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ERPNext vs. Zoho One
Comparison
What makes ERPNext a great Zoho One alternative
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You were probably using a Zoho app or two when you were starting out with your business. Now that your business is thriving and you need more help managing it, you might be considering upgrading to Zoho One. We’re here to tell you: stop. Take a minute to reconsider. There’s really no good reason to go with Zoho One when you could be using a full-fledged ERP system like ERPNext. Here’s why.
For one, you get so much more at only a fraction of the cost
Zoho One comes with over 45 apps to help you manage your business, but it still doesn’t have nearly as many features as ERPNext does, nor are they as deeply integrated. Take manufacturing and production management, for instance. Zoho One offers basic inventory management through Zoho Inventory, but it lacks the depth that ERPNext has.
ERPNext allows you to track raw materials and finished goods across multiple locations, create multi-level BOMs, plan production based on sales orders, demand forecasts and existing stock levels, track detailed production costs, manage subcontracts and so much more. Features like these are either not available or are significantly less comprehensive in Zoho One, which makes it less suitable to handle complex business processes, despite costing more.
When we say Zoho One costs more, we’re talking several times the cost
Zoho One has two pricing plans—an All Employee Pricing Plan, which mandates you to purchase licenses for all your employees at around $30 per employee per month, irrespective of whether they need to use it or not, and a Flexible User Pricing Plan, which lets you decide the number of licenses you need to buy, but charges close to $50 per user per month. So let’s say you have a company with 75 employees, out of which only 50 need to use a business management system. If you pick Zoho One’s All Employee Pricing Plan, it’ll cost you around $2220 a month, whereas the Flexible User Pricing Plan would set you back by close to $2400 a month. In contrast, ERPNext would charge you less than $50 in this scenario.
You can even use it for free for as long as you like
In addition to being potentially several orders of magnitude cheaper, ERPNext can even be used for free. ERPNext only charges for hosting, which means that if you host it on your own servers, you wouldn’t have to pay us a dime. Zoho One offers a 30 day free trial, but it has no free version.
ERPNext is 100% open source, which means you get all the control
ERPNext allows you to view, modify and distribute the code used to create it. This means you can inspect the code yourself, or pay someone else to, so you can know for sure that there’s no shady business going on under the hood. It also means you can modify the code to do whatever you please, add any features you want, use it for as long as you need without being charged. You could even host ERPNext on your own servers and control your security protocols, create backups and configure firewalls as per your requirements. It’s all in your hands. Zoho One, on the other hand, is closed source, which means that only people within the organization can see or have a say in how it works.
It’s also a breeze to customize
Create new forms, customize existing ones, build custom reports, set up workflows, change user permissions based on roles—you can do all that and more on ERPNext without writing a single line of code. And if you do know how to code, take advantage of its open source nature and play around with the code on your favourite editor, or create custom scripts right from the interface to tailor it to your exact needs. While SAP B1 is also customizable, it can take up a considerable amount of time and money, and usually requires external consultants or developers with SAP expertise.
It’s tailored to fit your industry
ERPNext comes with pre-configured modules for specific industries, like manufacturing, retail, healthcare etc, while Zoho One is better fit to handle more general use-cases. Check out this page to see all the different ways ERPNext’s industry-specific functionalities can help you.
Customize it to fit your exact needs
We get that every business is unique, which is why we’ve made customizing ERPNext a cakewalk. Create new forms, customize existing ones, set up custom workflows, change user permissions based on roles—all without writing a single line of code. And if you do want to code, we’ve made that easier for you as well. Create custom scripts right from ERPNext’s interface, or even modify the codebase on your favourite editor to fit your exact needs.
Find solutions to all your problems, even without paying for support
The ERPNext community is over 20k members strong and extremely active. Any question you might have has probably already been answered on our discuss forum, and if not, all you have to do is ask.
Stop betting against yourself
As your business grows, so will your team size, and that’s a good thing. If you were to choose a business solution like Zoho One that charges per user, it’s almost like you’re letting yourself get penalized for your success. With ERPNext, you can add as many users as you want without getting charged more. You only have to pay for what you use, not for every extra addition to your team.
Like we said, there really is no good reason for you to go with Zoho One when you could use ERPNext instead. Don’t trust us? Then check out these reviews or this comparison to see what users think.
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