21 Best Zoho Alternatives for CRM and Project Management

Updated Aug 7, 2023.
zoho-alternatives

Zoho needs no introduction. This project management/CRM tool is excellent in all that it does, from task management to multi-channel communication and reporting.

Its features set can be adapted to any organization of any size, whether it be a small mom-and-pop establishment or a Fortune 500 company—it’s used by Dell and Sage, for example.

But you might want different things from your project management software or CRM platform than Zoho can provide.

Improved usability might be your shtick.

Or greater flexibility.

Or you might want more out-of-the-box integrations.

Whatever it may be, here are the 21 best Zoho alternatives for CRM and project management in 2023 that are worthy of your consideration.

Best Zoho Alternatives for Project Management

1. Monday.com

Best Overall Alternative to Zoho.

Monday.com is the Best Overall Alternative to Zoho

Monday.com is an excellent workflow management solution that allows your team to build custom, automated workflows that simplify your work processes and tasks.

This work management tool is flexible enough to allow you and your team to be more creative with how you customize the platform to fit your specific needs.

There are powerful built-in tools that let you fully automate your workflows and streamline your work to boost productivity and reduce errors.

Monday.com features a drag-and-drop interface upon which you can plan and run projects with your team, whether it's an office-based team or a distributed team.

At a glance, you can see a broad overview of all your projects and manage the workflow of everyone in your team more effectively.

You also get analytics that give you insights into your team's performance so that you can find ways to boost team productivity.

All of Monday.com’s tools and workflows can be customized, from the dashboard and forms to the content blocks and pre-built templates—which help you get up and running with the system very quickly.

Additionally, Monday.com is equipped with bountiful collaboration tools to help your team work more effectively in a shared workspace. You can invite guests to join you in on your projects, a feature that’s particularly useful for teams that regularly work with clients and independent contractors.

And finally, the platform boasts a wide variety of third-party integrations, including Dropbox, Slack, Twitter, Harvest, Pipedrive, Jira, Surveymonkey, Facebook, Outlook, Box, Hubspot, Stripe, Zendesk, Twilio, Todoist, Shopify, Salesforce, and many more.

Pricing

Learn more about Monday pricing or Monday review

There are 4 different pricing plans: Basic Plan (which costs $8/seat/month with a 3-seat minimum), Standard Plan, Pro Plan, and Enterprise.

Monday.com also offers a free forever plan for 2 users and a 14-day free trial.

Pros

  • Boasts a wide variety of out-of-the-box integrations
  • Provides multiple project views
  • Time-tracking is inbuilt

Cons

  • Support for task dependencies is limited
  • Support can be slow

2. ClickUp

Best Free Alternative to Zoho.

ClickUp is the Best Free Alternative to Zoho

ClickUp’s many features include task assignments and status, communication and collaboration tools, a task toolbar, and custom alerts. These features make this alternative to Zoho Projects a great choice for businesses of all sizes and across all industries.

The platform allows users to assign tasks and comments to a team member or group of team members. The assignee can mark the task or comment as resolved or in progress or create a custom status to indicate their progress with the task.

ClickUp can display projects on an Agile dashboard or organize them by assignee. There’s an activity stream on which ClickUp displays tasks as they’re created or completed, all in real-time.

You can also configure your notifications to be sent only for specific items or events. When a team member mentions another user in a discussion, the Mentions feature alerts them. Comments can even be edited after posting.

And with integrations with platforms like Slack and GitHub, ClickUp could very well be all you need to manage your projects and more.

Pricing

Learn more about ClickUp pricing or ClickUp review

ClickUp boasts a free plan that could rival many paid project management solutions on the market today, so much so that comparing it to Zoho Project’s free plan would be unfair.

And on top of this extremely generous free plan, the entry-level plan costs only $5 monthly per user. On the surface, this might seem similar to Zoho’s starting price of $5 monthly per user. But dig deeper and the differences start to emerge.

For example, Zoho’s entry plan is limited to 50 users while ClickUp's free plan allows unlimited users. ClickUp is way more value for your money than Zoho Projects currently offers.

Pros

  • All plans support unlimited users
  • Plans are more generous than Zoho Projects
  • Has an extensive feature set

Cons

  • No financial management/budgeting features
  • Native integrations are not plentiful
  • Might have a steep learning curve due to its vast feature set

3. Wrike

Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Medium to Large Enterprises.

Wrike is the Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Medium to Large Enterprises

Wrike boasts a feature set and price point that tell you who its target market is: larger enterprises. Designed for teams of 20+ members, Wrike supports remote work and distributed teams.

It boasts extensive enterprise resource management features—like a Workload View that helps you track and balance employee workloads so that no one employee is either overloaded or underutilized—and is equipped with Gantt charts, calendars, custom dashboards, and real-time updates.

Tasks can be auto-assigned based on their status, and your workflow can be structured into folders or by projects.

Wrike offers separate platforms for marketing and creative teams, as well as service delivery teams. These platforms come with tools that are tailored towards the needs of teams in those fields.

For example, Wrike for Marketers comes with proofing tools and an Adobe extension, which are essential for marketing teams.

And if somehow, you can’t find one you need from its many integrations with third-party tools like Salesforce, Dropbox, Slack, and Adobe Creative Cloud, you can always create custom integrations with its open API.

Pricing

Learn more about Wrike pricing

Wrike has a free version and pricing starts at $9.80 monthly per user.

Pros

  • Suitable for remote teams
  • User interface is highly intuitive
  • Dashboards are customizable
  • Document editor allows you to edit documents on the cloud without downloading
  • Supports recurring tasks and multi-day deadlines

Cons

  • Reviewing HTML emails in Wrike is only possible through a web browser and not the app
  • Due dates cannot be set at the collaborator level
  • Expensive for the tools included
  • Doesn’t offer integrated live chat
  • No billing and invoicing

4. Teamwork

Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Client Projects.

Teamwork is the Best Zoho Projects alternative for client projects

Teamwork bills itself as “the all-in-one project management platform for client work”, and we couldn’t agree more.

With features like task lists, time tracking, file uploads, and messages, businesses get all the functionality to manage the different operations of a project. Teams can group objectives, collaborate more effectively and efficiently, and establish business processes.

The project scheduling features on this platform allow you to define project tasks, assign them to team members, and track assignments that are in progress.

You also get document management features that allow you to share documents with your team members via an online portal, thereby keeping all correspondence and project documentation in one place.

From the time logged using the inbuilt time tracking feature, you can generate invoices with the client billing feature, further proving that this tool was created specifically for businesses that work with clients.

The dashboards provide maximum visibility into projects and the collaboration features allow team members to communicate and remain connected remotely.

There are integrations with third-party tools like FreshBooks, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and many others. And support is offered via FAQs, phone, and email.

Pricing

Learn more about Teamwork pricing

Teamwork’s free to try for 30 days, and there’s a free forever plan. Then pricing starts at $10 monthly per person.

Pros

  • Design is simple and intuitive
  • Includes features for billing and invoicing
  • Offers a free account

Cons

  • No image or PDF markup tools

5. Hive

Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Workload Analytics and Productivity Insights.

Hive is the Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Workload Analytics and Productivity Insights

Hive claims to be the first project management platform that’s built for users by users. It’s likely the only one of its kind, too, seeing as it prioritizes the addition of features that are most requested by its users.

This cloud-based project management platform can cater to teams of any size or ilk, offering a vast selection of features like file sharing, task management, process automation, and chat.

As with any other project management software worth its salt, Hive lets you create, classify and assign tasks to any team member, complete with attached files, tags, and due dates.

You can track the status of projects and view everything on a Kanban board. There are also document management features for easy file storage, access, and sharing with team members.

Hive Analytics tracks team productivity on three dashboards using machine learning and existing data, and it provides insights for improving team productivity. You also get real-time alerts when there are drops in productivity levels.

Pricing

Hive offers a free forever plan that it calls Hive Solo. The paid plan, Hive Teams, is priced at $16 monthly per user. The platform is available to try for 14 days.

Pros

  • Request forms are editable
  • Adds features most requested by users
  • Very robust proofing and review environment – handles video as well

Cons

  • Client management process takes some getting used to
  • Does not support multiple file attachments to project requests
  • Mobile app is lackluster

6. Scoro

A Complete, End-to-End Work Management Alternative to Zoho.

Scoro is a Complete, End to End Work Management Alternative to Zoho

Offering customizable, real-time dashboards; sales pipeline management and CRM features; and flexible billing solutions, Scoro goes above and beyond Zoho’s exclusionary focus on project management features and capabilities.

This project management solution displays pending tasks, account information, KPIs, calendar events, and lots more on a single dashboard. Tasks are automatically populated in a task list that can be sorted by user, and you can see task changes in real-time.

You can also manage and synchronize multiple projects, tasks, calendars, and quotes in a single interface. Plus, you can send invoices to clients with its invoicing and budgeting capabilities. There are also features for advanced reporting and labor cost tracking.

Integrations include Microsoft tools like Outlook and Dynamics, as well as Dropbox and MailChimp, among others. And support is offered via user guides, video tutorials, email, and phone.

Pricing

Learn more about Scoro pricing

Scoro starts at $26 monthly per user with a 5-user minimum which is way more than Zoho Projects asks for. Whether it’s worth such a steep premium or not is entirely up to you.

Pros

  • Perfect for businesses of all sizes
  • Features capacity monitoring functionalities

Cons

  • Way more expensive than Zoho Projects
  • No free version
  • No templates

7. nTask

Superb Zoho Projects Alternative With Wonderful Prices and Great Feature Distribution.

nTask is a Superb Zoho Projects alternative with wonderful prices and great feature distribution

nTask gives small businesses and individuals all the regular project management features: collaboration, task management, meeting and scheduling, and many other tools.

But unlike many other SaaS offerings that hide the best features in their higher-tier paid plans, nTask offers many of its best features for free and on its entry-level paid plan.

The platform gives you the tools you need to assign tasks, set recurring tasks, share and attach files, generate checklists, and generate progress reports. The Gantt charts give you the most ideal interface to monitor project progress.

There are also features for resource and budget management. So, you can plan and monitor budgets for various projects, assign resources to specific tasks, define risks and issues, and keep an eye on how much time team members spend on each task.

nTask integrates neatly with Google Calendar and Outlook for meeting and calendar management. It offers mobile apps for Android and iOS and provides support via phone and email—although support is not very good.

Pricing

Allowing up to five users, nTask’s Basic plan is free forever. Then there are three paid plans, Premium (which costs $3 monthly per user, billed annually, cheaper than Zoho’s entry-level plan), Business, and Enterprise. Plus, there’s a free trial for all paid plans.

Pros

  • You can access most of nTask’s best features on the free and entry-level Premium plan
  • Time-tracking is excellent
  • Comes with a meeting management feature
  • Improves productivity and transparency with its task management features

Cons

  • Customer service is not the best
  • Could use more customization and formatting options
  • The calendar view is hard to configure

8. Nifty

Excellent All-in-One Zoho Projects Alternative.

Nifty is an excellent all in one Zoho Projects alternative

Nifty combines all the project management features you’ll ever need into an effective tool that improves team productivity and reduces project development cycles.

In this way, this new-age project management tool delivers milestone-driven progress that keeps teams motivated and ensures that you achieve your organizational goals on schedule.

The features include multiple project views like Kanban boards and lists, as well as document sharing for collaboration and a calendar that integrates with Google.

Nifty encourages collaboration and project-specific communication by featuring an individual discussion thread for each project. And there’s a GitHub integration as well, making this a great option for software engineering teams.

Pricing

Nifty’s Free Forever plan gives you unlimited users and access to all the most important features but limits you to only 2 projects and 100 MB of storage.

Prices start at $39 per month for the Starter plan, which allows 10 users, 100 GB of storage, and 40 projects. Prices quickly grow from there—as do the number of users, storage space, and projects—to a whopping $399 for the Enterprise plan.

Pros

  • Includes features for time & expense tracking
  • Offers task and issue management
  • Provides direct messaging
  • Allows collaboration on documents

Cons

  • If tickets add up, they can become hard to manage
  • Lacks invoicing tools

9. Celoxis

Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Expense Tracking.

Celoxis is the Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Expense Tracking

Celoxis is particularly equipped to plan and manage the often complex and diverse project portfolios of midsize to large organizations. As such, it is equipped with modules for resource management, revenue forecasting, budgeting, reporting, time and expense tracking, and team collaboration.

There are also advanced scheduling features that take several real-world conditions—such as multi-time zone, resource time off, part-time resources, working weekends, and so on—into consideration and combine them into one schedule.

Celoxis’ interactive Gantt chart can track as many as 10,000 tasks linked from several different projects. Plus, you can send reports as attachments in emails to specific users and roll-up data captured in custom fields to sub-tasks or summary tasks in projects.

The platform offers two deployment options: on-premise or cloud. It can be customized extensively and offers integrations with Excel, Outlook, Salesforce, and many more.

Pricing

Celoxis Pricing Plan

Celoxis is available as a cloud or on-premise project management solution. On the cloud, it costs $25 monthly per user, and on-premise, it costs a one-time fee of $450 per user.

Pros

  • Offers excellent value for money
  • Easy to use and has a short setup time
  • Fully equipped with budgeting, time tracking, and resource management

Cons

  • Timesheet freezes from time to time

10. ProofHub

Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Proofing.

ProofHub is the Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Proofing

ProofHub provides applications for project and task management, collaboration, resource management, and lots more for teams in various industries.

Its key features include Gantt charts, notes, discussions, to-do lists, calendars, timesheets, milestone tracking, and so on.

There are also reporting tools for generating custom reports and tracking resource utilization and project progress.

On the communication front, you get group and one-on-one chats, as well as proofing tools that let users comment on documents shared on the platform.

ProofHub supports third-party integrations like Google Docs and Dropbox, and there’s an API for building out custom integrations. The platform also supports content delivery over HTTPS using custom domain names and certificates.

There are mobile apps for iOS and Android, and support is provided via FAQs, an online knowledge base, and email.

Pricing

ProofHub Pricing Plan

ProofHub has no free account. There are two paid plans, starting with the Essential plan that costs a flat rate of $45 per month when billed annually.

Pros

  • Provides all the necessary tools for effective collaboration and management on a single platform
  • Allows the management of multiple projects at a time
  • Supports unlimited users
  • Communication is centralized, making it quicker and easier

Cons

  • No budgeting features
  • No option for setting up recurring tasks

11. Trello

Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Kanban View.

Trello is the Best Zoho Projects Alternative for Kanban View.jpg

Commonly used by agile software development teams, Trello is a visual project management software that is equally at home in the arsenals of marketing, HR, sales, and support teams.

The cloud-based tool provides users with the tools they need to define projects, outline requirements, and design a workflow that would ensure that projects are delivered on time and in a planned, sequential manner.

With Trello, you’re getting a digital board to create, organize, and prioritize actions, as well as define workflows, assign tasks, set due dates, and track project progress. Trello cards foster collaboration between team members as users can add members and comments, and attach documents to their assigned tasks.

There’s also a professional package that includes privacy and admin settings that are much desired by large-scale enterprises. And there are integrations with other online applications like JIRA Cloud, Google Drive, Bitbucket Cloud, GitHub, and Slack.

Pricing

Trello Pricing Plan

Trello is a cheaper alternative to Zoho, with its pricing starting at just $3 per user monthly.

Both project management tools offer a free trial, but Trello's free account is more accommodating, allowing unlimited users and 10 boards.

Pros

  • Offers an excellent Kanban board-based interface
  • Easy to use
  • Ideal for small businesses and teams

Cons

  • Feature set is quite limited
  • Storage space is limited

12. Asana

A Truly Versatile Project Management Alternative to Zoho.

Asana is Truly Versatile Project Management Alternative to Zoho.jpg

Asana provides a place for teams to orchestrate every aspect of their work, from quotidian tasks to strategic engagements. It empowers teams to confidently move faster and accomplish more with less, no matter where they may be located.

Over 100,000 organizations across the world pay to use Asana and millions of others rely on it to manage everything from marketing campaigns to product launches. This popularity is a testament to its effectiveness as a project management software.

After creating projects in Asana, you can create tasks and assign them to team members or add teammates as task followers. You can also share projects with teammates or mention them in your task comments to keep them updated on your progress.

Asana eliminates the need for spreadsheets and email for project collaboration. There are features for sharing notes containing task descriptions and attaching files and documents to tasks.

You can combine related tasks in a single click, follow and search public tasks, organize tasks by priority, get notified with updates on tasks, and add due dates to tasks.

Support-wise, Asana provides FAQs, a knowledge base, troubleshooting videos, as well as email, phone, and live chat support.

Pricing

Learn more about Asana pricing

Beyond the Basic plan which is free forever, pricing starts at $10.99 monthly per user. This is over twice what you would pay for Zoho Projects but it might be more worth it for some, especially considering that Asana offers more users with their free option and doesn’t cap user numbers based on your tier as Zoho Projects does.

Pros

  • Intuitive UI
  • Offer support for multiple task management options
  • Does not limit the number of users supported by each price tier

Cons

  • No invoicing features
  • No budgeting features

13. Basecamp

All the Project Management Features You Need for a Single Monthly Price.

Basecamp is All the Project Management Features Need for a Single Monthly Price

Basecamp is less about traditional project management—that is, resource planning and long-term scheduling—and more about real-time communication to help teams stay on the same page.

It provides a way for teams to stay on top of actionable items and priorities with its to-do lists, file sharing, due dates, and calendars. On a single interface, users can create projects, document their progress, and manage tasks related to those projects.

Being cloud-based, users can sign in from anywhere, anytime, whether through a web browser or via any of the mobile apps. The platform is not limited by industry and can be deployed by anyone from freelancers to megacorporations.

Pricing

Basecamp Pricing Plan

Basecamp gives you access to unlimited projects, unlimited users, and a 500GB storage space for a single price of $99 monthly.

Much like Zoho Projects, Basecamp comes with a free trial, and the Basecamp Personal plan is completely free.

Pros

  • Provides in-built communication functions
  • Single-plan pricing model is arguably better
  • Customer service is great

Cons

  • Lacks advanced project management features
  • Available customizations are limited

Best Zoho Alternatives for CRM

1. Monday.com CRM

Best Overall Zoho CRM Alternative.

Monday.com CRM is the Best Overall Zoho CRM Alternative

Monday.com might be known mainly as a full-on project management software, but it features a solid CRM that's great for customization.

The CRM solution provides drag-and-drop functionality, along with columns and rows that can be tailored to do pretty much anything within your customer management system.

Monday.com allows for full customization of boards and different templates that suit the unique needs of teams from various industries.

Zoho CRM only delivers four standard plans designed to cater to different types of businesses. If your company's needs don’t fit into one of the plans, it will be difficult to maximize Zoho CRM’s features.

Monday.com, meanwhile, focuses more on flexibility and providing the right solution to all kinds of teams. It offers four progressively adaptive pricing plans that can cater to the needs of all kinds of businesses, making it easier to find a plan that caters to your business and scales with you as you grow.

Zoho CRM works with app integrations; however, the list of available integrations can seem a little restricting for some teams.

For example, if your team is handling an email campaign and needs to use Hubspot, you may find it difficult to get Zoho to cooperate with the platform of choice.

Monday.com, on the other hand, offers an open API with which developers can build custom connections and integrate the platform with almost any third-party application.

The CRM platform is designed to structure itself around your company and its needs and this provides a solution that feels custom-made.

Out of the box, it includes integrations with several popular projects and task management tools like Asana, Slack, Gmail, Google Drive, and JIRA; you can customize the dashboard to suit your exact needs.

Pricing

Learn more about Monday pricing or Monday review

Monday.com offers a free account that accommodates 2 users and a free trial for 14 days. It comes with four pricing plans: Basic Plan, Standard Plan, Pro Plan, and Enterprise. The Basic Plan costs $8/seat/month with a 3-seat minimum.

Pros

  • Comes with a modern user interface
  • Highly customizable
  • Provides several in-app automations

Cons

  • No live support chat
  • No consolidated dashboards for all work spaces
  • 14-day free trial is not sufficient to learn the intricacies of the app

2. Pipedrive

Powerful Zoho CRM Alternative That Doubles as an Account Management Tool.

Pipedrive is a powerful Zoho CRM Alternative That Doubles as an Account Management Tool

Pipedrive is a sales-focused customer relationship management (CRM) solution that can double as an account management solution, with the ability to help with marketing and the entire sales process. Its proactive nature helps you track and organize calls and emails and synchronize schedules across different devices automatically.

With the ability of Pipedrive to visualize the sales process from start to finish, it is attractive to most small to midsize businesses (SMBs). It helps you improve efficiency and reduces the amount of second-guessing among teams, which is the main reason CRM implementations fail.

Pipedrive's user interface is intuitive, simple, and visually compelling making it easy to set up and use, which is worth a lot compared to the time and expense some tools require for training and onboarding. Zoho CRM has a rather complex implementation process that requires lots of customization before you can get to selling.

Businesses often need a CRM solution that can provide several pipelines across product lines, teams, and departments that can be fully customized. Pipedrive comes with an unlimited amount of visual, intuitive sales pipelines across all its payment plans.

A competent and dependable support team that you can contact at any hour is a game-changer. Zoho CRM offers 24-hour support, except weekends, and this attracts additional costs via their premium support plan. With Pipedrive, you can contact their customer support team at any time, irrespective of the plan you’re on.

Pipedrive also includes email integration features on all its plans. With Zoho, this feature is only included on higher plans.

Pipedrive provides two-way synchronization, so you can send and receive emails easily. Zoho CRM supports only one-way synchronization so you’ll have to keep switching from CRM to your email inbox.

Pricing

Learn more about Pipedrive pricing

Pricing for Pipedrive CRM starts at $12.50 per user per month, billed annually. Zoho CRM and Pipedrive include a free 14-day trial available. Zoho CRM’s pricing begins at $14 per user per month.

Pros

  • Provides an intuitive interface and deal-driven workflow
  • Reliable mobile apps plus call and email synchronization
  • Helps SMBs keep on top of their CRM processes

Cons

  • Provides limited functionality for the price
  • No separation between lists of new leads and contacts

3. Keap

One of the Best Zoho CRM Alternatives for Sales Automation.

Keap is one of the Best Zoho CRM Alternatives for Sales Automation

Keap CRM is an intuitive customer relationship management (CRM) tool that makes it easy to collect more leads and convert more clients. This CRM software provides everything small businesses need to manage sales and customers, all in a mobile-friendly platform.

It is rich with sales and marketing automation tools that let you automate text messaging, tasks, workflows, invoicing, and payments. For this reason, it can be categorized as one of the best sales automation software. Its drag-and-drop interface lets you set up automation rules easily.

With Keap, you can send an unlimited number of emails and make use of its modern templates to capture new leads, assign tasks, and send emails. You also get intelligent tips on ways to increase your delivery and open email rates. It is one of the best CRMs for email marketing.

Equipped with tools for invoicing, order checkout, and payments, Keap lets you easily send invoices through email and track customers who send payments.

It provides a single place for you to store and search all client information, activity, and communications. Using its client management feature helps you follow up, update records, and receive payment.

While Zoho CRM offers reporting, dashboards, and forecasting tools, Keap’s reports cover marketing data such as conversions by sales stage and lead source. It measures email open rates, click-throughs, campaign performance, and contact action.

You will be able to track sales reports by day, week, or month and compare them to previous periods. It can also show trends in payments, revenues, and transactions.

Other features are engagement analytics, advanced filters, and revenue growth visualization.

They both integrate with several popular online applications and services and have native mobile apps for iOS and Android platforms.

While Zoho CRM is ideal for businesses of all sizes with a focused requirement on sales force automation, Keap, on the other hand, is a small business CRM with tools and features for growing businesses. It is best for companies searching for powerful marketing automation tools, customer support, and customization in CRM software.

Pricing

Learn more about Keap pricing

Unlike Zoho CRM, Keap does not come with a free account, but offers three paid plans, starting at $56 per user for your first three months. Subsequently, the price increases to $79 per user per month, billed monthly.

All users are given a 500-contact monthly limit and will have to pay a one-time fee of $499 for its coaching package.

Both applications offer free trials, Zoho’s plan starts at $14 per user per month, billed annually

Pros

  • No limit on email sending
  • Provides invoicing and payment management features
  • Great coaching and support features

Cons

  • No free plan
  • No auto-save feature
  • Limited to only 500 contacts per month

4. Freshsales

An Excellent CRM Tool for Contact Management.

Freshworks is an Excellent CRM Tool for Contact Management.

Freshsales is a customer relationship management (CRM) software that helps sales teams of SMBs streamline their processes, close deals faster, and gain better insight into their customers.

Freshsales is a capable CRM tool that supports advanced contact management, workflow automation, and AI insights.

Freshsales’ intuitive, customizable interface makes it a good choice for those new to CRM software and means that it doesn’t require extensive team training to set up.

Zoho CRM helps you to connect with your leads and customers through multiple channels, so your customers can interact with your business in more than one way. Freshsales CRM, however, has an in-built phone system so you can make and take customer calls within the software.

It also helps make it easier for customers to call by buying local or toll-free numbers and assigning them to your team members. The entire conversation history per customer will be available and automatically logged. You can record a personalized voicemail message, too.

When it comes to reporting, Zoho CRM provides real-time reporting based on data from sales trends, marketing campaigns, activity reports, team performance, and others, and you can choose from standard reports or create custom dashboards.

Freshsales CRM, on the other hand, comes with default reports you can customize. You can easily set up a simple report or use advanced logic, make use of summaries or a matrix, and choose from different chart types to show your data. Visual sales reports help you monitor progress easily using graphical tables and charts.

Both software integrates seamlessly with apps from its own company, but also with third-party providers. Also, both solutions extend their functionality with native mobile apps on iOS and Android platforms.

Pricing

Freshsales and Zoho CRM come with free trials, with the inclusion of a free account. Pricing for Freshsales begins at $15 per user per month, billed annually.

Pros

  • Simplifies the CRM process for small businesses.
  • Extensive customization options.
  • Excellent AI assistant
  • Various integrations to extend functionality.

Cons

  • Free plan does not include reporting

5. Insightly

Amazing Zoho CRM Alternative That Offers Several Project Management Features.

Insightly is an Amazing Zoho CRM Alternative That Offers Several Project Management Features

Insightly CRM is one of the more evolved customer relationship management (CRM) solutions framed with a visually appealing and intuitive interface and aimed at small to midsize businesses (SMB).

Insightly and Zoho CRM have almost the same core features. They both provide ample contact management functionality letting you import leads from the current system and create custom fields to match the structure you’ve been using in another platform.

Zoho CRM has a territory management feature that assigns leads and contacts to different sales teams based on geographical location, product line, and industry. Insightly makes use of tags to offer another method for directing contacts once they’re inside the system.

Insightly makes use of a horizontal pipeline to visualize sales stages instead of the traditional vertical funnel. This is great for lead management, but the value of the pipeline feature extends beyond sales stages and into full-blown project management.

Reporting in Zoho CRM and Insightly are quite different. Zoho CRM classifies its available reports in sales, marketing, and activity reports. Insightly includes business intelligence reporting and dashboards within the product and, depending on the subscription plan, can build customized chart cards and share them with anyone. Insightly also offers 40 different chart types.

Both platforms provide Android and iOS applications. Insightly’s app lets you view and convert records, create tasks, and call, email, or text any record in their database. There’s also a map feature that makes it easy to get to your next sales call.

With regards to integrations, Insightly integrates with over 30 apps, like Dropbox, Outlook, and Google Apps. Zoho CRM integrates with Mailchimp, Unbounce, Evernote, and others.

The battle between Insightly and Zoho CRM is a close contest. Insightly’s inbuilt project management feature, however, gives it a clear advantage.

Pricing

Insightly Pricing Plan

Insightly and Zoho CRM provide free trials and free accounts. Insightly’s free-forever account only supports 2 users. Then pricing begins at $29 per user per month, billed annually.

Pros

  • Flexible and unique design
  • Powerful range of functionality with built-in project management chops
  • Extensive list of integrations

Cons

  • Not the best user experience
  • Need to pay extra for email integrations

6. Copper CRM

Best for Google-Driven Businesses That Value Simplicity.

Copper CRM is the Best for Google Driven Businesses That Value Simplicity.

Copper is a CRM tool that focuses on automation and simplicity and is famous for its Google Workspace integration. It is one of the best solutions for a specific type of customer: Google-driven businesses that value simplicity.

Zoho, the parent company of Zoho CRM, is often described as a jack of all trades because it tries to provide several services at once. Copper, on the other hand, has hundreds of engineers who are focused on making their CRM the best one out there.

It attracts no hidden fees. There are no professional services fees, consulting fees, or other add-on costs. Zoho, on the other hand, ends up being more expensive than originally advertised when you purchase all of the additional products.

One of the biggest benefits of Copper is its simplicity and how easily it can be tailored to your team’s workflows. Because Copper automatically populates all your data from Gmail, you already get a head start on customizing your setup.

Zoho CRM requires a lot of customization, takes a long time to set up, and often requires hiring consultants and lots of poring through the platform’s how-to guides.

As a CRM designed for Google Workspace, Copper CRM helps you capture, nurture, and convert leads straight from Gmail. You are also able to capture leads with your marketing campaigns, websites, or external lists that are imported into the software.

Copper CRM helps you visualize your CRM data using dashboards and presentation-ready reports. It captures your sales pipeline and visualizes the data so you can easily analyze where you have gaps, roadblocks, or possible wins.

The data automation technology puts an end to manual entry, so you are sure that the current state of your pipeline is accurately reflected.

On one hand, Zoho CRM is an affordable CRM solution that provides workflow automation for routine tasks so you and your team can channel more hours to leads and prospects.

Copper CRM, on the other hand, is best for SMBs that use Google Workspace. It provides workflow automation that can help simplify sales processes.

Aside from Google applications, it integrates with Zapier and Tray.io, using an Open API for custom integrations.

Pricing

Copper CRM Pricing Plan

Copper CRM’s Basic plan is the lowest tier and it costs $25 per user per month billed annually against Zoho’s $14 per user per month plan.

There is also the 14-day trial Copper offers for all plans. Unfortunately, it does not offer a free account like Zoho.

Pros

  • Integrates fully with Gmail, Google Calendar, and other Google Workspace products.
  • Several features can be accessed from Gmail.
  • Can enable automated actions.

Cons

  • There is no automating of drip email campaigns.
  • Pipelines do not contain qualified leads

7. Salesforce

Suitable Zoho CRM Alternative for Large Businesses.

Salesforce is the Suitable Zoho CRM Alternative for Large Businesses

Salesforce is a CRM cloud-based solution that manages all aspects of sales, service, marketing, and analytics, using area-specific “Clouds” to meet certain business needs.

Contact management is one of the most important components of any CRM. Both Salesforce and Zoho CRM offer features for adding and managing contacts, along with leads, accounts, and business opportunities.

The Salesforce database stores useful customer data, communication history, related activities, and more for every contact. You can use Salesforce’s virtual CRM assistant for insights like predictive lead scoring. Zoho’s contact management features let you record phone numbers, emails, meeting notes, to-do lists, documents, and much more without leaving the system.

It provides numerous tools to help decision-makers slice and dice information about revenue, customer acquisition, marketing programs, etc.

Salesforce offers built-in dashboards and reports that let you track lead volume, conversion rates, sales forecasts, and other metrics without bothering your data analyst to manipulate and merge massive spreadsheets.

If there is a need for more advanced reporting options for sales managers or CFOs/CROs, you can pay for the Einstein Analytics add-on which includes an additional per-user fee. Under the Dashboards tab in Zoho, you can access similar analytics tools.

Zoho's online product suite offers a reasonable selection of business apps and pre-built integrations with most of the important office programs.

But with regards to integration volume, Salesforce takes the cake. Their outstanding AppExchange covers over 2,900 apps built on the Salesforce platform and designed to improve functionality in sales, marketing, customer service, IT, finance, human resources, and other areas.

Of these two CRM solutions, Salesforce tends to be the better choice for larger businesses and even smaller ones that predict substantial growth over the next few years.

Even though it’s a lot more expensive to implement and support than many other platforms, it distinguishes itself as one of the most versatile CRM tools today.

However, it might be overkill for smaller companies with a small team size that don’t need a highly advanced and complex system.

Pricing

Salesforce Pricing Plan

Unlike Zoho CRM that has only four paid tiers, Salesforce provides different services using separate price plans, so businesses can adjust the service level and costs to fit their needs.

The first solution is for small businesses and the pricing starts at $25 per user per month, billed annually. It does not offer a free account but comes with a 30-day free trial.

Pros

  • Compatible with all browsers
  • Complete CRM solution
  • Easy to track employees

Cons

  • Too complex for small teams
  • Unlimited version only sends 1000 emails
  • Not easy to use
  • Poor customer support

8. HubSpot

Ranked One of the Best CRM Solutions for Small Businesses.

Hubspot is the Ranked one of the Best CRM Solutions for Small Businesses

HubSpot CRM is an intuitive and automatic CRM software that takes care of all the little details such as logging emails, recording calls, and managing your data and frees up valuable selling time in the process. It frequently ranks as one of the best CRM software products for small businesses.

Compared to a seamless and complete solution like Hubspot, Zoho CRM requires additional effort to set up initial and recurring maintenance.

HubSpot provides an elegant user experience that's optimized for the things people do every day. By combining powerful features with intuitive UX, it is consistently ranked as one of the most user-friendly CRM software, with rep adoption often cited as a key benefit among HubSpot users.

Zoho CRM does not provide the same quality of support to its customers that HubSpot does, and HubSpot's support is included in whichever pan you choose. For better support, Zoho CRM customers have to pay 20-25% of their annual contract.

HubSpot's customer support places a keen interest in making sure that businesses get as much out of the product as possible. Which directs us to their core customer success team that they run in-house and refuse to outsource.

HubSpot’s world-class support and customer success teams are available to all customers, with on the phone and email support offered at no extra charge for Pro and Enterprise customers.

HubSpot can be customized to meet your business needs without complexity. HubSpot comes with a flexible data structure for your CRM with custom objects, so custom implementations are a lot easier.

Zoho CRM has been slower to innovate on features that would ease these pain points—like out-of-the-box data connectivity between applications.

With HubSpot, you can access everything you need or want when you tap into HubSpot’s expansive network of over 700 integrations and thousands of certified solutions partners to help you provide an exceptional end-to-end customer experience.

While low-cost CRM platforms like Zoho CRM seem like a more cost-effective solution, it lacks the ecosystem to service all of their global customers and broad product line, leaving many businesses with limited support.

Zoho CRM users who do not have strong support mechanisms must be more self-sufficient to get value from their product. The lack of support ends up creating friction that makes the partnership between user and provider less positive.

Pricing

Learn more about Hubspot pricing

The pricing is divided into two categories: Products & Plans and Bundles. Under the Bundles, the cheapest plan is the Starter plan which is priced at $45 monthly per user, with a minimum of two users, billed annually

Pros

  • Truly an all-in-one CRM tool
  • Easy to use
  • Straight forward tool for capturing leads
  • Contains call to action buttons

Cons

  • Expensive for larger teams
  • Can’t use a few select features
  • Might have to pay for continuous technical support
  • Reporting feature is not as diverse as some of its competitors

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Anastasia Belyh

Editor at FounderJar

Anastasia has been a professional blogger and researcher since 2014. She loves to perform in-depth software reviews to help software buyers make informed decisions when choosing project management software, CRM tools, website builders, and everything around growing a startup business.

Anastasia worked in management consulting and tech startups, so she has lots of experience in helping professionals choosing the right business software.