Zoho is a collaboration and business productivity app provider with tools like project management, CRM, Accounting, etc. While it offers all the bells and whistles based on a complex pricing structure, it misses it’s mark when it comes to on small business and usability. TeamWave provides an out-of-the-box and simple solution to help small businesses manage and streamline everything in their company (Project Management, CRM & HR) while maintaining a strong focus on usability.

Why TeamWave is the leading Zoho Alternative.

1. Ease of Use

Small businesses need simple software that can provide most of the functionality out-of-the-box. The software should have a minimal learning curve, setup time and save resources (time and money). Here are some examples:

CRM Customization

CRM customization is important for businesses – it helps a company align the CRM system with own processes and extend the functionality. With Zoho you’ll get a lot of customization options, but they are also cumbersome and time consuming. For example, adding or modifying the the default sales pipeline can be quite tedious in Zoho. Here are the steps to add an additional sales stage.

• Click on ‘Settings’, then ‘Setup’ and ‘Modules’ present under ‘Customization’ heading
• Click on ‘Create New Layout’ once you move to ‘Modules’ section

  

• Select deals and click on stage-probability map
• Next, you need to enter the name, probability and two forecast types
• Click on save

This can overwhelming for any new user, especially in every step you need to select one option out of several other options. And let’s not get into handling of multiple sales pipeline which is a whole new ball game.

With TeamWave you can edit the sales stages with two clicks: click on settings and click on the stage which you wish to edit. Add additional pipelines from the same page.

Third Party Collaboration in Projects

Collaboration with third party users is one of the crucial aspects of project management. In case of Zoho, you can add client users by inviting client to your projects (requires multiple steps) which means you are required to mange the users as well. For example, in case a client user leaves their organization, you’d have to delete the user.

TeamWave has a specialised workflow to collaborate with clients or vendors. Just  invite just one person from your client’s team (requires few steps) and they will be able to independently add/manage their entire team, as they will be given their own TeamWave account with all the features. There is no need for you to manage their employees!

2. Pricing

Zoho can be expensive for small businesses. The CRM app starts from $12/user/month and goes up to $100/user/month. You will end up paying more if you go for certain additional features in Project Management app (example: Timesheet). The plans restrict the type of feature you can use!

TeamWave has a straightforward pricing – $2/user/month for annual subscription. All the plans get all the features and apps – absolutely no restriction.

Here is the cost comparison for a company with 15 employees:

3. Truly Native Integration of Apps

TeamWave is a unified platform for collaboration, sales and HR management. This means you’d get an application suite that integrates three apps. Some of the benefits:

Sales and Projects: Important files can be copied from deals to projects (example: requirement document) with a few clicks. Comes in handy when you commence project delivery after winning a deal.

Although Zoho lets you link CRM deals with projects, there is no option of transferring important files from deal to projects.

Projects and HR: Project admin can keep track of the performance of the employees along with appreciation received from clients and log them as private notes in the HR app. During appraisal these notes can be reviewed for better decision making.

Sales and HR: In the HR app, if you add someone as the reporting manager of a sales rep, then the reporting manager will be automatically added as a deal follower whenever the sales rep adds a new deal. This fosters collaboration and helps in progress tracking.

Bottom Line

Primarily small businesses just need business apps to track the progress of deals in a sales pipeline, manage tasks in a project, schedule activities and collaborate with the stakeholders. TeamWave offers all these basic tools for a fraction of the price one would pay to zoho! As TeamWave is focused on providing solutions for mission critical business functions targeted only for small businesses, it has been built with a minimal feature set that anyone can use, leaving out everything else. No clutter, no complexity and no extra features to confuse or overwhelm you. We do a few things, but we do them very well.  If you need advanced features like sales automation, complex third party integration (via API), TeamWave offers that as well!

The intuitive user experience, holistic focus coupled with straightforward pricing ensures that the fundamentals of any business, i.e., business acquisition, business delivery and people management run like a well-oiled machine.