Salesforce vs Zoho

When it comes to finding a CRM for your business, Salesforce and Zoho are two of the most well-known and feature-rich platforms available. Both cater to a wide range of industries and business sizes, offering tools to manage customer relationships, streamline sales processes, and improve team collaboration. However, Salesforce is often viewed as the go-to choice for larger enterprises with complex needs, while Zoho appeals to small and medium-sized businesses looking for affordability and flexibility. In this blog, we’ll compare Salesforce and Zoho, breaking down their key features, strengths, and which platform might be the best fit for your business. Additionally, we'll introduce folk - a popular alternative worth considering.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a robust CRM platform for large enterprises, offering tools for sales, marketing, service, and analytics, with extensive scalability.

Key features of Salesforce

• Comprehensive ecosystem: A unified platform offering CRM, marketing automation, customer service, and custom app development, suitable for the varied needs of large enterprises.
• Customization and scalability: Salesforce is highly customizable and scalable, allowing large organizations to tailor the platform to complex workflows and manage significant growth.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) integration: Salesforce Einstein offers AI-driven analytics and automation, providing insights that help large businesses optimize their strategies.
• Extensive integration capabilities: With Salesforce's AppExchange, large companies can integrate the platform with a wide range of third-party applications, ensuring seamless operation across different business systems.
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance: Salesforce provides robust security measures and compliance features, critical for large organizations handling sensitive customer data.

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.

Salesforce vs. Zoho: 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

Salesforce's pipeline management feature, known as Pipeline Inspection, provides a comprehensive view of sales opportunities by consolidating key metrics, deal changes, and AI-powered insights into a single interface. This allows sales teams to make informed decisions quickly and effectively. On the other hand, Zoho CRM's pipeline management feature offers a visual overview of the sales process, enabling users to track deals at various stages and manage the flow of opportunities effectively. This intuitive interface helps sales professionals stay organized and focus on high-priority deals. Both platforms offer robust tools for managing sales pipelines, but Salesforce's integration of AI insights may provide an edge for businesses looking for data-driven decision-making capabilities. Conversely, Zoho's straightforward visual approach may appeal to companies seeking simplicity and ease of use in their pipeline management.

2. Ease of use

Salesforce offers a robust but complex interface that may require a learning curve, whereas Zoho CRM is known for its user-friendly design, making it accessible for small to medium-sized businesses without extensive training.

3. Contact enrichment

Salesforce's contact enrichment feature leverages tools such as the Data Cloud to automatically enhance and update contact records in real time, drawing from verified data sources like LinkedIn and InsideView to provide real-time updates.

4. Outreach

Salesforce's outreach solution is powered by its AI capabilities, particularly through the integration of Einstein AI and their Outreach list that allows users to see cross-sales paths and leads they need to engage with. 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.

5. Automation

Salesforce offers robust automation features designed to streamline business processes. Its automation capabilities include workflow rules and flow builders, approval processes, and AI automation through Einstein AI. 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.

6. Integration

Salesforce integrates with a wide range of third-party applications through its AppExchange marketplace, allowing users to connect tools for marketing automation, customer service, analytics, project management, and finance. Popular integrations include platforms like Slack for team collaboration and Mailchimp for email marketing. 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.

7. Artificial intelligence

Salesforce CRM integrates AI through its Einstein platform, which enhances decision-making by providing predictive analytics, intelligent recommendations, and automated insights. It helps automate tasks such as lead scoring, opportunity forecasting, and data entry, while also offering natural language processing for customer sentiment analysis. 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.

Price and plans comparison

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

Salesforce prices

• Starter suite: $25/user/month provides basic CRM features for small businesses.
• Pro suite: $100/user/month includes advanced tools for growing businesses.
• Enterprise plan: $165/user/month offers extensive customization and automation for large companies.
• Unlimited plan: $330/user/month provides comprehensive features for large enterprises.
• Einstein 1 Sales: $500/user/month provides AI-driven insights and advanced features for large enterprises.

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.

Introducing folk CRM: the best alternative to Salesforce and Zoho

Looking for an affordable alternative? We recommend folk. There is a reason why folk is a multiple award-winning CRM platform loved for its easy-to-use, plug-and-play CRM system.

Key features

• 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.

Salesforce vs. Zoho: What's the verdict?

Both Salesforce and Zoho offer robust CRM solutions tailored to different business needs. Salesforce stands out with its comprehensive ecosystem and scalability, ideal for large enterprises seeking extensive customization and integration. On the other hand, Zoho provides a cost-effective, feature-rich CRM perfect for small to medium-sized businesses with a focus on sales automation and multi-channel communication. 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