Zoho Projects - Project Management

Our Verdict

Zoho Projects is a feature-rich cloud-based project management solution that’s super affordable. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools for task management, time tracking, collaboration, and in-depth reporting, all essential for businesses of various sizes. Its seamless integration within the broader Zoho ecosystem and with popular third-party applications makes it even better. And the interface has virtually no learning curve, despite there being so many features to explore.

As a centralized platform, project managers and participants can plan, monitor, and execute projects efficiently with visual aids like Gantt charts and Kanban boards. AI features aren’t extraordinary, but the platform still packs in enough automation to make it useful. Plus, it’s versatile, so it can be used for projects in various industries.

Pros

Great value for money
Easy to set up and use
Suitable for various types of projects (small and complex)
Practical automations to speed up progress
Time tracking
Zoho ecosystem integrations

Cons

Limited, less resourceful AI features
Free plan isn’t practical

Products & Pricing

Zoho Projects offers good value for money with more affordable pricing than some of the mainstream project management solutions like Asana and Jira. And it offers pretty much the same basic and advanced features at that price.

There’s a free tier with limited resources and features. You can try the paid plans with a 15-day trial. Here are all the plans:

Free: This entry-level tier is free and includes three projects, subtasks, a whiteboard, and five users.
Premium: This plan costs $4 per user per month (billed annually) and includes unlimited projects, project templates, time tracking, and blueprints.
Enterprise: This plan is for larger companies and costs $9 per user per month (billed annually). It includes everything in Premium plus custom fields/status, custom roles, SSO, and advanced AI features.

Free

$0 /mo

Up to 5 users

Premium

$4 /mo

Billed Annually

Enterprise

$9 /mo

Billed Annually

In-depth review

Task Management

The Task Management functionality in Zoho Projects lets you structure and visualize work into manageable units. These units can be milestones, task lists, tasks, and subtasks. Users can view their work in multiple formats, including traditional lists, interactive Kanban boards for tracking progress, and dynamic Gantt charts for scheduling, setting dependencies, and identifying the critical path. There’s also a Calendar view to see task assignments for the upcoming weeks or months. You can assign different users, set deadlines, and apply priority labels. Tasks can also be integrated with time tracking.

Collaboration & Communication

Zoho Projects centralizes team interactions, moving discussions away from scattered emails to task-specific threads. That way, users have context. It features an integrated Feeds module for instant updates and announcements, and allows users to @mention colleagues or #mention work items within comments to draw attention and expedite decisions.

Unlike many other project management platforms, Zoho offers built-in chats. Teams can use it as the primary communication tool, at least those working on the project. For collaboration, there are also Forums for discussions, as well as Pages and Documents sections that function as a repository for project documents.

Additionally, seamless integration with Zoho’s other communication tools, like Zoho Cliq (chat) and Zoho Meeting (video conferencing), further enables both synchronous and asynchronous communication within teams and outside.

Project Tracking & Reporting

For monitoring and performance analysis, the charts and reporting features provide real-time visibility into project health and team productivity. Project managers can use Gantt charts to compare planned progress against the actual timeline visually. Similarly, they can use workload reports to prevent resource over- or under-allocation.

The platform offers customizable advanced reports on tasks, issues, and timesheets, which can be shared with stakeholders. Project Baselines let you compare current performance against the initial plan, which can help prevent scope creep and delays. And if you want even more granular analytics, the platform can be integrated with Zoho Analytics.

Integrations & Add-Ons

Zoho Projects is built to integrate smoothly with the broader Zoho ecosystem and numerous third-party applications. Main in-house integrations include Zoho CRM for linking sales and project delivery, Zoho Books/Invoice for billing based on logged hours, and Zoho Analytics for deep business intelligence.

Furthermore, connectors to popular external apps like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, and development tools like GitHub and Jira allow teams to maintain existing workflows. There are over 50 integrations.

Automations & AI

The platform significantly boosts efficiency through its workflow automation capabilities. For instance, Blueprint allows users to design and enforce specific sequential workflows for task handoffs or approvals, based on rules and actions.

Zoho’s Zia AI offers conversational support, including NLP (Natural Language Processing) search, AI data insights to identify trends and bottlenecks, and AI Translate to facilitate seamless global communication. You need to use the ChatGPT API to set it up and have a paid account. While these AI features work well (search struggles a bit), they’re not the most useful for day-to-day use. Also, the Search and Translate features are only available on the Enterprise plan.

Features & Functionality

Zoho Projects covers all the basics that a project management software should, including task management, dependency, assignment, collaboration, progress tracking, and more. To get the best out of the platform, the Enterprise plan may be needed as it has the most features. Since it’s cloud-based, it can be accessed via web from anywhere as well as dedicated iOS and Android apps.

Here are three outstanding features:

1. Project Templates

The Project Templates feature is a big time-saver. You can start a project almost instantly without a time-consuming setup, and any tweaks to fields and workflows can be made later. It’s also a powerful tool for standardization, as you can use existing projects to start new ones. Instead of recreating task lists, milestones, task dependencies, and custom fields from scratch for similar projects (like client onboarding, software releases, or event planning), a template captures all the common elements.

2. Blueprints

The Blueprints is a powerful no-code workflow automation feature that allows teams to map out and enforce a specific business process or workflow for tasks and issues. You can define a sequence of states (for example, “To Be Approved,” “In Progress,” “Completed”) and transitions, according to how things work in your organization or the project in particular. Similarly, you can automate various actions, such as sending email alerts, updating fields, or assigning tasks, only after certain criteria are met.

3. Time Tracking

Zoho Projects has built-in time tracking capabilities for tasks and users, which eliminates the need for integrating third-party tools or asking users to track time separately. This ability can be useful when you want to bill clients for hours worked on a project or pay freelancers/contractors by the hour. It also gives visibility into how long certain tasks or milestones take, which helps project managers plan better next time. Team members can log their work hours either manually or by using built-in timers directly associated with specific tasks.

Ease of Use

Zoho Projects is incredibly easy to use and has a minimal learning curve. For instance, when you first create a project, adding members, setting phases, and adding tasks just takes minutes. If you have a small project, you’ll have it planned quickly.

For users who are joining for the first time, there are hints and messages to acquaint them with how things work. The interface is clean, and navigation is smooth. Anyone with some project management tool experience should get the hang of it in no time. And for those who don’t, there are plenty of tutorials and articles in the knowledge base to help.

Customer Service

Zoho Projects offers several support options, both direct and knowledge-based. The response time varies depending on the mode. As far as information goes, they provide plenty of resources to find what you need. Additionally, Zoho Project features a comprehensive blog section and an in-depth FAQ section. Their support business hours are Monday through Friday, 5 AM to 6 PM PDT.

Phone Support

You can reach their phone support during business hours

Support inquires can be sent via email

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