Zoho vs Nutshell

Zoho CRM and Nutshell are two CRM solutions designed to help businesses manage customer relationships and streamline sales processes, each with its own unique strengths. Zoho CRM is a highly customizable platform with a wide range of tools for sales, marketing, and customer support, making it ideal for businesses that need flexibility and scalability. Nutshell, by contrast, combines CRM with built-in email marketing and straightforward sales automation, offering a more integrated solution suited for small to mid-sized teams. In this blog post, we’ll explore their key features to help you choose the right CRM for your business – or whether folk might just offer a better alternative with user-friendly contact management and customization options.

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 Nutshell?

Nutshell is an all-in-one CRM specifically designed to help B2B teams close more deals. It combines contact management, pipeline tracking, and email marketing tools to support every stage of the sales process, from lead generation to deal closure. With features like customizable pipelines, activity tracking, and seamless integration options, Nutshell also enables sales teams to stay organized, collaborate, and drive results—all within a user-friendly platform tailored for B2B needs.

Key features of Nutshell

• Contact management: Centralizes customer information and tracks communication history to keep teams organized and informed.
• Pipeline management: Customizable sales pipelines to track leads and deals through every stage of the sales process.
• Email marketing: Built-in email campaign tools that enable targeted outreach and engagement with prospects and customers.
• Activity tracking: Logs all interactions, including calls, emails, and meetings, allowing teams to stay on top of follow-ups and engagement.
• Reporting and analytics: Provides insights into sales performance, forecasting, and team activity, helping to make data-driven decisions.

Zoho vs. Nutshell: Feature Comparison

Let's break down the key features of two CRM software solutions and take a closer look at their sales automation, email marketing tools, and contact management.

1. Sales pipeline management

Zoho CRM's pipeline management feature provides a visual overview of the sales process, allowing users to track deals at various stages and manage the flow of opportunities effectively. It offers customizable stages and advanced filtering options, helping sales teams focus on the most promising leads and close deals faster. Zoho's intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to move deals through the pipeline, enhancing productivity and collaboration.

Nutshell's pipeline management offers tools for tracking leads and deals through different stages using various views, including board, list, map, and chart views. The pipeline is customizable, allowing users to organize and prioritize leads according to their workflow needs. Additional features like hot lead identification and customizable lead cards support visibility into deal statuses and priorities. Nutshell's pipeline tools aim to support sales teams in managing and visualizing their sales process without unnecessary complexity, providing a straightforward and effective approach to sales management.

2. Ease of use

Zoho CRM offers an intuitive interface with customizable dashboards, making it easy for users to navigate and manage their sales processes efficiently. While Nutshell, provides a straightforward, user-friendly design aimed at simplifying sales-focussed CRM tasks, which is particularly beneficial for small to medium-sized businesses.

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. Nutshell’s contact enrichment feature is focused on minimizing manual data entry by allowing users to import contacts, emails, and calendar events from various sources.

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. Nutshell’s outreach feature includes built-in email marketing and automation capabilities, allowing users to create and send email campaigns directly within the platform. This feature enables teams to manage targeted outreach and follow-up sequences as part of their sales process, providing basic email tracking and engagement metrics to assess campaign effectiveness.

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. Nutshell’s automation features are focused on streamlining basic sales and marketing tasks. Its automation tools support activities like sending follow-up emails, managing task reminders, and progressing deals through pipeline stages. Additionally, Nutshell offers email marketing automation, allowing users to set up drip campaigns and manage customer engagement within the platform.

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. Nutshell offers integrations with a range of popular tools to enhance its functionality and streamline workflows. It connects with major productivity platforms like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Slack, allowing users to manage emails, calendars, and team communication within their existing tools.

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. Nutshell’s AI integration offers several tools to enhance team productivity and streamline workflows. Key AI-driven features include timeline summarization, which helps users quickly sort through historical records by summarizing past interactions and activities.

Price and plans comparison

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

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: $20 per user, per month.
• Professional: $35 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $50 per user, per month.

Nutshell  prices

Nutshell offers several feature-rich plans tailored to different goals and team sizes.

• Foundation: $16 per user, per month.
• Pro: $42 per user, per month.
• Power AI: $52 per user, per month.
• Enterprise: $67 per user, per month.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Zoho and Nutshell

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 is highly customizable allowing its platform to support multiple business functions including sales, marketing, recruitment and more. With its ability to scale with you, you can use folk as a solopreneur, SMB and enterprise.

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. Nutshell: What's the verdict?

When comparing Zoho and Nutshell, it's clear that both CRMs offer robust features tailored to streamline sales and customer management processes. Zoho stands out with its extensive customization options and AI-powered tools, while Nutshell is praised for its user-friendly interface and seamless integrations. However, for companies seeking a more personalized approach, folk emerges as a compelling alternative. It blends ease of use with powerful customization, making it a versatile choice for various business functions. Try folk today, free.