Biginvs
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM: If you need forecasting, territories, custom modules or more than fifteen pipelines, accepting the higher per-user price.
Bigin
Zoho pipeline CRM for small businesses, priced well below Zoho CRM itself
As of 31 August 2026, Bigin has a free plan and paid plans start at $7/month. Zoho sells a second, cheaper CRM alongside Zoho CRM, and most small buyers should look at this one first. Softwr lists it under CRM. Bigin is made by Zoho Corporation, available on Web, iOS, Android, macOS.
Overview
What Bigin does
Bigin is a pipeline-centric CRM from Zoho aimed at small businesses, sold as a separate product with its own pricing and its own domain rather than as an entry tier of Zoho CRM. It covers contacts, companies, multiple pipelines with configurable stages, activities, built-in telephony and email, simple workflow automation and a set of Teampipes for running non-sales processes such as onboarding or delivery in the same tool. The commercially interesting fact is the gap between Bigin and Zoho CRM. Bigin Express is 7 US dollars per user per month on annual billing and Bigin 360 is 18, while Zoho CRM Standard starts higher and its useful tiers considerably higher again. The two products overlap substantially for a team of five doing straightforward pipeline selling, and Zoho keeps them apart by limiting Bigin rather than by weakening it: three pipelines on Express, five on Premier, fifteen on Bigin 360, with automation counts capped at 30, 50 and 100 respectively. Those caps are the real product boundary, and if your process fits inside them you are paying a fraction of the flagship price for the same underlying platform and support. Buyers are small businesses, sole traders and small sales teams, disproportionately in India, Europe and the United States, often ones already using Zoho Books or Zoho Mail. The trade-off is that outgrowing the caps means a migration to Zoho CRM, and the free plan is one user with 500 records, which is a demonstration rather than a workable tier.
What people use it for
- A five-person sales team wants a real CRM for under 50 US dollars a month total and will never use the territory management or forecasting depth in Zoho CRM.
- A business already running Zoho Books or Zoho Mail wants a CRM in the same account with native links rather than a bridged third-party tool.
- A services firm wants to run client onboarding and delivery as pipelines alongside sales, which is what Teampipes exists for, without buying a separate project tool.
- A buyer evaluating Zoho CRM Standard should price Bigin first, because for straightforward pipeline selling it is roughly a third of the cost on the same platform.
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Bigin.
- The plan limits are the product boundary, not a soft guideline: three pipelines on Express and thirty automations will constrain any business with more than a couple of distinct sale types, and the only fix is to pay up a tier.
- Outgrowing Bigin means migrating to Zoho CRM, a different product with different objects and configuration, so the cheap start becomes a project later rather than a plan upgrade.
- The free plan is one user with 500 records and no automation, which makes it a trial rather than a usable free tier of the kind Zoho CRM competitors offer.
- Reporting and analytics are basic compared with Zoho CRM, with no serious forecasting, territory management or custom module building, so sales operations functions have nothing to work with.
- Zoho runs two overlapping CRMs and has an obvious incentive to keep Bigin limited, so features that would make it a genuine competitor to Zoho CRM are unlikely to arrive however much customers ask.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Bigin
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- BiginvsPipedrive
Pipedrive: If you want a pipeline CRM with a stronger app marketplace and no incentive on the vendor to cap you to protect a sibling product.
- BiginvsFreshsales
Freshsales: If you want built-in email marketing and a more generous entry tier from a comparable Indian vendor.
Pricing
What Bigin costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- One user only
- 500 records
- One pipeline
- No automation
Express
$7 /mo
- Three pipelines
- 50,000 records
- 30 workflow automations
- 9 US dollars per user if billed monthly
Premier
$12 /mo
- Five pipelines
- 100,000 records
- 50 workflow automations
- Advanced field types
- 15 US dollars per user if billed monthly
Bigin 360
$18 /mo
- Fifteen pipelines
- One million records
- 100 workflow automations
- 3,000 AI credits per month
- 21 US dollars per user if billed monthly
Capabilities
Features
Multiple pipelines
Separate stage sets for different sale types, capped by plan at three, five or fifteen
Teampipes
Run non-sales processes such as onboarding, delivery or recruitment through the same pipeline mechanic
Built-in telephony
Call from the record with logging, plus integration to third-party providers
Email integration
Two-way sync with Gmail, Outlook and Zoho Mail with templates and tracking
Workflow automation
Rule-based field updates, alerts and tasks, capped at 30, 50 or 100 workflows by plan
Mobile apps
Full-function iOS and Android apps including an Apple Watch app
Zoho ecosystem
Native connection to Zoho Books, Zoho Desk, Zoho Campaigns and Zoho Flow
Free onboarding
A guided onboarding session is included on every paid plan
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Bigin the same as Zoho CRM?
No. It is a separate, cheaper product on its own domain with its own pricing, aimed at small businesses, and it is deliberately capped so it does not compete with Zoho CRM.
How much cheaper is it?
Express is 7 US dollars per user per month annually against Zoho CRM Standard at a higher rate, and the gap widens against the upper Zoho CRM tiers.
What happens when I outgrow the pipeline limits?
You move up a Bigin tier to five or fifteen pipelines, and beyond that you migrate to Zoho CRM, which is a data and configuration migration rather than a switch.
Is the free plan usable?
Only for one person with a very small contact list. It is one user, 500 records, one pipeline and no automation.
Keep looking
Where to go from Bigin
- Bigin alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Bigin pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Bigin badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All CRM softwareThe full category
- Best CRM softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best CRM software for
Compare Bigin with
- Pipedrive
- Freshsales
- OnePageCRM
- Solid Performers
- Less Annoying CRM
- Really Simple Systems
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Clay
- Apptivo
- Daylite
- Folk
- Salesflare
- Scratchpad
- Seamless.AI
- SharpSpring
- SuiteCRM
- Solid Performers
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Bigin, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Bigin
Bigin alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Bigin pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Bigin
Put it head to head with anything we hold
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