true of Zoho Desk, the Zoho Finance suite, Zoho Projects and all of the other apps featured in these two product bundles. Changes too numerous to do justice in this article but too many to ignore as well. This is well developed, enterprise grade, real world tested and proven software that is constantly improving. 

Conclusion

The decision CRM Plus vs Zoho One comes down to a few questions:

• What are your use cases?
  • What will you be using the software for? Just sales and marketing? Other processes outside sales and marketing?
• From your use cases you should be able to answer the following: What specific Zoho apps are required by your users?
• Will all of your employees use the apps or some subset of employees?

If you can answer these questions, it should be a simple matter of reviewing the above pricing and determining the best option for your organization. That said, there can be complicating details such as third party software integrations or light users who only need access to reporting etc. We at ZBrains are available to help you to make the right decision given all the details. From deciding which bundle is best, to planning your implementation, to managing the change in your organization and optimizing the system after rollout, we’ve helped hundreds of companies over the past 12 years and we’d love to help yours. Please contact us anytime with questions about choosing the right Zoho bundle, how to integrate your other business systems, or anything else Zoho. Remember, Your Zoho experience begins with us!