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Salesforce Essentials vs Zoho CRM comparison

Salesforce and Zoho are both solutions in the CRM category. Salesforce is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0, while Zoho is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. Salesforce holds a 0.4% mindshare in CRM, compared to Zoho’s 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Salesforce users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Zoho users who would recommend it.
Salesforce Essentials
Read 14 Salesforce Essentials reviews
  • 284 Views
  • 278 Comparison Views
92% willing to recommend
Zoho CRM
Read 55 Zoho CRM reviews
  • 1,741 Views
  • 1,602 Comparison Views
89% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Zoho CRM and Salesforce Essentials are major contenders in the CRM market. Zoho CRM has the upper hand with its strong customization and affordability, making it ideal for startups and small businesses, while Salesforce Essentials excels in AI capabilities for sophisticated customer management.

Features: Zoho CRM offers extensive customization options, API access, and seamless integration with Google Apps, which benefits pipeline management and reporting. Salesforce Essentials provides advanced AI features and a comprehensive Sales and Service Cloud, enhancing customer interactions with efficient automation tools.

Room for Improvement: Zoho CRM could improve its email templates, social integrations, and mobile usability, along with enhancing scalability and third-party integrations. Salesforce Essentials needs better analytics, pricing flexibility, and support for mixed languages. Its interface complexity and lack of intuitive automation are also areas for enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zoho CRM supports both public and private cloud deployments, offering flexibility, while Salesforce Essentials primarily uses public clouds. Zoho's customer service receives mixed reviews, contrasting with Salesforce's criticized high response times despite generally effective support.

Pricing and ROI: Zoho CRM is cost-effective with competitive pricing and diverse plans, showing strong ROI through productivity gains. In contrast, Salesforce Essentials is more expensive, with higher pricing and added professional service costs, yet it provides solid ROI by reducing manpower needs.

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To learn more, read our detailed Salesforce Essentials vs. Zoho CRM Report (Updated: July 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Essentials vs. Zoho CRM
July 2025
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Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.9
Salesforce Essentials offers an efficient, user-friendly platform that accelerates sales, aids teams, and automates processes for quick returns.
Sentiment score
5.3
Zoho CRM enhances sales and efficiency with automation, reducing costs and boosting productivity through real-time reporting and streamlined operations.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.0
Salesforce Essentials is praised for fast, efficient support and reliable service uptime, enhancing user satisfaction and operational stability.
Sentiment score
6.7
Zoho CRM support varies in quality and availability, with mixed reviews on communication and resolution efficiency across regions.
Their service and uptime is phenomenal.
Salesforce Essentials has excellent customer service.
For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report
Sometimes, they don't understand what my actual needs are.
There are multiple blogs and articles available online for self-help.
The 1.5 deduction from 10 is due to cultural communication differences based on where we're getting the support, as sometimes it takes a couple of times to communicate clearly enough for them to understand the issue.
For more quotes and insights, download the Zoho CRM report
AA
GS
Romani Labib - PeerSpot reviewer
AU
reviewer2180034 - PeerSpot reviewer
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Salesforce Essentials is highly scalable, supporting enterprise-level needs with flexibility, although some report connectivity and enhancement dependency issues.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zoho CRM is scalable and integrates well for SMEs, though additional investments may be needed for full customization.
It is one of the most scalable systems available.
For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report
Zoho CRM is quite scalable; I have worked with clients who started with ten companies and have scaled up to managing 500 employees effectively within Zoho CRM.
The system is easy to understand, implement coding, and conduct training.
For more quotes and insights, download the Zoho CRM report
AA
JR
AU
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Salesforce Essentials offers stable performance, smooth SAP integration, minor bugs, and reliable uptime, ensuring minimal operational disruptions for users.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zoho CRM is praised for stability and reliability, with minor speed issues, earning high user satisfaction ratings overall.
Salesforce Essentials has proven stable, with no downtime that affects my work.
For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report
I find Zoho CRM to be 100% stable and reliable as far as I know.
I would rate the stability of Zoho CRM as a nine.
For more quotes and insights, download the Zoho CRM report
GS
JR
reviewer2180034 - PeerSpot reviewer
 

Room For Improvement

Salesforce Essentials needs better integration, intuitive UI, competitive pricing, simplified automation, enhanced connectivity, and improved language support.
Zoho CRM needs better integration, user interface, pricing, scalability, automation, and improved customer support and documentation.
Instead of requiring users to think about system navigation and clicking procedures, they can simply follow a workflow that guides them through the process.
There are other competitors, like Zoho CRM, that offer similar features at a lower cost.
For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report
The platform does not save code versions similar to GitHub, where you can compare new versions with previous ones.
Banks and confidential organizations may need an on-premise solution.
The main improvement needed for Zoho CRM is introducing SQL code for reports, similar to what's in Zoho Analytics.
For more quotes and insights, download the Zoho CRM report
AA
GS
AU
Romani Labib - PeerSpot reviewer
JR
 

Setup Cost

Salesforce Essentials is costly, but offers value through flexibility and add-ons, despite complex payment options and operational expenses.
Zoho CRM provides flexible and competitive pricing, starting at $12 per user, with comprehensive plans like Zoho One available.
The cost of running Salesforce Essentials is significant.
The costs associated with Salesforce Essentials are substantial, which is a drawback compared to competitors who offer similar services for less.
For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report
Zoho CRM and all of Zoho's software are quite affordable because they are specifically designed for small and medium businesses.
For more quotes and insights, download the Zoho CRM report
AA
GS
JR
 

Valuable Features

Salesforce Essentials offers cloud deployment, customization, AI, and mobile support, benefiting process optimization and data integration despite high costs.
Zoho CRM offers customization, integration, analytics, and affordability, making it ideal for startups and businesses needing robust tools.
It is very customizable to specific needs.
Salesforce Essentials is excellent because it is one of the most flexible CRMs available.
For more quotes and insights, download the Salesforce Essentials report
The most valuable aspect of CRMs, including Zoho CRM, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics, is automation capabilities.
Zoho CRM has many valuable automation features such as auto-reply, auto-mail, and reminders for customers about last offers and upcoming processes.
The most valuable features of Zoho CRM so far include Deluge script, which are custom functions, workflows which are mostly used while creating flows, and custom layouts which are used when adding extra fields or validations.
For more quotes and insights, download the Zoho CRM report
AA
GS
AU
Romani Labib - PeerSpot reviewer
JR
 

Categories and Ranking

Salesforce Essentials
Ranking in CRM
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Zoho CRM
Ranking in CRM
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Opportunity Management (5th), Sales Force Automation (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of Salesforce Essentials is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zoho CRM is 3.1%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

Srini-Dhanaraj - PeerSpot reviewer
Manages service requests and dispatches engineers to resolve issues
I work from home for a heater manufacturing company. They wanted to move away from their current SAP CRM system to Salesforce. There is a fulfillment process, which involves taking an order, delivering it, and providing service. Salesforce is used to manage the order-taking process. Once an order is taken, the backend system, SAP ERP, handles product manufacturing, delivery, and installation. After installation, the Service Cloud in Salesforce takes over for ongoing service management. Once your order is confirmed, integration with the SAP ERP backend will be seamless. The system takes the sales order from Salesforce and starts processing it for procurement, starting with creating a production order, manufacturing, and then delivery. Once the product is delivered, this information is passed back to Salesforce Service Cloud. In the Service Cloud, a service engineer receives a notification indicating that a product needs to be delivered to a specific location for installation. The engineer then inspects and installs the product at the designated site. SAP ERP manages the product manufacturing and delivery processes. After the product is delivered to the customer, Salesforce Service Cloud takes over. It manages service requests and dispatches engineers to resolve issues reported by customers. Service Cloud captures the information and creates an incident record when a customer reports a product fault. Engineers receive this information and promptly visit the client site to fix the issue. The solution is easy to implement. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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Romani Labib - PeerSpot reviewer
Customization options empower workflow management, though support understanding can be enhanced
Currently, I am still working with Azure and I use the Azure products for my current work. I use Azure Active Directory. I don't use products like App Service from Azure or Azure Logic Apps, Front Door, but I think it's very straightforward. Once I take the first step to use Azure, I can track myself to use another application, program, or module in Azure. I use Office 365 because we actually have Exchange mail server 2019 on premises. In the last few months, I upgraded from Exchange on premise to use Office 365, which is faster, easier to troubleshoot, and more secure. I use Remote Desktop Services (RDS) as the best solution because I make a private server in my data center room. I have many users that need to access the internet, so I don't join the server to my domain because if I have any malware or other attacks, I can resolve it easily without any damage to my internal network. Microsoft RDS is more user-friendly and easier to use compared to RDS from Azure Microsoft or another provider. I purchase Microsoft Remote Desktop Services directly from Microsoft. I have had an MCSE and Microsoft account for 15 years. I work with SharePoint and Exchange, which are famous applications through Microsoft and Office 365. For daily tasks, I use Microsoft tools and Linux tools because I have applications like CRM, ERP, and HRM running over CentOS, an operating system by Linux. Regarding CentOS, in Egypt, we have issues paying for things from the internet, especially due to the large margin between US dollars and Egyptian pounds. CentOS is totally free from the internet, so I create ISO and install it on the server to use all features, policies, and security modules. Currently, I use 3CX as voice solutions, and Asterisk is the Linux platform I use, along with firewalls by Linux called pfSense. All data centers in my company have products between Microsoft and Linux systems. For DNS, I use deDNS to make remote access or subdomains from deDNS organization. Sometimes, I pay for a main domain from HostGator and re-route the domain to my data centers. Based on other competitors, I would rate Zoho CRM's price as a five, as it has a middle-range price compared to others. Overall, I rate Zoho CRM a seven out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
Educational Organization
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Salesforce Essentials?
Salesforce provides the best they have with the current version. Most of the features we need are already there, and it's very easy to use.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Salesforce Essentials?
Salesforce Essentials is very expensive, but it delivers exceptional value. It is a good platform to have if you can afford it because it has numerous add-ons and modules. Anything that Salesforce ...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Salesforce Essentials?
We use a limited number of automated workflows in Salesforce Essentials. The workflows we implement are designed to make sales teams' lives easier when executing certain tasks. Instead of requiring...
See all answers
What do you like most about Zoho CRM?
Zoho CRM integrates easily with customer service workflows.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zoho CRM?
I rate the pricing as a five out of ten, as it offers good value for money.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Zoho CRM?
The UX for the product in general is probably below standard compared to some of the other CRMs.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time
Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Zoho CRM Logo
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Compared 5% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Essentials
July 2025
Salesforce Essentials reportDownload Salesforce Essentials product report
Buyer's Guide
Zoho CRM
July 2025
Zoho CRM reportDownload Zoho CRM product report
 

Overview

Salesforce Essentials is a cloud-based CRM tool for businesses seeking flexible, scalable, and customizable solutions to enhance sales and customer support processes.

Designed for seamless integration across multiple channels, Salesforce Essentials includes Sales and Service Cloud to simplify sales tasks and customer management. It enhances finance, credit, and quality processes with user-friendly AI capabilities and predictive analytics. Despite its strengths, there is room for improvement in SAP integration, interface simplicity, and report generation. Cost-effectiveness and support for diverse languages are also potential upgrade areas. Businesses use this CRM solution for lead management, opportunity tracking, and automating sales workflows, transitioning from paper-based methods to digital efficiency.

What are the essential features of Salesforce Essentials?
  • Scalability and Flexibility: Accommodates growth and customization needs.
  • Multiple Channel Integration: Enhances finance and quality processes.
  • User-Friendly: Easy navigation with AI capabilities.
  • Cloud Deployment: Includes Sales and Service Cloud features.
  • Predictive Analytics: Improves productivity and tracking.
  • Mobile App Support: Facilitates on-the-go access and management.
What benefits or ROI can users expect from Salesforce Essentials?
  • Improved Productivity: Automation features save time and streamline tasks.
  • Enhanced Customer Management: Centralizes interaction and data handling.
  • Ease of Transition: From manual to automated workflows.
  • Performance Monitoring: Standardizes processes for better oversight.

In the retail industry, businesses employ Salesforce Essentials for customer data management and transparency in order processing. Healthcare providers use it for patient engagement and streamlined communication. Financial services utilize it for billing management and compliance, harnessing automation tools for efficient data handling.

Salesforce

Zoho CRM empowers organizations with a complete customer relationship lifecycle management solution for managing organization-wide Sales, Marketing, Customer Support & Service and Inventory Management.

Zoho
 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
JetHub, Anderson Sales Advantage, ActionCoach, Milagro Advisory Group, TECO Pneumatic, Proteomics Consult
Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Essentials vs. Zoho CRM
July 2025
Free Report: Salesforce Essentials vs. Zoho CRM
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