Zoho vs Nimble

Exploring new options for a CRM? Zoho and Nimble are two popular CRM platforms, each offering distinct features tailored to different business needs. Zoho excels in sales automation and customization, while Nimble focuses on social media integration and relationship management. In this blog post, we'll compare their key features, pricing, and benefits to help you make an informed decision. We'll also introduce folk – a popular alternative.

What is Zoho?

Zoho is a CRM system with a strong sales focus. It has journey orchestration, sales process management, and workflow automation features. There's also something for marketing teams, including event management and customer segmentation.

Key features of Zoho

• Sales automation: Automates sales tasks like lead management, deal tracking, and follow-up actions.
• Customizable dashboards and reports: Allows users to create and customize dashboards and reports for in-depth analytics.
• Multi-channel communication: Integrates with email, phone, social media, and live chat to manage customer interactions.
• Lead and contact management: Manages customer information, tracks interactions, and segments contacts for targeted campaigns.
• Workflow automation: Automates routine tasks and processes to improve efficiency and reduce manual effort.
• AI-powered sales assistant (Zia): Provides predictive analytics, task automation, and intelligent suggestions to enhance sales performance.

What is Nimble?

Nimble CRM is a relationship-focused CRM designed to help businesses manage contacts, track interactions, and streamline communication.Nimble can work from your Outlook or Gmail inbox, social and web.

Key features of Nimble

• Contact management: Nimble consolidates contact details from various sources, including email and social media, into unified profiles, making it easier to track communication.
• Social listening and engagement: The platform integrates with social media channels, enabling users to monitor conversations, engage with leads, and stay updated on contacts' social activity.
• Email tracking: Nimble provides email tracking tools to monitor when emails are opened and links are clicked, helping users gauge engagement with outreach efforts.
• Pipeline management: Users can manage sales pipelines with customizable deal stages, allowing teams to track opportunities and monitor deal progression.
• Task and activity management: Nimble includes task tracking and reminders, helping users stay organized with follow-ups, meetings, and to-do lists associated with contacts or deals.

Zoho vs. Nimble: Feature Comparison

When evaluating CRM solutions, Zoho and Nimble stand out for their robust features tailored to enhance sales and marketing efforts. Here's a closer look at how they compare in key areas:

1. Sales pipeline management

Both CRMs excel in offering visual tools for managing sales pipelines, but the choice between them may come down to specific use cases and preferences in terms of customization and user interface.
Zoho CRM offers a comprehensive pipeline management tool that gives users a visual overview of their sales process. It enables tracking of deals across various stages, allowing sales teams to manage opportunities effectively and optimize their sales strategies. This feature is designed to streamline the sales workflow, making it easier to prioritize and close deals efficiently.
On the other hand, Nimble CRM provides a pipeline dashboard that is equally intuitive, allowing users to track sales opportunities through customizable deal stages. This feature offers a clear visual representation of where deals stand within the sales process. Users can create and move deals through each stage, set expected close dates, and update deal values, ensuring that sales activities are aligned with business goals.

2. Ease of use

Zoho CRM offers a user-friendly interface with customizable dashboards, making it easy for businesses to navigate and manage their customer relationships. They have three different products that cater to different business needs including small businesses, omnichannel solutions and enterprise. Nimble CRM provides a simpler versatile CRM ideal for small teams looking for straightforward contact management without extensive customization options.

3. Contact enrichment

Zoho CRM's contact enrichment feature, powered by its AI assistant Zia, automatically updates and enriches records using data from various online sources. The feature can fill in missing details, such as email addresses, phone numbers, company information, and social media profiles. Nimble CRM’s contact enrichment feature automatically gathers additional information on contacts from various public sources, including social media profiles.

4. Outreach

Zoho CRM supports multichannel outreach, enabling businesses to connect with leads through email, social media, and other platforms. The platform automates workflows such as lead assignment and follow-up reminders, while AI-driven sentiment analysis helps prioritize customer responses for timely engagement.
Nimble CRM’s outreach feature enables users to manage individual and group email communications, track engagement, and personalize messaging based on contact profiles. It includes email tracking to monitor opens and clicks, allowing users to gauge the effectiveness of their outreach efforts.

5. Automation

Zoho CRM provides comprehensive automation features that streamline tasks like sending emails, updating fields, and triggering alerts through workflow automation. It includes Blueprint for standardizing sales processes, Macros for automating repetitive tasks in bulk, and Zia AI for predictive automation that suggests workflows and actions based on data patterns. Nimble CRM's automation features are basic. Used mostly to streamline tasks like data enrichment and follow-up reminders, helping users keep track of interactions and due dates without extensive manual input.

6. Integration

Zoho integrates with a wide range of third-party applications to expand its functionality, including popular tools like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office. It also connects with accounting software such as QuickBooks and more. Nimble also connects with productivity tools like Mailchimp, QuickBooks, and Zapier, enabling users to automate data flow and enhance functionality through third-party applications.

7. Artificial Intelligence

Zoho CRM integrates AI through its assistant, Zia, which enhances productivity by automating tasks like data entry, lead prediction, and workflow recommendations. Zia provides predictive analytics for sales forecasting, identifies anomalies in sales processes, and suggests the best times for customer engagement based on past interactions. Nimble CRM incorporates AI-powered sales intelligence to enhance prospecting and lead enrichment. Using AI, Nimble gathers detailed information from multiple sources to create enriched contact profiles, helping users gain insights into leads and prospects.

Price and plans comparison

Let's take a closer look at the price and plans of both Zoho and Nimble.

Zoho prices

Zoho offers a Free plan limited to three users suitable for small businesses. After that, an annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $14 per user, per month.
• Professional: $23 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $40 per user, per month.

Nimble prices

Nimble provides both a monthly and annual subscription plan. With only one tier for each subscription type.

• Annual: $24.90/user/month.
• Monthly: $29.90/user/month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Zoho and Nimble

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. A multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system. folk can support multiple business functions including sales, recruitment, fundraising, and more.

Key features

• Contact management: Bring all your contacts into one place seamlessly, from social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram and X to multiple inboxes including Gmail and Outlook.
• Notes and reminders: Attach notes directly to a contact's profile in folk, and access them on the go. And assign reminders so you know exactly when to follow-up.
• Sales pipeline dashboard: Manage your entire sales cycle and leads with a highly customizable sales pipeline dashboard that can be used in Kanban-board view or listicle.
• Ease of use and customization: Easily customize the pipelines, dashboards, automation, email sequences, so that you can use it across your sales cycle and pipeline management – and other business functions such as recruitment, marketing, and more.
• Social media integration: Import people and companies from LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Instagram, and X within a click thanks to folk’s Google Chrome extension.
• Contact sync from Gmail and Outlook: Full email sync enabling users to manage all communications directly from the CRM.
• Find email addresses in a click: Contact enrichment powered by Apollo, and Dropcontact so you can fill in missing data points with 1-click.
• Email sequences: Send email sequences with reminders if your leads don’t reply to your first emails. It includes an AI integration allowing you to personalize email at scale.

Price and plans

folk has a 14-day free trial. After that, there are affordable monthly or annual subscription plans. The annual subscription plan is as follows.

• Standard: $20 per user, per month.
• Premium: $40 per user, per month.
• Custom: Starts from $80 per user, per month.

Zoho vs. Nimble: What's the Verdict?

It's clear that both Zoho and Nimble offer robust CRM solutions tailored for different business needs. Zoho excels with its extensive features and scalability, making it ideal for larger enterprises seeking comprehensive tools. Nimble, on the other hand, shines with its simplicity and social media integration, perfect for small to medium-sized businesses focusing on relationship building. For companies that need a more personalized approach to relationship management, folk provides a flexible alternative to these traditional CRM options, blending ease of use with customization. Try folk today, free.