What is Zoho?
Zoho is a cloud-based software suite offering an extensive array of business and productivity tools. With over 70 apps, it caters to various business aspects, such as finance, legal, IT, analytics, marketing, and sales.
Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects are among the sought-after apps under the Zoho umbrella, as these are exceptionally useful for project and client management. Its unique ecosystem lets you organize, manage, and monitor every business process.
Some of the things Zoho is capable of are:
Integrations: It works well with popular communication and team collaboration tools, such as Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.
Customizations: It allows you to map workflows for various niches, projects, and company sizes.
Analytics: Zoho offers analytics and reporting tools that provide overviews of success metrics for your projects, including processes, sales, and customer relationships.
Team collaboration: Through Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM, it supports seamless teamwork, helping your team maximize your potential and achieve synergy.
Automation and task management: Zoho can automate repetitive processes, helping you save time and lessen human error.
While these capabilities have helped Zoho earn its highly regarded reputation, there are some reasons why users might still be looking for alternatives.
For example, you may be dissatisfied with Zoho’s task visibility features or have issues navigating it. Additionally, some users have reported that Zoho’s customer support can be slow to respond, and its pricing can be difficult to understand.
6 best Zoho alternatives
We’ve curated the top six alternatives to Zoho. Let’s review them in detail so you can choose the best project management software for your needs.
1. Lark – Best overall alternative
Where Lark outshines Zoho most
Lark is the best overall alternative to Zoho. It offers seven different communication features and a more modern and intuitive interface. Let’s take a look at all the unique features Lark offers that Zoho doesn’t:
Multilingual auto-translation features
If you have a multilingual team, Lark’s chat translation feature can help your team communicate more effectively across language barriers.
With a single click, Lark automatically translates messages into your preferred language and lets you translate them as you type them. Considering this feature, Lark removes the need for manual translations and streamlines your communication workflow.
Besides the chat translation, Lark lets you translate documents and save the translations as new documents. This way, you don’t need to switch over apps to copy-paste the translations and save them.
Lark also lets you translate audio messages and image texts.
Lark’s translation feature supports 18 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Malay, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
Chat as a central collaboration hub
Lark’s chat feature is a central collaboration hub, allowing your team to communicate and collaborate more efficiently. With this, you can send messages, share files, and even host audio and video meetings.
Additionally, you can check the chat history to get in the loop with ongoing projects and find the information you need, such as files, events, and contacts.
Lark’s chat feature lets you discuss and resolve issues in context with document comments. You can mention a colleague in the comment, so they’ll get an automated notification in Lark.
To decide on simple issues, such as confirming a meeting time or choosing a team prize, Lark allows you to set up a vote directly in a group chat with just one click. Then, team members can see the votes for each item. There’s also an option to see who has and hasn’t voted in non-anonymous votes.
Suppose you’re working in an approval system where everything has to go through HR. In that case, Lark offers an efficient one-stop approval system that allows you to submit an approval in the Approval Workplace.
From there, you can set the approver roles, and Lark will send the reminders to the right people for you.
Live document collaboration within video meetings
Lark’s live document collaboration feature is better than Zoho's as it has more advanced collaboration capabilities. Among these is the ability to co-edit online documents among teammates during video meetings.
Document changes are saved in the Lark Drive, which has 200GB of cloud storage in Lark’s free version. With Lark Docs, you can also insert rich multimedia content, such as images, videos, charts, group chats, and polls.
Objectives and key results (OKR) management
Lark’s Objectives and Key Results (OKR) management outshines Zoho as it offers more advanced features.
Your teams can create detailed OKRs and align those through tagging and alignment setups. Additionally, team members can assign weights to key results, update progress, and add notes and comments.
For new alignments and tags in Lark OKR, team members will receive reminders in Lark Messenger without the need to set up any integrations.
Lark’s OKR management feature also allows creativity and brainstorming. Team members can easily add notes, create to-do lists, add ideas to whiteboards, and even add images and videos. All these features let your team centralize ideas and decisions around OKRs.
Team members looking to view colleagues’ OKRs can visit their profile page on Lark. With this option, you can identify OKRs to align or leave a comment if you have questions, feedback, or suggestions.
Finally, Lark makes reviewing and discussing OKRs with your team easy. You can insert the OKRs as a block in Lark Docs. Then, you can consolidate contexts, like weekly meetings, progress check-ins, and project plans.
AI transcription for meetings
Lark lets you focus on the meeting and not worry about making notes. Its AI transcription for meetings feature offers the following capabilities:
Real-time transcription
Auto-generated transcripts and keynotes
Supports multiple languages
Customizable settings, such as transcription speed and accuracy
Integrations
Lark offers 55+ integrations, allowing you to connect it to the tools you’re already using for seamless.
Here are some of the most popular Lark integrations:
Zapier
Office 365
Google Drive
Salesforce
Trello
Asana
GitHub
Jira
Slack
Zoom
Pros
It offers a modern and intuitive interface and features
Great value for money
Excellent customer support
Cons
The mobile version can be challenging to use
Users might take some time to learn the features
Pricing
Lark offers three pricing plans –Starter, Pro, and Enterprise:
2. ClickUp – Best for teamwork management
Considered best for teamwork management, ClickUp is also among the best alternatives to Zoho.
Some of the key features this platform offers are:
Task management: ClickUp has customizable tasks, nested subtasks, checklists, and over 35 ClickApps, allowing you to control your task management fully.
Document management: With ClickUp’s Docs feature, you can create, edit, and share documents with your team in real time. You can also add rich editing and update your team members with a visual knowledge base.
Centralized project-related communication: Streamline teamwork with powerful collaboration features, such as comments, proofing, chat, and document sharing. You can also brainstorm ideas with whiteboards.
Real-time updates: No more need for needless meetings; team members can communicate, add, and update tasks in real time.
Automated business processes: Choose over 50 actions, triggers, and conditions to automate routine work and processes. You can also start with a pre-built automation recipe and customize it based on your needs.
Integrations
ClickUp offers over 1,000 integrations, allowing you to connect the apps and software you already use. These include:
Slack
Trello
Asana
GitHub
Jira
Zoom
Google Drive
Salesforce
Microsoft Teams
Pros
Releases new features based on customer requests
Highly customizable project management options
A mobile app that allows you to manage your projects on the go
Cons
Steep learning curve
Not ideal for simple projects
Pricing
ClickUp offers three pricing plans –Free, Unlimited, and Business. Here’s what each plan includes:
3. Scoro – Best for time-tracking tasks within projects
If you’re looking for a project management software that allows you to track time spent on individual tasks, then Scoro might be the one to choose.
Here are the key features Scoro offers:
Real-time Gantt chart: This feature lets you track progress, tasks, and dependencies in an always-updated view, lessening manual updates.
Drag-and-drop planner and Kanban task board: The features, calendars, and built-in time tracker enable efficient work prioritization and planning.
CRM: Scoro’s CRM allows real-time tracking of deals and opportunities.
Multi-currency management: Feature for managing purchases, orders, and costs and comparing budget scenarios to actual results.
Reporting and dashboard: Create high-level reports and real-time dashboards for tracking performance and planning for the future.
Integrations
Scoro has more than 40 integrations so that you can streamline your work. From time management and productivity apps to accounting and payments, you can integrate the tool you’re using.
Here are some integrations you can use with Scoro:
Google Calendar
MS Exchange
iCal
QuickBooks
Dropbox
Stripe
Pros
Incorporates project management with time tracking for enhanced productivity
Has project management tools for creating budgets, managing billable work, invoices, and expenses
It has a user-friendly interface
Cons
It doesn’t have an in-app chat feature
Pricing is relatively high compared to its competitors
Pricing
Scoro offers a 14-day free trial and three pricing plans –Essential, Standard, Pro, and Ultimate:
4. Basecamp – Best for team collaboration
Basecamp is a project management platform that helps small teams move faster while making progress.
Here are the key features Basecamp offers:
Visual dashboard: Basecamp has a straightforward, one-page dashboard for your projects, schedule, and assignments. You can also use Basecamp’s unique take on Kanban, called Card Table, to organize tasks and visually track work that progresses through stages.
Organize and share docs and media files: Basecamp has an organized space to create, share, and discuss docs files and images.
Organize work by assigning tasks and setting due dates: Basecamp’s To-dos feature lets you track work deadlines, responsibilities, progress, and details. It also shows dated to-dos, milestones, and relevant events.
Leave feedback on tasks: Basecamp’s Messages feature offers a centralized place to discuss big topics with your team. It completely replaces project emails.
Chat with team members: With built-in real-time group chat, Basecamp lets you and your team discuss time-sensitive topics and move on.
Integrations
Basecamp offers 85 integrations to help teams work more efficiently, including:
Zapier
Harvest
Trello
Slack
Jira
Asana
GitHub
Pros
Straightforward visual and user-friendly interface
Features for easy collaboration
Cons
Limited customization
Pricing may not suit all business types
Pricing
Basecamp offers a 30-day free trial and two pricing plans –Basecamp and Basecamp Pro Unlimited:
5. Pipedrive – Best for sales pipeline management
With Pipedrive, you can track your sales pipeline, manage leads, and automate your entire sales process.
Here are the key features Pipedrive offers:
AI-powered automation: Pipedrive offers task automation, one-click contact data collection, webhooks, open API, and an AI-powered sales assistant.
Customizable pipelines: Pipedrive lets you customize pipelines for your specific business needs, letting you manage your sales process more efficiently and keep your team on the right track.
Centralized communication: With its smart features, Pipedrive lets you centralize your communication efforts, connect with your target audience, and move leads through the sales funnel.
Create custom sales reports: Pipedrive lets you create custom sales reports to help you forecast revenue while enabling you to check your sales process and make data-driven decisions.
Goal setting and activity tracking: Manage pipelines by setting goals, tracking activities, and getting insights.
Integrations
Pipedrive offers hundreds of integrations, including:
Google G Suite
HubSpot
MailChimp
Zapier
Trello
PandaDoc
Leadfeeder
Kixie
Automate.io
Pros
Integration with third-party apps
Sales forecasting features
Lead management features
Cons
No free plan
Limited customer support
Pricing
Pipedrive offers a 14-day free trial and five pricing plans –Essential, Advanced, Professional, Power, and Enterprise:
6. Freshsales – Best for AI-driven sales insights
Freshsales is a customer relationship management (CRM) system that helps you manage your existing and potential customers.
Key features Freshsales offers include:
Predictive insights into sales processes: Freshsales analyzes your previous sales data and predicts your future sales.
Track and manage sales deals: This feature lets you track deals from start to finish, helping you identify bottlenecks and optimize your sales processes.
Centralized customer and lead information database: Freshsales shows a single view of the customer, helping you deliver personalized experiences and improve customer satisfaction.
Automates repetitive sales tasks: You can save time from repetitive tasks, such as data entry, lead scoring, and follow-up emails, and focus more on important tasks.
Keeps track of email interactions with leads and customers: With this feature, you can understand customer behavior and tailor outreach accordingly.
Prioritizes leads based on their interaction and engagement: Freshsales provides predictive insights into sales processes, helping you and your sales team identify trends.
Integrations
Freshsales offers 35+ integrations, including:
MailChimp
Segment
Office365
Facebook
JustCall
Magento
Shopify
Pros
Customizable dashboards and user-friendly interface
Real-time notifications
Available mobile app for iOS and Android smartphones
Cons
Fewer integrations than its competitors
Users reported inconsistencies with customer support
Pricing
Freshsales offers four pricing plans –Free, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise:
So, what is the best alternative to Zoho?
The best alternative to Zoho is Lark. It’s a unified software offering task management and robust communication in one place.
Lark offers unique features along with basic project management features like Kanban and list views. For example, if your team is international, Lark offers a multilingual auto-translation feature so all members can seamlessly communicate. AI transcription for meetings and OKR management are other features that Lark has, and Zoho doesn’t.
Coupled with excellent customer support, Lark’s pricing offers great value for money.