Zoho CRM vs Sthan: an honest comparison for Indian real-estate developers.
Zoho is the cheapest, most flexible way to start — a generic CRM you configure for real estate. Sthan is purpose-built for Indian builders and works out of the box. The honest trade-off is sticker price versus setup effort and RERA-readiness.
Zoho CRM or Sthan — which should you choose?
These two compete on opposite philosophies: a general-purpose platform you shape into a real-estate tool, or a real-estate tool that arrives shaped.
Zoho CRM is a low-cost, highly flexible, general-purpose CRM — free for up to three users and inexpensive above that ↗ — that you customise into a real-estate tool. Sthan is purpose-built for Indian real-estate developers and works out of the box: unit inventory, bookings, RERA documents, site visits, construction-linked collections and possession are there on day one, without a configuration project.
The honest trade-off is sticker price versus fit. On headline cost, Zoho usually wins — especially for very small teams — and its 45-plus-app suite covers ground no vertical product does. That comparison flips once the channel is counted: Zoho bills every login it issues, so each channel partner you bring inside the system is another billed user, while on Sthan brokers, channel partners and buyers are free and never seats. On time-to-value and Indian-real-estate readiness, Sthan wins, because using Zoho for real estate means building the property modules, layouts, and rules yourself, as Zoho's own tutorial describes ↗.
What is Zoho CRM, and who is it for?
A general-purpose customer-relationship platform used across every industry, and part of a much larger business suite.
Zoho CRM is part of the broader Zoho One suite of 45-plus business apps ↗. For real estate, Zoho markets a dedicated landing page and positions the product as "custom-built for the real estate business" — while also stating in the same place that it "allows customization when you need it" ↗.
That qualifier matters. Zoho's own real-estate customisation tutorial is explicit that "the default sales setup does not meet their requirements" for real estate and that the CRM "can be customized extensively" — directing you to build a custom Property module to replace the default Leads and Deals, create multiple layouts for residential, commercial, landlords and vendors, and add conditional rules, subforms and validations↗. In other words, the real-estate fit is a configuration project, not an out-of-the-box product.
The practical read: Zoho is for teams that want a cheap, flexible platform and have the appetite (or a partner) to configure it — and who don't need India-specific compliance built in.
What is Sthan, and who is it for?
A CRM for Indian real-estate developers that runs the whole lead-to-possession lifecycle in one workspace — with no configuration project to make it real-estate-shaped.
Leads arrive from MagicBricks, 99acres and Housing.com through portal integrations, and from website forms, WhatsApp click-to-chat, missed calls, QR codes at the site, walk-ins and broker submissions — all tagged with where they came from. From there the same system carries the pipeline, site visits with location check-in, a live tower-by-floor-by-unit inventory grid with time-bound holds, the booking and its paperwork, construction-linked collections, broker commission, and possession handover. Sthan Sales, the field sales app for iOS and Android, is coming soon and will put the same records in the hands of the people standing at the site. The full module map is on the platform page.
It publishes its prices — ₹6,999 a month for 1–3 staff seats, ₹14,999 for 4–8 and ₹24,999 for 9+ — and charges for its own staff only. Brokers, channel partners and buyers get their own portal logins, unlimited and free on every plan, and every feature is in every plan. It completes onboarding within 24 hours and bundles optional marketing services. The reasoning is in the pricing and ROI transparency guide.
A general-purpose CRM gives you stages two to four and an automation builder. The rest is a build. Sthan covers all nine.
The same axes, both columns filled.
Sthan's column is what the product does out of the box. Zoho's column is written from Zoho's own published material — its pricing page, its real-estate page, and the customisation tutorial it points real-estate buyers at. Four rows go to Zoho.
| Capability | Sthan | Zoho CRM |
|---|---|---|
| Lead capture from portals | MagicBricks, 99acres, Housing.com, web forms, WhatsApp, missed call, QR, walk-in | Web forms, email and telephony capture on the standard platform. Indian property-portal feeds are not part of what its real-estate page describes↗ |
| Tower and unit inventory | Live tower × floor × unit grid, time-bound holds, cost sheets, floor plans | Its own tutorial has you build a custom Property module to replace the default Leads and Deals, with layouts, subforms and validations you define↗ |
| Site visits | Scheduling, location check-in, outcome logging, unlogged-visit alerts | Tasks, calls, events and calendar as generic activities; a site-visit workflow is something you model yourself↗ |
| Booking and documents | Booking workflow, allotment letters, agreements, cancellation and unit release | Deals plus custom layouts. India-specific booking paperwork is not part of the product; its real-estate page makes no mention of RERA↗ |
| Construction-linked collections | Milestone demands, demand notes, receipts, ageing, tiered reminders, GST invoicing | Not part of Zoho CRM. Billing and invoicing live in separate apps in the Zoho One suite↗ |
| Broker and channel-partner payouts | Partner portal, per-broker rate, commission accrual, pay-commission action, statements | No partner portal or commission model in the CRM; it would be a custom module you build↗ |
| Possession and handover | Handover checklist, possession letters, buyer portal, construction-progress tracking | Not part of the product; nothing after the closed deal is described |
| WhatsApp Business API | Two-way messaging with templates, click-to-chat and missed-call capture | Messaging channels connect through the wider Zoho suite and marketplace rather than the real-estate workflow↗ |
| Native mobile app | Sthan Sales, a field sales app for iOS and Android, role-aware in the field — coming soon | A mobile CRM app for the standard platform; the custom real-estate modules you build are surfaced in it by configuration |
| Time to a working real-estate system | Real-estate-shaped on day one. Onboarding completed within 24 hours | Its own tutorial states the default sales setup "does not meet their requirements" for real estate and that the CRM "can be customized extensively"↗ |
| Shaping it to an unusual process | Opinionated around the Indian lead-to-possession lifecycle. Roles, stages, templates and price sheets are yours; the shape of the product is not | Custom modules, multiple layouts, conditional rules, subforms and validations shape it to almost any process↗ |
| Breadth beyond sales | Real estate, end to end. Finance, HR and support stay in the tools you already use | Zoho One puts 45-plus integrated apps for finance, HR, support and operations behind one vendor↗ |
| Entry price | ₹6,999 a month for 1–3 staff seats, published in rupees, with a 7-day trial. No free tier — but broker, channel-partner and buyer logins are free and unlimited, and are never counted as seats | Free for up to three users, then ₹800 to ₹2,600 per user per month across four tiers↗ |
| Track record and partner network | A newer product with a smaller footprint. Support direct from the team | A long-established platform rated 4.3/5 across nearly 7,000 reviews, with a large partner and support network↗ |
Zoho's column describes the platform as shipped. Almost anything in it can be built with enough configuration — that possibility is exactly what the "shaping it to an unusual process" row credits, and exactly what the time-to-live row costs.
How do they compare on pricing?
Let's be straight: count only your own staff and Zoho is usually cheaper. Count the channel partners you want inside the system and the arithmetic turns over.
Zoho CRM is free for up to three users, then ₹800 (Standard), ₹1,400 (Professional), ₹2,400 (Enterprise) and ₹2,600 (Ultimate) per user per month, with annual billing discounted and GST extra ↗. Zoho is per user, and a user is any login. Sthan is per staff seat: 1–3, 4–8 or 9+ of your own people, with brokers, channel partners and buyers unlimited and free.
Which one is cheaper depends entirely on who you count, so count the way an Indian builder actually staffs. Take a desk of five with twenty active channel partners submitting leads — an illustration, not a survey, but the shape a channel-led developer works in. On Zoho that is twenty-five logins: at the ₹1,400 Professional rate, ₹35,000 a month, of which ₹28,000 is the channel rather than your team. On Sthan the five staff are the ₹14,999 tier and the twenty partners cost nothing, because partner logins are never seats. Onboard twenty more partners and the Zoho line moves to ₹63,000 while Sthan's does not move at all.
Two honest caveats sit behind that, and the first cuts against us. Compare the staff column alone and Zoho is cheaper: a ten-person team on Professional is about ₹14,000 a month — below Sthan's ₹24,999 tier for a staff of that size, and that is the right answer if nobody outside your payroll will ever log in. Second, the Zoho figure is for the unconfigured platform — it doesn't include the time or partner cost of building the real-estate modules its own tutorial says you need ↗, nor any RERA-document capability, which isn't part of the product.
Sthan offers a 7-day free trial and bundles the real-estate workflow in the price, with every feature in every tier. The full per-user-versus-per-staff-seat breakdown is in the pricing and ROI guide.
What does Zoho CRM do better?
Zoho is a genuinely strong product, and for the right buyer it's the better call.
- Price, especially at small scale. Free for up to three users and inexpensive per-user tiers above that ↗ — hard to beat for a one- or two-person operation or a brand-new developer testing the waters.
- Flexibility. Custom modules, layouts, conditional rules, subforms and validations mean you can shape it to almost any process ↗ — powerful if your workflow is unusual or spans beyond real estate.
- The Zoho One ecosystem. 45-plus integrated apps for finance, HR, support, and operations ↗ — valuable if you want one vendor across the whole business, not just sales.
- Maturity and reach. A long-established platform rated 4.3/5 across nearly 7,000 Capterra reviews ↗, with a large partner and support network.
If budget is the binding constraint and you have the appetite to configure, Zoho is a serious, honest choice.
What does Sthan do better?
Start with the product, not the price. These are the parts of a developer's job a horizontal CRM hands back to you as a configuration project.
- The whole lifecycle, not the front halfMarketing, capture, qualification, pipeline, site visits, inventory, booking, collections and possession run in one workspace. Most CRMs stop at the booking; in Indian real estate the booking is roughly halfway.
- Tower and unit inventory as a first-class recordA live tower by floor by unit grid with available, held, booked, sold and blocked states, time-bound holds that expire on their own, price and cost sheets, and floor plans attached to the unit.
- Broker and partner payoutsChannel partners sign up, get approved and log in to their own portal. Commission is set per broker and accrues against the booking and its receipts, so a payout is a record you open rather than an argument you have.
- Construction-linked collectionsPayment schedules tied to construction milestones, with demand notes, tiered reminders, GST-compliant invoicing and an ageing view the accounts team works from.
- A native app for the people at the siteSthan Sales, the field sales app for iOS and Android, is coming soon — leads, site visits with location check-in, the inventory grid and call logging that cannot close without a next step. The same role rules that run on the web will run on the phone.
- WhatsApp-native, not WhatsApp-bolted-onClick-to-chat and missed-call capture create the lead. Two-way messaging on the WhatsApp Business API, with templates you control, carries the follow-ups and the payment reminders.
- RERA and the paper trailFiling reminders, allotment letters, demand notes, receipts and possession letters generated from the booking record, and an audit trail behind every status, booking, payment and ownership change.
- Marketing services bundled with the CRMOptional Growth Services run the Google and Meta campaigns that feed the pipeline, so the spend and the booking it produced sit in one system rather than two.
Then the setup and the commercial model.
- Zero configuration required. Sthan is real-estate-shaped out of the box. Zoho's own tutorial says its default setup "does not meet" real-estate requirements and must be "customized extensively"↗ — that build is work you don't do with Sthan.
- Priced on your staff, not on every login. Zoho's per-user model scales with every login you create ↗, and in Indian real estate most of a builder's logins are channel partners and buyers rather than staff. Sthan's tier is set by your own headcount alone — brokers, channel partners and buyers get unlimited free portal logins and never count as seats.
- Faster setup, gentler learning curve. 24-hour onboarding, against a flexible-but-complex platform whose reviewers call it "overwhelming for beginners" and "very difficult to customise"↗.
- No lock-in. Month-to-month billing and a full data export on request.
The full picture — nine lifecycle stages, the layers underneath them and the modules inside each — is on the platform page. The bundled campaign work is covered in marketing automation and drip campaigns.
Where are Zoho CRM and Sthan roughly even?
On generic CRM fundamentals, both are solid.
Contact and lead management, pipeline stages, task and follow-up tracking, email and reporting dashboards are table stakes both cover. Mobile is the exception: Zoho has its mobile CRM app, and Sthan Sales for iOS and Android is coming soon. If all you need is a basic sales pipeline and you're willing to treat real estate as just another set of records, either can do it. The divergence isn't whether they can store leads — it's whether the real-estate workflow, RERA, and pricing model come built in (Sthan) or are yours to assemble (Zoho).
Which one is right for your business?
Decide on cost-versus-fit honestly.
- Pick Zoho CRM if budget is the binding constraint (especially with three or fewer users on the free tier), you want maximum flexibility, you'll invest in configuration, you want one vendor across finance, HR and support as well as sales, and you don't need RERA built in.
- Pick Sthan if you're an Indian developer running active projects and you want unit inventory, bookings, broker payouts, construction-linked collections, RERA paperwork and possession working out of the box, with published seat-based pricing that never bills you for a broker or a buyer, and 24-hour setup — and you'd rather not run a customisation project to get there.
This is the classic vertical-versus-horizontal decision. The framework for evaluating a real estate CRM in India gives you a buyer-first rubric to weigh configuration cost, RERA, and pricing model against each other.
Zoho CRM vs Sthan, answered.
The questions builders ask before they shortlist.
Is Zoho CRM or Sthan better for Indian real-estate developers?
It depends on whether you optimise for sticker price or for fit. Zoho CRM is a cheap, flexible, general-purpose CRM — free for up to three users — that you configure into a real-estate tool. Sthan is purpose-built for Indian real estate and works out of the box, with RERA documents, bookings, site visits, and collections on day one. Zoho usually wins on headline cost; Sthan wins on time-to-value and Indian-real-estate readiness.
Is Zoho CRM cheaper than Sthan?
On sticker price, usually yes. Zoho CRM is free for up to three users, then ₹800 (Standard), ₹1,400 (Professional), ₹2,400 (Enterprise) and ₹2,600 (Ultimate) per user per month, with GST extra. A ten-person team on Professional is about ₹14,000 a month, below Sthan's ₹24,999 Pro plan for a staff of that size. But Zoho bills every login it holds — your channel partners included, if you want them in the system at all — whereas Sthan counts only your own staff and gives brokers and buyers unlimited free portal logins. That Zoho price is also for the unconfigured platform: it excludes the cost of building the real-estate modules Zoho's own tutorial says you need, and it has no RERA capability.
Does Zoho CRM work for real estate out of the box?
Not fully. Zoho markets a real-estate page, but its own customisation tutorial states the "default sales setup does not meet" real-estate requirements and must be "customized extensively" — building a custom Property module, multiple layouts, and conditional rules. So Zoho for real estate is a configuration project. Sthan is real-estate-shaped out of the box, with no build-out required.
Does Zoho CRM handle RERA?
Zoho’s real-estate marketing page makes no mention of RERA or India-specific compliance, and RERA document generation is not part of the product. Sthan generates RERA documents as part of its lead-to-possession workflow, with Gujarat RERA as a first-class concern.
When does Sthan make more sense than Zoho for a developer?
When you want an Indian-real-estate CRM that works on day one — RERA documents, bookings, site visits, and collections built in — with predictable staff-seat pricing and 24-hour setup, and you’d rather not run a customisation project. If budget is the binding constraint (especially with three or fewer users on Zoho’s free tier) and you have the appetite to configure, Zoho is the honest choice instead.
Based on publicly available information as of 8 June 2026; readers should verify with Zoho directly.
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