The May update of Zoho Analytics clearly shows the platform's direction: more useful AI, clearer dashboards, and broader capabilities for connecting data from various company areas. This is important because, in business analytics, an advantage is built today not just by the charts themselves, but by the speed of getting from a question to a decision.
What does business gain?
The biggest change concerns Ask Zia – the AI assistant in Zoho Analytics. Zia can now not only answer questions but also transparently show the reasoning process that led to the answer – step by step, from interpreting the question, through identifying the correct data, to the final result (the Agent Thinking Process feature). From the perspective of companies that want to use AI without losing control over result interpretation, this is one of the strongest elements of this update.
Zoho has also improved dashboard usability. Maps now react to user filters and can display region names in the local language, while KPI widgets allow for quicker recognition of whether a result is above or below target. In practice, this means less clicking, less manual preparation of report variants, and faster situation assessment by managers.
Integrations are another important area. New connectors for SendGrid and Intercom allow combining marketing and service data with sales data, making it easier to view company performance in one place instead of several separate tools. Exporting large datasets now runs in the background, so users don't waste time waiting for the system to become available.
Zoho Analytics vs. Competitors
Compared to competitors, Zoho Analytics stands out by offering many features in a single, more accessible model. Zoho provides a free plan (up to 2 users and 10,000 data rows), and paid plans start from $25 per month per account (Basic plan, 2 users) – billing is per account/workspace, not per user. Additionally, it offers over 500 native connectors, AI as standard, and deployment options in the cloud, on-premise, and private cloud.
Tableau – excellent for advanced analysts, but more expensive and operationally demanding; data preparation requires a separate Tableau Prep, and many tasks that are more integrated in Zoho need to be configured manually.
Compare Zoho Analytics vs. Tableau (link to our analysis)
Power BI – a natural choice for companies deeply embedded in Microsoft, but becomes less convenient outside that ecosystem; full report creation is still most conveniently done via the desktop application, and collaboration and advanced AI features require higher plans (Pro: $14/user/month, Premium Per User: $24/user/month).
Compare Zoho Analytics vs. Power BI (link to our analysis)
Qlik – analytically powerful, but more difficult to implement and less user-friendly for business teams without strong technical support; complexity and costs increase with scale.
Compare Zoho Analytics vs. Qlik (link to our analysis)
Looker - integrates well with the Google Cloud environment, but outside of it, it often proves too technical and costly; data modeling requires its own language, which limits the autonomy of business users.
Compare Zoho Analytics vs Looker (link to our analysis)
Why consider Zoho Analytics?
Zoho Analytics is now a serious alternative to competing platforms that charge several times higher rates. For organizations looking to quickly connect data from CRM, marketing, and customer service – without building a heavy analytical environment – the platform's development direction makes perfect sense.
Our experience shows that companies that came to us after previous attempts with more expensive tools most often cite the disproportionate cost-to-benefit ratio and implementation expenses as the main reason for the switch.
At Z Partners, we help companies implement Zoho Analytics so that dashboards answer specific management and sales questions. Write to us (link below) – we'll schedule a brief call and show you how it works live.
