Zoho, a technology company offering the most comprehensive suite of business software applications in the industry, has announced that its enterprise collaboration and communications platform, Workplace, now serves more than 16 million users globally. The company attributes this substantial growth to increasing business demand for contextual applications with utmost standards for user privacy as well as rising costs from other collaboration platform providers. Since the start of the pandemic, Zoho Workplace adoption has accelerated as businesses of all sizes transitioned to digital-forward, remote work.
“Zoho has always been about persistent long-term execution, and our investment in Zoho Workplace attests to that. As competitors continue to raise prices or eliminate free editions for those who need them most, Workplace continues to serve businesses and professionals with a feature-rich suite that increases productivity while remaining broadly affordable. Our ad-free approach and respect towards user privacy will add to the overall experience that our solution provides,” said Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder, Zoho Corporation.
Zoho Workplace experienced 34 per cent year-to-year growth in 2021, with more than 40 per cent of new customers making the switch from Google and Microsoft. Growth was strong in all segments, with the SMB customer base increasing 40 per cent, mid-sized by 36 per cent, and enterprises by more than 20 per cent. In India, Workplace saw 40 per cent growth. Carnival Group, Equitas Bank, and VIVA Group are a few among the thousands of Indian businesses that have successfully onboarded to the Workplace platform in recent years.
Demand is largely driven by businesses still facing harsh realities of the pandemic, and its impact on their growth and budget. Unforeseen hikes in operational costs to support collaboration makes it more difficult for these businesses to recover and thrive. Within days of Google announcing that it would be ending the free edition of Workspace, Zoho’s Workplace platform experienced a 120 per cent increase in migrations from Google-hosted domains.
“Zoho is unique amongst its productivity suite competitors for not rolling out a cost increase for 2022, nor removing their freemium offerings,” commented Thomas Randall, Senior Research Analyst, Info-Tech Research Group. “Other providers have justified price add-ons and increases to reflect the additional value they believe their customers have received over the pandemic for using their tools. Yet freemium offerings and price consistency have been central for many customers and businesses to stay afloat during lockdowns. Now that such offerings are in short supply, Zoho will likely see increased demand for their Workplace services as customers seek strong ROI for productivity and collaboration software,” added Randall.