Is there a free version of Zoho Projects?

Yes, there is a free option for Zoho Projects. This free option is limited to five users and two projects, so it's best for small teams with simple projects in mind. Additionally, Zoho offers a ten-day free trial upon request for any of the pricing tiers that they offer.

What kinds of teams and projects work best with Zoho Projects?

Zoho Projects is good for teams that already use other solutions from Zoho. The user experience of this software is exceptionally average, making it a decent fit for most projects. However, more experienced project managers will find this product lacking any unique features that set it apart from other software options. It'll help you with your project management plan and track your team progress, but anything more complicated will be a challenge for Zoho Projects.

What kinds of customer support does Zoho offer?

Zoho offers a wide variety of customer support options, such as an extensive knowledge base, a user guide, webinars, help videos, a blog, an API guide for developers, a projects community, and a customer support phone number. No matter what you are working on, Zoho has support content that'll work you through any roadblock.

Zoho Projects Review 2024: Features, Pricing & More

Review Updated May 29, 2024

By: Emma Newbery

Our Small Business Expert

Many or all of the products here are from our partners that compensate us. It’s how we make money. But our editorial integrity ensures our experts’ opinions aren’t influenced by compensation. Terms may apply to offers listed on this page.

Zoho Projects delivers oodles of functionality at excellent value. It's easy to toggle between the list, Kanban, and Gantt views as you plan and track your projects. You can set up automations, customize templates, and manage time allocations, all of which make a difference when it comes to timely and cost effective delivery. Read our full Zoho Projects review to find out if this software is right for your business.

Ratings Methodology

Zoho Projects

Learn More for Zoho Projects

Rating image, 3.30 out of 5 stars.

3.30/5

Bottom Line: Zoho Projects is a bland, uninspired, and by-the-numbers project management software that has very little to offer outside of the expected standard functions.

Ease Of use

Rating image, 3.50 out of 5 stars.

3.50/5 Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor.

Support

Rating image, 3.00 out of 5 stars.

3.00/5 Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor.

Pricing

Rating image, 3.50 out of 5 stars.

3.50/5 Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor.

Features

Rating image, 3.00 out of 5 stars.

3.00/5 Our ratings are based on a 5 star scale. 5 stars equals Best. 4 stars equals Excellent. 3 stars equals Good. 2 stars equals Fair. 1 star equals Poor.
Offers free option
Easy to navigate user interface
Reasonable pricing
Offers no unique features
Features hidden in other paid Zoho tools
Feels like a “store brand” version of other software

You can always tell when someone puts all of their effort and passion into something they create. When you care about a product you make, it shows in the little details and differences you create that give your creation a niche of its own.

On the flip side, you can also easily tell when something is phoned in.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Zoho Projects, I can't help but feel like this software was created simply because Zoho knew they could. They created an office suite and decided that they wouldn't stop there.

Since then, Zoho has created solutions in all sorts of industries and markets, including: HR, finance, IT, email hosting, marketing, and sales.

My point is, with so many different tools vying for Zoho's attention, it's clear after using Projects that this company either doesn't have the drive or the resources to build this tool into something other than a cursory offering.

Who is Zoho Projects for?

This was a tough nut to crack. Who is this software for? The only answer I can come up with that makes any real sense would have to be other Zoho users.

If your organization or team is already invested in the Zoho ecosystem (I'll get into more of that later) then Zoho Projects will fit right into your established office suite.

If this is the case, then Zoho Projects is for anyone looking for a tool that will do any of the project management basics like task creation, issue tracking, or task tracking through Gantt charts.

Zoho Projects features

Zoho Projects does everything you'd expect from top project management software. Whether you're an experienced project manager or an entrepreneur who wants to keep track of your deliverables, Zoho Projects is worth checking out.

Accessible and user-friendly interface

Zoho Projects' interface is clean and easy to grasp, especially if you're used to other Zoho products. When you first log on, you'll get to the homepage, which tells you what tasks are open, what you need to focus on, and what's overdue. From there, you can switch to the portfolio tab to get a visual overview of all your projects. Common tools are all in the left-hand sidebar, and much of it can be customized to meet your needs.

When you want to set up a project, you can adapt one of the pre-built templates rather than starting from scratch. Paid users can build custom templates that suit their business needs. Moreover, the automations allow your team to spend less time on tasks that a computer can do better.

Several ways to visualize your project

The cloud-based software makes it super easy to manage your activities and workflows. You can quickly switch between different project views, zoom in and edit specific tasks, or change timelines or budgets. Plus, you can customize and export information as needed.

The main views within Zoho Project are:

Kanban view: Zoho Projects' Kanban view is not as colorful as some, but it works well. You can apply filters, customize views, and add tasks or move them smoothly through the workflow. The timer function is also handy here if you want to log activity.
List view: Use tags and filters to quickly sort data in the list view. You can make bulk edits to tasks, track budgets/times, and get an overview of activities. Use phases to break larger projects into manageable chunks.
Gantt chart: Use the Gantt chart to map out your project by date. It's easy to edit, color code, and highlight critical tasks. You can also use dependencies to set how tasks should function in relation to one another.

Automation

Automating common tasks can save time and reduce the risk of mistakes. Zoho Projects lets you automate even complex series of actions. It's great if you want, say, the project leader to receive an email if a key task becomes overdue. Or automatically update a task's status as it moves to another stage.

All paid plans can use Zoho Projects' Blueprint tool. You can set out broad sets of processes and automatically carry out certain actions in specific stages or circumstances. Enterprise users can also set up individual workflow rules for smaller, more straightforward tasks.

On a related note, templates can save you significant amounts of time, particularly if you often carry out similar client activities. Let's say your company builds websites. You can set up a project template and use it as a starting point with each new job. This will help you consistently deliver a quality service without having to constantly reinvent the wheel.

Collaboration and team management

There's an art to making sure everybody on your team has the information they need at the right time. A good project management tool is the canvas on which to practice that art. You can use the general Feed tool to comment or follow activity on your project. There's also a comment function within individual tasks, a discussion board, and Slack integration.

If we zoom out, each project has a discussion forum and a document repository (called Pages) for things like how-to guides, organizational charts, or product information. It's worth experimenting to see what works best for your team or specific project.

The software lets all users assign tasks to individuals, while Enterprise plans can also work with teams. Another feature of the Enterprise tier is that you can add read-only or resource-only users at a lower cost. This helps if clients or some team members only need to see certain projects or access documents.

Time tracking and budgeting

It's essential to avoid running over your budgeted cost, time, or both. Zoho Projects lets you set the overall budget by total amount as well as hours. There's also a calendar view, so you can see how much your team has on their plates, factor in holidays, and avoid overstretching staff.

As you drill down, you can set your budget by phase, task, or team member. Once work is underway your team begins to log the hours spent, you'll be able to quickly spot potential overruns and (ideally) change course before things get out of hand.

Once people have got the hang of the timer functionality, they can start, pause, and stop actions on specific tasks. This information feeds into both your timesheets and the project activity. It can help your team keep track of times and meet requirements for multiple clients. That said, neither the budgeting feature nor the timer are especially intuitive. I kept losing the timer I'd set. And only certain users can set budgets. Even then, you need to go to the settings to actively turn on the budgeting function.

AI assistance

Activate Zoho's AI tool, Zia to get help with your projects. I used it to create a new project, start (but not stop) a timer on my activity, and highlight any overdue tasks. It's good to see the functionality exists but it's early days for Zia. In fact, I needed to be so specific in the tasks I asked it to do that it was easier to do most things myself.

You'll find more advanced AI functionality in other top project management software. For example, ClickUp's AI can generate task details and suggest follow-up actions. Other programs use generative AI to produce emails and content.

Integration

As you might expect, Zoho Projects integrates with a wide range of apps. While it's easiest to integrate with the other Zoho software, you can also connect with many Google and Microsoft products. If your business is active on Slack or already uses Zapier to automate tasks, you can plug both of these into Zoho Projects.

However, the software does not integrate with QuickBooks or other top accounting software. If you want to create invoices, you need the Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books integrations. It would be good to see more integrations and not feel as if you're being pushed to buy more Zoho products.

Issue tracker

When you're testing a product or service, being able to track issues or bugs can be essential. If you activate Zoho Projects' issue tracker, your team can raise issues in one place. They work like simplified tasks, in that you can log time spent, assign responsibilities, and set their statuses.

You can also set up notifications so you'll know when issues reach certain stages -- for example something that hasn't been fixed after a set amount of time. If you're working with a client, giving them access to the bug tracker can make things more transparent. Especially as you can build in agreements about how quickly things need to be escalated or handled.

Zoho Projects' ease of use

It's hard to talk about Zoho Projects without first explaining its parent company. Zoho is an elaborate business suite company that creates software for every aspect of your organization, from event planning to accounting. There are tons of different available tools, including:

Zoho CRM
Zoho Workplace
Zoho Finance
Zoho IT Management
Zoho Mail

Why is this important? It looks as if Zoho wants to do it all and make as much money as possible while doing it. In fact, Zoho segments some of its crucial features out of Projects and into other Zoho products, kind of like Microsoft Project.

While this is convenient for businesses looking to transition over to Zoho's office suite, this leaves buyers only looking to adopt a new project management platform out in the cold. These buyers either have to buy into other Zoho options or deal with the gaps in functionality.

While Zoho Projects isn't as barebones without the support of its ecosystem like Microsoft Project is (don't get me started on that again), this "do-it-all" approach creates some rough patches for your average user.

Zoho Projects has a fairly simple and streamlined setup process. Once I enter my information on the homepage, I am taken to a setup screen that includes my time zone and the option to select the industry that I work in.

At first, I believed this selection would impact the type of experience I would have with this tool, but after creating a couple of projects, I was disappointed.

Zoho Projects onboarding screen asking for time zone and industry information.

I guess Zoho wanted my industry information for tracking and marketing purposes? I'm not entirely sure. Image source: Author

I've grown accustomed to project management software platforms that change their user experience based on the needs of my industry, and it's unfortunate when that isn't the case.

After a while, it becomes apparent that this half-baked entry into project management software is quite lackluster and run-of-the-mill.

As I venture further into this tool, I find myself staring at an exceptionally uninspired user interface. The boring white, blue, and gray palette reminds me of a hospital room.

It has all of the tools I need, but there is nothing very interesting to look at and nothing unique that sets it apart from other rooms. It's what I would expect if I gave an artificial intelligence (AI) system a basic description of what a project management software was supposed to be, and this is what it created.

Zoho Projects screen showing a Gantt chart specifying different projects' timelines and prioritization.

All of this sterile white on this Gantt timeline chart is blinding my eyes. Image source: Author

Sure, I can navigate around this software as easily as any other project management tool, probably because it feels like it's trying to be the Sam's Club equivalent of Asana or Mavenlink without any of the interesting features.

There aren't any interesting workload tracking tools or clever ways of setting up tasks. This software does the bare minimum of what any full-stack project management tool ought to do:

Create tasks (add due dates, users, comments, subtasks, dependencies, attachments, etc.)
View those tasks in Gantt timeline charts, calendars, or kanban boards
Upload documents to a centralized database
Create project milestones
View your project on the main dashboard
Track user time
Track issues

It's not that this project management tool is bad, necessarily. It just doesn't do anything to justify its existence, while simultaneously gatekeeping other crucial project functions, such as financial management, which brings me to my next gripe.

My biggest issue with Microsoft Project was the fact that almost every necessary function of project management was dependent on whether or not you used the rest of the Microsoft Office suite.

While Zoho is not nearly as bad as Microsoft Projects in this regard, it does occasionally hide these functions in other programs which you'll have to purchase separately.

Zoho Projects screen showing prompt to activate Zoho Invoice or Zoho Books.

Financial management features hidden behind other tools? It was at this moment that I knew what kind of review this was going to be. Image source: Author

Tracking the finances of some projects is crucial and it's bad enough if your tool doesn't offer these features, but to build that capability and hide it in another tool at additional cost is astounding to me.

I understand if you want to build a dedicated software for budgeting, accounting, and invoicing (which Zoho has done), but the least you can do is offer a project focused version of that functionality into your project management software.

I stand by what I said earlier, Zoho Projects is easy. It's easy to get in bed with this software and realize you have four or five other tools you have to sign up for in order to get everything you need to manage your projects.

Which brings me back to what I said earlier about the "do-it-all" approach. Can any software company really do it all effectively? I criticized Microsoft because they have what any software company would kill to have:

Lots of money
Lots of talent
And a considerable market share in lots of industries

Microsoft is worth $717 billion, so they can afford to dabble in pretty much everything (and it's unfortunate when they put out half-baked products). On the other hand, Sridhar Vembu, who privately owns Zoho, is worth roughly $1.1 billion.

My point is, based on my experience using Zoho Project, this company needs to find a specific market they want to corner and master. In my opinion, this "do everything" mindset, as well as the inherent greediness of hiding key features behind the paywalls of other products, are affecting the quality of their product.

Like I said before, Zoho Projects isn't a bad software option, if you ignore the nonexistent native financial management features. There's just nothing about it that justifies its existence, whether it's the user experience, the features list, or the price.

Zoho Projects pricing

Zoho Projects isn't the most expensive project management software I've ever reviewed, but it isn't the cheapest either. They do make the effort to put together a highly customizable pricing system based on the number of users you bring onto the platform, as well as the feature tier you subscribe to.

Zoho Projects' pricing is separated into four tiers:

Free: Up to 5 users, 2 projects, 5 client users, Google Apps integration, activity feeds, calendars, 10MB file attachment limit
Standard: Up to 10 users, 10 projects, 10 client users, 5 project templates, 5GB file attachment limit, time tracking, subtasks, reminders, Google Task Sync, issue tracking, Zoho CRM integration
Express: All previous features, unlimited projects, 15 client users, 10 project templates, 20GB file attachment limit, custom views, recurring tasks, Gantt charts, Zoho Books and Invoice integration (but no subscription)
Premium: All previous features, 20 client users, 20 project templates, 100GB file attachment limit, work planned vs. actual, task dependencies, automation of issue categorization
Enterprise: All previous features, 25 client users, 30 project templates, 120GB file attachment limit, custom fields, custom profiles and roles, custom domain, task dependencies across projects, critical paths

The pricing itself is based on user counts, so I've created this chart to help show some of the variations in price per year when accounting for feature tiers and the number of users:

	Standard	Express	Premium	Enterprise
6 Users	$150
7 Users	$175
8 Users	$200
9 Users	$225
10 Users	$240
15 Users		$480
20 Users		$600	$1,020
25 Users		$720	$1,260	$1,500
50 Users		$1,320	$2,460	$3,000
100 Users		$2,220	$3,960	$5,100
200 Users			$6,360	$9,300
300 Users				$13,500
400 Users				$14,700
500 Users				$15,900
1000 Users				$21,900
2000 Users				$30,900
3000 Users				$36,900
4000 Users				$40,500
5000 Users				$44,100

Like I said, not the most expensive, yet not the cheapest. Of course, most project management software options get expensive once you start talking about thousands of users.

Working with Zoho Projects' support

Finally a real bright spot for Zoho. Not only do they provide you with an extensive knowledge base, a user guide, webinars, help videos, a blog, an API guide for developers, and a projects community, but they even have a customer service number.

The only problem is their support number isn't easy to find on their website. In fact, I had to Google "Zoho support" in order to find it.

This doesn't give me confidence that Zoho is looking forward to any support calls, but I could be wrong. After some digging, I finally found a few sales team phone numbers by clicking on the tiny "contact" button down at the bottom of their website.

That being said, the vast ocean of support content on their website does, in some part, make up for this issue.

Benefits of Zoho Project

This is gonna be a hard one because Zoho Project's biggest benefit is also its greatest weakness.

Zoho does offer a long list of other software options for all kinds of business needs, which makes Projects an extremely versatile tool so long as you have the rest of the suite to back it up.

So, if you are already invested in the Zoho suite, you'll have access to a CRM platform, financing, IT, HR, and other aspects of business management to go along with your project management solution.

In terms of feature benefits, Zoho's bug tracker is decent and runs off of a similar setup as your task management functions.

All of your issues are tracked using an issue list or managed with a kanban board to show your resolution progress. Zoho reports are also quite easy to use, due to their basic setup. Using this reporting function, you can track everything from task completion to timesheets.

As for other benefits, I initially considered pricing as a benefit, but this also came up short. While Zoho Project is relatively affordable, I can't use that as a benefit since there are other project management tools I would recommend over this one at an equal or better price point.

However, if you're looking for a free project management software, you could do worse than Zoho Project.

You can do better than Zoho Projects

I'm finding it very hard to find reasons to use this software over its competitors unless you're already invested in the Zoho ecosystem. There are so many other options to choose from that either match or beat Zoho's pricing, such as:

Even when considering their free option, there are other products that surpass Zoho Projects in that category as well, like Freedcamp or Trello.

How Zoho Project Compares

	File Sharing	Budgeting	Collaborative Tools	Phone Support
Zoho Project
Podio
Asana
monday.com
Wrike

FAQs

Yes, there is a free option for Zoho Projects. This free option is limited to five users and two projects, so it's best for small teams with simple projects in mind. Additionally, Zoho offers a ten-day free trial upon request for any of the pricing tiers that they offer.
Zoho Projects is good for teams that already use other solutions from Zoho. The user experience of this software is exceptionally average, making it a decent fit for most projects. However, more experienced project managers will find this product lacking any unique features that set it apart from other software options. It'll help you with your project management plan and track your team progress, but anything more complicated will be a challenge for Zoho Projects.
Zoho offers a wide variety of customer support options, such as an extensive knowledge base, a user guide, webinars, help videos, a blog, an API guide for developers, a projects community, and a customer support phone number. No matter what you are working on, Zoho has support content that'll work you through any roadblock.