My once favorable opinion of Zoho has been degraded NOT because of their product features and capabilities but rather because of their subscription policies that are hindering my business.  My company is under the Zoho One subscription plan, which is great on the surface.  Access to almost the entire suite of Zoho products.  But it ends there.  Here are the reasons:

1) The details of the Zoho One subscription are opaque at best. It is either impossible or difficult to determine what quotas/thresholds/limits are associated with certain products.  Zoho Flow and Zoho Creator are good examples of this. I can see how many Flow tasks or Creator webhooks I am allotted INSIDE the product. But there are little to no details as to what timeframe the tasks used resets to zero, you have to contact support to find out. Even then, you will receive different answers which is arguably worse than receiving no answer at all.  How can a customer plan and manage their flows, API calls, webhooks and ultimately their business this way?

2) If you exceed the task, API, webhook limit, someone at Zoho made the awful decision to simply shut off those integration points, crippling your business. This is an idiotic policy beyond all comprehension.  Every known service provider across as many verticals as I can think employs an ELASTIC, on demand billing model where if a customer exceeds a quota/threshold for their given subscription, they are simply charged overage fees.  A customer who’s business puts food on the table and roof overhead would gladly pay an overage fee rather than have their business shut down for the heinous crime of being successful.  

Zoho’s policy of shutting down flows, API calls, etc when a threshold is exceeded is a LOSE-LOSE model.  My business stops, my sales orders don’t process and I am stuck, spending all my time trying to find a work around which, under the Zoho One subscription is to purchase more end user licenses because capacity is defined in terms of an end user, not your organization as a whole. Zoho should understand that they have now caused frustration, anger and distrust with their customer. While I will pay to add more users to get flows, webhooks, etc. running again in an emergency, which Zoho may celebrate,  I have now made plans to move my business off of Zoho entirely.

If I had to take a guess as to why they employ such a bad policy it's because their products and billing system aren't mature enough to support an elastic billing model, which, if true, is a shame.  Their product suite has a lot of potential value for businesses but their subscription policies compromise everything good about the products.

I am posting this in hopes that Zoho takes this feedback into consideration.