Salesforce vs Zoho CRM: which is right for a small business?

How do Salesforce and Zoho CRM differ in approach?

Salesforce is the platform large companies build on, packaged into suites for small ones; Zoho CRM is a full-featured CRM priced for small businesses, inside a large family of Zoho apps. Salesforce's small-business suites put sales, service, marketing, commerce and Slack on one data model, and its Pro Suite opens the customisation Salesforce is known for: custom apps and objects, Flows for process automation, and a sandbox.

Zoho CRM puts more into each edition for less. Its Standard edition already has multiple pipelines, forecasting, mass emails, built-in calling and custom modules, and Professional adds AI agents, process management, inventory, quotes and customer portals. For most teams of a handful of people, Zoho covers the sales work; Salesforce makes sense when the CRM will become the backbone of a growing company.

How much do Salesforce and Zoho CRM cost?

Zoho costs a little over half of Salesforce at the entry level, and about a quarter at the middle. Zoho CRM Standard is $14 a user a month billed yearly or $20 monthly; Salesforce Starter Suite is $25 a user, the same billed monthly or yearly. Zoho Professional is $23 billed yearly or $35 monthly; Salesforce Pro Suite is $100 a user billed yearly, with a contract required.

Read the small print on both. Salesforce labels its prices "starting price, transaction fees apply", and sells Premier Support as an add-on for Pro Suite. Zoho's prices exclude local taxes, Ultimate is $52 a user a month billed yearly or $65 monthly, and paid support and guided onboarding plans are optional extras on top of the Classic support every paid edition includes.

What does each include on the first paid plan?

Zoho's Standard gives more sales tools, and Salesforce's Starter gives more marketing and Slack. Zoho Standard includes email integration and mass emails, built-in calling, multiple sales pipelines, calendar integration, data capture forms, sales forecasting, data enrichment and custom modules, with Slack, Zoom and Teams integrations. Salesforce Starter Suite includes assistive AI with an Employee Agent, email nurture campaigns and lead scoring, built-in sales flows and lead routing, and a free Slack workspace connected to the CRM.

How does the AI compare?

Zoho's AI reaches further down its price list. Zia generative AI creates modules, reports and workflows and retrieves data on request, with predictions such as churn and lead scores, AI forecasting, data enrichment and anomaly detection; prebuilt and custom Zia Agents start on Professional. Salesforce includes click-based AI in Free Suite and assistive AI with an Employee Agent in Starter Suite, and describes agents that follow up on leads and serve customers around the clock.

Where does Mojobase fit?

Mojobase suits a different job: knowing every customer without keeping a CRM, and it's built for 1 to 25 people, and it works well for teams up to 100. It finds the people you email and meet, groups them by company, shows their invoices and Stripe plan, and drafts the follow-up when someone is owed a reply or has gone quiet. It has no pipelines, quotes, forecasting or custom objects, so a team that runs a sales process is better served by Salesforce or Zoho CRM. It costs $39 a month for the first person and $25 for each after, with every app and the AI included.