I am a fervent Zoho advocate. I jumped head first into our Zoho One implementation with the desire to go as deep into the Zoho ecosystem as is possible, with the ultimate ambition of having the most integrated and seamless experience possible. I even started this website to document and share my experiences.
However, even before I signed up to Zoho One, I knew there was a problem. Zoho told me that they would sort it. I paid for Enterprise Support because they told me they would sort it.
Not only have they not sorted it. They have profited from not sorting it.
Right now, the sad reality of Zoho is that if you have ambitions to operate beyond a single border, then Zoho One is going to break down.
I understand Zoho's multiple data centre model, whereby your data centres sit on servers local to your company. Particularly in India, where we have a subsidiary and the majority of our staff are located, there are a bunch of regulations surrounding the onshoring of data and laws quite specific to India.
When it comes to products like Zoho's FInancial Suite this multiple DC model makes sense.
However, for things like your productivity software you don't want to have one account in India for your India team, and one account in Australia for your Australian team.
So when we took up our Zoho subscription we had two choices. Have two Zoho One subscriptions, one for each country and that would let us have access to two sets of Financial suites, Backstage and everywhere else where local currency support was important. However, it would mean we couldn't sit on the same Cliq server or email server. Every time we shared documents we'd get a warning about sharing beyond our account, etc.
Cliq is so critical for us being able to communicate beyond borders, it wasn't a sacrifice I was willing to make.
We would have even been happy to do have a single instance if we could have chosen the data centre for each. For example, we run our India finances and accounts on Books, but use Xero in Australia so I don't need two instances. But I do need an Australian instance of Billings and I can't have Australian Billings and Indian Books under the one Zoho account.
We went back and forth for months on the best way to resolve this, and we even eventually got two organisations on two different default currencies. Technically, we finally sorted it out.
Except I didn't think it fair that I had to pay for the second instance of Billings. It's not a huge amount of money, but why should I have to pay for this second subscription to work around Zoho's limitations. I was offered a 10 per cent discount. I refused it as insulting. If you're going to rip me off, you can have the extra $5 a month.
Ordinarily, this would have me packing my bags. However, it was a massive bet to give up Hubspot and Google for Zoho, and not easily reversible. So I'm kind of stuck.
But if you have subsidiaries in more than one country, be warned that Zoho One is just a world of pain. Even if you plan to have subsidiaries in more than one country, it's not worth jumping in until Zoho sort this mess out.
