Zoho One opinions - anyone here use it?

[Jon12345]

I was on a quest to find a different email client, and someone recommended Zoho. Then I looked at some of the other software packages that they do and I got sucked in. It looks like I could do all sorts of sophisticated automation, analysis blah blah if I went all in.

The licensing thing sucks a bit. While it is great value if you get their £30pm license for Zoho One (40 apps), if I want to use some VA's part time, their licensing says the £30pm deal is only if you have all your employees paying £30pm. But what about ad hoc freelancers who want to login to the system? I have a few issues with that!

Orchestly looks great for further automation, although I think that is an additional £7pm, or something like that.

Currently I am on Office 365.

Anyways, ranting aside, does anyone here use any of the Zoho apps or Zoho One, and if so, what is your honest opinion?

 

[tony84]

I use the zoho workdrive (similar to drop box).
Miles cheaper than dropbox (assuming you outgrow the free space) and no difference from what I have seen.

The only downside with the level I have is that whilst I can make folders and choose who seems them, I can not put folders within folders and choose who sees them.

In my case, I have 2 people who work for me. I wanted to put a folder in there called Employees and then them each have their own folder that only I and the person could see. It would not let me do that. So I now just have a folder for each of them in the root folder rather than them both in one. No big issue though and for the price I really cant complain.

I did look at their CRM and I liked it but opted for something else instead.

 

[Jon12345]

I've started the 30 day free trial. I have to say that I was initially a little disappointed, since it felt a little bit clunky compared to Microsoft and Google offerings, which tend to be silky smooth. However, it is growing on me.

What strikes me is that potentially, the integration and levels of automation could be incredibly useful. You can program workflows, link autoresponders to CRM, blah blah. Not even looked at the CRM thing yet. There are a ton of conditional triggers, if-then options, programmable bots and so on. Exciting stuff!

So in essence, my current feeling is that instead of using it for email and some of the other features, I might stick with email with Outlook and gmail, but just have a subscription so I can use the autoresponder and so on. I just cancelled my $180 pa subscription to aweber, which I had for years. And by using some of that money towards Zoho One, the monthly fees will be less painful.

It costs £35pm if I pay monthly, which is probably what I will do in the first instance. If I get confidence in it, you can do an annual subscription for £30pm equivalent.

For virtual assistants and stuff, it is a bit more puzzling. You need an additional license of Zoho One for each additional "employee", and that includes a VA or freelancer. I asked what would happen if I hire someone from oDesk for like 4 hours, and then the contract stops, then hire someone different a week later, and then that contract stops, how does it work? They said take out a new license for each person and then get a prorata refund when they stop working for you.

Frankly, that is ridiculous! Hire someone for 2 hours, take out a license, then ask for refund? Stupid!! They need a better solution for part-timers or ad hoc freelancers.

So, I will probably just use Zoho One for my own use and any hires from oDesk, use an external system.

 

[andygambles]

Yes use ZoHo One.

There is a pricing option that is based on staff as needed rather than all employees which is $50 a month each a think instead.

We also give some peopel temporary access such as for 4-8 weeks at a time. Not quite hourly but gives an idea.

You can suspend the user which gives a pro-rata discount on your next bill.

We use G Suite for email and documents still but replaced a lot of external services with ZoHo One options.

Currently we use

CRM
Meetings
People
Remote Assistance
Campaigns (replaced Campaign Monitor)
Social (Replaced Buffer which was costign more than our entire ZoHo subscription)
Creater
Automator

It can be clunky at times. They need to work on improving the cross application integrations which they seem to be doing.

 

[Jon12345]

Hey Andy, thanks for the reply. Good to see another Zoho user here. Perhaps you have seen Zoho evolve over time, and so see a shift to increasing integration. It certainly does seem like a good price when you consider all the apps included. I find it fun just checking the forums to see all the new updates they are announcing. Since they are so many apps, there are always updates!

If you fancy chatting about anything Zoho, I recently created a Discord channel for it. Just me in there at the moment, but you are more than welcome. https://discord.gg/YpyqTK

I created a Discord channel for another product last year and we have tons of messages for that one, sometimes several hundred per day!