Zoho Makes Enterprise Apps Free For Coronavirus-Impacted SMBs

Zoho, which provides business-related apps for customer service, marketing and more, is letting companies use its products for free during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a press release.

The company has launched the Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP), which will help primarily the 20,000 Zoho clients that are small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with 25 employees or less. Those companies will be able to use Zoho’s apps for free for three months.

Zoho’s tools include assistance with customer service applications, marketing, collaboration and production tools, back-office work and accounting — all of which will be available for free.

This is compounded on Zoho’s other recent announcement of the Remotely software, which aids in the transition to helping people work from home. That software was introduced last month after the company had to cancel its Zoholics summit.

Because of the coronavirus, working from home has become the default for many businesses trying to avoid forcing people to spend time around others for too long for fears of spreading the highly contagious virus.

Zoho, as such, has seen over 5,000 new clients for its Remotely software since rolling it out a few weeks ago.

Zoho Co-Founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu said the move to make the services free came from the stress and hurt most businesses are under as a result of the global pandemic. He said it was “even worse” because no one knew when things would be back to normal, so anything Zoho or other companies could do to alleviate the difficulties was of paramount importance.

One Zoho customer, Violet Press, has benefited from the help, according to the company’s founder and designer, Violet Warner. She said every part of Violet Press has been affected by the virus, so the company was gracious of Zoho to extend free rent to them for a few months.

As the virus takes its toll on the world, SMBs have had to close due to restrictions from government attempts to stave off the spread, so people have had to band together to find other ways to support smaller businesses.