What Is Zoho Projects?
Zoho Projects is a low-cost project management app that includes a lot of built-in features that aren’t often found in other similar software. Zoho is known for being an umbrella for multiple apps that work cohesively in a tech ecosystem. You can connect Zoho Projects with its CRM, help desk, email service provider and accounting software. Zoho Projects gets a lot of attention for its low price and powerful features and offerings such as:
- A forever-free plan for up to three users
- The most affordable annual subscription plans compared to industry leaders
- Built-in chat for direct messaging and group chats
- Most core features included on all plans
- Custom fields and milestones on top-tier plan
- An intuitive interface with easy-to-use tools
- An AI assistant called Zia that helps you with data, scheduling and predictions
Zoho Projects has recently changed its interface and tools to make it even easier and more powerful. Even before the update, Zoho Projects landed on the Forbes Advisor list of the best project management software.
A section for chats includes a search bar and instructions on how to start a one-on-one chat or a group chat.
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Google, Outlook, Apple, Zoom, Teams, Zapier, Siri and more
What Sets Zoho Projects Apart
Zoho Projects makes project management faster and less tedious than ever. We liked that we were able to change details of a task from a card without having to click into the card and that we could assign tasks to more than one person. The built-in collaboration means fewer integrations are needed. With that said, there aren’t many integrations available compared to some of the biggest names in project management.
Pros
One of the most obvious benefits Zoho Projects has over its competitors is that it’s so affordable for small businesses. Even the Enterprise plan costs only $9 per user per month, if paid annually. That price is lower than some of the entry-level plans from other project management software companies. Zoho Projects is also easy to use, whether you have experience with project management software or not.
You’ll find features in Zoho Projects not otherwise available from even some of the best project management apps such as built-in chat, customization and the option to assign one task to multiple people. Aside from its powerful features and Zia, its AI assistant, Zoho Projects updates its software often; it’s a benefit we don’t often acknowledge, but it’s an important callout because frequent work on new and existing features can build trust and loyalty.
Cons
As much good as we have to say about Zoho Projects, it is lacking in a few ways. Customer support is more limited compared to other software (there’s no phone support). Storage space is also limited, so you may need to integrate a storage solution. Speaking of integrations, Zoho Projects mostly focuses on connections within its own apps, so you won’t have as many options compared to other project management tools.
Zoho Projects Core Features
The main features of any project management software include task management, Gantt charts, integrations, collaboration and customization. Although a lot of what Zoho Projects does at its core is similar to other project management apps, it does offer a few unique features in its task management and collaboration.
Task Management
We set up a project as soon as our account was active. The free version of Zoho Projects forces you to start from scratch, but paid plans provide a template as a shortcut. If you use the new version of Zoho Projects (8.0), you can create a new project from the left-side menu under “Projects.”
Assigning a task is simple, as is creating a subtask. What’s new to Zoho Projects and uncommon among its competitors is the ability to assign a task to multiple people. You’ll have an owner of a project and then you can choose multiple resources (in this case, people) to a task. You can also create subtasks and then nest more tasks (sub-subtasks, if you will).
Creating task dependencies only requires you to type in a task as a predecessor and choose it. It’s a bit tedious, but easy enough. Zoho Projects won’t allow you to set a task due before a predecessor, which helps prevent overdue tasks, broken timelines and overworked employees. Sometimes we wanted to just set the date preferred and fix the schedule manually, but there is no override.
You can set a task dependency from the open task by choosing the appropriate tab and typing in the predecessor task’s name.
Gantt Chart
Swapping your view of a project from Kanban to list to Gantt is easy enough; simply choose from the top right which view you’d prefer. We like the simplicity of Zoho Projects’ Gantt charts. We were able to refer back and as far forward as 18 months, so you can get a good view of the big picture of a project.
A view of a Gantt chart with due dates for tasks spread over weeks with the current date labeled with a dotted red line.
Software Integrations
There are more than 50 integrations you can choose from to work with Zoho Projects. Many of them are other Zoho apps, so you may not be able to connect your whole tech stack. However, lots of the options are big names in the industry. Google, Microsoft, Slack, Dropbox and Jira are just a few of the common apps you may want to use. Although there is a HubSpot integration, a notable omission is Salesforce, so you may need to do a data dump via import.
Collaboration
As with most project management software, Zoho Projects lets you collaborate with coworkers or outside sources on projects in that you can comment on tasks, add files and move tasks down the line. In Zoho Projects, you can also send direct messages to other users or create a group chat. For more in-depth conversations that you want to keep, consider using the built-in forums. There are also pages that you can use for internal documentation that can be helpful for company policies or project information to get new users up to speed quickly.
A section for chats includes a search bar and instructions on how to start a one-on-one chat or a group chat.
Customization
We were kind of surprised that most customization is buried in Zoho Projects’ high-tier plan. Every plan can customize statuses but custom fields for projects, tasks, issues and timesheets are reserved for Enterprise plan users and even then they’re limited.
Zoho Projects Pricing and Plans
| Free | Premium | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price (Billed Annually) | $0 | $4 per user per month | $9 per user per month |
| Projects | Two | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Templates | X | 20 | 30 |
| Gantt Chart | Read only | ✔ | ✔ |
| Other Views | Calendar | Custom | Custom |
| Task Management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Subtasks | – | ✔ | ✔ |
| Recurring Tasks | – | ✔ | ✔ |
| Time Tracking | – | ✔ | ✔ |
| Workflow Rules | – | – | ✔ |
| Storage | 5GB | 100GB | 120GB |
| Support | Email, Live Chat and Phone (weekdays) | Email, Live Chat and Phone (weekdays) | Email, Live Chat and Phone (weekdays) |
*Premium support is available as a paid add-on (20% of your subscription fee) and increases availability from eight hours per day to 24 hours (weekdays only).
Free
Zoho Projects offers a free plan that can work for an individual, though you can have up to three people on the account. It’s helpful if you only have a couple of projects you want to work on and need less than 5GB of storage. You’ll get a lot of core functionality, but you’ll miss out on the advanced features. For example, you can assign tasks but no subtasks. You can see a Gantt chart, but you can’t modify it or create task dependencies.
Premium
For $4 per user per month, if paid annually, you get the same features as Free plan users but you also unlock some of the aforementioned advanced features. You can create subtasks, set up recurring tasks, access project budgets, track time and use the AI-powered chatbot Zia. Zoho Projects also offers more integrations at this level so you can connect more Zoho and developer apps. There are still limitations: You get 100GB of storage and no custom fields, critical path or workflow rules.
Enterprise
Although this plan is named Enterprise, its pricing is more appropriate for small to medium businesses. For $9 per user per month, if billed annually, you get all the features built for Zoho Projects. It’s at this level you get full customization of statuses, fields and milestones. However, there are still limitations. For example, you can only create up to 255 custom task fields and you only get 120GB of storage space. You’re also limited to 10 read-only users; if you need more, you have to pay $7 per five guests per month (billed annually).
Zoho Projects Setup and Customization
Zoho Projects may have one of the easiest setups we’ve encountered. After signing up for a seven-day free trial, we were introduced to the dashboard and encouraged to set up our first project. That project had tasks set up with instructions to help guide us through specific features. It’s a clever way to get you to use the tools without relying solely on tooltips, tutorials or videos. With that said, Zoho also offers video tutorials and guides if that’s your preference.
The gear icon in the top-right corner takes you to settings where you can customize the look and feel of your dashboard. You can choose a color theme, set light, dark or auto mode and adjust the font size. We played around with reminders and notifications, which were simple to set. And we liked that automations are easy to find and modify in the settings menu.
There are many options in personal settings, including themes, dark or light mode, font size and font family.
Zoho Projects Ease of Use
As has been mentioned throughout this review of Zoho Projects, it’s incredibly easy to use. Finding the tool or feature you need is intuitive. The left-hand menu makes sense and everything is labeled as you’d expect. One frustration we had while testing Zoho Projects was that dates didn’t refresh on the dashboard in real time. We adjusted due dates for multiple tasks and then had to manually refresh each widget on the dashboard to see the new dates.
Zoho Projects Security
When it comes to general security, Zoho Projects is fine. You can expect standard encryption of data and the platform lives on a secure server. However, if you’re looking for two-factor authentication or single sign-on, you have to pay for it. These advanced security features are only available on the Enterprise plan. You can get these features, along with IP restriction, via Zoho Directory, an integration that’s reserved for high-tier plan users.
To be fair, you do have control over user permissions. We were able to modify permissions for various users through settings and we liked how much control we had. We could provide or prevent access to the portal or specific projects.
Zoho Projects Customer Service and Support
We tried our best to contact support at Zoho Projects via live chat but our first attempt didn’t work. Literally, the button for live chat did not work. It turns out it’s because we tried outside of support hours, but our second attempt (on a weekday) was more successful in that a chat window popped up, and we were able to type our question. At first, we saw a timer that tracked how long it was taking for support to get back to us, but then it quickly changed to the equivalent of a voice mail greeting.
It seems that support tends to answer within 24 hours. At the time of writing this section, we heard back from support regarding the ticket we submitted. However, the live chat message we sent still has no response.
Zoho offers two levels of support: free and premium. Free support is available via live chat, phone and email eight hours a day (times aren’t posted and support didn’t give us the hour range) Monday through Friday. Premium support comes with 24-hour availability, but this is also only during weekdays. The higher level of support requires you have at least 25 users and you pay 20% of your license fee.
A live chat with support shows the sent message with a notice that support was away.
Additional Features
A lot of bonus features you find in any project management software aren’t necessary for running a job, but they can help reduce the manual work you need to do or provide a different view of projects. Zoho Projects provides multiple tools that help make project management easier.
Customizable Templates
Only the free plan from Zoho Projects doesn’t allow you to use premade templates. The Premium plan allows you to use up to 20 templates, and the Enterprise plan allows up to 30. There are 24 pre-built templates we found in the app. With that said, you can also create your own project templates.
Templates are categorized by industry such as construction and marketing.
Milestone Tracking
Adding milestones to Gantt charts helps bifurcate a project into manageable sections, which can help with scheduling properly to ensure you meet timeline goals. These are only available on paid plans.
Finance Management
A project budget can be difficult to track if you don’t have reporting tools. Plus, when you rely on outside sources for work or clients for income, you need to have one place to manage funds incoming and outgoing. Zoho Projects offers you various reports and charts for project budgets, planned versus actual reporting and invoice management. The only downside is that Zoho Projects only integrates with its own accounting app, so if you’re set on using QuickBooks or Xero, you may need to use Zapier to connect or rely on manual accounting to keep numbers accurate.
AI Tools
Zia is Zoho’s AI assistant that can answer questions based on your data and your actions. It essentially employs machine learning to help with predictive analysis and offers suggestions for automations of repetitive tasks, and you can easily see quick reports by simply asking to see what you want. For example, we asked to see overdue tasks and outstanding invoices. Zia quickly pulled up the information so we had no need to run a report or find where the data lives to get our answers.
Guest Access
Guests are welcome to your platform, but it comes at a cost. Read-only guest access can be purchased for $7 per month for five users, if paid annually, and it’s only available to Enterprise plan users. If you need to provide guest access to a project or your Zoho Projects platform, you need to give them one of your three free spots or a paid user slot. You can adjust permissions for a specific role to restrict or grant access as needed, though.
Zoho Projects Alternatives and How They Compare
| Zoho Projects | ClickUp | Teamwork | Jira | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rating (Out of 5 Stars) |  |  |  | |
| Starting Price (Billed Annually) | $4 per seat per month | $7 per seat per month | $5.99 per seat per month | $8.15 per seat per month |
| Free Plan | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Templates | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Timelines | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | X |
| Gantt Charts | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | X |
| Kanban Board | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Software Integrations | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Dependencies | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| AI Tools | ✔ | ✔ | – | ✔ |
| Learn More | — | — | — | |
| Read Reviews | — |
*AI tools cost extra as an add-on.
It can be difficult to differentiate between project management apps because almost all of them include what are largely regarded as core features. Comparing Zoho Projects to alternatives comes down to small but possibly significant factors.
Zoho Projects vs. ClickUp
On paper, it seems that Zoho Projects is the better choice versus ClickUp but that isn’t necessarily true. Yes, Zoho Projects is more affordable than ClickUp at every plan level. However, ClickUp allows unlimited free plan users, and all paid plans offer unlimited view-only guests; in Zoho Projects you have to pay for these users. Also, ClickUp includes more powerful automations than Zoho Projects, in-app video recording and 24/7 support for all users.
Zoho Projects vs. Teamwork
Although you get similar features from either Zoho Projects or Teamwork, each project management app is better suited to different types of businesses. If you’re running an agency with client-based projects, Teamwork may be a better choice because it has built-in payment processing, time tracking and invoicing (even on the free plan). Both software are easy to use but Zoho Projects has a more intuitive interface. Additionally, both apps are affordable, but Zoho Projects is the cheaper option. Overall, Zoho Projects is a better choice for more types of businesses, while Teamwork is still more of a niche solution for agencies.
Zoho Projects vs. Jira
Jira is one of the best-known project management apps meant for software developers. It can work for teams that need simple task management, but it’s missing some features you may prefer that Zoho Projects has, such as Gantt charts. Also, Jira isn’t the easiest program to learn to use, and it’s lacking invoicing features, while Zoho Projects is intuitive and includes budgeting features.
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Our Expert Take
The first time we used Zoho Projects we weren’t all that impressed. It was a simple task management platform that worked well enough for personal projects. However, it’s recently gone through a big transformation, so it’s more intuitive, powerful and includes features we don’t typically see in project management software such as the ability to assign multiple people to one task.
Getting good support from Zoho’s team was difficult, and we don’t love that you have to pay for better availability from support. It’s also a bit limiting when it comes to integrations with third-party players, but if you’re just looking for good, affordable project management software, Zoho Projects is a respectable contender.
Who Is Zoho Projects Best For?
Zoho Projects is an excellent choice in project management software if you want powerful tools to manage budgets, tasks and multiple projects and stay within budget. It’s especially useful if you already use other Zoho apps because they all integrate together. However, if you rely on many third-party apps that don’t integrate, it may not be worth incorporating Zoho Projects in your tech stack, and you should consider a Zoho Projects alternative.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the benefits of using Zoho Projects?
Aside from being one of the most affordable project management solutions in the industry, Zoho Projects is easy to learn and use. It also includes shortcuts to help reduce the number of clicks it takes to perform a task in the platform as of its latest release. There are collaboration tools built into the platform that eliminate the need to integrate other software, too.
What’s better than Zoho Projects?
There are many excellent Zoho Projects alternatives that may suit your needs better. ClickUp is a flexible and easy-to-use platform that can work for almost any type of project and acts more as a work management platform. Teamwork is a great tool for agencies that need to bill and charge clients in the same software. We also like Jira for development teams that want an Agile project management solution.
What’s the difference between Zoho Projects and Zoho Sprints?
Zoho Projects is project management software with an emphasis on management of multiple projects of all kinds. Zoho Sprints is more for teams that need an Agile project management environment with Scrum boards.
