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Many companies treat internal comms as ad-hoc channels that don't require planning — and they're wrong. Internal comms are the glue that helps organizations build culture and nurture collaboration. Similarly, a social media calendar is essential for external...
Jan 22, 2025
Zoho offers many software solutions for different business processes, from marketing to business intelligence. However, building a solid content workflow often requires more specialized tools, so many teams and agencies turn to Zoho alternatives.
This is especially true if they’re looking for more content-specific features, better integrations, easier collaboration, and greater cost-effectiveness. In this article, I’ve gathered the best alternatives to Zoho products tailored specifically for content-oriented teams.
Zoho is an all-in-one suite of tools suitable for various business processes, from email marketing, social media management, and marketing automation to customer relationships and a CRM solution.
However, like many extensive systems, Zoho is imperfect, especially when serving more specific areas. Let’s check the most crucial aspects for content teams and agencies and see where Zoho may fall short.
Zoho’s content calendar tools let you schedule posts, track deadlines, and plan content. Their intuitive interface provides a clear overview of your content marketing strategy.
Zoho’s content calendar
You can reschedule posts with a drag-and-drop and automate repetitive processes such as scheduling content. A cool thing about Zoho is cross-posting to multiple brands, which is useful for agencies managing sister brands.
However, the lack of labels and tags may make it hard for teams to filter and organize their content, especially when managing multiple campaigns.
Zoho’s content collaboration tools let teams assign roles for each member. This streamlines collaborative work and allows you to differentiate access more granularly. You can share reports and track updates in a common timeline for team discussions.
While these tools help with general collaboration, Zoho doesn’t offer in-context feedback for specific edits, making precise changes harder.
Its unified Collaborate tab feels less intuitive with its clunky user interface — I, for one, prefer collaboration to happen within one post rather than in a whole different feed.
Zoho Social’s approval system helps organize review and approval processes. It lets teams set up workflows, assign roles, and share links with clients for content reviews.
A major downside is the lack of multi-level approval tools. This might be an issue for agencies that need to approve content within the team first and then send it out to the clients.
Pricing: Zoho Social has a 15-day free trial and a free plan with one brand and six channels to post to. Upgrade to one of the three paid Business plans starting at €15/month per user. Agencies have two plans starting at €320/month.
Planable’s features like approvals, scheduling, media library, collaboration, and content planning tools.
Planable is the best alternative to Zoho for content teams and agencies that need simple and fast collaboration.
Unlike Zoho, Planable’s team collaboration tools are built specifically for marketers. Multi-level approval, in-context feedback, and separate workspaces make teamwork easy and efficient.
A unified platform for content management, Planable helps manage any written content smoothly. Customizable workflows for internal and external approval ensure your posts are always timely and on point.
Social media is dynamic, and so is Planable’s content calendar.
The content calendar also offers four views: calendar, list, feed, and grid. Color-coded labels help your team categorize content and campaigns visually. You can filter all posts by these labels to get clear overviews of specific campaigns or content types.
Content calendar view in Planable
In a hurry? Use drag-and-drop for easy (re)scheduling and approve content with just one click, right in the content calendar!
Each workspace in Planable has its content calendar. It allows agencies to organize work efficiently, with dedicated workspaces for each client, making it simple to manage multiple brands without confusion.
Real-time collaboration is the true star of the show in Planable. Of all Zoho alternatives, Planable’s collaboration tools are the most suitable for content teams.
Collaboration on an Instagram post in Planable
Social media post approval, client feedback, and team collaboration in planable
Teams can easily add clients or external contributors in Planable, providing them with controlled access for a smooth workflow. One-time collaborators don’t even need a Planable account — they can access specific content through link sharing.
Planable offers flexible approval workflows, ranging from non-required to multi-level options. Teams can assign approval roles to multiple members and external collaborators, ensuring a smooth process.
Multi-level approval workflow in Planable
Agencies especially love multi-level approval as it allows teammates to exchange internal feedback before notifying clients.
It also works great for internal team approval. Run your content by other stakeholders to ensure it complies with the requirements of the product, legal, and sales teams — I know how hard it can be to satisfy all three of them.
Planable lacks social listening capabilities and a built-in CRM platform.
Planable offers 50 free posts. After that, you can upgrade to one of the three paid plans starting at $33/month per workspace. An enterprise plan with multi-level approval is available for custom pricing.
Takeaway: Planable is the best Zoho alternative for teams prioritizing flexible feedback, custom approvals, and team collaboration. It’s ideal for agencies and content teams looking for smooth teamwork.
Sprout Social is a solid Zoho alternative for large agencies and teams that need advanced reporting features. The platform tracks key data like audience growth, campaign results, and engagement, giving teams a clear view of their social media performance.
Sprout Social is pricey, which may be problematic for small teams or agencies with a limited budget.
Sprout offers a 30-day free trial. After that, you can upgrade to one of four paid plans starting at $249 per user/month.
Planoly is a simple yet efficient alternative to Zoho’s landing page builder. It allows teams to drive traffic and sales directly from their social media, simplifying the sales process.
Planoly offers features like microsites, “Link in Bio” solutions, and storefronts with seamless integration into Instagram and other social media platforms. Just what a small business needs.
Planoly is best for quick setups but lacks advanced customization for more complex landing pages or full e-commerce sites.
After a 14-day free trial, you can choose from three paid plans starting at $16/month.
Wrike is a project management tool for content teams and agencies. It offers detailed task tracking, workflow automation for repetitive tasks, and team collaboration features.
Compared to Zoho’s Marketing Plus dedicated project management solution, Wrike gives a clear visual view of projects with timelines and integrates with other tools, making it great for busy, dynamic teams.
Wrike’s advanced features might feel overwhelming for new or small teams. Its free plan is limited to personal use only.
Wrike has a free version for personal use and a 14-day free trial. Four paid plans start at $10 per user/month.
ClickUp is a comprehensive solution for content teams managing customer relationships, making it one of the best Zoho CRM alternatives. Teams can use it to analyze customer data, track sales activities, and automate workflows. It simplifies sales pipelines, breaking them down into specific trackable stages.
Besides strong contact management features, ClickUp helps with project management, time tracking, documentation, and more. It’s a solid all-in-one suite of business tools.
ClickUp is not specifically designed for content teams, so it lacks specialized features like content distribution and analytics.
ClickUp offers a free plan, and its three paid plans start at $10/month per user.
Notion is an all-in-one platform for content teams and agencies looking to replace multiple tools like Zoho Docs and Zoho Projects. It combines document management and task-tracking features into one flexible and minimalistic workspace.
Teams can create wikis, manage tasks, and share documents within one unified platform. This makes Notion great for organized and efficient doc workflows.
Notion doesn’t have advanced project reporting features available in its dedicated project management tools.
Notion offers a free version for personal use, with paid plans starting at $11.50 per user/month.
Canva is an alternative to Zoho WorkDrive and Zoho Social for businesses seeking easy-to-use design tools and a shared space to store visuals. Suitable for quick, simple designs, it has little to no learning curve.
Canva has tons of templates for social media graphics and presentations, allowing teams to create professional assets without design expertise.
Canva works best for simple designs and may not be suitable for creating complex or highly customized assets.
Canva’s core features are available for free. To access more advanced features like AI tools and brand kits, upgrade for $12/month per user.
Figma is a powerful alternative to Zoho Sites and its landing page builder. It’s perfect for designers who want a versatile platform for creating high-fidelity mockups, interactive prototypes, and collaborative UI/UX designs.
With Figma’s templates and visual tools, teams can efficiently build and refine websites, landing pages, web forms, and other digital assets.
Figma is quite complicated and requires some designer skills.
Figma has a free version and three paid plans starting at $15 per user/month.
When choosing Zoho alternatives, consider your team’s most crucial processes and which ones you want to improve. Find the thin places in your content workflow and solidify them with the right tools.
Looking to upgrade your collaboration and social media automation? Try Planable and get 50 free posts to give it a spin.
Content marketer with a background in journalism; digital nomad, and tech geek. In love with blogs, storytelling, strategies, and old-school Instagram. If it can be written, I probably wrote it.
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