At this year’s Zoholics UK 2025, one of the biggest and most anticipated announcements was the new Zoho One Unified Customer Portal. This is a game-changer for businesses and their customers, designed to solve a problem that has long been a source of frustration in the Zoho ecosystem.

The Problem: A Fragmented Customer Experience

Before this launch, businesses using multiple Zoho apps to interact with their customers faced a significant challenge. While Zoho's apps are powerful individually, their customer-facing portals were disjointed. A customer might need to manage their invoice in Zoho Books, a support ticket in Zoho Desk, and a project in Zoho Projects, but each of these was a separate experience.

This created a mess for everyone:

• Customer Confusion: Customers had to remember multiple URLs and different sets of login credentials. This led to a bad user experience and delays in getting issues resolved.
• Operational Headaches: For businesses, managing these disparate portals was a hassle. It was difficult to get a complete view of a customer's activity and maintain consistent branding across every touchpoint.

The need for a single, seamless gateway was clear.

The Solution: A Single, Unified Portal

The new Zoho One Unified Customer Portal directly addresses these pain points. It's a new hub that consolidates all customer interactions into one place, offering a truly cohesive experience.

Here’s what makes this a huge step forward:

• One URL, One Login: Customers now only need to remember one URL and one set of credentials to access all their interactions with your business, no matter which Zoho app is involved.
• Unified Admin Panel: Businesses get a single, centralised control panel to manage all customer contacts, applications, and portal customisations.
• Seamless Data Flow: The portal supports automated migration of existing portal data from apps like Zoho CRM and Books, making the transition smooth for both new and existing users.
• Extensive Customization: Businesses can now fully brand the entire portal, from using a custom URL to matching their company colours, logo, and even the names of the apps within the portal.

The best part? This isn't just for Zoho apps. The portal is designed to be extensible to non-Zoho applications, including custom apps built with Zoho Creator.

What to Expect from the Launch

The initial release is a strong start, with early access available to Zoho One customers. The first wave of supported apps includes Zoho CRM, Books, Inventory, and Billings, with more to follow, including Zoho Desk expected next month.

There are a few important considerations to keep in mind:

• Pricing Remains Separate: While the portal is unified, it does not change the pricing model. If a customer needs access to three different apps, you will still pay for the respective licenses for each app.
• Internal UI Consistency: For now, the internal user interface of each app within the portal will retain its original look and feel. Zoho has stated that they will work on unifying the UI across all products over time.
• Creator App Limits: If your organization hits the user limit for a specific Creator app, the unified portal will allow new users to sign up, but they will not be assigned access to that specific Creator app.

The Zoho One Unified Customer Portal is a major leap forward, simplifying the digital experience for customers and streamlining management for businesses. It’s an exciting new chapter for the Zoho One ecosystem and a clear indication of Zoho's commitment to customer feedback and platform consolidation.