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Zoho Invoice is a completely free invoicing service for small businesses from the popular software giant.
There are a fair few invoicing software options on the market, but Zoho stands out as one of the best. Its most radiant accolade is its customization options, which let you create and modify invoice templates before they’re sent to clients.
What Is Zoho Invoice?
Taking a step back, what does Zoho Invoice do?
Zoho Invoice is one of the best invoicing software, and the jewel in its crown is its customization options.
With a massive 16 templates (for reference, the runner up, Invoice2Go, offers eight templates), you’ll be able to tweak and customize your invoices to match your business’s branding.
On these invoices, you’ll be able to customize cosmetic things, like your logo or certain colors, but you’ll also be able to add more substantial details, like tracked hours, multi-currency, taxes, and discounts.
That’s not all, though, as they offer a lot of features that other software lock behind higher tiers, like recurring invoices and customizable analytics reports. Truthfully, the only area of Zoho Invoice that could use some work is their customer support, as they don’t offer 24/7 support, nor do they offer live chat options, meaning anyone looking for help is stuck with phone lines and email.
Zoho Invoice Hidden Costs
To get the most out of your Zoho account, you might want to look for some integrations that allow you to expand your horizons.
Zoho is home to a lot of software, not just invoice software. And almost all of these software options can be linked up and integrated into each other, which can be a huge help when it comes to staying on top of your finances.
For example, Zoho CRM is a Zoho product that allows you to keep in touch with your customers and maintain relationships with them. If you pay the monthly $14-$52 per user, you’ll be able to connect your Zoho Invoice to your Zoho CRM.
Zoho also have an analytics software, starting at $30 a month. This software will allow you to create useful and visually engaging reports that include all of your company’s data. These can be shown to clients or investors in order to give a good summary of your business.
And it’s not just Zoho products. You can also integrate your Zoho Invoice account with your email account, G Suite, or your business’s Slack network. These can help you stay on top of communication within your company, as anyone who needs to be informed of invoice activity will be notified.
You will need to pay the standard prices for these services, however. For example, G Suite costs businesses between $6 and $12 per month for each user, and Slack costs between $6.67 and $12.50 for each user. Linking these products up to your Zoho Invoices, however, is completely free once you pay for each software independently.
Alternatives to Zoho Invoice
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Price from
Each software platform charges an additional 2.9% of every invoice processed, as well as a 25-30 cent fee
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Minimum clients
The client limit on the lowest tier
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Minimum invoices
The monthly invoice limit on the lowest tier
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Minimum estimates
The monthly estimate limit on the lowest tier
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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 |
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Square Invoices |
Wave |
Invoice2Go |
Zoho Invoice |
FreshBooks Invoice |
Xero Invoicing |
QuickBooks Invoice |
Sage Invoice |
OneUp |
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No monthly fee |
Free (with transaction fees) |
$5.99 per month |
Free |
$23 per month |
$25 per month |
$20 per month |
$12 per month |
$9 a month |
|
Unlimited clients |
Unlimited clients |
5 clients |
5 clients |
5 clients |
Unlimited clients |
Unlimited clients |
Unlimited clients |
Unlimited clients |
|
Unlimited invoices |
Unlimited invoices |
50 invoices |
1,000 invoices |
Unlimited invoices |
20 invoices |
Unlimited invoices |
Unlimited invoices |
Unlimited invoices |
|
Unlimited invoices |
Unlimited estimates |
No estimates on lowest tier |
Unlimited estimates |
Unlimited estimates |
Unlimited estimates |
Unlimited estimates |
Unlimited estimates |
Unlimited estimates |
Zoho is one of the best invoicing software options out there, so it’s tricky to find a competitor that is objectively better than them in certain areas.
While Zoho isn’t incredibly expensive by any means, it’s always a good idea to find areas where you can cut costs, as long as you’re not missing out on any crucial features. If you’re looking for a cheaper option, Oneup’s cheapest plan, the Self plan (costing $9 per month), is a good place to start.
The only things missing from Oneup’s Self plan when compared to Zoho are a library of preset invoice templates, customizable reports, invoice tracking, and recurring invoices. However, Oneup does still beat Zoho in some places, as even this lowest tier offers unlimited client support, and the ability to add sales taxes to your analytics.
One reason you might not want to opt for Zoho is simply because they don’t offer the most comprehensive support network in the world, as their support isn’t live 24/7, nor is there a live chat option, meaning you’ll have to resort to phone lines or email support.
If you’re not the best with software, and already feel like you might need a bit of help with your invoicing, you might want to consider Wave invoicing. They’re free (but do skim a bit off of every invoice made) and offer a live chat option, while still supporting email. They miss a couple things offered by Zoho, like tracked hours on their invoices or customizable reports, but otherwise are still a solid choice.
Zoho Invoice vs QuickBooks
If you’re looking for support options, another choice might be QuickBooks’s Advanced tier. It offers every support option you could want, while also packing a massive amount of features. However, at its monthly cost of $150, it’s not an investment to be made lightly.
QuickBooks does offer cheaper options (albeit without their robust support network), notably their Simple Start plan and Essentials plan. Putting the support options aside, the Simple Start plan ($25 per month) offers almost everything that Zoho does, missing only multi-currency support and the ability to add tracked hours to an invoice.
The Essentials plan ($40 per month) patches both of those holes, adding multi-currency and tracked hours, and giving you three users instead of one. Also, while Zoho exclusively uses third-party payment processors, like PayPal and Stripe, QuickBooks uses a first party payment processor, which may influence your decision if you’ve already become accustomed to a third party option.
Zoho is a great choice for a business of practically any size. Whether you’re a small artist doing commissions, or a large plumbing company operating in multiple municipalities, there’s a Zoho tier that can accommodate your needs.
The most versatile tier is the Standard plan, which allows you to register 500 clients for only $22 a month, but it’s a good idea to enroll in the free tier to get a feel for the software and then work your way up to where your business needs to be.
Frequently Asked Questions
Zoho Books is a software intended for a business’s entire financial accounting, including all outgoing and incoming costs. Zoho Invoice is a software that helps you generate and track invoices to send to customers.
Zoho Invoice can link up with a handful of useful integrations. It can link up with Zoho’s own CRM, Analytics, and Projects software, as well as several online payment systems. You can also connect it to Slack, G Suite, and other email clients.
It’s a piece of software that lets a business send invoices to their customers, which is an official and manageable way of staying on top of who owes who. This software is intended for small to medium businesses, freelancers, and sole proprietors who are looking to create official invoices for their clients.
Zoho Invoice does offer a free plan. It offers all the features of the other plans, but only offers five invoicing clients and one user profile, making it quite limited. Most of the time it would be viewed as a demo than a fully-fledged plan.
Zoho Invoice offers three paid tiers, the Basic tier, which costs $11 a month and offers a 50 client limit, the Standard tier, which costs $22 a month and offers a 500 client limit, and the Professional tier, which costs $33 a month, and lets the users invoice unlimited clients.
Signing up for Zoho Invoice is easy, especially since their free plan can act as a non-committal demo to help you figure out the ins and outs of the software’s interface.
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