Twelve/Three - Blog , Zoho One

How is Zoho One Better than Odoo for Small Businesses?

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:49:25 -0400

Choosing the right business software suite is one of the most important decisions a company makes. Both Zoho One and Odoo are popular platforms that aim to replace groups of separately paid app subscriptions, with comprehensive "all-in-one" systems. However, they each take very different approaches, and for many companies, particularly small to mid-sized businesses, Zoho One often delivers greater value, integration, and ease of use.

Zoho One is designed and marketed as a "one-stop shop" operating system for business. A single Zoho One subscription includes 45+ integrated applications for sales, marketing, finance, HR, collaboration, support, website development and much more. With Zoho One, businesses no longer need a long list of separate programs or additional program subscriptions. Zoho One facilitates all standard business operations, while allowing for customization to facilitate complex ones.

Odoo, on the other hand, is a modular ERP platform where businesses can choose individual modules (for CRM, accounting, inventory, etc.) and assemble a solution or bundle of apps to fit their needs. In-app-purchases are required for more advanced operations, features or integrations.

Unified Platform vs Modular ERP

One of Zoho One’s strongest advantages is its unified, cloud-native environment. All apps are designed to work together "out of the box", with shared data and seamless workflows across functions. This means sales actions can trigger support workflows, HR can sync with finance, and analytics can pull data across all departments (just to list some out of countless examples).

Odoo’s modular system gives flexibility, but it requires more setup, ongoing customization and maintenance. Each module is powerful, yet integrating them often involves technical expertise or third-party custom development, requiring more time and investment than integrating between Zoho apps.

Ease of Implementation & Use

Because Zoho One’s apps are built, supported, and maintained by a single organization, businesses often experience faster implementation and adoption with lower learning curves. A typical company can begin using tools such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Mail, Zoho Books, etc. within days.

Odoo’s open-source nature and modular approach can give tremendous flexibility, but the trade-off is thatimplementation and internal training can take serious time, especially without experienced developers.

Total Cost

Zoho One is priced as a bundled suite. One subscription covers a huge range of apps and business functions, reducing the need to purchase or renew multiple standalone applications. This can make budgeting simpler and more predictable, while reducing overhead costs.

With Odoo, what you see isn't what you get like it is with Zoho One. Businesses frequently need to invest in the enterprise edition or make in-app-purchases for credits in order to "unlock" certain functions or capabilities. This is how Odoo is able to offer their most basic package at such a low cost. Regular in-app-purchases can significantly drive up the total cost over time.

For most businesses, especially those without an internal IT department, having a broad and seamlessly integrated suite like Zoho One delivers a lot more value than Odoo. Zoho's approach to integration, combined with an expansive set of applications in one subscription, means businesses can streamline operations without overcomplication. This gives Zoho One a major edge on not only Odoo but all of its competitors.

E-Commerce with Zoho Commerce

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:26:00 -0400

If you’re an internet-savvy person, chances are you’ve heard of e-commerce. For the uninitiated, e-commerce is the selling of goods online, shipping your orders out to customers. While major players like Amazon and Alibaba continue to rule, there are still niches left to explore that offer a lot of potential.

When you sell something unique and of value to your customers, people will start resonating with you as you grow. With that, here’s how to go about e-commerce and what you’ll get out of it:

Reach More Customers

Maybe you’re already a store owner or maybe you’re just starting out. When you have an online presence, you naturally reach more customers than you would with just a physical store. As you engage more with your audience, you build trust and brand awareness. And your website is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week!

Get Started with Online Marketing

When you want to promote your business online, an e-commerce website provides you with links to your products, which form the starting point of your social media marketing. And when you find yourself with happy customers, you know that your links will be shared—creating great publicity for your brand.

Be Customer-centric

If you’re already a familiar name in your neighborhood, customers will feel even more reassured when they see you online, and it’ll save them the trouble of having to go to your physical store every time they want to buy something. You can even offer incentives to customers who become regular online shoppers.

Connect with Your Audience

When you get SEO right, you’ll reach people who might not have heard of you before. And if your website is designed well, you’ll get more paying customers. Your website is an extension of your brand story and your values, so people connect more with your brand when your website inspires confidence.

All that said, expect e-commerce to have a few pitfalls. Do critical market research before you spend major resources on your online store. You might want to start with a pop-up store and build from there.

Get Started with Zoho Commerce

Zoho One is Essential for Small Businesses

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 15:27:00 -0500

Abstract – On July 24, 2017, Zoho announced a new product called Zoho One. This document explains the strategy behind Zoho One and how it can benefit small to medium sized businesses (SMBs).

The concept of cloud computing has been proven successful for Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMBs). The main benefits of cloud computing:

It reduces or eliminates the IT function at your business. You don’t need to buy servers, or upgrade servers. You don’t need to perform routine upgrades of software. You don’t concern yourself with backups or viruses. Most importantly, you don’t need to hire staff to perform these functions. Focus on what you do.
Quite often, data security is enhanced. Zoho’s data centers are manned 24 hours a day with biometric access to the equipment rooms. Video cameras everywhere. Bullet-proof structures. SOC2 compliance. In North America, Zoho runs two data centers and they are mirror images of each other with three separate power feeds each. If one data center goes down, the other can jump in. Most companies cannot match this level of redundancy and security.
Accounting – Computer hardware and Software were once part of your Capital Expenditures. Software upgrades had to planned and budgeted. Cloud computing moves software into the monthly expense category. Usually, you can quickly adjust user counts in a few seconds.

Current State of the Cloud

In our opinion, cloud software is largely inhabited by single-app companies. Think of the largest or the smallest – Salesforce, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Quickbooks, Slack, etc. Most of these companies occupy a single space in the cloud. Not all are profitable. This causes problems for SMBs:

Selecting an app from 50 or more similar apps.
Integrating that particular app with your other cloud apps. This may require consultants and custom code.
Each app can evolve on its own and may not continue to work with your other apps. Or the app you selected is now out of business.
Training users of each of these apps. Many of them use different terms for similar objects. A business may be called an “Account” in your CRM system but a “Customer” in your accounting software and a “Site” or “Location” in your mapping software. In essence, each app has its own way of doing things and these will vary. This will increase training time.

Zoho One is a suite of 40+ separate apps, all designed to work together.

There is really nothing like it in the cloud today. We do expect to see some of the large single-app companies aggregate in an effort to survive. But currently, you cannot get such a complete suite of the 40 most popular cloud applications.

The price is $37/user/month = $444.00 annually
These apps run on a common platform.
The apps have a similar look & feel. Training time is minimized.
The same programming/scripting language is used to customize every app in the suite.
There is a common admin panel where you can quickly add a new employee and set them up on their respective apps. When you run multiple disparate apps, you’ll have to set up or remove a user at each app’s admin panel.

Zoho does have a policy that you must buy a subscription of Zoho One for every person in the company. There is no clear definition of a user. For example – Contractors are users but not employees. Some employees may not even use computers (warehouse, production line, truck drivers, etc.) If you have a large business and you are unsure of what you user count is, call us or call Zoho. If you’re a small business, get one user license for every employee.

Zoho has a highly evolved sense of what software should be.

It should be a utility, like electricity. Use it when you need it.
Software should not be rationed. If sales people want to view (never edit!) accounting data, then give them access. It will cost you nothing.
The more that software is available to all users in the business, the better.
Zoho will keep adding apps to the Zoho One suite.