Invoicing in a Separate Application?
I have been waiting for the functionality in Zoho CRM that you have now in the new "Zoho Invoices" - to simply be able to customize the product description info on an invoice. But rather than adding this functionality to Zoho CRM (which would have helped my business be able to start using Zoho CRM on a larger scale) you made a separate application that isn't connected to Zoho CRM? Now you have two products that I won't buy ... instead of one product that I would buy. I think you risk alienating your paying Zoho CRM customers (and those of us who are close to becoming paying customers) that have been patiently waiting for improvements - when you invest that effort in a new application instead. I realize that you just released a new CRM version that has a number of enhancements and bug fixes, but it seems odd that this critical feature wasn't just left out - it was put into a separate application!
If you don't mind some free advice (in return for a lot of free value that you provide) ... you began with a great model: a suite of popular free productivity applications that are complimentary to a paid business application (CRM) -- it makes you more attractive than other providers who only offer a single application. But be careful not to fall into the same trap as Google by spreading yourselves too thin across too many products -- then you end up with overlap of functionality, and no product advances quickly enough and you will fall behind. Your CRM application has a lot of potential ... it's flexible, fast, easy, affordable, and useful for many businesses. Be sure to keep your eye on the ball. Maybe it's my MBA talking, but I think you would do better to focus on integrating (and getting out of beta) on your current apps, before inventing new ones. Some of your applications are suited well as stand-alone applications that can be tied to others (writer, sheet, show, etc.) ... but others would do better to be combined. For instance, Creator and DB & Reporting seem like they should naturally work together, and People, Business, & Invoicing seem like they would do better to be integrated with CRM (and people can simply choose which modules they want to use, like they do with the existing modules in CRM).
If you show customers (and potential customers) that you are dedicated to building Zoho CRM, I believe this will be your flagship product. Once you get the practical invoicing capability into CRM, and integrate the "People" functionality, you will only be missing the accounting piece -- which would also be a valuable component to add. In the meantime, an easy way to integrate with Quickbooks should suffice for many small businesses. I've been hoping to put my business on Zoho CRM once you worked the bugs out and added the important functionality, but given the slow progress we may have to choose something else.
Just my 10 cents worth ... I hope it's helpful. Thanks for the great applications.