Zoho

Zoho Mail (Almost) Beats Up Gmail In Dark Alley

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It’s no secret that I am crazy about Google. I use their products every day, multiple times. Just to give you an idea of how hooked I am, here is a list of the products I currently use on a regular basis:

I don’t make fun of people or get all defensive if they choose to use other companies’ services. I hope this widespread usage of mine does not brand me with the negative stigma that Google FanBoys tend to get. I like their products because they’re

1. free
2. easy to use
3. universally accessible

These three reasons are exactly what attracted me to Zoho back in 2006. It has taken a while for Zoho to catch on, but they seem to be hitting their stride. The user base for Zoho has been growing exponentially since its start. It took them a year to reach 100k users, and until July 2007 to reach 300k users. As of August 2008, they have surpassed the 1 million mark. That’s big time.

Last Friday marked the public release of Zoho Mail, previously in private beta. After poking around a bit yesterday, I will attempt to do a feature comparison below. I’m sure I’ll miss some stuff, so help me out in the comments if you see something missing.

It still boggles my mind why Zoho has implemented (for the second time) Gears before Google. They were first to use it in their Writer program, months before Google Docs. This marks the first webmail application to offer an offline component.

iPhone users will be happy about the excellent Zoho Mail interface. The rest of the corporate and small business world may not be interested until there is a version for Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Not having IMAP access is a deal-breaker for me at this point. More and more I rely on accessing my email from my iPod Touch. Having the synchronization advantages of IMAP would be tough to do without. (Last semester, I showed you how to set up IMAP for your ASU email account.) According to an email response I received yesterday from the Zoho Mail team:

“…IMAP is something we are working on, it should be available early 2009. Also attaching files from Zoho Documents is also a work in progress, should be available in a month or so.”

Matt Culbertson of ASU’s State Press published a story on Friday about the benefit of growing a customer base of college-age students. Two companies who have experienced significant success through partnerships with ASU are Apple and Google. Culbertson interviewed Marketing professor, Stephen Brown about customer loyalty. Said Brown:

Companies are projecting that college students will be affluent after graduation and therefore will have more purchasing power.
And while many ASU students still in college may be financially dependent on their families, they likely have more discretion on their spending in college than any other time before.
If companies establish familiarity and comfort with their products among college students, they can increase their sales in the long term and short term.

I’m curious to see if Zoho will attempt to build their customer base by partnering with universities. I’m sure ASU won’t be dropping their partnership with Google any time soon, but that’s just one university out of thousands. And there is always the high school market as well…

Zoho has made statements about how they aren’t afraid to compete with Google. Last month, AdventNet (parent company of Zoho) CEO Sridhar Vembu explained why they believe both companies can exist together. (I started to grab some quotes from the post, but it turns out I wanted to quote the entire thing. Go read all of it.) In a response to this post by Vembu, Dan Farber of CNET News believes Zoho has a long sweaty run ahead of themselves if they want to beat the big G. Read the full post on his blog, Outside The Lines.

There are others out there who believe that Zoho has already stepped ahead of Google. Last week the Yankee Group published a March-madness-type tournament bracket “that matches up 16 of the top business collaboration vendors in a head-to-head contest.” Raju Vegesna from Zoho breaks it down in this post.

Sure, the road ahead for Zoho may be a long one. But with the release of Zoho Mail, I think the boys and girls on the Gmail development team should consider never leaving their labs. Not even to grab some lunch.