20 unbilled hours can cut a 30% margin to 23%

Some of the work that IT consultancies and managed service providers do for customers never gets invoiced. It usually happens on fixed-price projects and managed service contracts, although late timesheet approvals can cause it as well.

Unbilled work is hard to spot because the financial reports most companies review each month are built from invoices. To find it, you have to check the hours logged for each customer against their contract and what they were charged. Below are the three places we would look first, along with what Zoho does in each one and a short checklist for owners and finance leads to run themselves.

Fixed-price projects

Customers often ask for extras while you are still negotiating a fixed-price deal. Some of these get agreed on a call or by email and never reach the contract, so the project manager doesn’t hear about them.

More small requests come in once the project starts, such as a change to a report or another training session. Agreeing to one of these is often reasonable, but if nobody records them, the total only shows up when the project goes over budget. For example, 20 extra hours on a 200-hour project priced at a 30% margin brings it down to about 23%.

Doing some extra work for free can be the right choice with an important customer, as long as someone who can see the project budget approves it. Record it as well, so that the next estimate for that customer can allow for it.

To check this, take a few recently finished fixed-price projects and compare the statement of work with what was delivered. For every extra item, look for a change request or a record of who agreed to do the work for free.

If you use Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects, the CRM integration lets you create a project straight from a deal using a template, so it is linked to the customer record from the start. Deal fields only reach the project if someone mapped them when the integration was set up, which means agreed extras and exclusions need a field of their own on the deal and a mapping to go with it. We would also make that field required, so sales cannot mark the deal as won until they have filled it in.

Managed services

Some support contracts include a set number of tickets or a block of prepaid hours, but installations and project work are usually outside them and should be billed separately.

That only happens if the engineer marks the work as billable, because a ticket closed in the normal way gives finance no reason to send an invoice. Unbilled jobs also cause trouble at renewal, when a customer who has had a few of them done at no charge expects that to continue.

Compare a sample of closed tickets with each customer’s contract to see how often billable work gets closed without anyone flagging it. Tickets for new equipment or infrastructure changes are the most useful ones to look at.

In Zoho Desk, a contract links a customer account to a support plan and an SLA. Support plans are either unlimited or ticket-based, where you set how many tickets the SLA covers in each period. Desk has no plan type for prepaid hours, so anyone selling time in blocks has to log the work as billable time entries on tickets and keep each customer’s remaining balance separately, because time entries record the hours used and do not keep a running balance.

With the Zoho Books integration, agents can create estimates and invoices from inside a ticket and send them to the customer. The engineers still have to decide what is billable, which means they need to know what each contract covers. We would also make flagging that work a required step before anyone can close a ticket.

Timesheets and invoicing

Billable time can be logged correctly and still go unbilled, which happens when finance prepares monthly invoices from approved timesheets on a fixed date and a project manager approves some entries a few days later. Those entries only reach the following month’s billing if someone keeps a list of approved hours that are still waiting to be invoiced.

A simple monthly check is to put approved billable hours next to what was actually invoiced. Some differences are fine, such as time covered by a retainer or written off by agreement, but finance should be able to explain each one.

The integration between Zoho Projects and Zoho Books only brings a timesheet across once it is both billable and approved in Projects and its project has a primary customer, after which it shows as unbilled in Books. Anything still waiting for approval is missing when finance prepares the invoices, so project managers need a fixed deadline for approving time. Finance should also review unbilled time in Books before closing each billing period.

How one client set this up

We implemented Zoho CRM, Zoho Projects, Zoho Desk and Zoho Books for an IT infrastructure and managed services company. It does installation projects as well as ongoing support, so its setup had to handle both kinds of billing.

When a deal is won in CRM, a project gets created in Zoho Projects and marked as billable or not, which decides whether it goes on to invoicing in Books.

Support tickets go to the network operations center first, which assigns them to the right engineering team. Closing a ticket includes a step that asks whether the work is billable, and anything the customer’s maintenance contract doesn’t cover gets invoiced.

Every project and every closed ticket at this company now carries a billing decision, and Books handles the invoicing for the billable ones. You can read about more of our implementations on our case studies page.

Where to start

These three checks will show where unbilled work is happening, and they use records you already have:

• Take a few finished fixed-price projects and compare the statement of work with what was delivered, looking for a change request behind each extra item.
• Go through a sample of closed support tickets alongside each customer’s contract, starting with tickets for new equipment or infrastructure changes.
• Ask finance to explain every difference between the billable hours approved last month and what was invoiced.

Most of what these checks turn up comes down to one of two causes. Either the hours were logged and finance never saw them, which usually means someone approved a timesheet late or the sync between Projects and Books isn’t set up properly, or nobody marked the work as billable at all. When that is the cause, sit down with sales and the engineers and agree what they have to record.

Delveio Consulting is an Authorized Zoho Partner with seven years of Zoho experience and more than 400 CRM projects delivered. We implement Zoho CRM, Zoho Projects, Zoho Desk and Zoho Books for IT services businesses, and we connect them so that billable work reaches an invoice.

If you are planning a Zoho implementation, or have one that is missing billable work, book a call and we will go through your current processes with you.

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A Feature List Won’t Tell You Whether You Need Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator is Zoho’s low-code application development platform for building custom web and mobile apps. Most of what’s been written about it just walks through the feature list. That settles very little. The more useful question is whether the handful of things Zoho Creator can do that you can’t buy off the shelf are ones you need.

It costs less than paying developers to build an app from the ground up, and that’s usually how it gets sold. But cost is a poor reason to choose it. The better reason is that it makes a few things possible that packaged software won’t give you at any price. The most important of those is the client portal, where everyone who logs in sees their own records and nobody else’s. That sounds minor. Both of the projects below depended on it.

This guide covers how Zoho Creator works, two apps we built with it, what it costs in 2026, how it compares with building from scratch and the other low-code platforms, and when it makes sense to get help.

How Zoho Creator Works

With Zoho Creator you build the app around your own fields, steps, and rules. Off-the-shelf software makes those decisions for you. Here, you make them. You assemble the app from forms, records, automation, reports, and client portals, and most of that assembly is drag and drop rather than code. Every app you build also runs as a native iOS and Android app, so Zoho mobile app development is part of the same build, not a separate project. People can use it on a phone in the field, not just at a desk.

When the builder can’t express a piece of logic on its own, Zoho gives you a scripting language called Deluge. Many apps never need it. And because Zoho Creator is included in Zoho One, a business already paying for Zoho One can build internal apps at no extra cost.

What Zoho Creator Is Good For

Each of the two apps below does something no off-the-shelf product could have done. That’s our test for whether Zoho Creator fits a job.

A gated assessment portal for an advisory firm

A business advisory and restructuring firm sells a series of assessments to its clients. A client starts with a short check on the general health of the business, then works through deeper assessments on leadership, sales, and finance. The firm fixes the order, so the deeper ones stay locked until the first is done.

When a client pays, the app runs the whole intake on its own. It saves the client’s details, creates a record in the CRM, releases the first assessment, and sends the booking and follow-up emails, with no member of staff involved. The assessments then open one at a time. The second stays locked until the first is submitted, even if an administrator tries to assign it early. A client who stops halfway comes back later to the same place. Every answer is captured on the same 1 to 10 scale, so the results score consistently, and once an assessment is submitted the client can’t edit it.

The firm had been running this on a basic online form and had outgrown it. A simple form is fine for capturing answers, but it can’t lock steps, save a half-finished response, or keep one client’s data apart from another’s. What changed for the firm was the admin load. Nobody sets up each client by hand any more, and nobody chases a half-finished assessment. The app handles the order and the reminders, and the answers arrive ready to score.

A client project portal for a field-services contractor

An electrical and telecoms contractor does installation and coverage work with its own crews. It wanted clients to be able to request jobs and follow their progress, without the long email chains that had grown up around the work.

In the app we built, clients sign themselves up and an administrator approves each one. From then on, a client sees only the projects belonging to their own company. They can request a project, check its status, upload files, and add comments. On the other side, administrators manage the money through budget lines that carry quantity, unit price, tax, and totals. Change requests show up in the budget as pending until the client accepts or rejects them, and the app records that decision with the date and time.

Some of the quieter details have earned their keep too. An administrator can mark a comment as internal so the client never sees it, archive finished projects to keep the working list short, and choose who gets emailed when something changes.

You can’t buy an app like this off the shelf, because it’s built around this one contractor’s own steps rather than a generic product’s. The practical change was that a job no longer lives in email. One record now holds the request, the files, the budget, and every approval, with a dated account of who agreed to what. Nothing depends on somebody finding the right email thread.

Both of those started as a plain conversation about how the business actually works. If you’re looking at a similar job, book a call with Delveio and we’ll walk through whether Zoho Creator fits it.

When Zoho Creator Is the Right Call

The two builds have one thing in common. Each client sees only their own data, and the app does work that used to sit in somebody’s inbox. That’s what Zoho Creator is good at. In our experience, it makes sense in a few clear cases.

One case is when a ready-made product almost fits, but not quite. Every product you try covers most of the job, then forces a clumsy workaround on the part that matters most. If that part is central to how you work, building it costs less than years of working around the gap.

It also pays off when a fully custom build would be too slow or too expensive for the job. The database, the logins, the security, and the hosting already exist in Zoho Creator, so you build only the part that’s yours. That’s where most of the time and money go when you build it all yourself.

And it makes sense when you want the app to talk to your other Zoho products. A Zoho Creator app connects to Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and the rest of Zoho One with no middleware. The advisory build shows this: one payment triggers the CRM record, the booking, and the file storage, with nothing bolted on between them.

When Not to Use Zoho Creator

If a ready-made product already does the job well, use the product. There’s no sense building an invoicing app when good accounting software exists, or rebuilding a CRM in Zoho Creator when Zoho CRM already does it better. Zoho Creator is meant for the gaps nothing on the market fills. Reach for it anywhere else and you’re left maintaining an app you could have rented.

What to Keep in Mind

Zoho Creator suits many jobs, but it has limits, and they’re better known before a project than after.

Screen design only goes so far. You’re working with Zoho’s building blocks, so the screens come out clean and usable, but you don’t get pixel-level control over every element the way a fully custom build would. That’s fine for most business apps. It makes Zoho Creator the wrong choice for a polished consumer product.

Very large apps can outgrow it. Zoho Creator serves small and mid-sized businesses well. An app holding millions of records under heavy daily load may hit limits that a custom build wouldn’t.

A Zoho Creator app ties you to Zoho. The app lives inside Zoho, and moving it elsewhere later means a rebuild, not a transfer. For most teams already committed to Zoho, that’s a fair trade, as long as you go into it knowingly.

Deluge-heavy apps need an owner. The more custom code an app carries, the more it depends on someone keeping it in order. A complex app left without an owner gets hard to change later.

Zoho Creator vs Building From Scratch

This is the comparison most businesses are weighing when they land on Zoho Creator. A from-scratch build buys you total freedom: you decide every detail, and you own the result outright. You also write, host, secure, and maintain all of it yourself, and that’s where the time and money go. Zoho Creator hands you the database, the logins, the security, and the hosting already built, so you only build the part that’s yours.

Building from scratch is only justified when your needs go past what Zoho Creator can do, which for small and mid-sized businesses is rare.

Zoho Creator isn’t the only low-code option. It sits alongside Microsoft Power Apps, OutSystems, Mendix, Appian, Caspio, Quickbase, and Airtable, and Zoho’s own pitch is that Creator is cheaper and faster to get started with than most of them. That’s broadly true for small and mid-sized teams. The heavier enterprise platforms like Power Apps and Appian have the edge when you need very deep customisation or you’re already tied into a Microsoft or enterprise setup. For the kind of work in this guide, client portals and internal apps for a business already built on Zoho, Creator is usually the sensible pick, because the app connects straight to your CRM, accounting, and email with no middleware in between.

Zoho Creator Pricing (2026)

Zoho Creator is priced per user per month, across three paid plans and one free plan. Zoho also quotes a custom Flex plan for requirements that fit none of the three. All the prices below are billed annually; monthly billing costs more.

Two details catch people out. First, the Standard plan allows only one application, so if you’re planning more than one build you’ll need Professional regardless. Second, the cost of portal users. Every paid plan includes only three, and beyond that, the outside people who log into a portal are billed through an add-on that starts at roughly $100 a month for a block of 250 users. Your own staff use ordinary licences. It’s the portal add-on people most often forget to budget for, so work it out before the build, not after.

For businesses on Zoho One, Zoho Creator is included for internal apps and comes with three portal users for the whole organisation, so a client portal for outside users will still need the portal add-on on top.

One caution on all of these numbers: Zoho changes its prices fairly often, charges different rates by country, and adds local taxes like VAT or GST on top. The figures here were accurate in mid 2026, but treat the table as a guide, not a settled quote. Check the current rates at zoho.com/creator/pricing.html before you fix a budget.

Common Zoho Creator Mistakes

Building too much too soon. The first version of an app should do one job well. Cram every feature into version one and you end up with something nobody finishes. Start small, let people use it, and add the rest once you can see what’s missing.

Launching with no plan for who owns the app. An app isn’t finished the day it launches. Somebody has to fix problems, add a field when the business changes, and keep the whole app in order. An app with no owner drifts, and a drifting app loses the team’s trust fast.

Treating the client portal as an afterthought. The moment client data or money passes through a portal, the access rules stop being optional. Test them until you’ve proved one client can’t see another’s records, before a single client logs in. A mistake here costs you the client relationship, not an afternoon.

Making big changes with nowhere safe to test them. If an app is in daily use, don’t rewrite a live automation on a Friday and hope. Zoho Creator gives you developer environments, which are isolated copies of an app where you can test changes without touching the live version. They exist for exactly this.

Should You Build It Yourself or Get Help?

Plenty of Zoho Creator work is fine to do yourself. Simple apps with a few fields, basic automation, and internal use only are within reach of anyone willing to sit with the builder for a day, and Zoho’s documentation covers most of what those apps need.

Help is worth paying for when the build carries risk or goes past the basics. That means client portals with strict per-client access, payment and CRM connections of the kind the advisory build needed, Deluge scripting, or data brought across from another system. One wrong setting in any of those breaks something, and a Zoho Creator developer who’s done the work before will save you weeks.

There’s one more reason to get help: an app decays when nobody on the team has time to own it. An app built with care and handed over with proper training will last for years. One assembled in spare half-hours won’t.

Working With a Zoho Creator Partner

Delveio built both of the apps above, and each is typical of our Zoho Creator app development work. The scoping that comes before any development usually takes more of our time than the development itself.

During scoping we sit with the people who’ll be using the app and record, over several sessions, how the work is handled now. The design decisions mentioned earlier in this guide were all settled at that stage. The assessment steps were put in a fixed order after the advisory firm explained its assessments are only ever sold in that order. The dated approvals in the contractor’s portal came in once it turned out decisions had been going missing in long email chains.

Once scoping is done, development covers the forms, the reports, the automation, whatever Deluge is needed where the drag-and-drop builder reaches its limit, the connections to the client’s CRM and accounting software, and the access rules that keep each portal user’s records separate from everyone else’s. The project closes with written documentation and training for the client’s staff, so the app can be maintained without coming back to us.

Delveio Consulting works across the whole Zoho product line, including Zoho CRM, Zoho One, and Zoho Books, so a Zoho Creator build can sit alongside your CRM, accounting, and email in one connected setup. Our Zoho Creator services page describes the work in more detail, and you can see more of our projects on the case studies page.

Where Zoho Creator Is Heading

Zoho has been folding more of its wider product line into Zoho Creator. The paid plans now include custom and ready-to-use AI models with a monthly allowance of AI calls, and the Enterprise plan bundles integration flows powered by Zoho Flow, business intelligence powered by Zoho Analytics, robotic automation of desktop tasks, and application testing through Zoho QEngine. The direction is towards Zoho Creator being the place where a business puts all of these pieces together. For anyone weighing up Zoho application development over the next few years, that direction is worth knowing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Zoho Creator included in Zoho One?

Yes. A business already paying for Zoho One can build internal apps at no extra cost. Zoho One includes three portal users for the organisation, so a working client portal will still need the portal add-on, which is best sorted before you build anything for clients.

Can external clients log into a Zoho Creator app?

Yes, through a client portal, where each user sees only their own records. Every paid plan includes three portal users, and larger numbers come through an add-on billed separately from your own team’s licences.

How many portal users are included?

Every paid Zoho Creator plan, and Zoho One, includes three portal users. Beyond that, portal users are bought in blocks through an add-on that starts at roughly $100 a month for 250 users. That’s the figure most people forget to budget for when they plan a client portal.

Do I need to know how to code to use Zoho Creator?

For most apps, no. The drag-and-drop builder handles forms, automation, and reports. Deluge, Zoho’s scripting language, is only needed for logic the builder can’t manage on its own.

How much does Zoho Creator cost?

Three paid plans, billed per user per month: Standard at $8, Professional at $20, and Enterprise at $25 when billed yearly. Monthly billing costs more. There’s a free plan too, portal users beyond the first three are charged through an add-on, and Zoho’s pricing page carries the current rates.

When is Zoho Creator the wrong choice?

Use a ready-made product when one already does the job well. Zoho Creator is for the gaps nothing on the market fills, like a client portal built to match how your business works. For a polished consumer product, or an app holding millions of records under heavy load, a custom build is the better route.

Can I hire Zoho Creator expert help to build it?

Yes. Delveio Consulting is a Zoho Creator development company, and our Zoho Creator development services run from scoping through to handover. A Zoho Creator consultant maps the process first, then a Zoho Creator certified developer builds the forms, reports, automation, and portals, and writes Deluge where the builder reaches its limit.

Is Zoho Creator better than building from scratch?

For most small and mid-sized businesses, yes, on both cost and speed, because the database, logins, security, and hosting already exist. You build only your part. Building it from scratch is only worth it when your needs go past what Zoho Creator can do.

Book a call with Delveio Consulting. It’s a straight scoping conversation. We look at your business flow, tell you whether Zoho Creator is suitable or or whether something off the shelf would serve you better, and give you a rough idea of cost and timeline before you commit to anything.

Your Email Address Says More Than You Think

A @gmail.com or @yahoo.com address on a business card raises questions. It tells prospects you either just started out or haven’t put much thought into how your company presents itself. A branded address ([email protected]) costs a few dollars a month and removes that doubt immediately.

Zoho Mail gives you branded email hosting with a calendar, task lists, shared inboxes and team messaging built in. No ads, full encryption and pricing that works whether you have five employees or five hundred.

This guide covers what Zoho Mail includes, what it costs, how it compares to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, and who it works best for.

Why Business Email Hosting Still Matters

As of 2024, there are roughly 4.48 billion email users worldwide. That number keeps climbing. For small and mid-sized companies, your email address is one of the first things a prospect notices, and a generic one can cost you credibility before the conversation even starts.

Zoho takes a hard line on privacy. They don’t scan your emails for advertising, they don’t sell your data and you keep full ownership of everything in your mailbox. That matters more than it did five years ago. Data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA now carry real penalties for businesses that mishandle customer information.

How Zoho Mail Handles Security

Threat filtering. Deloitte found that 91% of network attacks on organisations start with email. Zoho Mail checks every incoming message against SPF, DKIM, DMARC and DNSBL records to verify the sender. Spam, phishing attempts and messages carrying malware are blocked before they reach your inbox.

Encryption. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest. For messages that need extra protection, Zoho supports S/MIME encryption on Mail Premium and Workplace plans, which lets you digitally sign and encrypt individual emails end-to-end.

Certifications. Zoho Mail holds ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701 and SOC 2 Type II certifications. It is also GDPR compliant. These are independently audited standards, not self-awarded labels.

Two-factor authentication. Every user account can require a second verification step at login. Even if a password is stolen, the account stays locked without that second factor.

What Else Is Included Besides Email

Zoho Mail is more than an inbox. It comes with a calendar (day, week and month views, plus shared team calendars), contacts, task lists, notes and bookmarks. Everything lives in the same interface, so your team isn’t jumping between five different apps throughout the day.

Streams adds a social-media-style comment thread to any email. Instead of forwarding a message to three colleagues and ending up with a 47-reply chain, you tag people on the original message, leave comments, share files and assign tasks. The conversation stays attached to the email instead of spawning separate threads. For remote teams, this cuts inbox noise significantly.

Shared mailboxes let multiple people access and reply from the same address (think [email protected] or [email protected]). You can also grant access to specific folders or entire mailboxes, which helps when someone is on leave or when a team jointly manages a client relationship.

Custom Domains and Branding

You can create email accounts on your own domain for every employee, set up group addresses for departments (marketing@, accounts@) and add domain aliases if your company owns more than one domain. The setup is straightforward and it keeps your branding consistent across every message that leaves the company.

Mobile and Desktop Access

Zoho Mail has native apps for iOS and Android with full email, calendar sync, Streams and the same encryption as the web version. There is also a desktop app available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

Offline mode lets you read and compose emails without an internet connection. Everything syncs once you’re back online. If your team splits time between the office and remote work, the experience stays the same regardless of device.

Connecting Zoho Mail to Other Software

Zoho Mail includes a built-in CRM sidebar (eWidget) that shows contact and lead details from Zoho CRM when you open an email. You can create CRM leads from incoming emails, associate messages with CRM records, send CRM email templates and sync calendar events between the two apps. The integration is enabled by default for anyone using both services, though full bidirectional email tracking requires configuration within Zoho CRM settings.

Zoho Mail also connects to third-party apps through Zapier. If you already use other Zoho products like Zoho One or Zoho Books, the setup is faster because everything shares the same login and data layer.

For developers, Zoho Mail offers API access and a Developer Space (eWidget) to build custom integrations.

Migrating from Another Email Provider

Zoho includes a migration feature that supports IMAP, POP and Outlook Exchange servers. For Google Workspace, there is a dedicated migration path that uses a service account to transfer email, contacts and calendar data. The process involves several admin steps (setting up a Google service account, uploading a JSON key file, configuring folder and label preferences, adding users) but Zoho provides documentation and migration support for paid accounts.

For other providers, IMAP migration covers the basics. You can track migration progress in real time from the Zoho Mail admin console.

Admin Controls and Email Archiving

If you work in healthcare, finance, legal or any field where email retention is required, Zoho Mail gives administrators the ability to set retention policies, control user permissions, monitor sending and receiving activity and keep audit logs. GDPR compliance is included by default.

Email archiving stores a copy of every message sent and received, which is useful for compliance audits, legal holds and internal investigations. Archived emails are searchable and can be retrieved by admins without involving the original sender or recipient. The e-Discovery feature helps locate specific archived emails quickly.

Zoho Mail vs Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365

This is the comparison most businesses are making when evaluating email hosting. Here is how Zoho Mail stacks up against the two biggest alternatives on the factors that matter most.

The headline difference is price. Zoho Mail’s paid plans start at $1/user/month. Google Workspace starts at $7 and Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $6. For a 20-person team, that is the difference between $240/year and $1,680/year. Zoho also offers a free tier (in select regions), which neither Google nor Microsoft provide for business accounts.

Where Google and Microsoft pull ahead is in storage (especially at higher tiers) and the depth of their office app suites. If your team relies heavily on Google Docs or Excel, those are harder to replace. But if your primary need is professional email hosting with solid security, Zoho Mail covers that at a fraction of the cost.

Who Should Use Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail is not the right choice for everyone. Here is where it fits well and where it does not.

Freelancers and solopreneurs who want a branded email address without paying $7/month for Google Workspace. The free tier covers up to five users with 5GB each (in select regions), which is enough for a one-person business or a small team just getting started. Note that the free tier does not include IMAP/POP access, so you can only use Zoho’s own web and mobile apps.

Small and mid-sized businesses (under 100 employees) that need professional email, shared mailboxes for departments and basic collaboration features without spending thousands per year on Google or Microsoft licences.

Companies already using Zoho products. If you run Zoho CRM, Zoho One or Zoho Books, adding Zoho Mail means everything shares the same login, the same admin console and the same data. The CRM sidebar appears in your inbox by default without any extra configuration.

Businesses in regulated industries. Healthcare, legal, finance and education organisations that need GDPR compliance, email archiving, retention policies and audit logging will find those features included on paid plans without needing add-ons.

What to Keep in Mind

No email provider does everything well. Here are the trade-offs worth knowing about before you commit.

Third-party integrations are more limited. Zoho Mail connects to other Zoho products without friction, but its integration library with non-Zoho software is smaller than what you get with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Zapier fills some of that gap, but if you rely on a specific app that only has a native Google or Outlook integration, check compatibility first.

The admin console is a separate app on mobile. Managing user accounts, domains and security settings from your phone requires downloading a separate Zoho Mail Admin app. It works, but it is an extra step that Google and Microsoft handle inside a single app.

Storage is lower on free and entry-level plans. The free tier gives you 5GB per user and Mail Lite starts at 5GB (or 10GB for $1.25/user/month). Google Workspace starts at 30GB. If your team sends and receives large attachments regularly, you may hit storage limits faster on Zoho’s lower tiers.

The learning curve if you’re coming from Gmail. Zoho Mail’s interface is clean, but it is not Gmail. If your team has used Google Workspace for years, expect a few weeks of adjustment. The layout, keyboard shortcuts and search behaviour are all slightly different.

Free tier excludes IMAP/POP/ActiveSync. Free users can only access email through Zoho’s web interface and mobile apps. You cannot connect to Outlook, Apple Mail or Thunderbird on the free plan. IMAP and POP access requires a paid plan.

Zoho Mail Pricing (2026)

Here is what each plan includes and what it costs. All prices below are billed annually. Monthly billing is available at a slightly higher rate. Verify current pricing at zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html before committing, as pricing can vary by region.

For teams of 25 or more, Zoho recommends the Workplace bundle, which adds office apps and cloud storage on top of email. You can also mix and match Mail-only and Workplace plans within the same organisation on annual subscriptions.

Working with a Zoho Partner

If you’d rather not configure DNS records, migration settings and security policies on your own, a certified Zoho partner like Delveio Consulting can handle the setup, train your staff and provide ongoing support. This is especially useful for larger teams or businesses with specific compliance requirements.

Delveio Consulting works across the full Zoho product line, including Zoho CRM, Zoho One and Zoho Books. If you need help with more than just email, the same team can configure your CRM, accounting and support desk alongside your mailboxes.

Email Security Habits Worth Adopting

• Run simulated phishing tests once a quarter to keep your team sharp.
• Require strong, unique passwords and enforce regular rotation.
• Turn on two-factor authentication for every account. No exceptions.
• Set up email archiving and retention policies before a compliance audit forces you to.

Where Zoho Mail Is Heading

Zoho is investing in AI-assisted security (better phishing detection, smarter spam filtering), improved mobile features and tighter integration between Mail and the rest of the Zoho product line. The product is still under active development, which is worth knowing if you’re choosing an email hosting provider for small business today.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Zoho Mail free?

Yes, in select regions. Zoho Mail offers a free plan for up to five users with 5GB of storage per user. It includes web and mobile access and email hosting for a single domain. There is no time limit on the free plan. However, the free tier does not include IMAP/POP access, so you can only use Zoho’s own apps to check your email.

Can I use Zoho Mail with my own domain?

Yes. You can host email on your own domain (e.g. [email protected]) on every Zoho Mail plan, including the free tier. If you don’t already own a domain, you can purchase one through Zoho during setup.

Is Zoho Mail GDPR compliant?

Yes. Zoho Mail is GDPR compliant and holds ISO/IEC 27001, 27017, 27018, 27701 and SOC 2 Type II certifications. You can also choose which data centre region hosts your data at the time of signup.

How do I migrate to Zoho Mail from Gmail or Outlook?

Zoho has a built-in migration feature. For Google Workspace, there is a dedicated migration path that requires setting up a Google service account and uploading a JSON key file. For other providers, IMAP migration is available. Zoho provides documentation and migration support for paid business accounts. The process is not one-click, but it is well-documented.

What is Zoho Mail Streams?

Streams is a feature inside Zoho Mail that adds social-media-style commenting to emails. Instead of forwarding messages and creating long reply chains, you tag colleagues on an email, leave comments, share files and assign tasks. The thread stays attached to the original email.

How does Zoho Mail compare to Google Workspace?

Zoho Mail starts at $1/user/month compared to Google Workspace at $7/user/month. Zoho also offers a free tier for up to 5 users (in select regions), which Google does not. Google provides more storage and deeper office app integration. Zoho provides stronger privacy controls and lower cost. See the full comparison table above.

Does Zoho Mail have a desktop app?

Yes. Zoho offers a desktop email app for Mac, Windows and Linux. There is also offline mode in the web and mobile apps for reading and composing emails without a connection.

Does Zoho Mail connect to Zoho CRM?

Yes. Zoho Mail has a built-in CRM sidebar (eWidget) that shows CRM contact details when you open an email. You can create leads, associate emails with CRM records and send CRM templates from your inbox. The integration is enabled by default for users of both services. Full bidirectional email logging requires additional configuration in Zoho CRM settings.

Book a free consultation with Delveio Consulting to talk through Zoho Mail setup, migration and pricing for your business.