Zoho Posing Low-End CRM Threat to Salesforce.com

By Jerry Olsen
Updated: January 19, 2012

In an effort to compete with big companies like Microsoft and Oracle, Zoho software now offers Google Calendar and LinkedIn integration as a part of its customer relationship management (CRM) software application. Zoho also offers a new feature called Pulse, which allows users to track data objects within the system. An industry leader in online web applications, Zoho recently added over 25,000 customers due to its new CRM offerings. Additionally, the company has added over 25,000 customers due to its new application.

Although Zoho’s user base is much smaller than Salesforce.com, Zoho could pose a mild threat to Salesforce.com with its new CRM offerings. Zoho’s CRM software is priced much lower than Salesforce.com’s CRM offering, but Salesforce.com still offers a much broader set of features and functions. On the other hand, Zoho’s lower pricing could help attract small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that are more cost-conscious than their competitors. With 14.8% of the market share, Salesforce.com is currently the leader in cloud-based CRM software market, and the company continues to complete with big hitters like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.

Although Salesforce.com is expected to expand its share in the CRM market for the years to come, experts are say the company could still lose some of its market share if it can’t keep up with increasing competition.