Zoho One

A HUGE bang for the buck. Getting access to all Zoho apps for one value price is super appealing and great value.
All the apps a business needs in a single platform
Easy to administer
User friendly screens (mostly)

Apps are not as integrated as they could be. I spent a long time when consulting for several companies trying to customise their integrations between Zoho apps (that really should be there out of the box). Zoho Flow (Zoho's answer to Zapier) goes someway to help integrate their apps, but still some apps just cannot be integrated as needed (Bookings and CRM, Bookings and Inventory, for example). Zoho's integrations with 3rd party services and apps sometimes are way better than their own apps.

Their all-in-one platform approach often means that the main competitors offer much better features and functionality (e.g. Meetings vs Zoom, Bookings vs Calendly, Campaigns vs Active Campaign). Their strong point is definitely CRM, Books, and Inventory, which are all very strong products.

Support is hit and miss. I have had responses within minutes and then other tickets I have had to chase for nearly a week to get a response. Sometimes I had to explain the issue several times before I got more than a canned response.

We have tried many, many, many programs in our history. Zoho One was the one that answered all of our problems.

Imagine every single thing your business needs to operate and I'm pretty confident that Zoho One includes that. It has everything including a CRM, accounting, analytics, automated marketing, social management, HR, and even custom apps. And it does all of this extremely well. Even on the CRM side - you can customize it to your heart's content, including creating your own tables and interactions between them.

All of this is great. If you are a micro-business, then you can handle a lot of normally complicated tasks and processes much easier in Zoho One. On the other hand, if you are a small or medium-sized business with many people controlling different aspects of your business - they can all collaborate and do their jobs here too.

And the pricing? It is amazing. I was shocked when they announced this. We were subscribing to four or five of their products at a much higher rate per month. We were actually considering building our own system internally to save money and then they announced Zoho One. It gave us nearly everything in their catalog of programs - at a much lower rate than we were already paying. I mean the value is phenominal.

The only complaint I have is that some of the programs don't talk to each other as well as I would like. For instance, their Connect program has a lot of features that work well with project management and job tasks. However, it wasn't possible to attach the data in our Kanban lists to data in our CRM. I think if they could fully open each app so that its data was interchangable with all other apps - that would take Zoho One to a whole different level.

Zoho One is the perfect solution for small and particularly, micro businesses.
The alternative is that you use multiple tools that you have to then manually integrate. Or pay for another tool to integrate them. With Zoho One, you get Zoho's versions of those tools included! This can save you a huge amount of time and money so you really get to focus on the actions needed to grow your business.
Zoho One does more than you need it to do, and that's a good thing! Because it will provide you with capabilities and options to make your life easier and your business more effective, and they're there, already accessible to you. If you decide you want to launch a subscription service or membership, there's a system already there. If you start employing people, there's a HR solution. If you want to get really advanced and built your own custom applications, that's there too.
Finally, when you start using all of these individual products, it's a massive weight off to know that they are all tightly integrated. You don't need to work out how to add your customers onto your mailing list or know which ones are engaging with you on social media. You don't need to check multiple systems to find out if your customer has their invoices. It's quick and easy to integrate the applications, sort out duplicates, and ensure your data is as clean and tidy as it can be.

The only reasons I can see for not going with Zoho One are:
1. That you need a more specific tool to accomplish a specific job. Zoho's tools are industry leading in their own right as standalone products, but if you're just looking for the best marketing automation software, or the best tool to manage Instagram, then you might be able to find more features elsewhere. Zoho One excels on balance because of the added benefits of using all of the different apps together.
2. That your business is rapidly growing, and you need to use other software as well. If you need to use Microsoft 365, or you have to use Xero or Quickbooks, or communicate via Slack, then the cost benefits of Zoho One will start to diminish. Also, if your headcount is growing rapidly then £35 a month might start getting a bit steep as you may find that only 2-3 people need access to the marketing tools, while only your bookkeeper needs to use Books. In this instance you might be better off licensing the individual tools separately, or combining Zoho's other platform packages.