Sick of relying on email for your day-to-day communication and collaboration needs?
It may be the right time for your company to embrace the power of team chat applications instead. With team chat solutions, you can connect with your co-workers in real-time, share important files, and even engage in immersive conversations via video.
Zoho Cliq is the team chat application designed by Zoho – a company known for its low-cost, cloud-based office software. Designed with a unique column-style format, Zoho Cliq is suitable for companies and teams of all sizes. Let’s see what you can do with Zoho Cliq.
Features of Zoho Cliq
At its core, Zoho Cliq is a tool designed for file-sharing and real-time messaging. In a world where modern teams aren’t necessarily working in the same office space anymore, Zoho Cliq allows people to communicate at any time, anywhere, through custom channels. You can automatically start audio and video calls, share content and search for important details in your Cliq history.
Zoho Cliq works for both internal and external messaging. You can invite customers and vendors to your conversations and drag and drop files into your messaging app to share images and documents immediately. Zoho also integrates seamlessly with a range of third-party systems like MailChimp, Trello, Zendesk and Google Drive. Features include:
- Real-time Chat
- Private conversations
- Audio and video calling
- Single pane of glass view of all communication channels
- Bot automation options
- File sharing
- Mobile device channel creation and mobile apps
- Notification feeds
- Multi-protocol support
- SSL encryption
Benefits of Zoho Cliq
The Zoho Cliq app started as “Zoho Chat,” before a rebrand in 2017. Since that time, the app has received a range of new features to support the ever-growing needs of modern business users. The previous tool was explicitly designed for file sharing and conventional chat. However, the modern Zoho Cliq incorporates video and voice communication for a more immersive team experience. Benefits include:
- Chat to suit you: With Zoho Cliq, you can enjoy one-on-one conversations or chats with multiple users at once in a single channel or chat room. Users can create as many channels as they want and make video or audio calls within the same channel. There’s no need to switch to a different app.
- Generous features: Zoho Cliq is generous with its free features. For instance, you get unlimited storage for all your conversations and unlimited video chat – even when you’re using the free
- Plays well with others: Zoho Cliq is built on a developer-friendly platform. This means that companies can develop their own add-ons to enhance the system or choose from a range of integrations with tools like Trello and Slack. Zoho Cliq also works well with all popular SaaS platforms.
- Security and privacy: SSL encryption ensures that you can have absolute peace of mind when maintaining the privacy of your chats – even when you’re communicating via smartphone.
Target Market & Regional Availability
Like many collaboration and chat applications, Zoho Cliq is designed to work well with any size of team. However, it’s worth noting that this app will probably appeal more to your company if you’re already working in the Zoho ecosystem. For instance, when you’re using other office apps on Zoho – such as reviewing company documents, you can instantly pull up a chat tab to communicate with other members of your team. Zoho Cliq is also great for smaller companies on a budget, thanks to its tiny price tag.
How to Buy & Pricing
The free edition of Zoho Cliq comes with unlimited user access, security and data retention solutions, two-factor authentication, SAML single sign-on, user provisioning, and a maximum of 10 active integrations, 100GBs of storage, and 100 participants per channel.
The “unlimited” edition of Zoho Cliq is priced at:
- $3 per user (monthly) for up to 10 users
- $2.50 per user for 11-50 users
- $2.00 per user for 51-100 users
- $1.50 per user for 100-500 users
- $1 per user for more than 500 users.
The Unlimited Edition comes with everything you’d expect from the free package, as well as:
- Multi-team channels
- History storage control
- Guest access and external channels
- Channel permissions
- Unlimited integrations
Finishing Thoughts: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives
Zoho Cliq is one of the most comprehensive and easy-to-use chat applications on the market. For businesses in search of better team communication and collaboration, it also has one of the lowest prices you’ll find on the market, for the highest value.
Pros:
- Countless integrations for end-to-end collaboration
- Low-cost for companies with any budget
- Not just for chat – video and audio calls are available too
- Send shared files instantly
- Plenty of security including SSO and 2-factor authentication
- Easy to use and integrate with other tools
Cons:
- No screen sharing available (yet)
- No comprehensive ticket system
- Interface isn’t as clean as Slack
If you’re looking for an alternative to Zoho Cliq, try:
- Flock
- RingCentral Glip
- Flowdock
- Slack
