Zoho Subscriptions Reviews

Pros
Really easy to set up, and integrated with the merchant processing of my choice. When we first switched over Zoho subscriptions were the only tool that could email multiple reminders to the clients prior to the billing renewal which I feel is great for subscription services. The customer portal on the backend allows for customers to change their credit card information without me or one of my team members to have to do it manually. Super time saver. It also notifies my team when a payment doesn't go through for whatever reason and can automatically retry the card again. When we first started, it gave up to $50k worth of transactions as a free trial. Meaning you don't have to pay for a subscription until you reach 50k worth of transactions or a certain number of clients. Really cool.

Cons
The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't do a one time payment easily. Sometimes we have one time jobs such as web development or consulting, and it makes it kind of hard to use just this one system. We had to also get Zoho invoice to complement what we were doing. So unless you are doing just recurring subscriptions you'll need to get an invoicing tool as well. Als ran into problems with the customer portal, but most of my clients didn't wnat to log in so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Pricing structure API integrations Webhook announcements Clean and intuitive admin panel Robust reporting Subscriber export Subscription pricing flexibility with coupons and addons

Cons
The non-API deployment is a bit limited in terms of collecting any customer information that's not part of the default data. We didn't have the budget to do a full API deployment, but we were able to come up with some workarounds to collect info in fields not specifically designed for that information. When we did go with the full API deployment, it was pretty easy to transition our hacked-together data collection into the new custom fields.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
This software makes automatic billing an unbelievably easy thing to do. I absolutely love how you can create products, and within the product create different pricing plans. You can set how each customer should be billed and how often. It provides an online billing account for your customers to see their subscriptions, paid invoices and even update their credit card details.

Cons
We love it, but our main gripe about Zoho Subscriptions is that you only get one Hosted payment page for ALL of your products and plans. This is truly odd to me, and many people in the forums are also confused why there has not been any ability to create different payment pages for different products. This means that if you have two different branded subscriptions...you must somehow make a single check out page that fits both of them. Also, it's the same page as when a user updates their cc info... everything else is amazing with this product, but for us, it was a face-palm.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love how Zoho Subscriptions can connect to several payment processors. Its also wonderful how it auto syncs with Zoho CRM without having to build an API.

Cons
Didn't have any cons. Great program to use.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Loved the tool for building subscription checkout options, as well as the templates and options to customize with code. There was a great deal of freedom presented, and it served us very well. The ability to create and manage the plans themselves was also highly intuitive, and easy to adjust and update.

Cons
I have been very happy with this service, and if I have something I wish I could do, almost always find that this has already been covered in another feature.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Zoho Subscriptions is great because it allows our company to easily collect payments and then also run promotions and other types of outside-the-box type of billing. Easily integrates with Zoho CRM so our sales team can run orders efficiently and easily.

Cons
Don't love the fact that you have to create your own billing portals but once you complete this step, you're all set and everything runs easily from there.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
You can build plans for whatever you want with products and that is pretty simple in and of itself. It is tightly integrated to other Zoho Apps so that get's an A+, the testing environment is not too hard to configure. Add-on products can be created but not listed on the hosted page so an Add On essentially has to be added down the road as an invoiced item which means clients cannot configure their solution.

Cons
Spent about 3 hours configuring Test and when I created the Live environment - had to to it all over again. Nothing you create in Test is in Live. I have checked it twice - it asks you to copy an environment and when I did - poof - had to recreate the products and addons all over again. That seems like a glaring error and opens the solution to errors in subscriptions, wording, pricing, everything. Very odd way to build the solution.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 5/10

Pros
Integrations with Payments is very seamless. Setting up WebForms to create subscriptions is fairly easy.

Cons
Integration with ZohoCRM is not as seamless as hoped.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The customer service is awesome! Someone is always available to speak over the phone right away !

Cons
I wish you could have 1 email address associated with various different customers vs creating 1 customer and having multiple subscriptions under one.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
This is a highly competent subscription service, more features than we could possibly use, and we get to use our own billing. Many subscription services also want to do your billing, or getting a percentage of our sales, charging more than our bank, and then they "own" our customers, which is a deal-breaker for us. Zoho Subscriptions is what a subscription service should be, a highly competent web service that does all the heavy lifting, and plugs into our website and payment processors. We've been with Zoho for two years without an outage. We couldn't be happier.

Cons
The lack of an easily integrated customer portal results in us having to write a lot of user-facing pages on our site simply to do what is already available in the admin interface. But every time we've had a genuinely poorly designed thing on Zoho's end, they listened and rolled out changes within a few months. They obviously care about making this the best service.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I like that you can postpone payment if someone wishes to suspend their membership without have to cancel the whole subscription. I also like that emails are so easy to send the customers right through the website.

Cons
My only complainant is that the initial set up when adding a new customer could be a little more simplified and straight forward. Some of our sales team says it takes a few times to get used to where all the information is that is required and is doesn't point you in the right direction (i.e. high lighting a tab you missed) it just tells you you missed for example the address. Also I would like to see a reminder for when someone's postponed payment will be due again.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Once set up, it runs pretty seamlessly without problems or difficulties. We have been on with them for a couple of years and haven't experienced any problems as the system changes and evolves

Cons
The documentation is not easy to use and I haven't found a good source for help. Their forums are good for cookie cutter questions, but challenging to get out if the box answers.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Set it and forget it , i would not be able to function with the amount of subscriptions i have , Zoho take the hard work out of the management

Cons
No being able to change a subscription easily once set up , also not being able to change a customers Vat Rate , i have customers in different zones and if they ask to change from GBP to USD i have to create a new account

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Hosting pages features, multiple products, and multiple plans, ease of use, clean interface. Subscription management is also very easy.

Cons
It should have post payment, landing page feature.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Zoho Subscriptions hits the sweet spot by providing the functionality needed by most small to medium sized subscription providers at a low cost. Its direct integration with Avalara Tax takes care of critical sales tax calculations. Its multiple payment providers handle everything from credit card transactions to delayed invoicing. Its built-in subscription management reminders and customer portal keep your customers up to date on their subscription status.

Cons
Lack of a direct Quickbooks integration.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Helps me stay organized within my small business. Works as an accounting feature for me as well in regards to some of the reporting. Very intuitive with ability to customize everything, including branding. LOVE!

Cons
I really do not have any cons to this software!

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I like the fact that my customers have the ability to log in and update any info for themselves at any time (client portal)

Cons
I wish that this product would integrate with my routing software. (Jobber). That way I can save time and not have to manually transfer customer info to my other software (jobber)

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
-extremely powerful -subscription renewal an excellent feature

Cons
-lag between CRM syncing with subscription -problem with subscription: prorated rates within a month are not flexible; and adding 2nd tier subscriptions is complex and awkward -cannot change change on 2nd tier subscriptions automatically -updates to subscribers disappear to subscriber in 7 days and cannot be re-implemented by admin

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
- Provide automation - Easy to integrate with our product - Customer services are good

Cons
- Sometimes the system gets buggy - All the options are not there which is in Zoho invoices - Customer services are only via email, chat or direct phone lines are not that responsive

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
We like the ability to process all our payment and that is it integrated with ZOHO CRM. The various report that are available allow us to manage our business. We never received any training but have been able to navigate the software pretty good. They customer support does a good job answering our emails and phone calls fairly quickly.

Cons
We are not very happy at the time it takes to complete the process of clearing the ACH transactions. we know immediately whether we are funded but the invoices still show outstanding when they are not. so it makes it difficult to know what invoices are actually outstanding.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It's automated and super customizable. Any questions are always answered promptly by the customer service team

Cons
There are so many customization options that it can get complicated to do very simple tasks unless you know where to look

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It's very simple to use. I've used other subscription softwares and Zoho beats them hands down.

Cons
I would like to see Zoho create more options for reporting.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The program provides a lot of value for what you pay. Setup with straight forward it's easy to use on a day to day basis.

Cons
There are times where making changes/updates is more difficult then it should be which can be frustrating.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Was much better than Chargify or Recurly, as there was no % taken from the subcription.

Cons
The fact you couldn't embed/create your own hosted pages using Zoho Subs without a long form

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The software is easy to setup and has a great deal of customization options to suite any business.

Cons
I have had no bad experiences, so I can offer no cons to the Zoho products we use.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10