Data protection and privacy laws in multiple countries state that user data can only be stored in data centers located on that country's soil. In compliance, Zoho has set up data centers in multiple countries. Each data center only holds the data of users who have registered in that domain.
A user can sign up for a Zoho account with their email address and utilize the different Zoho services using this account. All the data that includes their personal information, emails, contacts, and information associated with each Zoho service they use will be stored in this account. A Zoho account can be associated with multiple email addresses, but an email address cannot be associated with multiple accounts.
How is a Datacenter (DC) assigned for a Zoho account?
When a user signs up for a Zoho account (personal or organization) with an email address, their account will be assigned to and stored in one of our data centers. We will assign a DC depending on the user's location by default (will be detected automatically using their IP address).
Why the Zoho accounts are stored in only the specified DC and not shared with other DCs?
Each country (and region) has their own set of privacy laws and regulations that we adhere to to protect the data of our users. In order to meet those privacy requirements, we prefer to store our users' data in the data center specific to their region. For this reason, we don't share the user's data with DCs of other regions.
Can a user sign up for an account in a different DC if they have already created an account in another DC?
No. As of now, we support signing up to another data center only through invites. A organizational administrator can invite users from other data centers to join their organization. A user cannot signup for an service on a different data center on their own. For more details contact
support@zohoaccounts.com.
Can a user who has an active account stored in one DC be invited to join an organization based in a different DC?
Yes. A organization administrator can invite users from another data center who are part of another organization to their organization and the users can join with their same account. A copy of their account will be created in the data center where the organization is present. The created copy of account will be called the secondary account and it will be mapped to the primary account. This way, the user will be able to join organization from different data centers. However, A user can be part of only one organization from one data center.
If the users' accounts cannot be closed (due to concerns of data loss), their accounts can be migrated from their current DC to the required DC along with their service data. To do so, the organization admin can contact our support team at
migrations@zohoaccounts.com for a migration request. Our DC migration support team will check the feasibility and assist with the migration. Note: A few services may not support DC migration.