The best CRM software offers a suite of solutions for marketing, sales and support teams. Zoho CRM and monday CRM are popular general CRM providers that can be adapted into a multitude of industries and sales processes.

Zoho CRM is a leading, feature-rich solution offering journey orchestration and AI tools with competitive pricing. Monday CRM is a more flexible tool that can manage end-to-end sales operations with a speciality in project and deal management.

Both are collaborative CRM software, meaning each helps in cross-departmental communication and ongoing project management and sales tracking. Determining which CRM software is best suited for your business depends on your budget, technical expertise, and priority CRM features.

Below, I will directly compare key features and pricing and identify ideal use cases for both Zoho CRM and monday CRM to help guide you.

Zoho CRM vs monday CRM: Comparison table

Zoho CRM vs monday CRM: Pricing

Zoho CRM pricing

• Free CRM: Free for up to three users and comes with lead and document management and a mobile app.
• Standard: $14 per user per month, billed annually, or $20 per user when billed monthly. Users can access email insights, sales forecasting, and multiple currencies.
• Professional: $23 per user per month, billed annually, or $35 per user when billed monthly. This tier includes all Standard features, plus assignment rules and unlimited custom reports and dashboards.
• Enterprise: $40 per user per month, billed annually, or $50 per user when billed monthly. This plan introduces all AI-powered tools, plus email segmentation, auto-response, and more.
• Ultimate: $52 per user per month, billed annually, or $65 per user when billed monthly. The Ultimate plan grants access to all mentioned features plus access to Zoho Analytics.

monday CRM pricing

• Free CRM: Basic CRM offerings only available for students and nonprofit organizations after submitting an application for approval.
• Basic CRM: $12 per user, per month when billed annually, or $15 when billed monthly. This tier offers unlimited pipelines, boards, and contacts, as well as templates for lead, contact and deal management.
• Standard CRM: $17 per user, per month when billed annually, or $20 when billed monthly. This includes advanced account, contact and deal management, two-way email integration with Gmail and Outlook, and AI email generator.
• Pro CRM: $28 per user, per month when billed annually, or $33 when billed monthly. This tier includes Sales forecasting, email templates with custom parameters, mass emails, and added integrations.
• Enterprise CRM: Contact monday.com for a quote. This level of support offers lead scoring, team goals, and advanced analytics.

Zoho CRM vs monday CRM: Feature comparison

Process builder

Winner: monday CRM

Zoho CRM users can build scalable and repeatable sales processes. With visually appealing designs, businesses can configure actions for every stage. Drag and drop to connect any sales action together with Zoho CRM’s blueprint feature. From there, users can specify the sequence in which the sales team will address each type of opportunity, decide who can do what, and set conditions that have to be met for a deal to close.

Monday CRM’s process builder is more intuitive and user-friendly. Users can easily tailor the CRM without any development help. Businesses can edit deal stages, add unlimited columns, manage multiple pipelines, and more. The dashboard builder includes vibrant colors, categories, and status updates that you can drag and drop to move or rearrange as needed.

Sales automation

Winner: Tie

Zoho CRM uses sales force automation to help teams manage tasks like scheduling client calls or appointments, initiating follow-up, tracking contacts, and updating sales opportunities. Zoho CRM prioritizes sales force automation so salespeople can focus more on nurturing leads and improving customer relationships. These automation tools can be applied to account and lead management, workflow rules, and even macro triggers.

Monday CRM offers no-code automations, making it easy for users to customize their workflows and close deals. Businesses can automatically assign leads to the right reps, set notifications for upcoming activities, get alerted when prospects open an email, and more. This can be especially useful when managers or admins need to change deadlines, territories, or the status of important projects to trigger next steps.

Analytics and reporting

Winner: Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM provides in-depth CRM analytics to help individuals, teams and entire organizations make smarter business decisions. These reporting dashboards provide multi-dimensional, digestible and actionable insights that can be shared and exported quickly. Example analytics that can be accessed include custom reports, charts, anomaly detectors, quadrants, KPIs, target meters and more.

Monday CRM offers basic reporting capabilities compared to Zoho CRM. Monday CRM focuses on performance tracking for businesses. This means users can view real-time dashboards that increase visibility for sales teams. Metrics available include sales forecasting, tracking forecast vs. actual sales, calls, meetings, and team quotas.

AI-powered tools

Winner: Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM offers a powerful AI sales assistant named Zia. Zia is a conversational AI that users can chat or call with. Beyond basic support and content generation, Zia can produce predictive insights, detect anomalies, automate workflows, and enrich data. Zoho CRM’s AI assistant can quickly fetch any information, take notes, and help reps better understand their business at a high level.

Monday CRM only offers AI-powered tools through a beta release. Monday AI includes automated task generation, email composition and rephasing, content generation, and formula building. With the aid of these new AI tools by monday, users can quickly create content for promotional campaigns or generate nurturing emails to send to leads or clients in a fraction of the time.

Zoho CRM pros and cons

Pros of Zoho CRM

• 15-day free trial.
• Offers GDPR compliance with every premium plan.
• Robust marketing features.

Cons of Zoho CRM

• AI tools are only available in the two highest-paid tiers.
• Users report complex software set-up.
• Users report occasional UI bugs and delays.

monday CRM pros and cons

Pros of monday CRM

• 14-day free trial.
• Unlimited contacts, pipelines, and boards.
• Offers HIPAA compliance in the Enterprise plan.

Cons of monday CRM

• Lead scoring and advanced analytics only available in the highest-paid tier.
• Users report occasional automation and notification flukes.
• Users request more in-depth training and onboarding resources.

Should your business use Zoho CRM or monday CRM?

Choose Zoho CRM if:

• You’re an enterprise looking for a CRM solution offering omnichannel marketing.
• Your business is in the hospitality, education, life sciences, or real estate industries.
• You want to prioritize lead generation and marketing strategies, along with building out the sales process.

For more information, head over to our Zoho CRM review.

Choose monday CRM if:

• You’re a small business looking for a CRM solution for managing projects.
• Your business is in the manufacturing, consumer goods, software, or IT industries.
• You’re in need of a customizable tool for in-depth project management.

Read our monday CRM review for more details.

Methodology

To compare Zoho CRM and monday CRM as providers, I used an in-house rubric. My rubric consists of predefined criteria and subcriteria around the most important factors when evaluating any general CRM software and its benefits.

PREMIUM: Choosing the right CRM for your organization.

Here’s the breakdown of the criteria used to score and compare Zoho CRM and monday CRM:

• Cost: Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Core features: Weighted 25% of the total score.
• Customizations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
• Integrations: Weighted 15% of the total score.
• Ease of use: Weighted 10% of the total score.
• Customer support: Weighted 10% of the total score.