Highrise vs Zoho CRM (2026)

TL;DR

• Pick Zoho CRM if you are choosing a CRM in 2026 — it is actively developed, free for up to 3 users, and paid from $14/user/mo.
• Highrise is not available to new customers. If you are an existing user, staying is safe but capped; migrating buys you a roadmap.

Highrise is a legacy product — say it plainly

There is no diplomatic framing for this. Highrise was 37signals' lightweight CRM, built by the team behind Basecamp, and it stopped accepting new customers in August 2018. It sits in permanent maintenance mode: the roughly 10,000+ businesses already on it retain access, and 37signals has publicly committed to keeping those accounts secure and online, but no new features are being built and none will be.

That makes this comparison unusual. There is no scenario in which a team evaluating CRMs today picks Highrise, because they cannot. What follows is for the existing user asking whether "still works fine" is good enough.

Zoho CRM is the opposite in every structural way: actively developed, aggressively priced, and part of a 50+ app ecosystem. It handles lead and contact management, multiple deal pipelines, workflow automation, email campaigns, and forecasting, with Zia — Zoho's AI assistant — layered in for scoring, predictions, and anomaly detection at Enterprise and above.

What Highrise did well, and what replaces it

Highrise's virtue was restraint. It tracked contacts, conversations, notes, and follow-ups, and refused to become a sales platform. Non-technical users learned it without training. That design philosophy is why people still miss it.

Zoho CRM does not replicate that. Its breadth is the point, and its own documentation and user reviews acknowledge that the volume of features and configuration options makes initial setup feel complex. A Highrise user migrating to Zoho will encounter modules, blueprints, and settings they never wanted. The compensating argument is that everything Highrise never had — automation, pipeline management, AI, reporting — is now available when the business needs it, at a price that does not punish you for growing.

If pure simplicity is the requirement, Zoho is not the closest match; a focused tool like Bigin or Pipedrive is. But if the goal is a supported product with room to grow, Zoho gives more capability per dollar than nearly anything in the category.

Cost: grandfathered rates vs current market

This is the one dimension where Highrise still genuinely wins, and it is worth being honest about. Long-time Highrise customers locked in legacy pricing that no longer exists anywhere. Any migration is a cost increase.

Zoho CRM softens that better than most: free for up to 3 users with no time limit, then $14/user/mo Standard, $23 Professional, $40 Enterprise, and $52 Ultimate billed annually. For a two- or three-person shop, the free tier may make migration cost nothing at all. For a ten-person team, Standard runs $140/month for a product that is being improved rather than preserved.

The real question: risk, not features

Staying on Highrise is not reckless. 37signals is a stable, profitable, privately held company with an unusually good record of honoring commitments to customers, and the "we will keep the lights on" promise is credible.

But a frozen product is a ceiling. It will not gain AI, it will not gain modern integrations, and it will not adapt to whatever compliance or security expectations arrive next. Every year on Highrise widens the gap you will eventually have to cross, and migrations get harder as data accumulates. If you can see your process outgrowing contacts-and-notes within two years, move now rather than later.

Who should pick what

• Anyone evaluating a CRM for the first time in 2026 → Zoho CRM (Highrise is unavailable).
• Existing Highrise user whose needs have not changed at all → staying is defensible.
• Team that now needs workflow automation or multiple pipelines → Zoho CRM.
• Cost-sensitive team of three or fewer → Zoho CRM's free tier.
• Business already using Zoho Mail, Books, or Desk → Zoho CRM.
• Team that wants Highrise-level minimalism → neither; look at Bigin or Pipedrive.

Bottom line

Highrise is a discontinued product, and no honest comparison can end elsewhere. If you are not already a customer, you cannot become one, so Zoho CRM wins by default — and it happens to be a strong default, delivering near-Salesforce depth at $14 to $52 per user per month with a genuinely usable free tier. If you are an existing Highrise user, 37signals will keep your account running, but you are on a product with no future development, and the migration only gets more expensive the longer you defer it. Zoho is the pragmatic landing spot if you need capability; a focused tool is the better match if you only ever loved Highrise for its simplicity.