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I love zoho crm and had the same thought when I implemented it company wide. If one is anything like crm ride it to the moon! They are great!

Zoho fan here. As another suggested, I'd recommend using Google or the like for email, which can be integrated into Zoho. Which apps are you considering, and how will you be using them? Definitely not "too good to be true". There's definitely a learning curve (as typical for any robust CRM). No "gotchas" as far as pricing or usage goes. For any specific application, there's probably a better dedicated alternative, but each of Zoho's apps probably offers a competitive 2nd or 3rd place alternative.

The Zoho ecosystem is great for start ups, soloprenuers and small biz.. basically the underdogs

Zoho books, crm, social, site, help desk, campaigns and salesq are what I use the most. It's a great product. Has apps. Integration is great. You can't beat pricing. Most of the negative reviews I have seen is because it doesn't do this one thing that you want it to do. That can be said about any product. On the support side. You get a good one or sometimes you get a bad one. There are times that certain issue might not get resolved if it's not serious enough. Then make a suggestion and move on. Some people don't explain the issues very well. Doing custom development stuff almost always comes with issue with any product. I don't do custom stuff so it does not affect me in my case. Is it perfect nope. What is? For me it works out fine and does what I need it to do. Some people refuse to change their process of how to do certain things and are stuck in there old ways. I always look to improve or change to be more efficient. Some people don't see it that way and will not work for them To me it's a great product and worth the cost for my business. It might not be for all.

The Zoho ecosystem is extremely half-baked and their support is god-awful. I have experience with it as a Systems Engineer who has to support the thing.... the apps are all designed by unique teams inside Zoho and it shows... the integration between everything you get in zoho one is subpar at best and you'll find yourself frustrated at setting up "integrations" that should have been there from the get-go in a "unified" suite.

How much you feel should it have been to be taken seriously?

I used them for a while. It was great but they had downtime enough that I eventually moved over to gsuite for email. I think their email went out two times three times per year, which started to become unacceptable. Honestly, I miss their email interface as I preferred it to gmail. Too good to be true? It’s a great deal but this is not the google toppler or anything. Their software has enough quirks and issues that i was adapting myself to it more than I felt I should. For example, their crm had far more estimating options than their payment system and the two didn’t communicate effectively. But it’s getting better all the time, I’m told. Give it a shot and see if it works for you.

I''m a full time ERP specialist at my work (SMB) and Zoho is doing pretty much everything we ask it to do. We are mostly using CRM, Creator, Books, Inventory, Subscription, Flow, Analytics. There is some bugs here and there and sometimes there is evident stuff that should be available but are not but it's never something that's dealbreaking for us. I also made several small custom Integration between Zoho apps (using Deluge) and it's working pretty great. We've been using Zoho for two years now (starting with only CRM and expanding) and there is always work to do to improve but it's been a pretty smooth experience on my side to setup and customize.

somebody use zoho recruit?

I used Zoho One to run my small business last year (and another larger business I was part of before that). I made a video about my experiences here: [https://youtu.be/u4zMJBtkJcU](https://youtu.be/u4zMJBtkJcU). It really is a joy to use as a self-employed person or small business owner. I loved the fact that when I wanted to do something (run a marketing campaign, start a subscription service, send an invoice) there was already a tool or function there for me to get started. I think it saves so much hassle in the long run. It's also a great safety net, as all of the business data is being captured. It's comforting to know when you're juggling so many things that when you have time to restructure or organise your business contacts, the data is there ready for you to sort through.

After years of continuous struggle with Zoho, I would not recommend it! If you have a dedicated IT department and lots (looooots!) of time and super-human patience you could definitely give it a try. With Zoho nothing goes easy, automatically or without endless trial and errors. It is a matter of fact I was just going to ask this forum if anyone knows an alternative for the Zoho-One bundle.