Good news but it would be much better if Zoho would be committed to open source its software.

Corporates (even governmental companies/ departments) don't usually go for Open-Source since the code may not be maintained and there may not be any support.

This is why FOSS systems like Linux and OpenOffice are still not mainstream in the corporate world (though Linux rightfully dominates in the backend server market), whereas Microsoft rules the corporate world with its expensive software (Windows and MS-Office).

Plenty of server-side FOSS is mainstream. Maintainability of the code is not the problem — there exist commercial support options. On desktop FOSS often has inferior usability for non-tech users due to different incentives for product development. If you ask anyone in the legal or accounting departments of a corporation, they will demand Microsoft (not even Google) not because it’s more expensive or has terms and conditions, but because they just can’t feel themselves productive when using alternatives. LibreOffice is not bad, but it isn’t great too.

> since the code may not be maintained and there may not be any support.

Isn't this an argument in favor of open source? Zoho may not be around forever, but open source code is, and you could just pay someone to work on it.

Try getting support from google

Just curious: why is committing to open-source an expectation? Is it a moral standard you hold of businesses or is it because of the govt adoption?

Open-source has many technical advantages over closed-source, in addition to the moral ones (which are quite powerful themselves).

Being able to inspect the software you use makes you able to trust house it works, and fix it at points where it's not working; those were the first motivators for creating the FLOSS movement.

There's also the advantage that in the long term you don't depend on the company developing the software; if the company goes under, or simply stops supporting the software, you can hire a different batch of developers to carry on maintaining it. That's the reason why many big contracts require that the software vendor puts the source code under escrow.

In reality, closing the source of software only benefits the seller; everybody else benefits from having it available. With FLOSS, you get that for free.

Being a closed-source stack, their CVE disclosures [0] paints quite a sorry picture, unless, of course, they’ve built such mind-blowing security that it makes Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce and Google combined look like amateurs.

[0] https://www.cvedetails.com/vendor/14145/

You are criticising them for their lack of CVEs?

And to top it off you add Microsoft into your mentions, that just had a disastrous security bug, that was just mind blowing?

I get what you are saying but the FANG evangelism gotta stop. They are just like other huge companies. When was the last time your bank got hacked?

So you are comparing a Indian company (worth ~$12 billion) to worldwide giants worth hundreds of billions (or even trillions!) that make billions in a few days?

As of October 2025, Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company) has a market capitalization of approximately $2.999 trillion. This figure represents the total market value of its outstanding shares.

Zoho is interesting in the sense that it is one of the few email providers I know of that lets you use a custom domain with one of their free plans.

Very startup friendly. Also free POP/IMAP, so you are not locked in.

That used to be the case. You can still get free email hosting, but POP/IMAP needs a paid plan.

Zoho's plans are very affordable and friendly for startups.

That affordability, quality and service is why Indian government is migrating its IT dependencies from Microsoft to Zoho.