Zoho has a reputation for making high quality, cloud-based business software that doesn't cost a fortune.
Its business messaging app, called Zoho Cliq, is no exception.
This thoughtful and speedy messaging app borrows some of the best ideas from its competitors and adds a unique paneled layout so you can view multiple discussions at once.
Cliq also costs less than any other app in this space.
In terms of features and integrations, Zoho doesn't yet rival Editors' Choices Slack and Microsoft Teams, but it's a wonderful option if you prefer its layout or if your team needs to keep costs low.
Zoho Cliq Pricing and Plans
Zoho Cliq is free to use, with some limitations, and there's a paid version called Unlimited (starting at $0.90 per person per month) which, as you may have guessed from the name, removes those limitations.
The free version of Zoho Cliq lets you invite as many people as you like to join.
When you search, the results come from only the most recent 10,000 messages.
Your team gets a generous 100GB of storage space to share for uploads.
Free accounts include organization channels and private channels, but you not team channels.
You cannot manage permissions in channels, nor can you set up external channels or have secret chats.
The paid account comes with everything in the free plan, but all the limits are removed.
Additionally, you get 100GB of storage per person, rather than collectively shared across everyone.
You get a custom domain and a few other benefits, too.
Paid accounts are charged on a sliding scale based on the number of people on your team.
With 500 or more people, you pay $1 a head per month, or $10.80 per person if you pay annually.
It creeps up from there as the number of users declines.
At 10 people or fewer, you pay $3 per person per month, or $32.40 per person annually.
You can test the waters of a paid account with a 14-day free trial.
Compared with other team messaging apps, Zoho Cliq has the lowest prices you'll find.
Slack is one of the most expensive, starting at $8 per person per month for Standard and $15 per person per month for Plus.
Flock costs $6 per person per month, and Glip charges a little less at $5 per person per month.
Twist, an option designed for distributed teams, costs $6 per person per month.
Microsoft Teams offers a free version for up to 300 users or costs $5 per user per month as part of Office 365 Business Essentials, which doesn't include installable Office apps; to add those, you pay $12.50 per month per user for the Office 365 Business Premium plan.
Getting Started With Cliq
The basic function of Zoho Cliq and most other team messaging apps is to create a space for group chats.
You create an account, invite people to join, and set up channels, which are similar to group chat rooms.
These channels can be open to anyone in the account to join or invite-only.
Every channel needs a name and optionally a description.
It's common for companies to have channels for projects, departments, teams within departments, as well as for socializing.
As with most team messaging apps, channels are not the only place to have a conversation.
Cliq also supports direct messages with individuals and groups.
The most notable aspect of Zoho Cliq is its columnar design.
As you begin joining channels and messaging with people, each chat opens in its own panel or column, reminiscent of TweetDeck.
The more chats you open, the more columns fill your screen.
They get smaller in width the more panels you have to a point (depending on your screen size), after which you must scroll laterally to find the one you want.
I love this design because it means you can have more than one chat window open at a time, so you can reference one conversation while replying to another.
Unfortunately, you can't rearrange the columns at will, which feels like a major oversight.
With most other online apps that use this type of layout, like kanban boards, you can drag and drop the columns to reorder them.
In Zoho Cliq, the only way to get the columns in the order you want is to close all the windows and then open them again sequentially in your preferred order.
Tracking Conversations
One problem that messaging apps have struggled to solve is what to do about the fact that conversations can be hard to track.
Someone asks a question or starts a conversation in a channel and then, because of time delays, someone else posts something directly below it that's unrelated.
If the second post gets more responses, the first one gets buried.
At that point, it's easy for people to miss it entirely.
Zoho Cliq handles this problem with forking, which are not unlike threads in Slack.
When a post that necessitates additional follow-up separate from the rest of the channel, you can fork it to a private direct message.
The forked conversation appears as its own selection in the list of channels and direct messages on the left with the annotation " - Forked."
The app Twist, by the remote-first company Doist, solves this same problem in a totally different way.
Twist uses a setup that looks a whole heck of a lot like email.
In this app, you create threads for each conversation, to which you can add a subject line.
So instead of having a long, scrolling list of chatter, you have a list of conversations.
Each conversation is contained.
It's much more orderly for people who work in different time zones and might have to catch up on a day's worth of conversation in one sitting.
Additional Features
Cliq supports unlimited video and audio calls, and screensharing.
I like that when you hover over someone's name in your list of direct messages, an info box appears with buttons to call them at once.
Speaking of video, there's a great feature called PrimeTime that lets anyone with the right permission level host a one-way video stream that anyone in the organization can watch.
It's useful for town hall meetings, presentations, and other announcements.
Fine details help Zoho Cliq stand out from other business messaging apps, too.
When you have a private chat with someone who is on a mobile device, for example, you see a smartphone icon next to that person's chat.
That's helpful for determining how soon you might expect a response.
Additionally, when you're using a mobile device, you can opt into a location feature that tells your colleagues where you are.
You can adjust the setting to alert them as to your exact whereabouts or only the city.
Reminders in Cliq let you add a notification to any message.
You can add more reminders in by typing them in free-form.
Cliq also keeps track of events that you and your teammates create in the app.
When you make an event, a bot called Taz sends an invitation to the appropriate people.
You can then review all the invitations you've accepted from a panel on the right.
Apps and Integrations
Zoho Cliq is available as a web app and desktop store apps for Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu.
There are mobile apps for Android and iOS.
Zoho makes a wide range of online business apps, from its popular CRM software to a project management platform.
Fittingly, Zoho Cliq works with other apps in Zoho's portfolio.
It also supports integration with a few outside apps, such as Asana, Box, Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive, JIRA, Trello, and Zendesk.
Zoho lets you make your own custom integrations using Zoho Flow, an integration service that's similar to IFTTT, Integromat, or Zapier.
You use Zoho Flow and its simple drag-and-drop interface to create integrations with other apps and services.
Even if you don't know how to code, you can still create simple integrations.
A little familiarity with coding helps, however, if you want to get more advanced with them.
What's Missing
In testing Zoho Cliq, I logged into some old accounts I had created a few years ago.
One of them was giving me trouble.
It turns out I had created two fake companies for testing, and the troublemaker account was in a different company.
So I invited that user to join the other company.
That's how I learned that you can't be a part of more than one company.
Cliq doesn't let you.
You must choose your allegiance.
Other apps, including Slack and Microsoft Teams, let you join multiple team accounts and toggle among them rather easily.
I was surprised Zoho Cliq didn't.
Other aspects of Zoho Cliq aren't as wonderful as they could be, too.
As with most instant messaging and team messaging apps, you can set a status to indicate to your colleagues that you're available, busy, away, or any custom status you want to write.
Zoho Cliq meets expectations on this front, but Slack and Twist go the extra mile by adding images to your status.
That way, your colleagues can see tell at a glance when you're out.
In Cliq, you get a solid colored bubble and a few words, that's it.
You can share files using Zoho Cliq and discuss them right in the app, so long as you are able to describe your comments using text alone, as there are no image or PDF markup tools included.
Glip by RingCentral offers some lightweight markup tools, which add a lot of value for teams that frequently discuss visual files.
Notifications are standard in Cliq, but they also don't provide anything special.
If someone puts an @ sign in front of your name, you'll be notified.
The same goes for when someone direct messages you, and you'll get alerts for incoming audio and video calls, as well as any time someone starts a PrimeTime session.
You can turn off some of these alerts if you like, and you can customize the specific alert tones you hear as well.
I find Cliq's tones surprisingly pleasing.
There's more room for improvement in the notifications arena, not in how you get them, but in how you stop them.
Cliq gives you a few options for Do Not Disturb mode, but they're all for a set number of hours, rather than recurring hours, such as every day from 9 p.m.
to 7 a.m.
This invaluable setting is fairly common now in other messaging apps.
There are no keyword alerts in Cliq.
Slack has them, though.
When a keyword is used anywhere in a public Slack conversation, you can choose to be notified.
Excellent Value, Stellar Business Features
Zoho Cliq borrows some of the best features from Slack and other established team messaging apps and improves a few of them.
For businesses, it has one of the lowest prices you'll find and some of the highest value.
If you like the panel layout, then this is the app for you.
Cliq has room for improvement, but that doesn't prevent it from being among the best options.
It doesn't edge out Slack or Microsoft Teams, our Editors' Choices, which continue to offer unparalleled features and integrations.
