Zoho Cliq

So why look at Cliq when Slack and Teams exist? Because of the bill.

Standard is $16.20 a month for up to 25 people. That's the whole team, not each person. With 25 of you it works out at about 65 cents a head.

Honestly, that alone would do it for a lot of small teams. But it isn't a cut-down chat app either. There are channels, threads, read receipts, voice and video messages, calls and meetings with screen sharing.

It's on a lot of screens, too. Mac, Windows, Linux, phones, tablets, even your watch and your car. Zoho's mobile page says Siri or Google Assistant will read your messages out while you drive.

Already on Zoho? Then it's easier still. Cliq plugs into Zoho Projects, Desk and Mail, and it comes bundled with Zoho Workplace and Zoho One, so you may already be paying for it.

Got a tinkerer on the team? Every plan, free included, lets you build bots, slash commands and widgets.

The plans are an odd shape. Standard is one flat price, but Professional and Enterprise charge per person and bill for at least 10.

So a team of six that wants guest chat or roles and permissions pays for ten seats. And a team of 26 has outgrown Standard, so it's Professional at $1.80 each, which is about $47 a month where it used to be $16.20.

The free plan has a memory problem. Only 10,000 messages are searchable. Ten people sending 50 messages a day get there in a month.

Free meetings also end at 60 minutes. And there's no call recording, and no channels with people outside your company, until you pay.

The one AI feature on the plan list, chat summaries, needs Professional or Enterprise.

And the phone app has a past. App Store reviews from 2020 and 2021 are full of crashes and notifications that wouldn't behave. Recent ones are much happier, but run a trial on your own phones before you move everyone over.

Start free. It covers the whole team, with 100 GB of storage between you and meetings for up to 100 people.

Standard is $16.20 a month on yearly billing, or $18 month to month, for up to 25 users. You get unlimited search, call recording, 24-hour meetings and channels you can share with people outside the company.

Professional is $1.80 a person a month on yearly billing, or $2 monthly, with a 10-user minimum. That adds guest chat, tasks, roles and permissions, live events and chat summaries, and storage goes up to 100 GB each.

Enterprise is $3.60 a person, or $4 monthly, again for at least 10. It adds audit history, eDiscovery and data loss prevention. We'd skip it unless someone in legal or IT is asking for those.

Paying yearly saves 10%. There's a free trial of the paid plans as well. The home page says 15 days and the pricing FAQ says 14, so call it two weeks.

Check what you already pay for, too. Cliq is included in Zoho Workplace, People Plus and Zoho One.

Zoho Cliq has 4.8 on the App Store from about 6,500 ratings.

Who's happy? People whose company already runs on Zoho. One had spent eight years on it, moved the company to Slack, and found they missed having chat built into the CRM, Desk and Projects screens they already had open.

A startup founder who'd always been on Slack or Teams gave it a go on a friend's say-so. Their verdict: nicer than Slack, not as good as Teams, and so much cheaper that it won.

The one-star reviews are mostly old. In 2020 and 2021 people wrote about the phone app crashing, notifications ignoring their settings and menus they got lost in.

There's one from 2024 worth knowing about. A reviewer said conference calls weren't working for them, and that their company was moving to Microsoft.

And Hacker News? Nothing. We couldn't find a single comment about Cliq there from the last two years.