Zoho CRM Professional Edition
Zoho’s collection of online tools has seen quite an improvement over the past few years. In some ways it is even comparable to the powerful and sophisticated Google Docs. Their Customer Relationship Management is not quite up to standard, but the Zoho CRM Professional Edition does offer a very affordable system which is particularly useful for Google Apps users as well as current Zoho clients.
The free version includes automation for customer support, marketing and sales, including Web forms, forecasting and reporting. The Professional version comes with increased options such as management of inventory, workflow, security and custom data, for $12 a month per user. For $25 a month per user, the Enterprise version also includes data manipulation tools, autoresponders and Web tabs.
While some vendors might need the extended capabilities of the Enterprise version, the Professional offers the best value for money for most small and medium businesses. The price can go up significantly if you need to opt for the plug-ins for Office, Outlook and Zoho Mail – these can cost you an extra $3 to $5 per user monthly. You can however at anytime choose to downgrade, upgrade or cancel services, and the cost is still reasonable in comparison to other CRM apps such as Salesforce.com Professional, at $30 a month per user. (more…)