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Zohoho, and a bottle of rum...
Friday, September 19, 2008 — posted by Sarah O'Keefe
The excellent ReadWriteWeb has a couple of articles that are must-reads:How Decoupled is The Innovation Economy From Rest of The Economy?
Zoho: The Little Engine That Could (Take on Both Microsoft and Google
I'll just recommend that you read them both.
We recently shifted our customer relationship management (CRM) system to Zoho, and we are quite pleased. Why Zoho?
1. It's cheap. We looked at Salesforce, Netsuite, Sugar Professional, and several other options. Zoho is a LOT cheaper. We're talking hundreds of dollars per year instead of thousands of dollars per year. The price differential is absolutely stunning.
2. It's easy to use. I set up trial accounts with several other providers. Zoho is oodles easier.
3. Their support is somewhere between excellent and astounding. Our questions are answered quickly, and the support staff is quick to offer to call and/or set up a web meeting to solve a problem. Given what we're paying them, I can't believe that they even bother to return our email.
4. We tried using open-source CRM. The maintenance cost to us was simply too high.
I have to agree with the RWW guys, who note that:
They [Zoho] charge real money for their software, with no advertising. But the price is really low. This is like WalMart. This is like Basecamp, reasonable prices for great software. That is so boring! In branded consumer goods, buying expensive conveys status. In software, buying expensive when there is an equivalent at lower cost, simply conveys a willingness to burn money.
Zoho is offering an enormous amount of value.
Another interesting part of the story is that Zoho is based in India, which may help explain their low pricing. It's common these days for U.S.-based companies to have development offices in India, but Indian-owned companies that are focused on the U.S. market are less usual.
Labels: business
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