Zoho Projects’ fast factsPricing: Paid plans start at $5 per user per month, billed annually. Key features:
Try out Zoho Projects’ free plan, or take advantage of the 10-day trial for its Enterprise plan. |
Zoho Projects is a part of the Zoho One online services suite and offers teams observability, collaboration and productivity capabilities to upgrade project management workflows. Since its launch in 2006, Zoho Projects has become one of the leading choices for project management software.
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As of 2021, Zoho Projects serves over 75 million users across the globe competing with other office suites like Google Workspace and Microsoft’s Office 365. Individuals, teams and entire companies can use Zoho Projects to manage tasks, automate processes, track and integrate critical data, and collaborate across multiple projects.
Jump to:
- Zoho Projects pricing plans
- Key features of Zoho Projects
- Ease of use
- Pros and cons
- Zoho Projects video review
- Zoho Projects use case and audience
- Who is Zoho Projects best for?
- Best Zoho Projects integrations
- Zoho Projects alternatives
- How we evaluated Zoho Projects
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Zoho Projects pricing plans
Zoho is known for its transparent pricing structure, and this is true for Projects as well. Zoho Projects offers three plans: one free and two paid.
Zoho offers a 10-day free trial that does require a credit card, so you can try out the Enterprise version of the platform before you commit to a plan.
Free
The Zoho Projects Free plan is forever free for up to three users; if you have more than three users, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the paid plans. The Free plan only allows you to have two projects and provides limited storage space for files and data. And Zoho Projects’ Free plan offers limited features such as task management, read-only Gantt charts and project feeds.
Premium
The Zoho Projects Premium plan costs $5 per user when billed monthly or $4 per user per month, billed annually. In addition to all of the features on the free plan, the Premium plan includes unlimited projects, 20 project templates and 100GB of storage. Zoho Projects’ Premium plan also features additional functionality like subtasks, reminders, automated tasks and project budgets.
Enterprise
The Zoho Projects Enterprise plan costs $10 per user when billed monthly or $9 per user per month, billed annually. This plan includes unlimited projects, 30 project templates, 120GB of storage and 10 read-only users. The Enterprise includes all of the features on the premium plan as well as additional functionality like a portfolio dashboard, global resource utilization, inter-project dependencies, and custom roles and fields.
Key features of Zoho Projects
Task management and automation
Zoho Projects lets you break down larger projects into milestones, task lists, tasks and subtasks for easier task management. It also provides the option to visualize projects as both Gantt charts and kanban boards. Users can automate task management with workflow rules, email alerts, custom functions and other helpful features.
Blueprints
“Blueprints” is Zoho’s name for its automation tool, which allows users to build custom workflows. Once built, the Blueprint will guide users through what actions need to happen in what order and ensure the right people are automatically looped in at each stage of the process.
Time tracking
Whether or not you use a billable hours system, your team can track each minute spent on each task with Zoho Project’s built-in time trackers. Managers can review and approve timesheets within the dashboard and compare planned time with the actual time needed to complete a task.
Bug and issues tracking
Software development teams can log bugs directly in Zoho Projects using the IssueTracker tool, then prioritize and assign them accordingly. They can even import bugs and issues into Zoho from CSV, XLS and XLSX files as well as from Jira.
Communication and collaboration
With Zoho Projects, project teams can view the most recent project update in a centralized, chronological feed. Moreover, Zoho Projects enables users to talk with other teammates in individual or group chats, have a lengthier discussion in the forum section, or create a repository of internal information using the pages feature.
Zoho Projects ease of use
Zoho is known for making software that is easy to navigate and use, and Zoho Projects is no exception. Even if you aren’t familiar with other Zoho products, you will be able to quickly find your way around Zoho Projects thanks to its logical layout and prominent sidebar menu. Even if you haven’t used another project management software before or aren’t particularly tech savvy, users report that Zoho Projects is simple to learn.
While it will take longer to familiarize yourself with Zoho’s many project management features, initial setup, like making an account and starting a project, can be done in just a few minutes. The site even prompts new users on the next actions they can take to help speed up the learning process and get projects up and running faster.
If you can’t figure something out on your own, Zoho offers plenty of training resources, including a knowledge base, FAQ database, tutorials, and live and recorded webinars in addition to customer support via email, chat and phone calls.
Pros and cons
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Zoho Projects video review
Zoho Projects use cases and audience
Zoho serves more than 75 million users and 200,000 businesses globally, including notable customers like Dell Technologies, Stanford University and Tata Consultancy Services. Below are some of the core use cases and types of clientele Zoho serves.
Use cases
- Agile software development.
- Campaign and client management.
- Creative production management.
- Event planning and management.
- Issue, request and bug tracking.
- Project and portfolio management.
- Remote work and team collaboration.
- Resource, time and workload allocation.
Industry clientele
- Automobile, aviation, engineering, logistics and travel.
- Creative, design and digital marketing.
- Construction, manufacturing and commerce.
- Gaming, electronics, IT services, software and website development.
- Non-profit organizations, educational institutions and students.
- More including finance, environmental services and real estate.
Who is Zoho Projects best for?
Like all Zoho One products, Zoho Projects is designed to work seamlessly with other software from Zoho. If you’re already using Zoho, then you will likely benefit from using Zoho Projects as your project management software since it will integrate with your other Zoho platforms.
If you’re ambivalent about Zoho as a platform, Zoho Projects still makes a compelling case for itself thanks to its combination of affordable pricing and useful features. However, there are plenty of other project management software competitors available at similar price points.
Zoho Projects is also flexible, making it compatible with different use cases across industries. Whether you’re part of a website development team that needs a tool for bug tracking or a member of a nonprofit organization looking to manage remote work, Zoho Projects can probably be configured to meet your project management needs.
Best Zoho Projects integrations
While Zoho Projects has many features, it doesn’t always cover every need your team might have. Fortunately, Zoho Projects integrates with many other popular software products, so you can increase its functionality and enhance your project management experience.
- Jira: Project teams using Zoho Projects often integrate Jira for development-related project needs.
- Google apps: Companies that use Google’s suite of cloud-based software can integrate Calendar, Tasks, Spreadsheets and Drive for time and document management.
- Microsoft apps: Companies that use Microsoft’s suite of cloud-based software can integrate Microsoft 365, OneDrive, Teams and SharePoint for document management and collaboration.
- Harvest: Teams already using Harvest to track their time can integrate it with Zoho Projects, so they don’t have to duplicate tracking.
- Slack: Teams often integrate this popular business messaging app with Zoho Projects to centralize all of their project conversations in one place.
- Zendesk: With Zendesk, project teams can automatically sync support tickets to Zoho Projects and convert them to a task or issue that can be assigned.
Zoho Projects alternatives
| Software | Zoho Projects | ClickUp | Asana | monday work management | Wrike |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multiple project views | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Native time tracking | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Automations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Collaboration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Starting paid tier (billed annually) | $4 per user per month | $5 per user per month | $10.99 per user per month | $8 per user per month | $9.80 per user per month |
ClickUp
ClickUp offers unlimited storage, integrations, dashboards and Gantt charts even on its lower tired paid plan, which starts at just $5 per user per month. The tool offers a high degree of customization, although this can result in a steeper learning curve than some other project management software.
ClickUp offers 15 different projects views and more than 1,000 premade templates, so if you’re looking for a software that is priced similarly to Zoho Projects but offers more views and templates out of the box, this is a worthy alternative.
For more information, read our full ClickUp review.
Asana
Asana gained a lot of ground in the project management space thanks to its robust forever free plan as well as its automation and customization capabilities. However, Asana doesn’t offer a native time tracking function, and certain other features like its reporting are lacking compared to some competitors.
Asana’s forever free plan supports teams of up to 15 people, much more than Zoho Projects. If you are looking for a forever free plan for a larger team and don’t need Zoho Projects’ more extensive feature set, then Asana is worth checking out.
For more information, read our full Asana review.
monday work management
monday work management offers highly specific tools for almost any project management scenario, such as modules for marketing plans. The higher tier plans offer features that will appeal to enterprise clients, such as dashboards that combine up to 50 boards and advanced security measures.
If Zoho Projects’ features aren’t advanced enough for your project needs or you need more storage than even the premium plan can provide, monday work management is a good alternative to explore.
For more information, read our full monday Work OS review.
Wrike
Wrike’s Collaborators feature lets clients and contractors access the projects with limited permissions, Meanwhile, the Write Lock security feature provides an added layer of security for peace of mind.
Wrike offers more than 400 integrations that are available even on the lowest paid tier, which is significantly more than Zoho Projects. Check out Wrike if you already have a software stack in place and are looking for a projectment management tool that will integrate with your other platforms.
For more information, read our full Wrike review.
How we evaluated Zoho Projects
We reviewed this project management software tool through hands-on experience with a free trial of the Enterprise plan. Additionally, we examined official product documentation, Zoho customer reviews, third-party software review sites and more to enhance our review.
If you’re still not sure if Zoho Projects is right for your project needs, check out our list of the best cloud-based project management software.
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