Zoho alternative
A Zoho alternative for small teams
Zoho’s prices are low. A team that uses four Zoho apps manages four products, four sets of settings and calls that reach the help desk through an integration. ContactRoll is one product, with one record of each customer.
Zoho and ContactRoll, need by need
Zoho sells many separate apps, each with its own plans: Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk for support, Zoho Voice for calls and Zoho Campaigns for marketing email, and bundles such as CRM Plus and Zoho One. [1]
| What a small team needs | Zoho | ContactRoll |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts, companies and a deals pipeline | Zoho CRM: deals on every edition, multiple pipelines from Standard. [1] | Every plan, Free included; Free has one pipeline. |
| Support email as cases in a shared queue | Zoho Desk: email tickets on every edition. [2] | Every plan, Free included: each email opens a case anyone can take. Free has one support address of your own. |
| Knowledge articles and a public help center | Zoho Desk: a public knowledge base from Standard. [2] | Every plan, Free included. |
| Calls in the browser, with recording and transfer | Telephony in Desk from Professional, with transfer and recording; Zoho CRM Standard lists built-in calling; Zoho Voice for a phone system. [2][1][3] | Every plan, Free included, through your own Twilio account: call groups, voicemail, recording, hold and transfer. |
| A phone menu for callers | Zoho Voice: a multi-level phone menu on every plan; in Desk, on Enterprise. [3][2] | Plus, from ready-made templates, with owner-first ringing and warm transfer. |
| Marketing email to about 2,000 people | Zoho Campaigns: free up to 2,000 contacts; Standard from $12.75 a month for 2,500. [4] | Every plan: 500 marketing contacts and 500 emails a month on Free, 2,000 marketing contacts on Standard, 10,000 on Plus. |
| Automation | Workflow rules in CRM and Desk. [1][2] | Plus: automation flows. Standard and Plus: sequences started by what a customer does. |
| Roles and who sees what | Roles and profiles in Zoho CRM; roles in Desk by edition. [1][2] | Every plan: nine ready-made roles and scopes. Plus: roles of your own. |
| An API and webhooks | Yes, with daily credits by edition. [1] | Plus. |
What it costs a team of five, and of ten
Zoho CRM Standard, Zoho Desk Professional (the first Desk edition with telephony), one Zoho Voice Standard license (an administrator and 10 telephony agents) with a local number, and Zoho Campaigns Standard for up to 2,500 contacts. List prices, per month, paid yearly, in US dollars, before tax.
| What the team buys | 5 people | 10 people |
|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM Standard, $14 a user [1] | $70 | $140 |
| Zoho Desk Professional, $23 an agent [2] | $115 | $230 |
| Zoho Voice Standard, one license [3] | $49 | $49 |
| A Zoho Voice local number [3] | $1 | $1 |
| Zoho Campaigns Standard, up to 2,500 contacts [4] | $12.75 | $12.75 |
| Zoho, about | $247.75 | $432.75 |
| ContactRoll Plus, $59 a person | $295 | $590 |
| ContactRoll Standard, $29 a person: the CRM, support cases, calling with call groups, recording and cold transfer, and marketing email to 2,000 | $145 | $290 |
Leaves out minutes past the 1,000 incoming and 250 outgoing included with the Voice license, recording minutes, and taxes. With Zoho Campaigns’ free plan the totals are $235 and $420. ContactRoll’s calls are billed by Twilio to your own account, with no markup: for example, 2,000 minutes a month in the browser, half of them recorded, with one number, come to about $34 at Twilio’s published US rates (a call put on hold or transferred also pays Twilio’s conference minutes). Try your own numbers in the calling cost calculator.
For a team of 3 people or fewer, ContactRoll Free costs nothing: 1,000 contacts, one pipeline, one support address, calling through your own Twilio account, and 500 marketing emails a month (Free’s limits). Zoho CRM’s free edition is for 3 users. (Zoho CRM’s pricing page, read .) Zoho Desk’s free plan is for 3 agents. (Zoho Desk’s pricing page, read .)
Where Zoho is strong
- Low prices, and a free tier for each app: Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk free for three users, Campaigns free up to 2,000 contacts. [1][2][4]
- One Zoho Voice Standard license covers ten telephony agents, and Zoho Voice Basic includes unlimited calls in the US and Canada. [3]
- Zoho One bundles more than 50 business apps, for a company that wants one vendor for everything. [5]
Switching from Zoho
In Zoho CRM, open Setup, then Data Administration, then Export, start an export, choose the module and fields, and download a CSV or XLSX file: up to 200,000 records from one module at a time. [6]
Zoho Desk exports each module in CSV format. [2]
Then import the file into ContactRoll as a CSV file (save it as CSV first if it came out in another format). Files exported from Zoho CRM are matched as they come, including their company or account columns and their phone columns. ContactRoll shows, row by row, what the import would do before it writes anything, and people who unsubscribed stay unsubscribed.
Import your contacts from a CSV file walks through it, and the CSV contact cleaner merges repeated addresses first if your file has them.
Questions
Is ContactRoll cheaper than Zoho?
Zoho’s four apps for this team cost less than ContactRoll Plus, and more than ContactRoll Standard, which has everything here but the phone menu. ContactRoll is one product with one record of each customer, at $59 a person a month on Plus or $29 on Standard, paid yearly, with calls billed by Twilio to your own account.
Can I bring my Zoho CRM contacts to ContactRoll?
Yes. Export your contacts and accounts from Zoho CRM as a CSV file and import it into ContactRoll: Zoho CRM’s columns, including account and phone columns, are matched as they come.
Sources
Every Zoho figure above, with the page it was read from and the date. Prices change, so check Zoho’s own pages before deciding. Zoho and every other product named here are trademarks of their owners, named only to say which product is described.
- Zoho CRM, pricing and edition comparison (the prices its page loads): https://www.zoho.com/crm/zohocrm-pricing.html, read 2026-10-14.
- Zoho Desk, pricing comparison: https://www.zoho.com/desk/pricing-comparison.html, read 2026-10-14.
- Zoho Voice, pricing: https://www.zoho.com/voice/pricing.html, read 2026-10-14.
- Zoho Campaigns, pricing: https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/pricing.html, read 2026-10-14.
- Zoho One, pricing: https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing.html, read 2026-10-14.
- Zoho CRM Help, export CRM data: https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/kb/crm/data-administration/export-data/articles/export-crm-data, read 2026-10-14.