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I use Freshsales to manage leads for a company that has customers. I handle customer relationships in one place where I mark them under bucketing, bucketing them under different stages to check how the sales guys are doing. These sales guys and clients work for our client, and I monitor their stages on Freshsales.
What I like most about Freshsales is that it gives clarity. It provides proper visibility because it is a CRM where I can monitor everything. Without this tool, I would have to do it either in Excel or manually. I can create reports around it. It is a shared CRM where everyone has access and whoever needs to report and monitor can do so.
What I dislike about Freshsales is that it is a bit complicated and the initial setup is very difficult. It takes a lot more time to customize it according to your stages and use cases. I also require an external person to set this up for me, or I have to hire someone specifically to set up the system.
Regarding the initial setup of Freshsales, I have to mention my stages, bucketing, and set up all the processes, including how the leads will flow and what the customer's cycle looks like. It takes at least a month or 45 days to set this up, process it properly, and check whether the automations and workflows are working. Then I onboard all the team members I want to use Freshsales. Thirty to 45 days is the rough timeframe I have realized. As I start using it, if I see any flaws, I correct them.
Freshsales stability is good. These guys are stable, and it is a very renowned company. Whenever they have any maintenance downtime, they notify me before I get notifications about it, but it is very rare. I do not have such issues.
Regarding Freshsales scalability, adding a team and scaling it up is not a problem. However, setting up different processes and different life cycles is a bit complicated. If I onboard more team members and scale the team, it is not a problem at all. I can multiply it multifold very quickly and very easily. It is very simple.
Freshsales does not require any maintenance on my end, but the vendor provides maintenance.
Freshsales initial setup is a bit difficult. I have to mention my stages, bucketing, and set up all the processes, including how the leads will flow and what the customer's cycle looks like. It takes at least a month or 45 days to set this up, process it properly, and check whether the automations and workflows are working. Then I onboard all the team members I want to use Freshsales.
For the deployment of Freshsales, usually vendors do it and they have a team for different processes. For this particular company, I know there was one guy who used to do it, but he has his backup team at the back end who also does certain other things based on the requirements.
When it comes to the pricing of Freshsales, most of them are very similar. HubSpot and Zoho are the two competitors I have used. Pricing-wise, it is doing good. I can negotiate it on a case-by-case basis, but it is not very costly. These three are very nearby in terms of pricing.
I use some AI-driven insights with Freshsales. It shows some predictions based on scoring, but I do not rely on that much at the moment.
Regarding the predictive scoring in Freshsales, because I do not rely on it, there are certain other things which are answered but not on Freshsales. Not everything is marked on the CRM. For me, it is not very good. I usually do it according to my prior history and prior learnings. I do not rely on that very much, and I have not checked it properly. I just see it on the CRM, but I do not rely on or use it much.
I have used the workflow automation in Freshsales for bucketing, emails, and lead cycle. If I have to change them to a customer, I set up how I want them to onboard and what initial emails they should be getting. I have used it, and it is quite good, but it is a bit complicated. I have to set it up in great detail with what exactly should happen after each particular step.
I would rate this review 9 out of 10.
My main use case for Zoho CRM is to maintain our prospects database, track our email interactions, and manage our entire sales operations.
A quick specific example of how I use Zoho CRM in my daily work is that we qualified a few accounts, got opportunity meetings with them, and it helped us by creating pipelines, managing pipelines, and timely follow-ups to get conversions.
I would like to add that we are bringing data all together at one place. We have been using emails and campaigns with multiple email providers, logging all those in multiple profiles at one place to access the entire data and get more visibility.
The best features Zoho CRM offers are the dashboards, which I really like as a leader.
What I find most useful about the dashboards is that both the visualization and customization give a clear picture.
Zoho CRM has positively impacted my organization so far because my team has adapted to it. Initially, while migrating from Salesforce, it was a bit challenging, but now everything is working well.
I think Zoho CRM can be improved because everything is good, but the UI can be improved. That is the main area where improvements are needed.
I have been using Zoho CRM for the last three months.
Zoho CRM is stable in my experience.
Zoho CRM's scalability is definitely evolving. I have seen how Zoho CRM was a few years back and how it has evolved since then.
The customer support for Zoho CRM is good compared to my previous CRM, which was considerably better, I would say.
I previously used Salesforce.
The main reason I switched from Salesforce to Zoho CRM was due to cost considerations and our utilization needs. With the pricing structure, we have very limited users, and we compared these two tools and decided to switch to Zoho CRM for that reason. At the same price point, we have multiple users who can access the same CRM.
I have seen a return on investment so far because it is definitely time-saving, and our efficiency improved by utilizing this tool. However, I do not have any numbers or ROI metrics available at this time.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that those details were taken care of by our operations team, and I am not sure about the specifics.
Before choosing Zoho CRM, I evaluated other options including HubSpot and a few open-source CRMs such as SugarCRM.
My advice for others looking into using Zoho CRM is that it is definitely a pocket-friendly tool for startups, beginners, and mid-level users who can use Zoho CRM without hesitation. However, for fully established companies and entrepreneurs, it might have some limitations, and they might have in-house capabilities that could make it less useful for their needs. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
