Zoho CRM Review for Growing Businesses: The Honest Version

Zoho CRM is one of those products that doesn’t get talked about as much as HubSpot or Salesforce, but quietly has over 250,000 businesses using it worldwide. It’s priced aggressively, packed with features, and offers a level of customisation that surprises people who’ve only seen it listed as a “budget option”.

But it’s not perfect. The support experience frustrates people. The ecosystem can become a trap. And the depth of customisation that makes it powerful also makes it overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Here’s an honest review — what Zoho CRM does well, where it genuinely struggles, and how to decide whether it’s the right choice for a growing business.

The Pricing Advantage Is Real

Let’s start with the most obvious thing. Zoho CRM is significantly cheaper than HubSpot and Salesforce at comparable feature tiers.

Tier	Zoho CRM	HubSpot Sales Hub	Salesforce Sales Cloud
Entry	Free (3 users)	Free (unlimited users)	N/A
Basic paid	~$20 AUD/user/mo (Standard)	~$27 AUD/user/mo (Starter)	~$40 AUD/user/mo (Starter)
Mid-tier	~$35 AUD/user/mo (Professional)	~$130 AUD/user/mo (Professional)	~$120 AUD/user/mo (Professional)
Advanced	~$50 AUD/user/mo (Enterprise)	~$200 AUD/user/mo (Enterprise)	~$200 AUD/user/mo (Enterprise)
Top tier	~$65 AUD/user/mo (Ultimate)	~$270 AUD/user/mo (Enterprise+)	~$500 AUD/user/mo (Unlimited)

At 20 users on the Professional tier, you’re looking at roughly $8,400 AUD/year for Zoho versus $31,200/year for HubSpot or $28,800/year for Salesforce. That’s a substantial difference — especially for a growing business where every dollar matters.

And unlike HubSpot, Zoho doesn’t charge based on your contact database size. You’re paying per user, not per contact. For businesses with large databases and small teams, this pricing model is far more predictable.

Customisation Depth Is Impressive

This is where Zoho genuinely surprises people. The customisation engine — especially on Enterprise tier and above — rivals Salesforce at a fraction of the cost.

What you can customise:

• Custom modules — create entirely new data objects beyond the standard Leads, Contacts, Deals, and Accounts. If you need to track equipment, projects, sites, or certifications, you can build a module for it
• Custom functions — write server-side scripts (in Deluge, Zoho’s scripting language) that execute on triggers. This isn’t drag-and-drop automation — it’s actual code that can perform complex logic, API calls, and data manipulation
• Canvas design — completely redesign the layout of any module’s detail view using a drag-and-drop builder. You can make Zoho CRM look nothing like Zoho CRM
• Blueprint — define process flows with mandatory steps, conditions, and transitions. This is more powerful than basic pipeline automation because it enforces the process rather than just suggesting it
• Subforms and related lists — build multi-line data entry within records, which is essential for quoting, line items, and complex data structures

For a business that wants to heavily customise their CRM without paying Salesforce prices or hiring a Salesforce developer, Zoho’s customisation layer is a legitimate option.

The Zoho Ecosystem: Advantage and Trap

Zoho has 50+ products — CRM, Projects, Books (accounting), Desk (support), Marketing Automation, Analytics, Creator (low-code platform), and dozens more. They all integrate with each other natively.

The advantage: If you go all-in on Zoho, the integration between products is seamless. CRM to invoicing to support to email marketing — data flows without middleware, without Zapier, without API workarounds. The Zoho One bundle ($65 AUD/user/month for everything) is remarkable value if you use even half the products.

The trap: Once you’ve built your business on the Zoho ecosystem — CRM data flowing into Zoho Books, support tickets in Zoho Desk, automations in Zoho Flow, custom apps in Zoho Creator — migrating away becomes enormously difficult. Your data, your integrations, your custom scripts, your workflows — they’re all tied to Zoho’s proprietary tools.

This isn’t unique to Zoho. Every platform creates lock-in. But Zoho’s breadth means the lock-in runs deeper. You’re not just migrating a CRM — you’re potentially migrating your entire business operating system.

Where Zoho CRM Struggles

The User Interface

This is the most common criticism, and it’s fair. Zoho CRM’s interface is functional but not elegant. It feels busier than HubSpot or Pipedrive. There are more menus, more options, more settings visible at any given time. For technical users who appreciate depth, this is fine. For sales teams who want simplicity, it can feel overwhelming.

Zoho has improved the UI significantly in recent years — the Canvas feature lets you redesign layouts completely — but the out-of-the-box experience still feels like it prioritises capability over clarity. Your team will need more training time compared to Pipedrive, which most people figure out intuitively.

Support Quality

This is the area where Zoho consistently receives the most negative feedback. Free and Standard tier support is email-only with response times that can stretch to 48 hours or more. Even on paid tiers, support interactions can feel scripted and slow to resolve complex issues.

Premium support is available for an additional fee, and the experience improves significantly. But if you’re choosing Zoho partly because of its lower price, paying extra for usable support somewhat undermines that advantage.

For Australian businesses, the time zone adds friction. Zoho’s primary support centres are in India, which means responses may arrive overnight and back-and-forth troubleshooting stretches across days.

The Learning Curve

Zoho CRM has more configuration options than most businesses need. That depth is a strength for power users but a barrier for everyone else. Setting up Zoho properly — configuring modules, building automations, designing layouts, connecting to other Zoho products — requires a significant time investment.

Many businesses set up Zoho in a hurry, skip the customisation step, and end up with a generic interface that doesn’t match their workflow. Then they blame the tool, when the real issue is that Zoho requires more setup effort than simpler alternatives.

Deluge Scripting

Zoho’s custom functions use Deluge — a proprietary scripting language that only works within the Zoho ecosystem. It’s not JavaScript, Python, or anything else your developers already know. This means:

• You can’t hire general developers to write Zoho automations — you need someone who knows Deluge
• Skills learned in Zoho don’t transfer to other platforms
• Custom logic is locked inside Zoho’s infrastructure

For simple automations, Deluge is approachable. For complex business logic, the proprietary nature adds friction and dependency.

When Zoho CRM Works Best

Zoho is a strong fit when:

• Budget is a primary constraint and you need a full-featured CRM at 30-40% of what HubSpot or Salesforce would cost
• You want one ecosystem for CRM, invoicing, support, and email marketing — and you’re comfortable with the lock-in that implies
• You need deep customisation — custom modules, complex workflows, and process automation — without paying Salesforce prices
• Your team is technical enough to handle the configuration and learning curve, or you’re willing to invest in proper setup
• You have 10-50 users — Zoho hits a sweet spot for mid-sized teams where per-user pricing adds up fast on other platforms

When Zoho CRM Is the Wrong Choice

Zoho is a poor fit when:

• Your team values simplicity above all — if adoption is your primary concern and your team struggles with complex tools, Pipedrive will get higher usage with less training
• You rely heavily on community and third-party resources — HubSpot and Salesforce have vastly larger communities, more consultants, more training materials, and more integration partners
• Support responsiveness matters — if your business can’t afford 24-48 hour response times when something breaks, Zoho’s standard support will frustrate you
• You need enterprise-grade reliability guarantees — Zoho’s uptime and infrastructure are solid but not at the same level as Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics for mission-critical deployments
• Your developers want standard tools — if you’re building custom integrations, the Deluge dependency adds a layer of complexity that standard API-based tools avoid

The Bottom Line

Zoho CRM is genuinely underrated. The pricing makes it accessible. The customisation depth makes it capable. The ecosystem makes it versatile. For a business that’s willing to invest the time to configure it properly — and comfortable with the ecosystem lock-in — it delivers remarkable value for money.

But it’s not a plug-and-play tool. It rewards effort and punishes shortcuts. A well-configured Zoho instance can compete with CRMs costing three times as much. A poorly configured one will frustrate your team and end up supplemented by spreadsheets and workarounds — which defeats the entire purpose.

If you’re considering Zoho, be honest about two things: how much setup time you’re willing to invest, and how technical your team is. If the answers are “significant” and “reasonably,” Zoho is a strong contender. If the answers are “minimal” and “not very,” look at simpler options first.

And if you’ve tried Zoho (or any CRM) and found that no off-the-shelf tool handles the way your specific business works — complex quoting, industry-specific workflows, multi-system integration — that’s usually a sign that the problem isn’t which CRM you choose. It’s that your workflow doesn’t fit the CRM model. At that point, the question changes from “which tool?” to “should we build something that actually fits?”