One module of a suite, or one thing on its own

Zoho SalesIQ is the visitor engagement module of a much larger suite, and its own site describes it as an all in one live chat and analytics platform for communicating with every site visitor at every stage of the customer lifecycle. The integrations it names first are the neighbouring Zoho products: CRM, Desk, Campaigns, Analytics and Bookings, among more than thirty listed. That adjacency is the argument for it, and it is a strong one.

The plan structure is built around three ceilings rather than one. The free plan carries three operator licences, ten thousand visitors a month, one hundred operator chat sessions a month and three profiles. Basic adds fifty thousand visitors, a thousand operator chat sessions, one chatbot and twenty five thousand bot chat sessions. Professional lifts that to a hundred thousand visitors, unlimited operator chat sessions, five chatbots and fifty thousand bot sessions. Enterprise reaches two hundred thousand visitors, ten chatbots and two hundred thousand bot sessions. The page states that the paid plans are priced per operator, and additional visitor tracking, brands, chatbots and bot sessions are sold on top.

Underneath the bot is a real development platform. Zobot has a codeless drag and drop builder for people who want flows, and SalesIQ Scripts for people who want control, described by Zoho as a low code bot building platform for rule based and flow based chatbots written in Deluge, which they expand as Data Enriched Language for Universal Grid Environment. Plugs are connectors that define a custom action or integration through Deluge or webhooks and then appear inside the codeless builder as ordinary cards. Widgets pull data from outside systems into the chat window itself. Mobilisten covers Android, iOS and cross platform mobile builds.

Answer Bot is the piece closest to anything here: a ready to deploy knowledge base chatbot that answers visitor queries using your own articles and FAQs with no manual training, and which Zoho now describes as running on a language model of your choosing. Bots deploy to websites, mobile applications and the messaging channels including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram and LINE. There is a fifteen day free trial with no credit card. What is missing from all of that is a price, and the reason is in the notVerified list below rather than guessed at here.

Written to be used rather than to be waved at. If any of these describe you, this is the wrong product and the rest of the page will not change that.

• You already run Zoho. Stop reading and buy SalesIQ. A visitor record that lands beside the customer record in CRM, and a chat that becomes a ticket in Desk without anybody wiring it, is worth more than every feature argument on this page put together.
• You want to program the bot rather than configure it. SalesIQ Scripts, Deluge, Plugs and webhooks let a bot read from and write into other systems, take actions, and render data from outside applications inside the chat window. Askably cannot call anything, look anything up, or write anywhere, and no setting changes that.
• The ceilings are the point. Two hundred thousand bot chat sessions and two hundred thousand tracked visitors a month on Enterprise is a scale of traffic that nothing on this price list is built for, and buying a small product for a large site is a false economy.
• Your visitors are in an app or a messenger. Mobilisten covers Android, iOS and cross platform mobile builds, and the bot deploys to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram and LINE. This product answers on your own website and on nothing else.
• Somebody in your organisation has an opinion about which language model touches customer data. Zoho now lets you supply your own for Answer Bot. If that choice has to be yours, that is a procurement requirement and procurement requirements do not bend.

• You can read the price before you talk to anyone. Four flat figures, published: $0, $29, $99 and $299 a month. SalesIQ's paid plan prices did not render on its own pricing page, which turns a small purchase into a conversation with a salesperson.
• There is nothing to build. Point it at your site or upload your files, choose a match threshold, paste one script tag. No flow to draw, no cards to wire, no scripting language and no connector layer between you and a working assistant.
• Each answer carries numbered references back to the passages behind it, so what the assistant said can be checked against what your documents actually say without anyone opening a bot builder to find out why.
• Operators are not the unit of anything here. There is no operator licence, no seat and no per person charge, so the invoice does not change when somebody joins or leaves.
• Appearance is entirely yours including custom CSS, the launcher runs in a closed shadow root with the panel in its own frame, and our name is off the widget on every paid tier at no extra charge.

Read off their own site on that date, quoted narrowly. Prices and packaging in this category change often, so treat this as a snapshot and check both before you decide.

Listing this is more useful than filling it in. Every line here is something that was not clearly published, or was behind a sign-up.

• No numeric price for Basic, Professional or Enterprise appeared in the pricing page content. The page carried plan names, allowances and trial buttons where the figures would sit, so no Zoho price is quoted anywhere above.
• Add on prices for extra operator licences, extra brands, extra chatbots and extra bot chat sessions are offered on the page but no figure for any of them was readable.
• Whether Zoho branding can be removed from the chat widget, and on which tier, was not addressed on the pricing page.
• How a bot chat session differs from an operator chat session in the counting was not defined on the pricing page itself.

Why is there no Zoho price on this page?

Because we could not read one. Their pricing page rendered plan names and allowances but no numbers for the paid tiers. Quoting a figure from a third party review site would be guessing with extra steps, so we left the gap visible instead.

Can this connect to a CRM the way SalesIQ does?

No. There is no contact record, no CRM sync, no ticket creation and no lookup into any other system. It answers from material you indexed and takes a name and an email when somebody wants a person.

Do I need to build a bot flow to get started?

No, and there is nothing to build if you wanted to. There is no flow builder, no card, no scripting language and no connector. You index material, set a threshold and install one script tag.

Does it deploy to WhatsApp or a mobile app like Zobot does?

No. Your own website only. There is no messaging channel, no social channel and no mobile software development kit at any tier.