Zoho Bigin is a pipeline-centric CRM tailored for small businesses and startups, offering an easy on-ramp from spreadsheets to a modern CRM.
Keep your sales process on track with Bigin’s intuitive pipeline management. Deals move through custom stages in a visual Kanban board, giving you a clear view of each opportunity’s status. You can create multiple pipelines (e.g. for different products or regions) to mirror how your UK business operates – for example, one pipeline for domestic sales and another for international deals. Bigin’s drag-and-drop interface makes it simple to update deal stages, add notes or tasks, and never lose sight of a prospect. Every lead and deal is consolidated in one place, so your team always knows what to do next to push opportunities toward a win.
Zoho Bigin includes built-in communication tools to help you connect with prospects and customers without switching apps. Send and receive emails from Bigin – it syncs with popular email services like Office 365 and Gmail, automatically linking conversations to the right contact or deal. Need to make a call? Bigin’s integrated telephony lets you dial clients directly from the CRM and log call outcomes for future reference. It even supports WhatsApp Business integration for messaging, ensuring you can reach UK customers on their preferred channels. By having emails, calls, and social interactions tied to each contact record, your team gains a 360° view of all customer communications in one CRM system.
Even as a lightweight CRM, Bigin offers powerful automation to save you time. Set up workflow rules (no coding needed) to handle repetitive tasks – for example, automatically assign new web form leads to a sales rep, or send a welcome email whenever a deal is created in the “Qualified” stage. You can schedule follow-up activities and reminders so no prospect falls through the cracks. Bigin also provides basic analytics like pipeline charts and customizable dashboards, helping you identify bottlenecks and forecast sales. With these tools, UK small businesses can operate with the efficiency of a larger enterprise, freeing up time to focus on building relationships and closing deals.
Zoho Bigin is built on the Zoho platform, which means it plays nicely with other business apps as you grow. It integrates out-of-the-box with Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice for invoicing and accounting, Zoho Desk for customer support, Zoho Campaigns for email marketing, and more. You can capture leads using Zoho Forms or web-to-lead forms on your site and have them flow right into Bigin. Need to connect with external tools? Bigin offers Zapier integration and APIs to link with countless third-party apps like Gmail, Mailchimp, or Google Contacts. When your business eventually needs a fully-fledged CRM, you can upgrade seamlessly to Zoho CRM – Bigin is a stepping stone, with an easy migration path to the more advanced Zoho CRM platform. In short, Bigin grows with you, ensuring your sales processes are future-proof.
By connecting Zoho Bigin to the rest of your software stack, you can automate the flow of information and avoid double data entry. Zoho Bigin offers native integrations with other Zoho apps – for example, you can receive support tickets from Zoho Desk inside Bigin or sync contacts and deals with Zoho CRM/Books. It also connects with popular third-party tools: integrate your Google Workspace to access Contacts and Calendar, use Zapier to connect Bigin with apps like Mailchimp or Slack, and embed Zoho Forms on your website to capture leads directly into Bigin. These integrations ensure that your sales pipeline in Bigin stays up-to-date and aligned with your broader business systems. Whether it’s accounting, customer support, or marketing, Zoho Bigin acts as a central hub for your small business CRM data, saving you time and improving accuracy across the board.
Zoho Bigin is essentially a lighter version of Zoho CRM, focused on core pipeline management for small businesses. It offers the essentials – contacts, deals, activities, and basic automation – in a simple package. In contrast, Zoho CRM provides a much broader feature set (advanced analytics, marketing automation, inventory management, etc.) suitable for larger teams and complex processes. Many UK startups begin with Bigin to get organized, then upgrade to Zoho CRM as they expand. The good news is that Bigin is built on Zoho CRM’s platform, so when you outgrow Bigin you can migrate to Zoho CRM seamlessly without losing data.
Yes. Zoho Bigin offers a Free plan for a single user, which allows one pipeline and up to 500 records. This is great for trying out the software or managing a very simple process at no cost. The free edition includes essential features like contact management, notes, and a mobile app, but it lacks some advanced capabilities (no workflows or integrations beyond Zoho Desk, etc.). As your business needs grow, you can easily upgrade to an Express or Premier plan to unlock more pipelines, records, and automation features.
Absolutely. Zoho Bigin integrates with popular email providers such as Gmail and Outlook, so you can manage emails within the CRM and keep conversations linked to contacts. It also offers two-way sync with Google Calendar and Office 365 Calendar, ensuring your meetings and tasks stay updated. Through Zapier and Zoho Flow, Bigin can connect to thousands of third-party apps. For example, you could automatically add a new Bigin contact to a Mailchimp mailing list, or generate a Bigin deal from a form submission on your website. These integrations make sure Bigin fits smoothly into your existing workflow.
As a trusted Zoho Partner, Svennis Cloud Solutions can help you get the most out of Zoho Bigin from day one. Our team will assess your business requirements and customize Bigin to fit your sales process – defining pipelines and stages, importing your current data, and setting up workflows that match how you work. We provide hands-on training to your staff here in the UK, ensuring everyone is comfortable using the CRM. Beyond initial setup, we offer ongoing support and enhancements (like building custom functions or integrating Bigin with other systems you use). In short, we partner with you throughout your CRM journey so that Zoho Bigin truly accelerates your sales success.