Zoho Commerce Review 2024 – Is It Worth Your Money?

Fashion brands, furniture homes, baby wear businesses, and many other industries now depend on Zoho Commerce for their eCommerce needs. Most customers agree that Zoho Commerce is more affordable than many of its competitors, including Shopify.

As you may already know, Shopify is among the most popular eCommerce platforms out there. However, it can be expensive for many sellers. This is where Zoho Commerce comes in. It offers excellent eCommerce capabilities at a much affordable price.

With Zoho Commerce, you get several free beautiful ecommerce store themes, a no-code experience, a completely customizable checkout process, and curated product listings. The pricing plans are affordable and come with a 14-day free trial.

You don’t need a credit card to register on Zoho Commerce and above all, Zoho Commerce charges zero transaction fees, regardless of the plan you choose.

There are many exciting features offered by Zoho for eCommerce operations. But is it the right fit for your company? Keep reading this 2024 review of Zoho Commerce to learn more.

Key Features

• Drag-and-drop interface that will let you build an ecommerce website without any coding
• Professionally designed templates to suit eCommerce businesses of all kinds
• SEO features to improve your store's visibility on search engines
• Integration with multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize
• Shipping management tool that calculates real-time shipping rates
• Ability to create and manage discounts and promotional offers
• Detailed reports and analytics to track sales performance

Pros

• Affordable pricing plans
• Easy to use drag-and-drop builder
• A complete set of eCommerce features
• Seamless integration with other Zoho products and third-party applications
• 14-day money-back guarantee

Cons

• A limited number of templates and customizations
• No free plan available as of now

Zoho Commerce Overview

Zoho Commerce was launched in April 2019, which makes it a rather new eCommerce platform. In this short period, it has been used by several websites including retail businesses such as Pets Oasis and B2B companies such as Caple Industrial Solutions.

Why do companies select Zoho over other market leaders such as Shopify? It’s mainly because of the easy-to-use feature set offered within its affordable pricing structure.Shopify realizes that and is currently offering a 33-day free trial on its services.

Zoho also offers a 14-day free trial to its customers along with zero transaction fee. The monthly subscription costs of Zoho Commerce are lower than those of many other eCommerce providers.

I have tried both Shopify and Zoho Commerce and I find the basic plan of Zoho Commerce to be superior to the basic plan of Shopify. If you move to the more premium plans, Shopify has more options.

But for startups and beginners, Zoho Commerce might be a better choice. Zoho has over 25 free templates for eCommerce stores, which might not be a lot but is enough for small businesses.

How I Tested Zoho Commerce

I’ve been using Zoho Commerce for almost 14 months now and I’m aware of its advantages and limitations. However, for this review, I created a test account to see what it offers in its 14-day trial.

I’m happy to know that you get the full-fledged Zoho Commerce experience in the trial and you don’t need to enter your credit card details for that.

You get all these settings to customize your store. Whether you want to offer multi-currency support or create coupons, you can do it through the dashboard. You can also set your preferences for order numbers and invoices. There are all types of settings you can play with, right from your dashboard.

It also lists integrations, which include all Zoho products along with some other third-party applications. Plus, Zoho Commerce gives you SEO capabilities.

Pricing

While, Zoho Commerce doesn’t offer a free subscription, they offerthree pricing plans.

• Starter for $22/month
• Professional for $60/month
• Advanced for $140/month

The starter plan is pretty affordable and gives access to many features. For example, you can add up to 2000 products on your website, which is more than enough for most small businesses.

With the Professional plan, you can offer product filters to your customers, calculate live shipping rates, offer advanced coupons, and much more.

And with the Advanced plan, you can create price lists that will have different prices for different customers, product bundles, and much more.

Apart from these plans, there are also some add-ons.

For $5, you can have an additional user in your Starter and Pro plans. You can also add extra pickup locations, price lists, and more by paying extra per month.

Zoho Commerce Features

Zoho Commerce comes with several features that will make it easy for you to launch your online store.

Ecommerce Website builder

The drag-and-drop builder doesn’t need any coding knowledge. Just drag your desired elements and drop them on the right place on the page.

Responsive themes

Zoho offers several readymade themes that work with all screen sizes. Select a theme and start building your online store.

Pages and files

You can have downloadable files, images, and other components on your website. For example, there can be downloadable PDFs to explain how a product works.

Multi-currency display

With Zoho Commerce, you can display your products with different currencies for different countries.

Complete infrastructure

You can install free SSL certificates in no time and make your site live. Zoho also offers hosting solutions that offer unmetered bandwidth.

Product and order management

With Zoho Commerce, create products and their variants quickly and easily. Plus, you can control the order lifecycle and manage order fulfillment.

Using Zoho Commerce

I’ve been using Zoho Commerce for 14 months and it has been an easy experience. The website was made in under an hour, including the designing and content part. Adding products can take a bit longer, especially if you have over a hundred products.

Let’s discuss the components of Zoho Commerce

Templates

When you start creating a website, Zoho Commerce will show you a range of templates and you can select the right one depending on your needs and preferences.

There are several eCommerce templates available for free. You can customize them and change their theme colors and other aspects to create a unique look for your store. You’ll find templates for different industries which makes it easier to find a suitable match.

Each template has a pre-designed layout with essential pages. You can add more pages according to your needs. Many elements of the templates (such as colors, fonts, and layout) are easily customizable.

Dashboard

This is how your initial dashboard will look. It will work perfectly even during the free trial. Here you can add your products, shipping information, payment details, and other data.

The dashboard is your central location where you’ll see how your store performs. It will show you total sales, orders, and customer count, along with visual features like graphs and charts. It lets you track inventory levels, view your top-selling products, and monitor your website traffic.

It also offers insights into abandoned carts and customer behavior, giving you complete control of your store.

Products

Zoho Commerce lets you add up to 2000 products in the Starter plan. It lets you select the product image, title, description, and other basic details. Apart from that, it also lets you track inventory and set low-stock reminders.

You can add specifications to your products according to your needs. For example, you can assign measurements and weight to your products. Plus, it lets you add attributes such as size and color as well.

Adding products is pretty straightforward and instead of adding each product separately, you can clone similar products and edit the details to upload your stock quickly.

Collections

Once you’ve added products to your store, you can create collections. A collection is a group of products from your store. You can create a collection and manually add products to it or set some criteria.

For example, you can create a collection called Less than $10 and set a condition for price. If the price of a product is less than $10, it will automatically be added to that collection.

Collections will help your website visitors find your products more easily. In the example above, I have created three collections based on seasons. You can create a collection based on design, sale, or a particular brand as well.

Shopping Cart

More than 68% of shopping carts are left abandoned. To avoid this, Zoho lets you send retargeting mailers to your customers.

Zoho Commerce integrates with some of the top shipping carriers all over the world. It lets you set shipping rates according to dimensions, weight, delivery time, and shipping zone.

The payment gateways offered by Zoho Commerce are PCI and SSL compliant so your customers’ details stay safe when they shop with you. It also lists spammed IP addresses to find out if there is a fraudulent transaction. The security system keeps track of the steps taken by a customer before purchasing to find out if a transaction is valid or deceitful.

Reports

Reports and analytics can show you how your store is performing. The sales report feature shows sales by orders, sales by products, sales by product variant, and sales by category.

The traffic analysis will show you daily visits, their source, and the product pages people visited. Your dashboard will also show you your top purchasers and frequent visitors.

You will get to see frequently abandoned products and customer details. This will help you understand why customers leave certain products and what you can do to avoid that.

Zoho Commerce also offers funnel analysis that helps you understand how users interact with your website. It shows the place your visitors landed and where they dropped off.

User Experience

Zoho Commerce has a smooth user experience. However, some other eCommerce builders offer an even easier ride. I feel that the number of templates and customizations in Zoho Commerce is rather limited. Despite this drawback, Zoho does offer an easy way to build websites.

All you have to do is select your industry and enter some other basic details. Once you enter the details, it will show you relevant templates and you can pick the one you like. It will give you some customization options and within a few seconds, you’ll be at your dashboard.

I miss the AI support I get from some other retail store builders. There are no product description generators. Of course, you can use a free AI tool and generate your description and then copy it to the product page but that’s just an extra step.

Let’s see what other users feel about Zoho Commerce.

Most users are happy with Zoho Commerce but there are some dissatisfied users as well. Their main concerns are with limited customization options. Whether it’s about designing a landing page or customizing the layout, there isn’t much you can do.

Who Is It For?

Zoho Commerce is for retailers as well as wholesalers. If you want to sell products online, Zoho Commerce might be for you. Here are some users who can use Zoho Commerce.

Small businesses

Small businesses need a cost-effective way to make their presence online. Zoho Commerce will be a good solution for them since it offers affordable plans. Plus, it doesn’t need any coding knowledge. All you have to do is drag and drop the elements on the page and your website will be ready in no time.

This way, you can create an online storefront without much investment in website development or technology. With its no-code features, you don’t need to hire IT professionals to develop a website. You can create your online retail store in less than an hour.

Startups

Startups need a scalable solution that can help them grow. While they want to invest little in the beginning, they often want tools that can be upgraded easily. Also, since they will need to use more applications as they grow, they need eCommerce solutions that can integrate with third-party apps.

Zoho Commerce can be a good solution for startups because they can begin with its Starter plan and then upgrade as their needs change. Also, Zoho Commerce seamlessly integrates with other Zoho offerings such as Zoho CRM and Zoho Inventory. It can also integrate with other third-party apps such as Mailchimp.

Specialty Stores

Zoho Commerce works with niche markets and specialty stores that cater to specific customer needs. Some customization options with Zoho Commerce let you create flexible design options. While it lacks fine tweaking, it does offer some basic levels of customization. This lets users create online stores that connect with their audience.

Also, since there are categorization options along with collections, customers can find their niche products more easily. For example, if you have a t-shirt store with categories according to fabrics (cotton, rayon, bamboo, etc.), you can also create a collection of t-shirts with floral embroidery or tie-and-dye so your customers can find a niche product.

Entrepreneurs

If you’re an individual retailer who wants to create their website without any help, you’ll find Zoho Commerce very easy to work with. It has a user-friendly interface and extensive documentation that will take you through the design and development process.

There are tutorials, customer support, and other helpful features that will let you create your online store in no time, and that too without help from third parties. And as your business grows, you can upgrade your plan so your eCommerce platform will scale with you.

Zoho Commerce Alternatives

Zoho Commerce offers affordable solutions but it’s not the only eCommerce solution in the market. Here are some other popular platforms that might suit your business better.

Shopify

Shopify is popular for its user-friendly interface, extensive app store, and robust community support. All these features make it a great choice for businesses and individual sellers. It offers several themes and plugins to make your website even more appealing and useful. But these tools are often expensive.

Just like Zoho Commerce, Shopify offers a drag-and-drop editor, which makes website creation very easy. Shopify also offers multi-channel selling, which means you can sell not just from your website but also from other platforms such as Amazon and social media platforms.

Shopify is a powerful ecommerce tool that comes with additional features for marketing, inventory management, and much more. However, it’s costlier than Zoho Commerce.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is another popular eCommerce website builder. It has a drag-and-drop builder that lets you work without learning coding. Just like Zoho Commerce, BigCommerce also comes with responsive themes, SEO capabilities, and order and inventory management.

BigCommerce can handle high-volume sales and complex product catalogs. This makes it a good option for mid-to-large-sized businesses. BigCommerce can integrate with third-party applications to enhance its functionality.

Compared to Zoho Commerce, BigCommerce offers more advanced features. However, if you use other Zoho tools, Zoho Commerce will be more suitable for you as it will integrate with other Zoho applications seamlessly.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce was earlier known as Magento and was among the early players in the eCommerce market. It’s a flexible platform for companies with complex needs. It offers many customization options that let businesses create websites that resonate with their brand identities.

It offers powerful analytics and advanced SEO tools. Plus, it allows multi-channel selling and multiple payment gateways. Adobe Commerce can handle large volumes of data so you can have a catalog with thousands of products.

While Adobe Commerce offers extensive customizations, it needs high technical expertise, which means it’s more suited for businesses with developer resources or technical expertise. In comparison, while Zoho Commerce doesn’t offer many customization facilities, it is more suitable for small-sized businesses.

Conclusion

Zoho Commerce offers a versatile and user-friendly way to create an eCommerce website. While it offers limited customization options as compared to some other market leaders, Zoho Commerce is more affordable and easier to implement.

Zoho Commerce also integrates seamlessly with other Zoho applications, making it the perfect choice for retailers who are already using the Zoho suite.

With its value for money and ease of use, it is an ideal solution for small businesses and individual sellers who don’t want to spend too much and are looking for basic solutions for building an online retail store.

So, coming back to the original question, “Is it worth your money?” Yes, if you’re a small business owner with basic eCommerce needs, it’s definitely worth your money.

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