Market Perspectives

We are happy to share some insights about Zoho drawn from our latest Value Index research, Ventana Research Value Index: Subscription Management, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements.

In all of our Value Indexes we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for subscription management. We evaluated Zoho and 20 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two related to the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our benchmark research on subscription management.

Zoho was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor, ranking eighth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked 10th in Product Experience where it performed best in Reliability, placing sixth. It ranked sixth in Customer Experience and performed best in Validation, placing fifth. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in Usability and TCO/ROI. These two categories represent 25% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

When compared to all vendors in this Value Index, our assessment finds that Zoho could perform better in Capability, where it placed ninth, by supporting data mediation and complex usage pricing. In Usability, where it ranked 10th, it could improve tasks using more advanced screen and form navigation.

Zoho could perform better overall in this evaluation by addressing its Usability performance of 59.8% by focusing on intelligence assists. Zoho’s strongest performance came in Adaptability at 80.4% where it did well with customization and process integration.

This assessment was based on Zoho Subscriptions and was available in March of 2023.

Zoho, like all vendors in this market, should ensure they are tracking the needs and expectations of consumers including business customers, as more organizations outside of the traditional digitally native industries continue to evolve their use of mixed revenue models including subscriptions.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of subscription management software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.