Pipedrive Vs. Zoho CRM 2023: Best CRM for Business?

As your business grows, so does your number of clients. 

Having effective client management can be the difference between your business growing or ultimately going under. 

Luckily, Zoho CRM can effortlessly import, add, and manage your contacts without breaking a sweat!

To get started testing this feature (over six months), we imported our customer data from a CSV file (shown below). 

The whole process took less than five minutes and allowed us to easily move our data from another CRM. 

This is great news for any SMBs looking to make the switch to Zoho (with none of the opportunity cost). 

Once our contacts were imported, we wanted to see how Zoho CRM handled manual contact entry. 

We manually added some of our B2B contacts at Small Business Bonfire to put it to the test.

Here’s how it looked from our perspective.

Within each contact card, we were able to add and edit the following information:

• Name 
• Contact owner
• Contact info
• Account name
• Lead source
• Vendor name
• Date of Birth 
• Custom fields 

With all this data at our fingertips, you’d think it might be confusing to navigate. 

Luckily, Zoho CRM is incredibly user-friendly (even for beginners). 

We could quickly and easily find the contacts we needed with the powerful search function and filter options.

The bottom line: Zoho CRM offers some of the best client management capabilities on the market.

Being able to communicate with your prospects and customers through various channels is critical for keeping them engaged and happy. 

Thankfully, Zoho CRM makes this easy with its omnichannel support. 

Zoho CRM essentially provides the ability to manage the following channels in one convenient location:

• SMS
• Messaging
• Chat
• Email
• Social
• Telephony
• Signals

Zoho CRM stores all of your communication history with each customer, making it easy to pick up where you left off. 

Plus, you can track how and when your customers interact with your business across different channels.

We connected a ton of our communication channels to Zoho CRM to really test it out (over six months). 

For instance, we could connect our Gmail account in just a few clicks. 

Here’s a look into the email integration process (which took less than five minutes from start to finish).

Once connected to Zoho CRM, we could easily track and manage all of our email communication with clients. 

Here are some things we loved about this feature:

• All our communication was stored in one central location, so we could access it easily.
• We could see who we were talking to (and when), which made managing multiple clients a breeze!
• We could automate email follow-ups and reminders so we never miss an important conversation with a client.

Our two cents: Zoho CRM offers top-notch omnichannel support that makes it simple to manage and track all of your communication with clients. 

Zoho’s project management features are a great addition to their already powerful CRM capabilities.

Here’s a breakdown of what we found:

• Task tracking & assignment: Allocate tasks to team members and monitor their progress.
• Gantt charts: Visualize project timelines with the help of Gantt charts.
• Customizable views: Tailor the project interface to suit your needs.
• Progress reports: Stay updated with thorough reports on project progress.
• Budgeting & expense tracking: Keep track of your finances with budgeting and expense features.
• Inventory management: Manage your resources efficiently.

These project management capabilities make Zoho an ideal choice for teams aiming for organized collaboration and timely delivery of projects within budget. 

We put these features to the test by creating an onboarding project with individual tasks for new hires. 

Here’s a quick look at our project management board (during our six months of testing).

We could easily assign tasks, track progress, and monitor the budget for our project. 

At the end of the day, Zoho CRM proves to be a very powerful tool for managing projects within your CRM system. 

If you plan to scale your sales, you will need a clear and customizable sales pipeline. 

Zoho CRM has you covered in this area with its intuitive pipeline management feature.

Here’s what we found:

• Customizable deal stages: Tailor your sales process to fit your unique business needs
• Drag-and-drop interface: Easily move deals from one stage to another
• Create multiple pipelines: Organize your deals by different sales processes or product lines
• Sales forecasting: Get insights into your future sales based on your pipeline data
• Real-time reports: Track and analyze your pipeline data to make informed decisions for improvement

We added in our affiliate marketing deals at Small Business Bonfire (to really put Zoho CRM through its paces). 

Here’s how a “new deal” card looked (for reference). 

We could easily create custom fields, allowing us to tailor each deal according to our specific needs. 

Plus, with the drag-and-drop interface of our pipeline dashboard (shown below), we could easily move deals through each stage of our pipeline.

Our final thoughts: Zoho CRM’s pipeline management feature is a must-have for any business looking to scale its sales process and track its progress in real time. 

It’s easily some of the best pipeline management in the biz. 

Scaling your business can be tricky without the right reporting capabilities in place. 

After all, how can you make informed decisions without knowing the numbers behind your sales and marketing efforts?

Zoho CRM gives you in-depth reporting and analytics to help you gain insight into your business operations. 

Here are a few key business features we found helpful:

• Customizable dashboards: Easily customize your dashboard to display the data that’s most important to you.
• Sales forecasting: Get a clear view of your upcoming pipeline and potential revenue.
• Lead & sales tracking: Track the progress of leads and deals to better understand your conversion rates.
• Customizable reports: Create custom reports to track metrics that matter most to you.

We created custom dashboards (like the one below) with important data (such as deal insights). 

With Zoho CRM, we could easily see how our sales and marketing efforts were performing, allowing us to make informed decisions for improvement.

The nuts and bolts: Zoho CRM’s reporting and analytics capabilities could be the secret sauce your business needs to take it to the next level. 

With customizable dashboards and in-depth reports, you’ll have all the data you need to make strategic decisions that drive growth. 

Efficiently managing leads is absolutely crucial for any business, and Zoho CRM gets that. 

It’s got some seriously advanced lead management features that can help you stay on top of things. 

When it comes to customizability, Zoho CRM really shines. 

To fully test this feature, we added some of our hot leads at Small Business Bonfire. 

Here’s how one of our lead cards looked (for reference)

It’s all about having the right information to turn those leads into loyal customers.

Here’s what stood out in Zoho CRM’s lead management:

• Customizable lead cards: Tailor your lead cards to display the most relevant data to your business. This means having all the necessary details at your fingertips, making lead management incredibly efficient.
• Lead tracking: With Zoho CRM’s lead tracking, you can monitor the activity of your leads and know exactly when to engage them. 
• Lead scoring: This feature assigns scores to your leads based on their interactions with your business, enabling you to prioritize your efforts effectively.
• Automated lead distribution: Leads can be automatically assigned to the right sales personnel, ensuring timely follow-up and conversion.
• Conversion tracking: Zoho CRM allows you to track the rate at which your leads are being converted into customers, giving you valuable insight into where adjustments may be needed.

The nitty gritty: Great lead management is essential for scaling businesses, and Zoho CRM’s customizable lead cards and robust tracking features could prove to be a game-changer for your sales process.

Zoho CRM’s task management feature is an essential tool to have in your arsenal. 

It allows for efficient tracking and management of tasks, which, in turn, maximizes productivity and ensures tasks are completed on time. 

We found the task management capabilities to be robust and easy to use. Here are some of the aspects we particularly enjoyed:

• Simplicity: Zoho CRM’s task management is straightforward and user-friendly, which makes it easy for us to get the hang of it quickly.
• Task assigning: The system allows for easy assignment of tasks to team members. This made delegation a breeze and helped us ensure everyone was on the same page.
• Status tracking: We could track the status of tasks in real time, which made it easier to manage workflows and deadlines.
• Collaboration: The feature supports team collaboration, allowing several team members to work on a task simultaneously.
• Prioritization: We could rank tasks by priority, helping us to tackle the most critical tasks first.
• Deadline alerts: The system sends reminders about upcoming deadlines, ensuring no task falls through the cracks.

In summary, Zoho CRM’s task management is a powerful tool that can help any team elevate their productivity and efficiency.

Great automation can help you streamline your processes and save time across the board. 

Zoho CRM offers a wide range of automation capabilities to make tedious tasks a thing of the past.

We tested this feature (over six months) by creating all sorts of automation. 

Here’s a look into the creation process from our perspective.

The whole process took under ten minutes and saved countless hours of manual work. 

Here are some tasks we were able to automate with ease: 

• Sending automated emails based on triggers or conditions
• Creating tasks and reminders for follow-ups
• Assigning leads to specific team members based on criteria
• Updating deal stages and information based on triggers
• Updating contact information when specific actions are taken

Our verdict: Zoho CRM’s automation capabilities are highly efficient and can help businesses save valuable time by eliminating manual tasks.