Innovation

Zoho updates its Office Suite amid Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 domination

Zoho Office runs from free to $6 per user a month depending on whether you're a single individual or large company.

Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor Feb. 14, 2019 at 6:00 a.m. PT

Zoho thinks there's still room to innovate in the office productivity space and crowbar its way into a market dominated by Microsoft Office 365 and Google's G Suite.

The software company's Office Suite is free for single users, $3 per user per month for small- and medium-sized enterprises and $6 per user per month for enterprises. Google's G Suite just raised its pricing to $6 for G Suite Basic and $12 for G Suite Business.

Zoho's Office Suite is also part of a larger bundle of applications that fall under an all-you-can-eat Zoho One plan that goes for $30 per month per employee.

According to Zoho its Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, and Zoho Notebook all get updates that are enhanced with its artificial intelligence assistant Zia as well as Zia Voice. Zoho Office Suite is also integrated with Cliq, a unified communications app that rhymes with Slack.

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The pitch from Zoho is that its Office Suite is built to be contextual and improve collaboration as workers share and sign documents, post notes and drag and drop across applications. What Zoho is ultimately trying to do is exploit gaps in the big productivity suites. Features that illustrate how Zoho is trying to exploit gaps include:

Readability scores for documents in Zoho Writer based on grammar, style and writing quality. Zoho's Zia assistant also makes recommendations for presentations.
One click automation to merge documents and create forms as well as take signatures.
Zoho Notebook, a new addition that takes several formats of notes and smart cards that grab relevant information for context.
Chart and pivot table recommendations in Zoho Sheet as well as data cleansing tools for address issues with duplication and inconsistencies. Zoho Sheet also allows users to create personalized functions.
Integration with Apple-TV and Android enabled devices for Zoho Show.

Here are some screens: