Zoho’s Business Suite Taking on Google Apps
Nick Gonzalez
16 comments »
Zoho has been a busy company. Over the past two years they’ve launched 12 applications along with 4 utilities, nearly all with APIs. Last October Zoho tied these programs together for individuals with a single sign-on feature. Today they’re releasing a similar bundling for businesses that takes on Google’s own business productivity suite.
The new release is called Zoho Business, and will bring multiple Zoho applications under a single roof along with an administration console to manage users, domains, and groups. Zoho business will feature multiple user accounts with varying security levels, single sign-on across all Zoho applications, domain name control, remote backup, telephone support, and a variety of other features to be announced.
The suite will will come in a Free and Pro version, mirroring Google’s offer. However, Zoho is expected to price their suite around $40/user/year, $10 less than Google Apps. Zoho’s offering will also consist of more applications than SMBs get with Google Apps, which consists of calendaring, email, Docs & Spreadsheets, Page Creator, and Start Page. Zoho will include all 12 of their collaboration programs (chat, email, planner, wiki, crm, project manager, etc.).
Zoho has yet to finalize the service differences between the free and paid version. It is currently available in private beta, will go into public beta next month, and exit public beta during the first quarter for next year. You can apply for the beta here.
Title is mis-spelled.
I have been using Zoho applications already for a long time. Applications are great! Much more features than Google or other Web based productivity apps providers offer. Complete suite!
Rajesh Shakya
Congrats to the Zoho team. I recently conducted an interview with the Zoho founding team and must say that these guys rock.
Here are the links:
a. on Zoho product suite:
http://www.pluggd.in/2007/07/z.....indianhtml
b. on Entrepreneurship and challenges in building products from a non-US region:
http://www.pluggd.in/2007/08/i.....n-startups
Yawn! Please don’t post this lame stuff on techcrunch. zoho and zimbra are so lame. Rajesh Shakya, you work for zoho, so you come on here and give a good post…no one wants to pay for your service, wordpad rocks compared to this stuff. There is no need for more of this stuff, please close shop immediately!
Whatever other people say, Zoho performs like a champ!
Taking their apps to the business world has always been the next logical step -and- it should get some (positive) pull.
About time Google got some competition. Maybe this will help them realize that their office apps suck and need major improvement before I will start paying to use them.
Congrats to the Zoho team. I recently conducted an interview with the Zoho founding team and must say that these guys rock.
Here are the links:
a. on Zoho product suite:
http://www.pluggd.in/2007/07/z.....indianhtml
I agree with Blake…! Google office is no great product and quite lately, google has been desperately marketing the tool..
-.
Saw this interview with Zoho founders on challenges they faced in building the product::
http://www.pluggd.in/2007/08/i.....n-startups
The problems with companies like Google, and you see it with Yahoo, is that on one hand they drink their own cool-aid and on the other, at some point they grow through acquisitions and not innovation. You can argue that you cannot build everything in house and I would agree. Still, if you buy, you still need to deliver on the innovation and excellence used to build your reputation.
Zoho may have the better product and hopefully it is a wake up call to Google.
The biggest value of Google Apps (IMHO) is its support for email. It sounds like Zoho is bundling its apps together and offering it as one package with some admin capabilities for businesses. This is cool, no doubt. However, it is not clear if this bundle covers the ability to manage email. If it does then its a great match for Google Apps. If it doesn’t, then the comparison is not very valid.
Pran:
Once our Zoho Mail steps out of beta, we plan to offer email for your domains.
Maybe it’s just me, but the Zoho apps are more solid that Google’s offerings. This is good and bad. Good, because I enjoy using them more. Bad, because Google will end up buying them.
Now, if Yahoo bought them I’d get excited.
Here’s wishing them all the best ! 8 )
Keep Clicking,
Kode
Hmmmm so many similar comments that link to the same place and otherwise talk about zoho like we stepped into a commercial.