Zoho Online Applications










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Zoho
Online Applications

by Karen
Spring

Docid: 00011565

Publication Date: 1706

Report Type: PRODUCT

Preview

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Zoho offers a full suite of Web-based business, collaboration,
and productivity applications ranging from Office-like apps to CRM. The company claims more than
25 million users. This report reviews Zoho’s online applications along with the latest cost fees associated with these
apps. 

Report Contents:

Description

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Zoho offers a comprehensive suite of online business, productivity,
and collaboration applications. The online applications suite, which
is available for free to individuals and for a fee for
organizations, is made up of offerings for CRM, mail, support,
invoices, and others.

All of the online applications from Zoho are available directly
from the Zoho.com Web site, with data stored securely online on Zoho’s
servers, and can be accessed from any Web browser at any location. Unlike
traditional software products, Zoho’s applications require no download
and installation onto a computer. Instead, all that is needed is an
Internet connection. 


Vendor

Name: Zoho Corporation
Headquarters
4141 Hacienda Drive
Pleasanton, CA 94588 US
(877) 834-4428
Email: sales@zohocorp.com 
Web: http://www.zoho.com/
Type of Vendor: Applications Provider
Founded: 1996 
Service Areas: Worldwide
Stock Symbol: Zoho is privately held.

Users who are interested in Zoho’s services need to sign up for a
username and password at the vendor’s site. Once an individual has
signed up for one service, he or she will have access to all other
services. Zoho targets its products to users and businesses who
are looking for full-featured offerings, want to manage information,
and get a handle on their business data but aren’t interested in, or
financially able to, worry about constantly updating software and
hardware.

As the suite keeps information online, Zoho offers a full breadth
of security to protect its users’ data, including physical security
such as biometrics and video monitoring to protect its facilities that
hold data, a variety of network and infrastructure capabilities, and redundancy
and business continuity measures.

The main online applications that Zoho offers are as follows:

Email and Collaboration Applications

Connect – Connect is a sort of social network for employees to
share information and collaborate. Teams and groups can connect to share
information about projects and events whether they are local or not. Available
as a smartphone app for both iOS and Android. 

BugTracker – Zoho’s BugTracker is a tool that creates rules and
customized workflows for managing bugs including setting up notifications and
determining the severity of each one. 

Docs – Zoho
Docs is a central document repository that enables users to store and
share files securely, and access them anywhere, anytime. 

Mail – Zoho
Mail is an ads-free Web-based email service that can be accessed from any wireless
device or smartphone. It offers storage space, spam protection, a personalized
email address, folders and labels, and instant messaging features.

Meeting – Zoho
Meeting supports online meetings and Web conferences and supports multiple
platforms. Meeting supports multiple languages and time zones and is used
for online training sessions or demos.

Projects – To
track and manage projects, Zoho offers its Projects application. A Web
interface lets users plan task lists and tasks, task dependency,
milestones, and meetings. To complete projects, Zoho enables users to
share and post files and create an intranet to manage the project stream,
calendar, document sharing, forum discussions, project Wiki, and project
chat. To track the project’s progress, features include a project
dashboard, project reports, and time tracking.

Vault – Vault stores and organizes all sensitive data including
passwords and encrypts this information with AES-256. Privileges are
granted to share passwords with specific groups of people and Vault tracks
those users who have used passwords. 

Chat – Content and communications are at the heart of Zoho Chat. Teams
can share documents, graphics, and feedback, enabling anyone within the
organization to contribute content ideas. To make Chat more fun and animated,
users can utilize emojis, guest users, channels, and other features.

Showtime – Showtime from Zoho is a presentation medium for
groups. Users create presentation files and then upload those files to
Showtime and invite an audience. The presentation is delivered via
smartphone, laptop, or both and the audience can participate in the
discussion, ask questions, or type in questions to be asked. 

Notebook – Like a tablet of paper and a pen, Notebook is used to
jot down ideas and create checklists, then customize the data as best
suits the user. Data can be secured with passcodes and touch ID. Available
as an app for iOS and Android. 

Sales and Marketing Applications

ContactManager – With ContactManager, all correspondence with clients,
suppliers, and partners stays in a centralized address book. Tasks, meeting
notes, history, and email correspondence is kept within the contact page. 

Campaigns – Zoho offers Campaigns to automate the entire marketing
process. Pre-designed templates enable easier creation of emails and
newsletters while
analytics track the performance of marketing campaigns in real-time.
Campaigns integrates with Zoho CRM. 

CRM – The CRM offering from Zoho is a
customer relationship lifecycle management application that automates sales
activities, sales tracking, and customer communication. It includes a
mobile version and CRM for Google Apps.

Motivator – Zoho Motivator contains dashboards to measure sales
performance and scorecards that sales reps can view to see their current
activity. To encourage and promote better sales outcomes, Motivator offers
contests and leaderboards. 

Forms – With Zoho Forms, users can build and share forms from
any device, assign tasks to team members, and create custom reports.

Sites – Zoho’s Sites is a design tool to build Web sites and
then update them. Themes are available to be customized for a client’s
needs or the site can be built from scratch. Other features from Sites
include drag and drop capabilities, payment buttons, and blog pages. 

Survey – Zoho’s Survey is a tool create surveys, collect audience
feedback, and analyze results. Surveys can be created from scratch or by
using templates and can be translated into more than 30 languages. 

Social – The Social app engages the audience with appealing content
while also monitoring information that is valuable (i.e. competitor tracking,
events, new prospects). Visual reporting gives insight into a brand’s media
presence. 

SalesIQ – SalesIQ from Zoho is highly customizable and gives
valuable information including visitor location and referral data for
tracking purposes and to improve the overall customer experience. 

SalesInbox – Automatically prioritizes emails according to specific
requirements (i.e. from top buyers or customers). Notes and details are readily
available so that users can craft business-driven messages in
response.  

IT and Help Desk Applications

Assist – Assist
is an application that allows companies to provide remote support to their
employees or customers through Web browser access. It is geared towards IT
industry personnel, customer support teams, teachers and other trainers,
and computer users.

MDM MDM is a mobile device management application that
can be used for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices from procurement to
retirement. Security features include authentication, passcodes, remote
device lock, full or selective device wipe, geotracking of lost assets,
and containerization of bring-your-own-device data. 

ServiceDesk Plus – Manages the lifecycle of IT incidents,
projects, changes, and problems. Offers over 150 reports to manage IT help
desk performance. 

Desk – A context-aware solution, Desk enables agents to support
customers with the details that they need. Issues can be handled quickly when
organized according to specific criteria. Knowledge bases can be created so that
customers have access to self-service information.  

Finance Applications 

Books – Books is a financial management
tool for business users. The online accounting software enables users to manage
money, customers and invoices, and to record, monitor, and reconcile bank
accounts and transactions. Business users can also use the application to
collaborate with their accountant in real-time.

Invoice – Zoho Invoice is an
invoicing software for companies to use for billing customers. The Invoice
application supports invoicing in multiple currencies and languages and
online management of billing information.

Subscriptions – With Zoho Subscription, management of the entire
customer lifecycle is made simple. It offers recurring billing and subscription
schedules while giving metrics on rates, payment transactions, and revenue.
Invoices can be tailored with templates, color, and wording. 

Expense – This Zoho app handles all expense recording, even
capturing credit card transactions to include them in expense
reports.  

Inventory – Zoho provides inventory control and order management
with its Inventory app. It can be integrated with Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and
Shopify for expanding selling opportunities. 

Checkout – Companies can build a branded payment page with the
Checkout feature and allow for one-time or recurring payments. The
Checkout feature is entirely customizable to fit with the needs of the
company using it. 

Human Resources Applications

Recruit – Recruit is an applicant
tracking system for management of job openings, resumes, candidates, and
contacts. The application is fully customizable and a central database
keeps multiple files in one spot for management purposes.

People – Zoho People is an employee
portal for human resources management. A drag-and-drop customization tool
allows for the creation of forms and fields.

Business Process Applications 

Creator – Creator is a
Software-as-a-Service platform for building database applications. Zoho
Creator can be accessed from any location and has a drag-and-drop
interface to create tables and add business rules. Creator features a drag-and-drop interface, a form and table builder, data
collection, reporting, data views and analytics, alerts and notifications, a
various APIs.

AppCreator – AppCreator creates mobile apps for every business
need with pre-made components so that developers don’t need to know
programming languages. Any data collected by these created apps is stored
in the cloud. 

Reports – Zoho Reports is an online
reporting and business intelligence service. Charts and tables help build
reports and data can be pulled from hosted or in-house applications.

Site24x7 – This application tracks the availability and response
times for Web sites so that performance issues can be addressed in a
timely manner. It monitors Web site performance, servers, synthetic
transactions, application performance, networks, real users, and public
status.  

Applications

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The online applications from Zoho are designed to enable
businesses of all sizes to run their processes and manage their data with
limited experience and at a minimal cost without having the concerns of
purchasing hardware or software. 

Environment

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Zoho’s online applications support various Web browsers
including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Google Chrome. In
addition, for those who wish to access the site from their mobile devices, Zoho
offers apps for iOS and Android. 

Support

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Zoho offers email support during business hours for its
free apps. Paying customers receive 24×5 support on business days and 24
hour response time on email. An online support form is available from the
vendor’s Web site. Phone support is available for paying customers in the
following areas: Books, CRM, Creator, Invoice, Reports, Mail, and Support. Users
of Zoho services also have 24-hour access to online forums, FAQs, and help
documents which can be found on the Web
site

Pricing

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Table 1 below outlines the pricing options for many of the
Zoho applications.

Table 1. Pricing
of Zoho’s Online Applications
Applications Pricing (USD)
Zoho
Connect
  • Free: For unlimited users and  10 GB of file space. 
  • Enterprise: Starts at $35/ internal network/month for 50
    users and file space of 100 GB. For an external network,
    $100/network/month with file space of 2 TB.
Zoho BugTracker 

  • Free: Free for one project.  
  • Express: $25/month for up to 20 projects.
  • Premium: $50/month for up to 50 projects.
  • Enterprise: $80/month for an unlimited number of projects.
Zoho
Docs 
  • Free for up to 25 users and 5 GB of
    storage per user. 

  • Standard: $5/user per month
    for 100 GB of storage per user.
  • Premium: $8/user per month for 1 TB of storage per user.    
Zoho Workplace (an update
to Zoho Mail) 
  • Free for up to 25 users and to host one domain.
  • Standard 30 GB: $2/user per month to host multiple domains. 
  • Pro 100 GB: $5/user per month to host multiple domains. 
  • Enterprise: $8/user per month. 
Zoho
Meeting 
  • Meetings with one participant
    and one host are free. 

  • Pricing begins at $12/month
    for five participants. 
Zoho Projects
  • Free: Includes one project and 10 MB storage. 
  • Express: $25/month includes 20
    projects and 10 GB
    storage space.
  • Premium: $50/month includes 50
    projects and 100 GB
    storage space.
  • Enterprise: $80/month includes unlimited projects and
    100 GB storage space. 
Zoho Vault
  • Free: Available for one user to store unlimited
    passwords and notes.
  • Standard: $1/user/month offers the storage of unlimited
    passwords and notes, admin controls, data backup and other features. 
  • Professional: $4/user/month offers the storage of
    unlimited passwords and notes along with all the
    benefits of the Standard edition plus added features
    including user access and activity reports, user groups, and
    sharing password groups with users.
  • Enterprise: $7/user/month
    offers everything in the Professional edition plus Active
    Directory integration and user provisioning, password access
    control workflow, and other features.
Zoho Chat
  • Free: Unlimited users, 50 active channels, and up to 5 GB
    of file storage. 
  • Startup: $1.80/user/month billed annually or $2
    month-to-month for unlimited channels and guest access.
  • Corporate: $90/month billed annually or $100
    month-to-month for access to team channels and creation of
    multi-team channels. Includes 50 users.
Zoho Showtime
  • Basic: Free for one trainer/month and up to five remote
    attendees.
  • Standard: $25/trainer/month and up to 25 remote attendees.
  • Professional: $35/trainer/month and up to 100 remote
    attendees.
  • Enterprise: $50/trainer/month and up to 200 remote
    attendees. 
Zoho ContactManager

  • Free: Single user with 500 contacts and up to 10 deals.
  • Smart: $15/month for an unlimited
    number of users, 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 deals. 
  • Ultra: $25/month for an

    unlimited number of users, contacts, and deals. 

Zoho Campaigns

  • Pay-As-You-Use: Fee is dependent upon email credits (i.e.
    250 email credits is $6).
  • Monthly subscription: Unlimited emails, auto responders,
    and social media. Price is dependent upon the number of
    subscribers. 
  • Free Plan: 2,000 subscribers and up to
    12,000 emails/month.

Zoho CRM 

  • Standard Edition: $12/user per month billed annually or
    $15 month-to-month. 

  • Professional Edition: $20/user per month billed annually
    or $25 month-to-month.

  • Enterprise Edition: $35/user
    per month billed annually or $40 month-to-month.
  • Ultimate: $100/user/month billed annually. 
Zoho Motivator
  • Free: Up to 5 users and
    consists of standard dashboards, company scorecards, one
    concurrent contest, and Contest TV channel.
  • 5-User Pack: $60/month annually ($72 billed
    month-to-month) and
    consists of everything in the Free edition plus customized
    dashboards, team and individual scorecards, unlimited
    contests, and more. 
  • 10-User Pack: $100/month annually ($120 billed
    month-to-month) and
    consists of everything in the Free edition plus customized
    dashboards, team and individual scorecards, unlimited
    contests, and more. 
  • 25-User Pack: $200/month annually ($240 billed
    month-to-month) and
    consists of everything in the Free edition plus customized
    dashboards, team and individual scorecards, unlimited
    contests, and more. 
Zoho Forms
  • Basic: $10/month for one user,
    unlimited forms and reports, 10,000 submissions per month,
    and 500 MB of storage.
  • Standard: $25/month for 10
    users, unlimited forms and reports, 25,000 submissions per
    month, and 2 GB of storage. 
  • Professional: $50/month for 25
    users, unlimited forms and reports, 75,000 submissions per
    month, and 5 GB of storage. 
  • Premium: $100/month for 100
    users, unlimited forms and reports, 150,000 submissions per
    month, and 10 GB of storage. 
Zoho Sites
  • Free: Includes hosting
    unlimited pages and 2 free sites. 
  • Basic: $5/site/month includes unlimited pages, Audio
    Player, Comment Box, and more. 
  • Standard: $10/site/month includes unlimited pages, audio
    player, comment box, password protection, and more.
  • Professional: $15/site/month includes unlimited pages,
    audio player, comment box, password protection, PayPal
    integration, and more.
Zoho Survey
  • Free for unlimited surveys with 15 questions/survey and
    150 responses/survey.
  • Standard: $19/month annually ($24 for month-to-month
    billing) for unlimited surveys, questions
    and responses.
  • Premium: $24/month annually ($29 for month-to-month
    billing) for the same as the
    Standard tier with piping logic, multilingual surveys,
    Google Docs integration, and other features. 
  • Enterprise: $41/month annually ($49 for month-to-month
    billing) for all the same details as the
    Premium level plus an admin + 2 users, user management, and
    portal creation. 
Zoho Social
  • Free: Includes 1 user, 1 brand, and and
    Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.  
  • Standard Monthly: $10/month includes 2
    users, 1 brand, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+,
    and Instagram. 
  • Standard Yearly: $100/year includes 2
    users, 1 brand, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+,
    and Instagram. 
  • Professional Monthly: $50/month includes 5 users,
    3 brands, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and
    Instagram. 
  • Professional Yearly: $500/year includes 5 users,
    3 brands, and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and
    Instagram. 
Zoho SalesIQ
  • Free: Includes 2 users, 100 chat sessions monthly, and 30
    days of storage.
  • Basic: $17/month annually ($19 for month-to-month billing)
    includes 3 users,
    1,000 chat sessions
    monthly, and unlimited storage. 
  • Professional: $53/month annually ($59 for month-to-month
    billing) includes 5 users, unlimited chat
    sessions, and reporting. 
  • Enterprise: $116/month annually ($129 for month-to-month
    billing) includes 10 users, unlimited chat
    sessions and chat translation support. 
Zoho Assist
  • Free subscription: includes
    one technician, one unattended computer, and 5 unattended sessions. 
  • Standard: Starts at $8/month annually ($10 billed
    month-to-month) for one remote support technician, 10
    concurrent sessions, and more. 
  • Professional Edition: starts
    at $13/month annually ($15 billed month-to-month) for one
    remote support technician, 20 concurrent sessions, and
    more.  
  • Standard: Starts at $8/month annually ($10 billed
    month-to-month) for 25 unattended computers and unlimited
    technicians. 
Zoho Desk
  • Free subscription for up to 10 users, email inbox and Web
    form, knowledge base, and more. 
  • Professional: $12/agent/month with everything in the Free
    plan plus multichannel support, helpdesk automation, and
    more. 
  • Enterprise: $25/agent/month with everything in the
    Professional plan plus scheduled reporting, contract
    management, and more.  
Zoho Books 
  • Basic: $9/organization/month for 50 contacts, 2 users, and
    5 automated workflows. 
  • Standard: $19/month/organization for 500 contacts, 3
    users, and 10 automated workflows. 
  • Professional: $29/month/organization for unlimited
    contacts, unlimited users, and 10 automated workflows. 
Zoho
Invoice 
  • Free: for up to 5
    customers, one user. 

  • Basic: $7/month for 50 customers, one user. 
  • Standard: $15/month for up to 3 users with up to 500 customers. 
  • Professional: $30/month for
    unlimited users with unlimited customers.  
Zoho Subscriptions
  • Standard: $29/month for 500
    customers and 3 users. 
  • Professional: $69/month for
    unlimited customers and unlimited users. 
Zoho
Expense
  • Free: For 3 users, 5 GB of receipt
    storage, and 100 auto scan. 

  • Standard: $15/organization/month includes 10 users, unlimited receipt
    uploads and auto-scan of receipts.
Zoho Inventory
  • Basic: $29/month which
    includes 100 online monthly orders and 100
    shipments/month. 
  • Standard: $79/month which
    includes 750 online orders/month and 750
    shipments/month. 
  • Professional: $249/month which
    includes 3,000 online orders/month and 3,000
    shipments/month. 
Zoho Checkout
  • Free: single user collecting up to 50 payments for 1
    payment page.
  • Standard: $9/month for up to 2 additional users, unlimited
    payments, and 3 payment pages. 
  • Professional: $29/month for unlimited users, unlimited
    payment collections, and unlimited payment pages. 
Zoho Recruit 
  • Free for one recruiter.
  • Standard: $25/month for one
    recruiter, an unlimited number of records, and other
    features.
  • Enterprise: $50/month for all the things in the Standard
    package plus custom links, field updates, auto responders,
    and more. 
Zoho
People 
  • Startup: $9/month for up to 5 employees. 
  • Basic: $19/month for up to 10
    employees.

  • Standard: $49/month for up to 25 employees. 

  • Premium: $99/month for up to
    50 employees. 
  • Enterprise: $199/month for up
    to 100 employees.

Zoho
Creator

  • Basic: $5/month/user for 3 apps. 
  • Premium: $15/month/user for 50
    apps.

  • Express: $199/month for unlimited users and 100
    apps. 
  • Express Plus: $1,999/month for unlimited users and
    unlimited apps.  
Zoho
Reports 
  • Free for 100,000 records/rows
    and two users.

  • Standard $50/month for five
    users and 500,000 records/rows.

  • Professional: $90/month for 10
    users and one million records/rows.

  • Professional+: $140/month
    for 20 users and two million records/rows.
  • Enterprise: $495/month for 50 users and 25 million
    records/rows.
Zoho Site24x7
  • Starter Web: $9.00/month for
    monitoring 10 Web sites at 1 minute poll frequency. 
  • Pro Web: $35/month for
    monitoring 40 Web sites at 1 minute poll frequency.
  • Classic Web: $79/month for monitoring 80 Web sites at 1
    minute poll frequency. 
  • Enterprise: Starts at $225/month. 

Other programs exist for infrastructure, application
performance management, managed service providers, and
all-in-one plans. 

Competitors

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Zoho’s applications mainly compete with Google Docs
and Drive, Microsoft Office, Apple’s iWork for iCloud, and Slack. The Zoho CRM
application faces competition from Salesforce.com. One of the ways that Zoho
says it differentiates itself from the competition is that it doesn’t serve ads
on any of its products, even its free editions. 

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About
the Author

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of this report]

Karen M. Spring is a staff editor for Faulkner
Information Services, tracking high-tech industries including network
security, data breaches and cybercrime, CRM, public safety, business
continuity and resilience, and software tools. She writes regularly on
high-tech topics for publications in the k-12 and higher education
industry. Previously, Ms. Spring was a marketing specialist for two
computer distributors, working closely with such clients as 3Com, IBM,
Okidata, Unisys, and Acer.

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