Zoho CRM vs Copper: Which CRM for agencies wins?

Agencies don’t struggle with “finding tools.” They struggle with staying organized amidst the chaos of managing client relationships and sales processes. As prospect information gets dispersed across various platforms like emails, calendars, and spreadsheets, follow-ups can easily be overlooked, handoffs between team members may falter, and forecasting turns into a challenging guessing game. A CRM for agencies must not only accelerate new business but also maintain a comprehensive account history to facilitate renewals, upsells, and referrals.

In this article, we’ll explore two popular CRM solutions—Zoho CRM and Copper. Zoho CRM offers a robust feature set aimed at versatile pipeline management and automation, while Copper shines through its seamless integration with Google Workspace, streamlining processes for teams heavily invested in Google tools.

Choosing between these two platforms depends significantly on the specific needs of your agency, including workflow complexity, the desired level of integration, and how much administrative effort your team is prepared to invest in customization and maintenance.

Was ist Zoho CRM?

Zoho CRM is a versatile customer relationship management tool within the larger Zoho business software ecosystem. It caters to agencies needing features like pipeline management, activity tracking, automation rules, and comprehensive reporting, while seamlessly integrating with other Zoho applications as required. With support for multiple pipelines and layouts, it can adapt to various service lines or sales strategies. Additionally, marketplace extensions and integrations facilitate connections with external tools beyond the Zoho suite, making it an ideal choice for agencies seeking extensive functionality along with flexibility in sales, operations, and reporting.

Was ist Kupfer?

Copper is a CRM tool that prioritizes seamless integration with Google Workspace, providing a user-friendly environment that keeps CRM activities closely tied to Gmail and Google Calendar. This solution is ideal for agencies that manage most of their client communications and scheduling within Google tools, allowing them to maintain their daily routines with minimal disruptions. Pipelines facilitate opportunity tracking while contact and account records preserve the context of relationships. By employing workflow automation and integrations, teams can minimize repetitive administrative tasks, making this an excellent choice for those who prefer a Google-centric approach to CRM organization.

Funktionsvergleich zwischen Zoho CRM und Copper

Mehrere Pipelines und benutzerdefinierte Stufen

Zoho CRM enables the management of multiple sales pipelines, allowing teams to rename, add, remove, and reorder stages as processes evolve. By associating pipelines with layouts, teams can effectively separate various sales motions while still utilizing the same Deals module. Changes to stages are handled in the pipeline settings, and any removed stages remain accessible in the stage builder, making it ideal for agencies that require unique stage logic for each service line or motion.

Copper also facilitates the creation of multiple pipelines to accommodate different processes with distinct stage flows. Users can edit pipeline stages to ensure the opportunity board reflects how an agency qualifies, scopes, and closes work for each specific motion. This allows for the separation of renewals, retainers, and project-based sales while maintaining a unified CRM data model. All changes are managed in the pipeline settings and pertain to the selected pipeline.

Verfolgung von Kunden- und Geschäftsaktivitäten

In Zoho CRM, activity tracking revolves around tasks, events, and calls, all of which can be examined through CRM views and record-related lists. The activity views in Zoho CRM organize items by their creation time, enabling users to open an activity and access related details such as notes, history, attachments, upcoming actions, and email conversations. The Closed Activities list also highlights completed tasks, calls, and meetings associated with a record, ensuring a comprehensive log of past events and scheduled actions.

Copper maintains deal context by integrating with popular Google Workspace tools, providing visibility into relevant communications and activities related to contacts and opportunities. Calendar syncing allows users to create and synchronize events between Copper and Google Calendar, with updates reflecting across both platforms depending on the chosen sync feature. Users can review activity and relationship histories on records, facilitating smooth transitions and strategic next steps for accounts and opportunities.

Automatisierung und Arbeitsabläufe

Zoho CRM offers standard reporting by module along with the flexibility to customize reports to meet specific business needs. Users can leverage dashboards and analytics to track their pipeline and compare sales metrics, including the forecast reporting concepts elaborated in Zoho’s analytics materials. For more comprehensive reporting, Zoho Analytics can connect to Zoho CRM data to generate additional reports and dashboards, with options for sharing and scheduling tailored to your setup. The visibility of the pipeline hinges on the configuration of deals, stages, and activities.

Copper Workflow Automation employs a trigger-and-action model to automatically update or create records based on predefined events. Automation recipes provide examples such as creating tasks from specific triggers, which helps standardize follow-ups and internal handoffs. The workflow behavior is contingent on the trigger conditions and the configured actions, operating according to the account's automation setup.

Berichterstattung und Analyse

In Zoho CRM, reporting encompasses standard reports organized by module and the option to customize these reports to meet specific business needs. You can leverage dashboards and analytics tools to track your pipeline and compare sales metrics, including forecast reporting concepts outlined in Zoho's analytics resources. For more in-depth reporting, Zoho Analytics can integrate with Zoho CRM data, enabling the creation of additional reports and dashboards, complete with sharing and scheduling options based on your configuration. The visibility of your pipeline is contingent upon how deals, stages, and activities are set up.

Copper's reporting centers on dashboards, metrics, and customizable insights that can be easily shared or exported, offering features like emailing or exporting dashboards as part of your reporting workflows. The reporting setup includes dashboard templates, filters, and editing controls, allowing you to tailor KPIs and views to the specific pipeline and activity data being monitored. Additionally, scheduled delivery and alerting are highlighted as part of the comprehensive reporting features.

Integrationen und Datenhygiene

Integrations within Zoho CRM can be accessed through Zoho Marketplace and its integration layer, which categorizes connectors and extensions by their specific use cases. The platform features robust duplication management tools, including duplicate checks, merge tools, and an auto-merge de-duplication tool designed to identify and merge exact matches, while allowing for manual conflict resolution when necessary. Additionally, Zia's data enrichment capabilities can enhance records by adding company context fields based on predetermined mappings. These features collectively aim to minimize duplicates and enhance the completeness of records over time.

Copper provides integrations with a variety of commonly used tools, including a Zapier integration that connects Copper to an extensive array of external applications for seamless automation and data movement. To maintain data hygiene, Copper incorporates a duplicate management workflow that enables teams to identify and merge duplicate People, Companies, or Leads, thereby streamlining records. This ensures that contact history and account context remain linked to a single record, even when duplicates arise from imports or manual data entry.

folk: Das beste CRM für Agenturen im Jahr 2026!

folk is an AI-powered CRM that centralizes contacts, conversations, and deal context without making setup a daunting task. It’s tailored for agency teams where multiple members engage with the same account throughout prospecting, onboarding, delivery, and renewals. By maintaining a visible history of relationships, transitions between team members no longer rely on memory or scattered notes.

• Multi-pipeline functionality and customizable stages for various agency processes
• Kontakt- und Geschäftszeitpläne, die die Interaktionshistorie an einem Ort zusammenfassen
• E-Mail- und Kalendersynchronisierung, um Konversationen mit den entsprechenden Datensätzen zu verknüpfen
• Tasks, reminders, and follow-up tracking to ensure consistent next steps
• Ansprechpartner-Anreicherung, um fehlende Unternehmens- und Kontaktinformationen zu vervollständigen
• Tools zur Deduplizierung, um Duplikate zusammenzuführen und eine saubere Datenbank zu pflegen
• Einfache Pipeline-Berichterstattung zur Verfolgung des Status der einzelnen Phasen und des Fortschritts der Geschäfte
• Integrationen und Automatisierungs-Konnektoren zur Minimierung manueller Aktualisierungen

For agencies, the primary benefit lies in achieving operational clarity across concurrent relationships. Pipelines can represent various revenue streams such as retainers, projects, partnerships, and referrals, while tasks and reminders ensure that follow-ups are consistent across the team. Features like data enrichment and deduplication help eliminate duplicate records and fill in missing fields, keeping pipeline reporting effective over time.

Schlussfolgerung

In summary, Zoho CRM excels with its versatile pipeline management and extensive automation features, making it ideal for agencies requiring flexibility. Copper shines through its seamless Google Workspace integration, perfect for teams that prioritize a Google-centric workflow. However, for agencies that depend on email integration, automation, and effective sequencing, folk stands out as the best alternative. It offers a user-friendly platform that centralizes interactions and ensures operational clarity across relationships, making client management efficient and straightforward.

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