Goodbye Zoho One: Our 2025 Journey to the Best Zoho One Alternatives

For nearly three years, Zoho One served as the cornerstone of our business operations. With over 50 integrated applications, it provided a one-stop solution for CRM, project management, analytics, communication, cloud storage, and social media management. Initially, it was a cost-effective and convenient way to centralize our workflows.

However, as our company grew, the limitations of Zoho One began to hinder our progress. Rising costs, limited flexibility, and restrictions on API usage prompted us to explore Zoho One alternatives that offered greater customization, scalability, and control. By the end of 2024, we transitioned to a new tech stack built on open-source and open-core tools, ensuring a future-proof system that meets our evolving needs.

Why We Left Zoho One

While Zoho One provided significant value in the beginning, several challenges arose as our business expanded:

1. Too Many Unnecessary Apps

Zoho One bundles over 50 applications, but many of them were irrelevant to our workflows. This resulted in paying for tools we didn’t use, adding unnecessary complexity to our tech stack.

2. Limited Flexibility

Zoho’s tools work well out of the box, but they often lacked the level of customization we needed. Adapting these tools to align with our unique workflows and requirements became a significant challenge.

3. Unsustainable Costs

The per-user pricing model became increasingly expensive as our team grew. Tools like Zoho CRM, Zoho Analytics, and Zoho Desk added extra costs for exceeding API limits or accessing advanced features, making scalability difficult.

4. API Usage Limits

While Zoho provides RESTful APIs and GraphQL, their usage is capped based on the subscription plan. These limits became a major hurdle as we relied more on automation and integrations to streamline operations.

Why We Chose Zoho One Alternatives

To overcome these challenges, we transitioned to Zoho One alternatives that offered better flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. Our approach focused on leveraging open-source and open-core tools that are self-hosted, ensuring complete ownership and control over our systems and data.

1. Cost Efficiency

Open-source tools are free to use and self-hosted, eliminating per-user and API-related costs. Open-core tools, which offer freemium models, provided access to premium features without recurring SaaS expenses.

2. Full Ownership of Data

By self-hosting both open-source and open-core tools, we ensured complete control over our data and configurations. This eliminated vendor lock-in, allowing us to adapt and optimize tools freely to meet our business needs.

3. Customization and Scalability

Unlike Zoho One, which has predefined limits, Zoho One alternatives enabled us to build highly customized workflows and scale our systems seamlessly. From advanced integrations to tailored modules, these tools allowed us to grow without restrictions.

4. Community-Driven Innovation

Open-source tools are backed by active developer communities that ensure frequent updates, feature expansions, and a wealth of customization options. This constant innovation keeps our tech stack dynamic and adaptable.

The Zoho One Alternatives We Chose

We replaced Zoho One’s applications with an ecosystem of Zoho One alternatives tailored to our needs. Here’s an overview of the tools we now use for each module:

Zoho CRM Alternative: Twent CRM

Twent CRM provided a powerful alternative to Zoho CRM. It includes:

Unlimited Custom Fields for flexible data tracking.
Advanced Data Models for creating relational structures like one-to-many or many-to-many relationships.
RESTful APIs and GraphQL with no usage caps, ideal for integrations.
Multi-Organization Support, which allows us to manage multiple ventures from a single system.

Zoho Projects Alternative: Plane

Plane became our go-to project management tool, replacing Zoho Projects with features like:

Active Cycles for managing sprints and deadlines.
Custom Fields for task personalization.
Self-Hosting, ensuring full control over our project data.

Zoho Analytics Alternative: Metabase

Metabase replaced Zoho Analytics, offering:

Interactive Dashboards for real-time data visualization.
SQL Support for advanced queries and data insights.
Self-Hosting, giving us complete control over analytics data.
No Per-User Costs, unlike Zoho Analytics, where costs scale with users and features.

Zoho Desk Alternative: Chatwoot

Chatwoot served as the ideal replacement for Zoho Desk, providing:

Unified Customer Communication across WhatsApp, Messenger, email, and more.
Custom Fields to manage client-specific data.
Self-Hosting, ensuring complete ownership of customer interactions.

Zoho WorkDrive Alternative: BeDrive

BeDrive became our cloud storage and file-sharing solution, replacing Zoho WorkDrive. It features:

Self-Hosting, ensuring full control over sensitive data.
Custom Branding for a professional, personalized experience.
Effortless File Sharing for teams and clients.

Zoho Social Alternative: StackPosts

StackPosts replaced Zoho Social as our social media management tool. It provides:

Social Media Automation for scheduling and managing campaigns.
Integration with Major Platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Self-Hosting, giving us full control over social media data and operations.

Zoho Knowledge Alternative: Outline

Outline replaced Zoho Knowledge with a focus on internal documentation. It includes:

Real-Time Collaboration for seamless team editing.
Version Control for tracking and reverting changes.
Self-Hosting, ensuring complete control over documentation.

Zoho Vault Alternative: Bitwarden

Bitwarden became our password management solution, replacing Zoho Vault. It offers:

Team Sharing for securely managing credentials.
Cross-Platform Support for accessibility across devices.
Self-Hosting, ensuring complete control over sensitive data.

Looking Ahead

Our decision to transition to Zoho One alternatives was driven by the need for greater flexibility, scalability, and cost control. Each tool we’ve adopted has been carefully chosen to align with our specific workflows and growth objectives.

In the future, we will publish in-depth comparisons for each Zoho module and its corresponding alternative. These articles will provide detailed insights into why we chose each tool, how we implemented them into our workflows, and how they have transformed our operations. By sharing our implementation process and lessons learned, we hope to provide valuable guidance for others considering a similar transition. Stay tuned for updates!

If your company is also looking to migrate from Zoho One, we invite you to book a consultation with the Growably Agency. Over the last three years, Growably has been innovating and building tomorrow, today. We specialize in tailored solutions for businesses, and our case studies showcase how we’ve helped organizations achieve their goals.