Small-business CRM
Bigin by Zoho CRM: the complete independent guide
Bigin is Zoho's small-business CRM: a pipeline, your contacts, your emails and calls, and little else. That restraint is the point. This guide explains who Bigin suits, what each edition adds, how to set it up in a day and how to know when you have outgrown it.
- Best for
- Owners and teams of 1 to 10 leaving spreadsheets
- Editions
- Free, Express, Premier, Bigin 360
- Billing
- Per user, monthly or yearly
- Free plan
- Yes, for a single user with a record limit
- Setup time
- An afternoon to a few days
What it is
Bigin is a pipeline-centred CRM made by Zoho for small businesses that find a full CRM too heavy. You see your deals as cards moving across stages, each linked to a contact and a company, with the emails, calls, notes and tasks attached.
It deliberately leaves out much of what Zoho CRM offers: no leads module to convert, no territories, no forecasting, no deep customization. In exchange a new user understands the screen in minutes, and the price per user is a fraction of a full CRM.
Bigin is not limited to sales. Its pipelines can track anything that moves through stages: customer onboarding, job applications, orders to deliver, support follow-ups. Many small teams run two or three such pipelines side by side.
Who it fits
A good fit when
- You track customers in a spreadsheet, a notebook or your inbox, and deals slip through.
- You are one to ten people and nobody has time to administer software.
- Your sales process fits in five to seven stages that everyone can name.
- You want calls, emails and messages logged against the customer without extra tools.
Look elsewhere when
- You need approval steps, enforced processes or complex automation. That is Zoho CRM territory.
- You have several teams with different permissions, territories or product lines.
- You need forecasts, advanced reports or many custom modules.
What it does well
- Pipelines
- Drag deals from stage to stage, filter by owner or amount, and see at a glance what is stuck. Higher editions allow several pipelines for different processes.
- Contacts, companies and history
- Each contact shows every deal, email, call, note and file in one timeline, so anyone on the team can pick up a conversation.
- Built-in communication
- Connect your mailbox, make and log calls through supported phone providers, and handle messaging channels such as WhatsApp from the same screen.
- Simple automation
- Workflows create follow-up tasks, send an email when a deal changes stage or notify a colleague, without the complexity of a full rules engine.
- Forms and mobile app
- Web forms send enquiries straight into a pipeline, and the mobile apps let you update deals and log calls from the road.
Editions and pricing explained
Bigin is sold per user in four editions and is among the least expensive CRMs on the market. We describe what each edition is for and leave current prices to Zoho's price list.
| Edition | Made for | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Free | A solo owner trying it out | One user, one pipeline and a limited number of records. |
| Express | A small team with one process | More records and pipelines, workflows, email integration and web forms. |
| Premier | Teams running several processes | More pipelines and automation, more custom fields, stage transition rules, multiple currencies and higher limits across the board. |
| Bigin 360 | Teams pushing Bigin to its maximum | The highest limits and the most advanced features Bigin offers, for teams not ready to move to Zoho CRM. |
Our rule of thumb: start with Express, and move to Premier when you want a second or third pipeline with its own automation. If you find yourself considering Bigin 360 for a team of more than ten, compare it with Zoho CRM Standard or Professional before deciding.
How to set it up properly
Name your stages
Write the five to seven steps a deal goes through, in your own words. Avoid stages that describe a hope rather than a fact: 'proposal sent' is a stage, 'interested' is not.
Import contacts and open deals
Clean the spreadsheet first: one row per person, one column per piece of information. Import companies and contacts, then only the deals that are still open.
Connect email and phone
Link each user's mailbox so messages appear on the contact automatically. Add telephony if you sell by phone.
Add two or three automations
A follow-up task when a deal enters a stage, a reminder when a deal has not moved for a week, a thank-you email when it is won. Stop there for the first month.
Make it the single place
From day one, a deal that is not in Bigin does not exist. Review the pipeline together once a week, on screen.
Rather have a specialist do it? Talk to TECHMA
Common problems and how to fix them
The pipeline fills with dead deals
Close lost deals instead of leaving them open, with a reason. A weekly review where every stale card is either moved or closed keeps the pipeline honest.
Half the team still uses the spreadsheet
Retire the spreadsheet on a fixed date and make it read-only. Two systems side by side always end with the old one winning.
Emails are not showing on contacts
Each user must connect their own mailbox, and the contact's email address must match the one in Bigin.
You keep hitting what Bigin cannot do
That is the signal to upgrade, not to work around it. Zoho provides a migration path from Bigin to Zoho CRM that keeps your records.
Adding AI
Bigin includes a share of Zoho's Zia assistant for tasks such as writing and summarizing emails, depending on the edition.
For a small team, the most useful AI is often outside the CRM: an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT connected to Bigin through Zoho's API, which prepares a morning list of deals to chase and drafts each follow-up from the history. On a clean pipeline, that takes little setup and saves real time every day.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between Bigin and Zoho CRM?
Bigin is built around a simple pipeline for very small teams. Zoho CRM adds leads, forecasting, enforced processes, detailed permissions and deep customization. Bigin costs much less and takes hours rather than weeks to set up.
Is Bigin free?
There is a free edition for one user with a limited number of records. Teams start with the Express edition.
Can we move from Bigin to Zoho CRM later?
Yes. Zoho offers a migration from Bigin to Zoho CRM that carries over contacts, companies, deals and history. Plan to review your pipeline and fields at the same time.
Is Bigin included in Zoho One?
Yes. Zoho One includes both Bigin and Zoho CRM, though a team normally uses one or the other.
Want it set up right the first time?
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