Businesses are suffering because of the corona Covid-19 virus.  Workers must remain at home. Workers might even be getting sick. Customers may be holding or cancelling orders or payments. These are unprecedented times.

Zoho are aware of the issues companies will be facing and for this reason are offering a 3 month waiver of license fees. The aim is to allow severely impacted small business customers access to Zoho software they currently use, free for three months while we ride out this crisis.

All Zoho customers in businesses with 25 employees or less, who are suffering impacts from the corona virus to their business operations, can apply for this concession.

Zoho will assess each case and will grant license waivers based on the severity of disruption, industry, and other factors.

Please click the following link for more details: https://www.zoho.com/esap/

How to Apply

To apply, please send an email, addressing the above assessment points, to esap@zohocorp.com

Zoho have recently partnered with West Ham United football club as their Official Global Partner, providing Software & Business Enterprise Solutions.

West Ham United is one of over 50 million Zoho users implementing a suite of online business software to improve the running of the football club's operations.

Zoho is a world leading provider of online business software and has over 45+ SaaS applications covering HR, Accounting, CRM and Marketing, or Recruitment to Project Management; as well as many other business functions.

Zoho's services will benefit many key areas of the club as well as other organisations the club is involved in, bringing the fans closer to each other as well as with the club.

Scalable, Flexible Applications

Zoho can be used for all areas of club management, from membership contact management, email marketing of club news and events, social media management and even automated subscription management for club membership dues.

Perfectly scalable, with numerous addon apps and affordable licensing, Zoho is the obvious choice.

We have implemented Zoho software in a number of clubs and organisations, from a national Welsh agricultural union to a local sea swimming club in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

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If your business is one that runs on a subscription basis then Zoho Billing is the perfect subscription management and automation tool.

Zoho Billing provides features such as synchronisation to Zoho CRM, subscription plan and addon management, automated invoicing and reminders, online payments, batch processing, GoCardless integration and many more.

And now, you can integrate Zoho Billing with Zoho Reports for advanced analtyics of your subscription, including 30+ subscription related reports that Zoho provide right out of the box.

Zoho Billing, which is part of the Zoho 'Finance Suite' actually integrates to Zoho Books as standard, giving you the financial side of your subscription management process right at your fingertips.

With this in mind the integration is especially useful if you want to build reports from multiple sources, such as Zoho Books and Zoho Billing.

This is a real game changer for subscription based businesses and one we think will be really useful and popular moving forwards!

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Contact us here for more information on Zoho Billing and and integration to Zoho Analytics.

The old and well known user interface of Zoho CRM is set to be phased out soon - 15th December 2016 to be exact - which means the new UI will be rolled out in its entirety from that time.

You may well have been using the new UI for some time - if not, it's great! 

Enhancements include many new features and enhancements such as improved screen layout/design, faster searching and filtering, check-in functions and improved reporting and dashboards.

However, if you have not yet seen it here is a 30 minute webinar from Zoho on what the new UI is and what you can expect:

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For more information on Zoho CRM and how best to implement it in your business please contact us here.

In their recent article the well known and widely trusted tech/app comparison website 'GetApp' recently reported how Zoho Recruit had come in third place in a review of a variety of recruitment applicant tracking software apps.

Software was assessed on such things as user reviews, as well as integration capability to other apps, mobile app availability, media presence and security. The software was assessed from an independent and unbiased viewpoint and each score given was independent of any commercial interests or any relationship that the software has with GetApp.

Click the link below for:

GetApp's review of Zoho Recruit.

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For more information on Zoho Recruit please contact us here.

I received a newsletter this morning from Evernote, that I have been using for several years, which prompted me to wrote a blog about the comparison between the popular note management app and a relatively new app from Zoho called Zoho Notebook.

In truth, I think Evernote is great. Clean and easy to use, great functions, ample free storage/usage, desktop and mobile app... I must admit I did dabble with Zoho's note management app for a while when it was first released but found it too basic in comparison and as I had been using Evernote for years, I opted to stay with it.

That was until this morning.

As a Basic (free) version user I have just been informed by Evernote of changes to their Basic version, which states in 30 days time they will be limiting the number of devices you can use the app on, to just two devices. 

This can mean two PCs, one laptop & one PC, one laptop & one phone, two tablets... it doesn't matter what the devices are, but the limit will mean just two of them.

In my case I have one PC, one laptop, one phone and one tablet, plus a phone I use for overseas travel and another backup laptop for travel and presentations! 

All of them have Evernote running on them, and the whole point and advantage of course was that my notes are always in synch across all devices, no matter which one I use.  But not for much longer.

Of course, if I upgrade and pay, I can use Evernote on as many devices as I like but if I do not pay, in 30 days I will need to uninstall Evernote from all but two devices.

Whilst I admit I have been using the free version of Evernote for years and therefore Evernote have not got any money from me directly up to now, I have recommended it to countless of my friends and colleagues over the years, because of its flexibility in usage across so many devices; it is also used as standard in Mangoho and by other business owners I know in their offices as the staff note management app.

For me, this major and rather restrictive change by Evernote is problematic in the long term, and forces me to pay, or use something else. In steps Zoho Notebook...

Zoho Notebook

So, on to Zoho Notebook... How does it compare to Evernote?

You can see more here in the basic but clever little website: https://www.zoho.com/notebook/

OK, I will be the first to admit it is not yet in Evernote's league!  

Note the word "yet", because if we do know something it is that Zoho do take on board customer comments very openly and rapidly increase the features of their apps once first released. Plus it is free and there are no ads.

There are all of the basic functions such as text, audio, check lists, images etc. Plus I have heard handwriting is on the agenda for future release. The interface is clean and attractive and it is very easy to use. You can also organise your notes into categories or 'books', the usual stuff.

The one main drawback at this stage is there appears to be no desktop version yet.  So, it is truly a mobile note taking app and not much more, with none of the cool browser 'clipper' functions you get in Evernote, for example. Nor would you be able to type notes on your laptop such was drafts for meetings or draft emails etc. Personally we think this needs to be addressed as this is one of the key advantages of Evernote, so we will communicate to Zoho on this and try to get some input on their long term plans for this promising little app..

Also, unfortunately, Zoho Notebook currently does not integrate to Zoho CRM notes, or Zoho Projects or any other Zoho app, but something tells me that as it is a Zoho app, one of a very large family of Zoho apps, this will come in the future, as most of their other apps have ended up being integrated in some way or other.

So for now, Zoho Notebook is a very basic mobile note management app, but as with all of Zoho's other apps I think this one will be developed and user comments and suggestions taken on board.  And in time it will hopefully result in a serious 'player' in the note management software arena, with the aim (for me) of replacing Evernote at some stage. 

Evernote is still the best in my opinion, it takes some beating, but I don't like this kind of surprise and am not yet ready to pay for a simple note management app.  License models change and Evernote have made a change. It's fair enough. Luckily there are plenty of alternatives of this type of app.

As Zoho have over 25 business apps in their suite, it is logical they would look to integrate their new note management app to one or more of them in the long term though.  For me, a note management solution that seamlessly integrates to Zoho CRM, or Zoho Projects would be great.

Watch this space for further developments...

We are please to announce that Zoho Projects have increased the storage space for all the paid plans in Zoho Projects.

Current Storage Space:

Express - 5 GB
Premium - 15 GB
Enterprise - 30 GB

New Storage Space:

Express - 10 GB
Premium & Enterprise - 100 GB

This will give even more space to store project related documentation as well as larger files such as audio and video, screen captures and more.

Zoho Projects is a powerful online project management solution that can be used in all kinds of business verticals, from software design to marketing, to construction.

Click here for more details on Zoho Projects project management software.

Contact us for more information.

Here is the latest from Zoho on the recent cyber attacks:

UPDATE: 0800 pacific time, Nov 12

All Zoho services are now functioning  normally. We have performed many upgrades and are monitoring carefully. We’ll make a detailed statement soon.

Live updates on the DDOS attack on Zoho services can be seen here.

We will also be announcing any updates as we receive them from Zoho - please also follow us on Twitter using this tag @mangohocloud or access our Twitter page, here.

You can also follow Zoho's Twitter updates directly via @zoho, or their Twitter page, here.