Zoho –Salesforce story is pretty well known (SF wanted to acquire Zoho, but Zoho refused) and today, Zoho launched the ‘Zwitch to Zoho’ program to lure Salesforce customers by playing the pricing card.
He offered repeatedly to acquire Zoho outright, which we rejected. I told him there is absolutely no fit between our companies, particularly with his business model and our business model. I told him there is just no cultural fit between our companies and such an acquisition would be miserable for both parties. Finally, he offered to let us integrate Zoho into AppExchange, provided we pull the plug on Zoho CRM. We told him that kind of pre-condition is totally unacceptable, and it also completely negates his claims of openness of their platform. Needless to say, we never did agree on the issue, and we dropped the integration effort. – Sridhar
Zwitch program enables any salesforce customer to migrate to Zoho and try out the service; and 
while Salesforce charges $65/user/month, Zoho is offering it’s CRM product for $12/user/month, a claimed saving of 80%.
Would be interesting to see how many SF customers migrate to Zoho? What’s your hunch?
Also see: Zoho pulls the “G” string – Now you can Import Google Docs in Zoho Writer
In the US market, 65 USD or 12 USD isn’t going to make much of a difference. But Zoho should focus on asia-pacific instead. India is a much more price sensitive market and its large enough today.
-Tarun
I woud disagree on that Tarun…We should focus on the world…as the world wants us to focus on them…USD 70-100 is not very high in the indian context either…
Well, in these times of recession… the “save as much as you can” mentality is back.. I feel…. so definitely the price difference is going to play a part here…
Well, Zwitch looks just as ugly as Salesforce!! The only reason I wll invest more time in a CRM is if I can actually have better usability. Cost helps, but won’t be the deciding factor.