Zoho CRM introduces Bigin: A new pipeline-centric CRM built and priced for small businesses

Beginnings matter, and for small businesses they mean everything. Every humble beginning comes with its own set of diverse challenges, and every small business needs software that helps them grow faster. As a bootstrapped business from day one, Zoho understands this struggle better than any other vendor in the market. Since its inception, Zoho has been an active supporter of the small business community by offering extremely affordable, feature-rich software to help SMBs run their day-to-day business operations smoothly. Today's announcement is another definitive step in this direction.

We are delighted to announce the launch of Bigin, our new pipeline-centric CRM that is built and priced for the needs of small and micro businesses. Bigin comes at an important time when businesses are going through a sudden, forced digital transformation to ensure business continuity. We believe this new addition will enable millions of small businesses to move their operations online and start seeing improved customer relationships.

Why Bigin?

Even though there are more than 600 CRM vendors in the market, most small businesses are still stuck with spreadsheets. So many new CRM players entered the market in the last decade promising to fill this gap with a simple solution for small businesses. However, they all fell short of their promise, leaving small businesses to settle for less when they actually needed more.

At Zoho, we clearly saw the problems in small businesses relying on dozens and dozens of spreadsheets to manage customer activities instead of investing in a CRM. Our decades of experience in building successful customer relationship products have shown us that small businesses need a CRM solution exclusively built for them.

Bigin was born out of that vision.

How does Bigin help small businesses?

Bigin is the only CRM in the market that offers the 3 things that small businesses actually look for in a CRM:

• Great ease of use

• The right feature set

• Affordable pricing

Bigin brings spreadsheet-like simplicity to CRM so that anyone can use the tool. You don't need prior knowledge of CRM, or have to spend additional resources to actually make your software work. While working on the new product, we also noticed that small businesses were being taken for a ride by vendors who removed essential CRM features from their basic plans but still called it the right choice for small businesses. We wanted that to change. With features like multiple pipelines, built-in telephony, and workflow automation, Bigin contains just the right feature set to help small businesses run a full-scale customer-facing process inside their CRM. And most importantly, we wanted to offer all of this at the right price.

Bigin is the most affordable CRM system in the market right now, priced at $7 per month, per user, when billed annually.

What are some of the highlights of Bigin?

Multiple pipelines for customer operations: With the option to create multiple pipelines with fully customizable stages, Bigin empowers small businesses to run their distinct customer operations inside CRM. Bigin's pipeline view allows users to see their customer information in the most visually engaging way, and extend it to the entire customer journey.  

Set up in 30 minutes or less: Bigin is simple and practical. It allows businesses to set up and start using the product in under 30 minutes with effortless on-boarding. Users can start using the CRM right away without the need for product tutorials or any additional support.

Built-in telephony: Making and receiving calls anytime, anywhere is made possible through Bigin's built-in telephony. Bigin also lets users choose from a range of popular telephony providers in the Zoho Phonebridge marketplace. With integrated telephony, Bigin gives you all the information you need to have well-informed calls with customers and prospects.

Workflow automation: Bigin's easy-to-create automated workflows help users drastically cut down on the time wasted on repetitive manual tasks. All you have to do is pick a routine task, create a simple workflow in minutes, and let Bigin do all the hard work.

Real-time notifications and analytics: Real-time notifications from prospects are delivered inside the CRM so that sales reps can take meaningful actions to improve the chances of closing the deal. Bigin's out-of-the-box analytics dashboards with charts and KPIs empower businesses to make smarter, data-driven decisions.

Fully mobile: You don't need to be at your desk to be in touch with customers. Manage emails, stay updated with your pipeline, and access key business information in real time with our mobile apps for iOS and Android.

We launched a version of Bigin for early access this January and have been receiving lots of good feedback from the early adopters. They love Bigin's combination of ease-of-use, features, and pricing in one solution.

Here are some of the testimonials that we received from our early adopters.

"I am super impressed with Bigin. I was looking for a simpler lead management and automation tool and I have finally arrived at the right platform after trying multiple tools in the last few years. It has completely transformed the sales process and I regularly recommend Bigin to my contacts."

Vikas Kakkar, Founder & CEO, HireXP  

“We were so impressed by Bigin’s ‘perfect fit’ for small organizations that we have now consolidated all information about our clients and projects in Bigin. It's impressive to see that such an affordable product helps in managing duplication of records, customizing fields specific to our processes, providing dashboards to manage the performance of emails, and even linking up with the Twitter accounts of our clients.”

Luison Lassala, General Manager, Bedrock Success Consulting

“I want to sincerely thank the entire Bigin Team for developing this excellent platform for SMBs who are keen on getting rid of excel. My primary requirement was exactly the same, but Bigin has offered so much more. It has increased the overall productivity of my sales team, and I have already recommended Bigin to friends in different sectors.”

Dhruvesh Lakhani, Founder Director, Investacc Insurance Brokers Pvt. Ltd.

We've also used this time to tweak and improve our offering before the public release. We are thankful to the early adopters for their invaluable feedback and suggestions.

Bigin is now available in 28 languages and is also part of Zoho's revolutionary suite of 45+ business apps, Zoho One.

How is Bigin different from Zoho CRM? 

Bigin is a pipeline-centric CRM solution focused exclusively on small and micro businesses, who are still stuck with spreadsheets and never tried a CRM solution for their business before. It is also an ideal fit for freelancers and individuals who want to manage their personal business pipelines online. By comparison, Zoho CRM is focused on growing businesses of all sizes who are looking to utilize the larger CRM platform for their advanced business needs.

Are you ready to Bigin?

We invite all small businesses to try our new CRM solution. True to its name, Bigin is just the start of the journey and we have even bigger plans for the future. We want to serve the small business community to the fullest.

Get instant product access by signing up for our free 15-day trial and #JustBigin your CRM journey today!