More than 40% of new migrations to Zoho Workplace during 2021 came from Google and Microsoft, according to Zoho.

SMB customers increased by 40%, mid-size by 36%, and enterprises by more than 20%. This may indicate that the largest organisations are more likely to be rusted-on Microsoft customers.

Zoho believes the growth is due "to increasing business demand for contextual applications with utmost standards for user privacy as well as rising costs from other collaboration platform providers."

According to Info-Tech Research Group senior research analyst Thomas Randall, "Zoho is unique amongst its productivity suite competitors for not rolling out a cost increase for 2022, nor removing their freemium offerings.

"Other providers have justified price add-ons and increases to reflect the additional value they believe their customers have received over the pandemic for using their tools. Yet freemium offerings and price consistency have been central for many customers and businesses to stay afloat during lockdowns. Now that such offerings are in short supply, Zoho will likely see increased demand for their Workplace services as customers seek strong ROI for productivity and collaboration software."

Zoho chief evangelist Raju Vegesna said "Persistent long term execution has been a hallmark of Zoho, and our investment in Zoho Workplace attests to that. The market has seen vendors offering hundreds of seats for free to gain market share and eventually pulling the plug.

"All along, Zoho Workplace has been consistent in delivering customer value and continued high speed of innovation. Our ad-free approach and respect towards user privacy will be a pleasant surprise to users coming from alternative 'free' services."

Queensland-based software company printIQ's global director of sales Adrian Fleming said "Zoho is definitely playing a big part in our success. The main benefit is that we communicate better as a five-country organisation.

"Prior to using the tools in Zoho Workplace, our business processes were very disconnected and nothing spoke to each other.

"Zoho Cliq has been the biggest surprise. We use it extensively and I think without it, our communication would have been a lot more difficult. We've become very reliant on the product and the tools within Zoho Workplace, they've been a godsend."

Zoho Workplace is available in three editions: Standard is $4.40 per user per month (paid annually), and Premium – with extra storage and additional features – is $9.35 per user per month. Zoho Mail is $1.65 per user per month.

In related news, Google just introduced the Workplace Essentials Starter Edition. It includes Chat, Docs, Drive, Meet, Sheets and Slides – but not Gmail. A business email address is required to sign up.