Freshsales CRM

A powerful and modern alternative to Zoho

Freshsales CRM, with its AI-powered, easy-to-use platform, is a superior alternative to Zoho for businesses of all sizes. Boost your sales productivity, improve conversion, and enjoy friendly onboarding and support from day one. 

Start free trialRequest demo

Freshsales CRM

Zoho CRM

Freshsales CRM is a modern, easy-to-use CRM software powered by advanced AI capabilities. Freshsales CRM comes packed with extensive customization options and automation features.


Freshsales CRM is built for businesses of all sizes and can be tailored to scale. It stands out with its multichannel engagement capabilities that include built-in phone, email automation, and conversational AI chatbots.

Zoho Corp. offers an ecosystem of cloud apps that cater to various business needs, including finance, collaboration, project tracking, and more. It also offers CRM for sales teams.


Zoho CRM is best suited for small and upcoming businesses looking for essential CRM features. Zoho CRM helps sales teams manage their prospects and customers and is best known for its integration with other Zoho apps.

How to choose the right CRM for your business?

CRM platforms have the power to make or break your business growth journey. To help you make an informed decision, we’ve laid out the key parameters to look for in a CRM.

Smooth onboarding

Fast onboarding and modern user experience to ensure wider adoption and faster time-to-value.

Sales automation

No-code automation to streamline daily operations so that your sales team can focus more on selling.

Multichannel engagement

Built-in channels across email, phone, and social media available in a single tool to drive higher conversions.

New-age capabilities

AI-powered CRM that enables sales teams to build personalized engagement at scale and derive insights to sell smarter.

Affordable pricing

Impactful features at an affordable cost with transparent pricing to get the best value for your investment.

Friendly support

Prompt and reliable after-sales support to avoid delay in resolution and disruption in sales.

Freshsales CRM: the #1 Zoho alternative

Compared to Zoho CRM, Freshsales guarantees increased sales productivity and helps drive better customer engagement at an unmatched starting cost.

Start free trialRequest demo

5 impactful areas where Freshsales outshines Zoho

1. Superfast onboarding and setup with Freshsales CRM

What Zoho offers

  • Getting started with Zoho CRM can take between 30 to 90 days as the software is not ready out-of-the-box and demands a longer learning curve

  • Zoho lacks ready-to-use templates for workflows, which takes more human hours to set up and defeats the purpose of automation

Level up with Freshsales CRM

  • With an out-of-the-box setup and a dedicated onboarding team, you can get started with Freshsales within 24 hours

  • Sales teams can access 25+ ready-to-use workflow templates to quickly automate repeat activities like sending welcome emails or scheduling calls and focus more on selling

2. Freshsales CRM is designed to enhance productivity

What Zoho offers

  • Everyday sales activities like sending an email, making a phone call, and scheduling a meeting are time-consuming and involve multiple steps

  • Zoho CRM does not offer kanban views out-of-the-box, which makes organizing and viewing customer data more complex for sales teams

Level up with Freshsales CRM

  • You can quickly organize contacts, get a snapshot of the customer profile and engage with your prospects in one-click with the natively available kanban view and list view

  • With Freshsales, you will witness 90% higher adoption like our customers do and faster time-to-value as it simplifies CRM usage for salespeople

3. Freshsales CRM is built for scale and customization

What Zoho offers

  • Nothing wins you big-ticket deals like talking one-on-one to customers. In Zoho CRM, you need to pay third-party phone bridges an additional $20/month to build personalized conversations.

  • You need to install separate e-sign apps to send quotes for customer approvals, which illustrates that Zoho does not scale with your business needs

Level up with Freshsales CRM

  • Sales teams can build personalized engagement at scale and win more deals with the built-in phone, which costs 25% less than other phone bridges

  • Enterprises get rich customization options and sandbox feature. The native e-sign for quotes helps you prioritize deals and increase conversion by up to 33%.

4. Freddy AI in Freshsales CRM is powerful and affordable

What Zoho offers

  • ZIA, Zoho’s native AI, helps sales teams with anomaly detection and sales forecasting. However, you cannot leverage ZIA unless you buy 20+ user licenses, which shoots up the overall cost to $800/month/account.

  • Without an out-of-office detector in Zoho CRM, sales executives will be shooting sales emails in the dark

Level up with Freshsales CRM

  • Businesses can access Freddy AI from the Freshsales Pro Plan onwards for as low as $39/user/month, without any license restrictions to generate impressive emails, gain sales insights, and project revenue

  • The out-of-office detection helps your sales team plan customer calls or proactively share the quotation before the prospect goes unreachable

5. Freshsales CRM comes at a 35% lower starting cost

What Zoho offers

  • Zoho CRM offers different features and subscription plans for businesses, but small businesses need to shell out $14/user/month for the starter pack, which costs 55% higher than Freshsales

  • Zoho’s support team is available only 8*5 and has a waiting time of >8 hours for queries, significantly hampering your day-to-day sales operations 

Level up with Freshsales CRM

  • At just $9/user/month, a new business can access all the essential features of Freshsales CRM and easily realize impact without breaking the bank

  • The Freshsales customer support team is available 24*5 and is widely acclaimed to be best-in-class. We’re not saying this; our customers are!

Freshsales CRM vs Zoho CRM: An honest comparison

Criteria

Freshsales CRMZoho CRM

Pricing

Starts at $9/user/month

Starts at $14/user/month

AI capabilities

No min. license requirements
Freddy AI included in Pro plan onwards  
($39/month)

ZIA requires min. 20 licenses

Available only from Enterprise plan

($800/month)

G2 Rating

4.5 out of 54.1 out of 5

Built-in phone



Workflow templates

25+ ready-to-use templates


Kanban View for records


Offered via extension only for Deals

Contact Lifecycle Stages



List View with one-click for emails, calls and reminders



Dormant Deal Alert


Requires extension

Sales Sequences


Available only via Workflows

e-Sign in CPQ


Requires Zoho Sign Add-on

Deal teams



Out-of-office detection



Switch from Zoho to Freshsales CRM today. Get $500 worth of free consultation.

Contact now

The Freshworks advantage

Freshworks Neo Platform

Create custom workflows and applications to meet your unique business needs. Scale fast with a marketplace of more than 1,200 apps. Unify experience, gather actionable insights, and bring customer context to every interaction.

Learn more

Freddy AI for sales

Get more done in less time with Freddy, your always-available AI assistant. Freddy helps you find potential customers, create personalized emails, and provides insights to help you close deals faster.

Learn more

Freshsales Suite

Unite sales and marketing with an all-in-one CRM. Deliver seamless engagement across channels with a 360° view of the customer. Understand customer intent and send the right message to close deals faster.

Learn more

Why our customers love us

With Freshsales, we are able to get a holistic view of our customers, have better governance over sales productivity, pipeline and in turn move our business forward.

Brian ShiaHead of Corporate Solutions, Lalamove
Watch video

Reducing our no-show rate was important to have higher utilization of our sales team. With Freshsales, we brought it down to about 20%, and time is money.

Mike HopkinsSenior VP, Sales and Service, Blue Nile
Watch video

Simplicity and power of the tool took us. Freshsales is allowing us to keep going with limited resources, given the shifting environment. It’s an asset.

Greg ArmstrongVP of Sales, Evans Manufacturing
Read Customer Story

We are 100% satisfied with Freshsales. We wanted an out-of-the-box solution that could be used. We have got it.

Kim JohnsenCCO, Kongskilde Industries
Read Customer Story
TRUSTED BY 65,000+ BUSINESSES WORLDWIDE

Recommended by industry experts

FAQ

What are the disadvantages of Zoho CRM?

Zoho CRM has the following disadvantages:

• 55% higher starting cost than Freshsales CRM

• No built-in phone for customer engagement

• Absence of out-of-the-box sales productivity solutions for workflow templates, kanban views and dormant deal alerts

• Expensive to access AI features costing up to $800/month

• Limited customer support available only 8*5

Why is Freshsales CRM the best Zoho alternative?

Freshsales CRM is a modern and powerful Zoho CRM alternative, as it ticks all the boxes for sales teams that focus on enhanced productivity, faster deal closure, and higher conversion rates.

• 35% lower starting cost at an affordable pricing of $9/user/month

• 20x more affordable with Freddy AI features available from Pro plan at $39/month

• 24-hour lightning-fast onboarding and set up with dedicated assistance

• Multi-channel engagement with built-in phone, email and chat

• Modern, easy-to-use interface that is designed to increase sales productivity

How to migrate data from Zoho CRM?

Migrating your data from Zoho CRM to Freshsales CRM is a simple 2-step process. All you need is your data in CSV/XLSX files to make the migration easy and then click on the Zoho CRM Migration button in your Freshsales account to move all your Zoho CRM data to Freshsales. Learn more