Zoho sees strong migration from Google and Microsoft to its Workspace

• Zoho Workplace experiences 34% year-on-year growth, with more than 40% of the new migrations coming from Google and Microsoft in 2021.
• Zoho is unique amongst its productivity suite competitors for not rolling out a cost increase for 2022, nor removing their freemium offerings, analyst says.
• Set to see an increased demand for its Workplace services as customers seek a strong return on investment for productivity and collaboration software.

Zoho’s Workplace platform has experienced a 120 per cent increase in migrations from Google-hosted domains after Google’s announcement that it would be ending the free edition of Workspace in January 2022.

Zoho, a technology company offering the most comprehensive suite of business software applications in the industry, said that it now serves more than 16 million users globally.

Thomas Randall, Senior Research Analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, said that Zoho is unique amongst its productivity suite competitors for not rolling out a cost increase for 2022, nor removing their freemium offerings.

In 2021, Zoho Workplace experienced 34 per cent year-on-year growth, with more than 40 per cent of the new migrations coming from Google and Microsoft.

Pulling the plug

Momentum was strong across all segments, with the SMB customer base increased 40 per cent, mid-sized surging 36 per cent, and enterprises expanding by more than 20 per cent.

“Persistent long term execution has been a hallmark of Zoho, and our investment in Zoho Workplace attests to that. The market has seen vendors offering hundreds of seats for free to gain market share and eventually pulling the plug,” Sridhar Iyengar, Managing Director, Zoho Europe, said.

Zoho 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.

Privacy a top priority

Iyengar said that Zoho Workplace has been consistent in delivering customer value and continued high speed of innovation.

“Our ad-free approach and respect towards user privacy will be a pleasant surprise to users coming from alternative ‘free’ services,” he said.

 Zoho is headquartered in Chennai, India with European headquarters in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Additional offices are in the United States, India, Japan, China, Singapore, Mexico, Australia, and the UAE.

 “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,” Randall said.

Now that such offerings are in short supply, he said that Zoho will likely see increased demand for their Workplace services as customers seek a strong return on investment for productivity and collaboration software.

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