I had a hearty laugh when I first saw ZohoCRM.

On first appearance, it looks a lot like Salesforce.com — they’ve copied User Interface elements such as Recent Items, object names, tabs and even the Drag & Drop Page Layouts.

All pretty good for a quarter the price of Salesforce.com.

Then, however, I started looking a bit closer and found several things missing:

• There’s no DataLoader, so you have to get your data in & out via the web interface. There is, however, an API so in theory you could write an automated loader.
• You can’t create Custom Objects (but you can add custom fields to existing objects)
• There’s nothing resembling Apex or Visualforce, so don’t even dream of customising anything (aside from Workflow rules)

I’m sure there’s a myriad other differences, but these alone mean that it won’t be used as a serious system in established businesses. While it will improve over time, so will Salesforce.com and I don’t expect it to catch up.

The Bottom Line

• It’s fine if you’re a small business or you’re managing a social club
• For anything else, don’t waste your time