Zoho has a very reasonable price for the value it brings. It is considered one of the most economically feasible and feature-rich solutions in the business technology market.

You can pay per user per app or you can choose to use app bundles that are priced under one umbrella. The latter fits when your org uses more than one app (e.g., Recruit and CRM) or when you need to serve different LOBs (e. g., Sales, Marketing, Service, Project Management, Finance, etc.)

There are also additional plugins and connectors that are not included in the bundle price, and can be purchased separately (e.g., enhanced social media or e-commerce platform connectors). As your implementation partner, we would work with you to define what apps/ bundles/ add-ons you need to purchase for your specific case.

An example of the bundle pricing is the Zoho One bundle: https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/

In short, no, you don’t need a developer every time you want to make changes to your Zoho system. Zoho has an intuitive interface, and users are able to perform basic changes like: 

• adding or removing data fields 
• activating and deactivating apps in Zoho app bundles 
• playing with settings 
• pulling reports

However, from our experience with many clients, here are some tried & tested tips:

• Go through Zoho User Training
• Use a Zoho partner (like Customerization) to build out the basic setup and configuration and establish a support relationship to partner with you for your future changes.
• When you’re customizing your system (which IS the point of configuring the system that fits your specific business needs and processes), you want to document each step and each change you make because changing stuff in one place can break something in another. Make small changes and test that everything still works; keep track of all your changes to reverse engineer if anything turns out differently than what you expected.
• Keep the system in the hands of one/ max two people who are responsible for it in the organization as part of their day-to-day job responsibilities.  This should not be an afterthought system to manage.

That’s understandable. There’s a lot of information out there in the digital marketplace.  Let’s review a couple scenarios and give you some guidelines to follow.

1. You are already on Zoho, and you need to maximize its effectiveness. This can be adding a module, or even designing and implementing a complex solution. You already have requirements, but need help on timelines, pricing and implementation expectations.

In this case you can share the requirements with us and hop on a call with one of our experts and discuss your plans in detail.  During that call we can share more about our implementation framework, processes and even provide you with a rough estimate for project implementation costs that you can expect to incur.

2. You have the scope of work lined up, and Zoho made it to your final list of potential solutions. But, before you purchase the software, you’d like an extra set of eyes to review your plans and software to make sure you avoid any project pitfalls and make sure you are purchasing exactly what you need from Zoho. 

Here we will follow a similar process.  We will set up a call, you will share you requirements and plans as well as the open questions you have.  We can then provide validation of your Zoho software purchase plans and provide the guidance you need to feel confident you are on track. 

3. You are still trying to decide between Zoho and a different system.

We are experts in Zoho and Microsoft Dynamics 365, so if those are your two systems that you are trying to decide between then, we can definitely help you with comparing these two solutions by guiding you through the pros and cons.  We have a ton of experience helping clients pick the best system for their needs today as well as future proofing your purchase.

In the meanwhile, you can open a free Zoho trial account to test out the software and see how you like it.