Zoho AI Reviews and Overview: The Right Tool for Your Sales Team in 2025?

Eugene Suslov 17 Apr 2025

We’ve been doing B2B/sales software reviews for quite some time now. Lately, we’ve shifted toward AI-powered tools that are the superior choice for all modern businesses, with no exceptions.

From identifying prospects and crafting personalized outreach to managing entire sales pipelines—there are now AI tools for every existing sales process, helping sales teams improve, automate, and scale their operations.

Some of the most impressive and powerful AI sales tools are dedicated AI sales agents, commonly referred to as AI SDRs, that handle virtually all early and mid-stage sales processes exactly as human SDRs, only faster and around the clock.

Zoho, which has cemented itself as a veteran in the CRM space over the years, has now also entered the AI race with its very own intelligent sales assistant—Zia.

But does it measure up to the more established AI sales agents out there, does it truly stand out or is it more of an add-on for existing Zoho users, and is it the right choice for your business?

Let’s take a closer look at the Zoho AI sales assistant—its main features, user reviews, pricing plans, and alternatives to find out the answers.

What is Zoho AI? Product overview

Let’s start with the basics—what is Zoho AI and how does it work?

To best answer this question, let’s take a step back and remind ourselves of Zoho, the actual company behind this new AI assistant.

Without a doubt, Zoho is one of the best CRM tools out there. It’s a 360° business management platform designed to streamline the entire sales process, helping businesses stay on top of every stage of the sales pipeline and make smarter decisions.

Now, Zia, short for ‘Zoho Intelligent Assistant’, is Zoho CRM’s brand new native AI component designed to help users optimize sales workflows and streamline sales decision-making. It’s critical to note that Zia is not a separate product, but rather a deeply embedded sub-product within the Zoho ecosystem.

Think of the Zoho AI agent as a general-purpose assistant for sales teams using Zoho CRM.

It seamlessly integrates with Zoho’s CRM and works around the clock by analyzing large volumes of sales and customer data to offer intelligent assistance, predictive insights, actionable advice, and administrative automation.

Unlike AI sales agents like Jason AI which completely take over entire sales processes like identifying potential buyers and completely automating personalized outreach campaigns, Zia acts more as a support system for sales teams.

And while its functionality is quite impressive, there’s a catch—Zia isn’t available as a standalone AI tool, so if you’re not a Zoho CRM user you simply won’t get to see it in full light.

On the other hand, when Zia is combined with other Zoho sales tools like Campaigns or SalesInbox, sales teams can seriously supercharge their outreach efforts with AI-driven insights.

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What are the main Zoho AI features?

Now that we’ve covered what is Zoho AI, it’s time to look under the hood and explore its features.

Truth be told, the Zoho CRM AI assistant is quite ambiguous in terms of functionality. It does a bit of everything, which makes it tough to pinpoint its ‘main’ features, so we went for those that would be most valuable to modern sales teams.

AI lead and deal scoring

One of the main functions of the Zoho CRM AI assistant is to provide sales teams with objective analyses of each unique lead and deal in the pipeline. It does so by using machine learning algorithms to analyze tons of customer and prospect data, including engagement history, firmographics, intent signals, etc.

This way, Zia automatically assigns data-driven scores to each lead to determine those most likely to convert into customers, enabling sales teams to focus their efforts on the highest-value prospects.

Moreover, Zia also offers dynamic deal prioritization by highlighting those that are ‘trending up’ and flagging those that are ‘trending down’. Sales reps and managers get a clear and constantly updated picture of every deal’s ‘health’ while Zia runs in the background looking for any data or changes that might affect them.

To make its lead scoring much more accurate, Zia has powerful data enrichment tools that scrape various external sources to build complete data profiles for each prospect and/or company, automatically adding them to your CRM.

All these features empower sales teams to divert their attention to accounts with the highest revenue potential while saving time on manual prospecting, data enrichment, and deal analysis.

AI sales forecasting & reporting

Besides analyzing real-time and historical data, Zia also has the superpower of making accurate sales forecasts built on predictive AI models. In fact, users can create their very own prediction models with a simple no-code builder for virtually any business data in their reach.

The Zoho CRM AI assistant will then run your prediction model through thirteen unique statistical approaches to determine the most accurate one for your unique forecast.

It goes without saying that it can then generate all kinds of customizable reports for you, all you have to do is prompt your desired task as you would with any ChatGPT alternative.

Just as an example, you could ask Zia to show you the predicted customer lifetime value for all accounts in the US, and then ask for whichever visual adjustments you want to make exactly as you want.

This level of reporting flexibility and automation is rare in most CRMs, so this is where Zia really makes its ‘parent’ product Zoho stand out from the competition.

Communication intelligence

While Zia doesn’t completely automate sales outreach like some other AI sales tools, it does equip sales teams with certain AI-driven intelligence they can use to improve their outreach and connect with the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

For starters, Zia analyzes all communications and prospect online behavior to identify engagement trends and suggest the best time to connect with each unique customer, promising to significantly increase open and reply rates.

It goes without saying that all that data Zoho’s AI engine identifies to assess leads and deals is leveraged to help sales reps write better cold emails and follow-ups, making each message more relevant and meaningful.

B2C companies can also enjoy Zia’s cross-selling feature that automatically suggests products or services that each customer is likely to purchase and when, which could be a game-changer for driving retention.

While Zia is integrated with Zoho’s main sales engine and has its own set of features, it undoubtedly lacks AI-powered outreach capabilities compared to AI sales agents like Jason AI.

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Anomaly detection

While Zia is doing all that busy work in the background, analyzing every conversation, prospect move, and deal success probabilities, it also keeps a lookout for any data anomalies that could potentially derail a sales strategy.

In other words, it acts as an early warning system for any unusual changes or trends in your sales data, helping businesses keep their finger on the pulse for all serious revenue-driven matters.

For instance, Zia might flag a spike in customer complaints across a certain region and analyze the situation in detail to provide contextual explanations, which would allow sales teams to be proactive and take swift action to fix the issue before it gets out of hand.

Since Zia (and Zoho altogether) is integrated with your email inboxes, rest assured that any potentially harmful communication trends will be detected early and brought to your attention. And even if you’re exploring different email providers for your business, rest assured that AI assistants like Zia can integrate with them all.

Administrative workflow automation

We all know that good old stat about how over half of all sales reps’ time is spent on, well, not actually selling, but rather the scores of different administrative tasks that sales teams deal with.

In short, Zia goes through your organization’s entire operations history to identify patterns and offers to automate certain tasks and workflows on your behalf to reduce the administrative burden.

Instead of creating any forms or adjusting the settings to get Zia on board with the task at hand, you wish to automate, you can simply chat with it (or perhaps ‘her’). Zoho’s AI engine will interpret what task you want to be automated, determine how to do it, and execute it.

Search is another area where Zia shines. Ask her about any customer or company and she’ll instantly pull every related email, support ticket, document, and so on to give you a streamlined view of each account.

These types of time-saving automations are especially useful in high-volume, quota-driven sales teams where every minute counts, enabling reps to focus on building relationships and closing deals.

What are the Zoho AI pricing plans?

Now that we’ve covered Zia’s main features, let’s talk money.

As we’ve discussed, Zia is not a standalone product but rather a sub-product of the Zoho CRM ecosystem. As such, we have to take a look at the Zoho AI pricing plans for the entire product.

As we can see, Zia is included in the Enterprise and Ultimate plans, but not in the Standard and Professional ones. For those businesses already using (or considering) Zoho CRM—you’re in luck since Zia will come at no additional cost.

Here’s a quick rundown of the two pricing plans that offer the AI assistant (among many other business tools):

Enterprise ($40/user/month) → ideal for mid-sized sales teams looking for comprehensive CRM tools paired with the Zoho AI assistant Zia. It includes data-driven lead and deal scoring, anomaly detection, workflow automation, and basic analytics features. However, this plan lacks advanced AI capabilities and real-time reporting features, so it’s not suitable for businesses looking for AI sales forecasting.
Ultimate ($52/user/month) → this is the premium Zoho plan that includes everything in Enterprise plus advanced business intelligence tools, more advanced AI features, and powerful analytics. It’s best suited for larger sales teams that work with tons of data across multiple products, customer types, and/or locations, and heavily rely on advanced sales forecasting to navigate their sales strategy.

The fact that businesses cannot use Zia without signing up for the entire Zoho ecosystem definitely makes it a much less flexible tool, but perhaps this will change in the near future.

As of now, if you’re already using a different CRM tool, there’s nothing much you can do to integrate Zia into your stack.

However, if you’re considering Zoho CRM for your business, it would definitely be advised to opt for the Enterprise or Ultimate plans to get access to Zia, their powerful AI assistant.

What are Zoho AI reviews by real users?

We always say that software is only as good as what the users have to say, so we took a closer look at Zoho AI reviews from verified users.

Zia’s G2 rating sits at 4.0/5, which is lower than average compared to other AI sales tools, but there are relatively few reviews at this moment as it’s only recently been released on the market.

Still, there are some consistent trends across user feedback:

✅It comes as no surprise that reviews from long-term Zoho users absolutely love this addition to the product, praising how seamlessly it integrates with other internal tools;
✅Zia’s predictive lead and deal scoring get praise for helping sales reps effectively prioritize high-level prospects;
✅Multiple users mentioned how Zia effectively automates all the routine sales tasks which saves sales teams time and reduces manual admin work.

❎Several users mentioned that compared to other AI sales tools, Zia’s email/call intelligence isn’t as advanced and lacks depth;
❎Despite being marketed as a jack of all trades, some users report limited flexibility to customize their workflows;
❎Numerous users agree that Zia is still in its very early stages, some even go as far as to say it’s prematurely released.

And, here are some of the most popular real-world Salesfinity reviews. First up, the positives:

“Zoho Zia has completely transformed the way I manage my business operations. This AI-powered tool from Zoho Corporation has proved to be a game-changer, providing invaluable insights and automating various tasks, ultimately boosting productivity and efficiency.”

One more:

“I found Zoho Zia very helpful. One is when I search leads on Zoho CRM through Zia search; I can easily see leads information & data. Also on Sales IQ, Zia filled in leads data like company, company size etc. It is beneficial for Zoho users like us.”

And now here’s some ‘not so positive’ feedback from users:

“Well, it’s a nice start, but putting it as a product is a bit too early. It really is a premature product at best. It’s not intuitive, barely working and doesn’t really show any signs of any intelligence (artificial or otherwise). I believe it will probably improve a lot in the near future, but for now it is very underwhelming.”

And one more:

“Zoho CMS is one of the most advanced on the market, with a large customer base. With Zia they try to add some “New technology” with popular AI flavour. It reminds me of Cortana or Siri, but in their baby years. And that simplicity for the free version is my first dislike. Pay for additional functionality is second.”

What are the top Zoho AI alternatives?

Since Zia isn’t a separate product like most of its AI-powered sales counterparts, things get a bit tricky. It would be wrong to compare the entire Zoho CRM to dedicated AI sales agents, so moving aside from pricing/integrations/accessibility, here’s how Zia measures up to some of the top alternatives on the market.

When we look at established AI sales agents, aka AI SDRs, it’s clear that Zia is still quite far from its competitors in terms of functionality. In all fairness, Zia mainly focuses on automizing workflows and assisting sales teams, whereas most AI SDRs heavily specialize in prospecting and outreach.

For perspective, here’s how Zia compares to one of the top AI SDRs on the market—Jason AI:

Jason AI creates conditional multichannel outreach sequences for each unique lead across emails, LinkedIn, calls, SMS, and WhatsApp.
Jason AI finds targeted prospects for your business on your behalf from a vast database of over 1 billion contacts;
Jason AI hyper-personalizes each message across each channel by conducting thorough research on every prospect and staying alert for any intent signals;
Jason AI handles responses on your behalf by answering questions, handling common objections, and booking meetings on your behalf;
With AI SDR Playbooks, users can train their AI sales agent to sell exactly how they want it to, making it a fully-fledged member of their sales team;
Just like Zia natively integrates with Zoho, Jason AI natively integrates with Reply.io, enabling sales teams with powerful analytics, premium email deliverability, a native lead database, and much more;
While Zia works flawlessly with its native product Zoho CRM, businesses can similarly leverage other AI sales tools of their choice and just as easily integrate them. For instance, numerous sales teams leverage the Reply.io and Zoho CRM integration to combine AI-powered sales automation and powerful data management features.

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Is Zoho AI the right tool for your business?

Time for the verdict—is the Zoho CRM AI assistant Zia the right addition to your business? In fact, the better question would be, is Zia worth it for businesses to commit to the entire Zoho CRM ecosystem?

At the end of the day, if you’re already a Zoho CRM user (or considering it), it would probably be worth it to stick with Zia since it’s natively offered within the product, and will likely only get better with time.

On the other hand, Zia’s limited functionality is just not enough to entirely integrate your entire sales workflow in Zoho, especially if you’re already using other tools.

If you’re mostly interested in fusing the powers of AI into your existing sales tool stacks and workflows, you’re much better off with an AI sales agent like Jason AI that completely handles prospecting and outreach on its own, without any work on your behalf.

Zia makes your sales team better and more efficient. AI sales agents like Jason AI join your team as new intelligent sales reps that work round the clock and make data-driven decisions.