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Freshsales vs Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Zoho CRM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Freshsales is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Salesforce Sales Cloud is 2.4%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho CRM is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Salesforce Sales Cloud2.4%
Zoho CRM1.9%
Freshsales1.1%
Other94.6%
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Manojkumar Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Technology Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Automation has boosted sales efficiency and improves follow-ups across multiple customer segments
The automation runs whenever a certain trigger point is met. For example, if the person details captured indicate they are interested in proceeding further, then when we update the particular field, it automatically goes to the next person at a higher level, and then the status gets changed. There are many features including recently enabled AI that gives a brief description to the contact person about what that particular promotion is about. There are also features like auto email getting triggered and marketing emails. All of those features are part of Freshsales.
Jonny Katz - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Business Operations at PeerSpot
Uses data-driven insights to improve workflows and highlights a need for simpler automation tools
Salesforce Sales Cloud can be improved in several areas. First, the UI is an area for enhancement. Even though they've launched Lightning, it's clunky at times with page load speeds. It also needs to be made extremely more user-friendly. For new people using Salesforce Sales Cloud, there is a steep learning curve. Additionally, giving non-admins the ability to make changes on the fly is something that I feel is necessary. Currently with Salesforce Sales Cloud, you need to have a consultant. It's hard to build the flows or workflows. Making it easier for that end-user who's not so technically minded to help themselves is essential. I choose seven out of ten because I think you need a consultant or a consulting company to help you build it out. Certain changes should be made much easier and more user-friendly where an admin can do it. The automation processes need to be much simpler. If you're looking at other tools out there, for example SalesLoft or HubSpot, it's much easier to build those workflows and do automation.
NaveenKumar S - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Maximus
Zoho CRM improves lead conversion with AI assistance but could have better technical support
Zoho Zia has helped our lead conversion process by serving as a private AI of Zoho CRM that assists in boosting lead conversation by analyzing customer data, predicting outcomes, and automating workflow follow-ups. Regarding how Zia helps with lead conversion, there's lead scoring and conversion predictions, sentiment analysis, and workflow suggestions. For lead scoring, Zia analyzes past lead conversation patterns and assigns scores to new leads, and high score leads get prioritized for faster follow-up. In terms of conversation predictions, Zia predicts the probability of lead conversion based on demographics and engagements, helping the sales team focus on the most promising leads. Another point is sentiment analysis, where Zia scans customer emails, chats, and notes to detect tones such as positive, negative, or neutral, guiding us on how to approach the leads better. For workflow suggestions, it recommends automated workflows such as sending emails and assigning tasks to agents, improving our engagements. Additionally, the conversational AI feature through Zia chatbot can interact with leads via website chat or capture details and push them into Zoho CRM automatically. The analytics and reporting features in Zoho CRM helped me understand sales patterns and customer behavior through standard reports that include pre-built reports for leads, deals, sales activities, and campaigns. We can customize reports as well, creating reports based on any module fields, and we can integrate with Zoho Analytics for direct capture of reports from our modules. We can merge leads reports to contact reports using SQL, allowing for effective sales funnel tracking to identify drop-offs and optimize conversation strategies. Auto-generated reports are also available for daily scheduling, ensuring that admin receives daily basis reports through automation. With advanced BI features such as drag-and-drop dashboards and predictive analysis using pivot tables, we can create insightful dashboards while pulling CRM and external data from sources such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads for unified analytics. The automation capabilities in Zoho CRM have helped streamline our organization's sales and marketing tasks by handling repetitive tasks such as sending follow-up emails, assigning leads, and updating fields. For example, if a lead score is greater than 80, it automatically assigns that record to the senior sales representative. There are also blueprint options to define the step-by-step sales process, ensuring every sales representative follows the same process. Automation includes assignment rules, lead scoring, priority load options, sales signals, macros, and territory management, which automatically routes leads based on geography, revenue, and industries. Additionally, deal stage automations trigger actions when a deal moves stages, such as sending a contract when it moves to negotiation. For marketing, there are tools for email campaign automation, behavior-based triggers, campaign to lead sync, and social media automations. The overall benefits I have seen from using Zoho CRM include centralized customer data, where all customer interactions are visible in one place, providing a 360-degree view. Improved lead conversations through AI-powered scoring and automation helps us focus on the right leads, with end-to-end sales automation managing tasks from lead capture to deal closure, thereby saving time on repetitive tasks. This leads to better marketing ROI, as we can track campaigns, ad spend, and lead sources, connecting marketing efforts to revenue. Enhanced collaboration through shared notes, tasks, and role-based access enables teamwork within our internal users and sales teams, contributing to customer satisfaction. Moreover, Zoho CRM is scalable and customizable, adapting to startups, SMBs, and enterprises with its flexible modules and fields. Lastly, it is cost-efficient compared to Salesforce and HubSpot while including a wide range of features.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the most valuable features is the ability to divert deals based on the potential revenue or specific market to certain sales teams."
"Freshsales is very simple to use, but it's fairly limited in its functionalities, and it's very cheap."
"Freshsales is user-friendly, scalable and stable."
"I like Freshsales because it's integrated with Shopify which we use to host our website."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its well-organized sales cycle, which is important to us."
"Freshsales has impacted us positively; it has saved time, increased sales, and improved customer relationships."
"To conclude, the productivity and automation features are the most useful."
"Freshsales is user-friendly, scalable and stable."
"The automation of Salesforce Sales Cloud makes the process very easier to focus on leads and converts them automatically to accounts, contacts, and opportunities."
"Best of breed SAAS solution, easy to deploy globally, easy to customize to comply with any business process, ideal for small-growing organizations."
"There is a ton of information on the dashboard. Reports are also there for us. We can analyze information across the team and across a period, such as quarterly or annually."
"In my company, we have very manual backend disparate systems, but the good news is that through Salesforce—not only the Sales Cloud, but the Commerce Cloud—our customer-facing experience is best-in-class with this solution."
"The tracking and monitoring of daily activities within each account is the most valuable aspect of Salesforce Sales Cloud. It allows for staying informed about ongoing activities, ensuring comprehensive visibility into the progress made within each account on a regular basis. Additionally, the plugins that are available, such as ZoolInfo are useful."
"Salesforce Sales Cloud has positively impacted my organization as the old excuse where a lot of people used to prefer working in Excel has been eliminated; nowadays, we have a system that's built around our business needs, which helps us optimize processes, make processes much shorter, and give us insights into sales cycles and how to improve them."
"From a personal perspective, one of the key things Salesforce.com provides us is insight into our business that would be difficult to achieve otherwise."
"This product is lightweight."
"I like that it is easy to get data in and out of it; we can export and import CSV files, and the hierarchical database allows me to look at a parent and multiple children."
"The best thing about Zoho CRM is that it is integrated with other Zoho applications."
"The most valuable features include the dashboards, deal tracking, email tracking, notes, managing notes and the ability to manage databases in one place."
"I like the solution's reminder feature which is helpful for big projects. There are many tasks that run at the same time. The reminder feature makes things easy for me since I use Zoho's mobile version as well."
"We tested the solution for a year first and found it more user friendly compared to other solutions on the market."
"One of the most important features is that it's a cloud base and, it's also quite cheaper when compared to other solutions."
"The dashboards and visualizations help us see how different markets perform. I find the dashboard feature most valuable because it's easy to visualize data. I've been trying to use the built-in quotations feature, which could reduce turnaround time. We're not using many automation features for record management and opportunity tracking. I'm trying to integrate Zoho CRM with Zoho Flow for quotation submission workflow."
"The most valuable aspect of CRMs, including Zoho CRM, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics, is automation capabilities—without requiring a large team or manual intervention, the system can execute entire business flows in seconds through proper configuration and automation setup."
 

Cons

"The price of this solution could be improved as well as the reporting functionality."
"The reporting for this solution across all their products could be improved. Currently, we have clients who export their data from Freshservices to third party solutions such Power BI to create more comprehensive reports."
"The reporting for this solution across all their products could be improved."
"We can use only one domain in the basic package."
"The licensing costs should be based on the amount of data and number of clients that one can insert into the application."
"It lacks customizability for complex and larger use cases."
"The solution needs to improve the user experience and leads capture."
"We have a problem with the time to delivery for our customers, although this is not specific to this solution."
"Salesforce Sales Cloud needs a more user-friendly interface."
"As of now, Salesforce is the most expensive CRMs out there - making it a bit more affordable will help them in a big way."
"Salesforce must build some connectors and features to make integrations easier."
"If you don't have sysadmin rights, you can be hamstrung doing many things manually and one at a time."
"Sometimes, it is difficult to integrate it with my emails. I've had trouble integrating it with my emails. There were a couple of things I did try as well, but I wasn't able to do so. I've had difficulty in other areas too with integration. It was related to syncing my calendars. I want the tasks that I put in to automatically sync to my calendars and update my calendars, but I couldn't figure out how to do it."
"The high price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It would be nice if they had an ERP offering or a firm strategic partnership with a best-in-class ERP."
"One aspect I find challenging with Salesforce Sales Cloud is its forecasting feature. While it's useful for analyzing sales data and predicting future revenue, I've encountered instances where the outcomes weren't as perfect as expected."
"When writing code that exceeds 500 or 700 lines, if you forget to save it and haven't run it once, the entire function can be lost."
"Adding a new contract to the solution is quite complicated."
"We would like to always email users as soon as any new features are launched."
"Custom development is often necessary to make such extensive changes, and it does come with associated costs."
"Zoho CRM has room for improvement when it comes to building email templates and mass email campaigns."
"It would be useful to have some way of mapping organizations that could add more value. If I have X company's database and am trying to create multiple contexts for different entities of the same company, I should be able to map it in such a way that I can see the organization chart."
"The integration should be more user-friendly."
"Since Zoho CRM is not made for the enterprise kind of company, its stability for enterprise businesses could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The basic price is affordable. The add ons are expensive."
"If one is a very low price and ten is expensive, I rate the product price as a three."
"The price for this solution is good in general, but in Brazil we do pay additional taxes."
"Freshsales is an economical product."
"The tool is not that expensive."
"The price of Salesforce Sales Cloud could be reduced. It is expensive."
"I've seen the prices for Salesforce Sales Cloud, but I haven't been the one to handle the money. As someone who's only visually looked at the price, I would imagine it's on the pricier side, but they do have a ton of leverage, and seeing that everyone I've worked for has always been dedicated to continuing Salesforce. I've never worked for anyone who has threatened to leave. Everyone has accepted the pricing for what they offer."
"Sales Cloud is quite expensive."
"Not the cheapest"
"The tool's pricing is based on the number of users. It has a different pricing for 0-100 and another for 100-500 users."
"There is a license required to use this solution and the price is expensive. It could be reduced."
"It's expensive, storage being the most costly aspect."
"The overall price of Salesforce Sales Cloud could be better, it is more expensive than other competitors. There is an annual license for Salesforce Sales Cloud."
"We have an annual license fee that costs $12,000."
"The solution has standard pricing plans."
"Zoho CRM is available at a fairly average price"
"We consider it a good value and found it to be cost-effective."
"The product costs $35 per user per year."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price and ten is a low price, I rate the pricing a five. However, the pricing is fine because we chose the enterprise plan as a private limited company."
"The basic plan has changed from $15 to $25 or $30."
"There is an annual license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Freshsales?
The product is up to the mark and everything we need right now.
What is your primary use case for Freshsales?
Freshsales is our CRM tool and CRM platform. Whenever we want to sell a product to a customer or when they inquire on...
What advice do you have for others considering Freshsales?
Freshsales is a must-go product if you are considering a low budget and highly scalable product. I would rate this re...
What are the pros and cons of MS dynamics vs. Salesforce CRM?
When comparing Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce CRM in 2026, both are leading CRM platforms, but they serve slig...
What do you like most about Salesforce Sales Cloud?
The features of Sales Cloud most useful for testing and running email campaigns are highly valuable.
What needs improvement with Salesforce Sales Cloud?
Salesforce Sales Cloud can be improved in several areas. First, the UI is an area for enhancement. Even though they'v...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM and all of Zoho's software are quite affordable because they are specifically designed for small and medium ...
What needs improvement with Zoho CRM?
I think areas of Zoho CRM that need to be improved or enhanced include the permission structure, which can be easy to...
What is your primary use case for Zoho CRM?
I describe the usual use cases for Zoho CRM that I mostly work with as related to sales flow. Most of my clients are ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Sales Cloud, SFDC, Salesforce
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Caratlane, Pykih, Buying Show, INTUO, WallyPark, Exploring Vacations, Raved, Forest, Ascendore, MagePlaza, Vacasa,
Coca-Cola Enterprises, Kuoni Global Travel Services, Financial Times, Just Eat, Jobsite, H.R. Owen, PlayerLayer, O2, DMGT, Philips, Xtreme.ie, Business Stream, Remote Asset Management, Dialogue Group
JetHub, Anderson Sales Advantage, ActionCoach, Milagro Advisory Group, TECO Pneumatic, Proteomics Consult
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Zoho and others in CRM. Updated: April 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.