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Freshsales vs Zoho CRM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Freshsales
Ranking in CRM
20th
Ranking in Opportunity Management
10th
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (7th)
Zoho CRM
Ranking in CRM
3rd
Ranking in Opportunity Management
3rd
Ranking in Sales Force Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 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 (%)
Zoho CRM1.9%
Freshsales1.1%
Other97.0%
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.
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

"Freshsales is user-friendly, scalable and stable."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its well-organized sales cycle, which is important to us."
"Freshsales is very simple to use, but it's fairly limited in its functionalities, and it's very cheap."
"To conclude, the productivity and automation features are the most useful."
"The solution is a low-cost CRM product compared to other CRM alternatives."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to divert deals based on the potential revenue or specific market to certain sales teams."
"I like Freshsales because it's integrated with Shopify which we use to host our website."
"Email integration is easy."
"Some of the best features of Zoho CRM include the open architecture; it's fairly easy to modify it to your business process without having to get professionals involved."
"Its initial setup process for the cloud-based version is straightforward."
"For the most part, the solution is stable."
"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 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."
"What I like most about Zoho CRM is its configurability. We can adapt it to our needs in terms of the sales process. It has automation capabilities, but we mostly use it as a static system, except for sending emails and information about updated products."
"Zoho CRM by contrast is easy to use, customizable and you don’t need training to use it."
"I like that it is easy to get data in and out of it. We can export and import CSV files. I also like that the database is hierarchical, which allows me to be able to look at a parent and multiple children."
 

Cons

"The licensing costs should be based on the amount of data and number of clients that one can insert into the application."
"The solution needs to improve the user experience and leads capture."
"We can use only one domain in the basic package."
"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."
"It lacks customizability for complex and larger use cases."
"We have a problem with the time to delivery for our customers, although this is not specific to this solution. Time to delivery can be 90 days."
"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 login process could be improved as some users find it unfriendly. The documentation could also be more user-friendly and better organized."
"The integration should be more user-friendly. I think the architecture currently is pretty modularized within the Zoho system."
"They should provide an option to customize modules."
"The only thing I noticed was that it does not support multi-country operations."
"Support could be more knowledgeable."
"The solution can improve by having a policy that allows us to integrate with the cloud."
"In Creator, you can do calculations and change another field immediately after you enter any value. If you add the quantity or price in any field, you can immediately change the total in Creator. The same functionality is not directly available in CRM because it is prebuilt."
"The product's scalability and stability need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Freshsales is an economical product."
"The tool is not that 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."
"The basic price is affordable. The add ons are expensive."
"Zoho CRM has a subscription-based license, which is not too expensive."
"The price of Zoho CRM is already competitive, but we would always like to have a better discount. Most of the features are included in the price but if we want the extra features then we have to purchase them."
"The product costs $35 per user per year."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"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 tool started out quite cheap. It's had some changes with small and medium business subscriptions, but it's still worth the price. I'd say it's priced a bit below the medium range."
"Zoho CRM is an expensive tool."
"The solution has standard pricing plans."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
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 any promotion site, we get the customer details over Freshsales, and based on t...
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 review as a nine.
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 businesses.
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 set up custom permissions within Zoho Creator using different filters and runni...
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 involved in that; the lead system allows leads to flow into our system, which ar...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Caratlane, Pykih, Buying Show, INTUO, WallyPark, Exploring Vacations, Raved, Forest, Ascendore, MagePlaza, Vacasa,
JetHub, Anderson Sales Advantage, ActionCoach, Milagro Advisory Group, TECO Pneumatic, Proteomics Consult
Find out what your peers are saying about Freshsales vs. Zoho CRM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.