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New Zoho Developer and Zoho Marketplace Gives Developers the Tools to Create, Buy and Sell Custom-Built Applications
[July 27, 2016]

New Zoho Developer and Zoho Marketplace Gives Developers the Tools to Create, Buy and Sell Custom-Built Applications


Zoho (News - Alert) today announced the launch of Zoho Developer, a program that provides independent software vendors (ISVs) and application developers the tools and resources to create extensions and build custom applications. Zoho also launched Zoho Marketplace, an online store where users can buy extensions and custom-built applications and developers can sell them commission-free. Together, Zoho Developer and Zoho Marketplace establish a platform that caters to Zoho's current and rapidly growing base of over 20 million users worldwide.

"With Zoho Marketplace and Zoho Developer, Zoho evolves from a product suite into a platform," said Raju Vegesna (News - Alert), chief evangelist of Zoho Corp. "On one hand, Zoho Marketplace empowers our customers with tools, extensions, and applications that complement their Zoho products so they can focus on their business. On the other hand, Zoho Developer gives ISVs and software developers a platform to develop solutions, and access to Zoho's vast user base to whom they can sell these solutions."

Zoho's launch partners include Devart, Docusign, Eventbrite, Exigo Group, MailChimp, Plivo, SurveyMonkey, Ytel, Zendesk and other major SaaS (News - Alert) vendors who have introduced several ready-to-deploy solutions on Zoho Marketplace. Most of these extensions are available for free.

Zoho Marketplace

The launch of Zoho Marketplace meets the demands of users who want to integrate third-party applications with Zoho applications, extend Zoho applications with additional features or automate new processes with custom applications. Zoho Marketplace is contextually integrated within supported Zoho applications, so users can browse through a wide variety of solutions, find the ones that best fit their requirements and install them without leaving the application. Users may also browse and buy directly from Zoho Marketplace.

Currently, Zoho Marketplace offers extensions for Zoho CRM and custom applications. Zoho Marketplace also offers a number of Zoho-developed extensions for Zoho SalesIQ. Going forward, Zoho Marketplace will offer more extensions available for other Zoho products.

Zoho Developer

Zoho Developer is a single developer program across Zoho, available to Zoho developers, partners, ISVs, IT services companies and domain experts to develop and distribute their extensions and custom apps.

Develop a solution. As part of the program, developers get the Zoho Developer tool, which lets them build extensions for Zoho CRM now and other Zoho products in the future. To create custom applications, developers have access to Zoho Creator. They also get access to Zoho's extensive array of open REST APIs. Finally, developers have access to a quick-start guide, video tutorials, the Zoho Developer forum and other self-service and live support resources.

Distribute it for a profit. Developers can submit their extensions for review before publishing them to the Zoho Marketplace. Once approved, developer solutions can be sold or distributed for free on Zoho Marketplace. Zoho takes no commission from Zoho Marketplace sales. Developers can also privately share the custom solutions they build for individual clients rather than sell them through the Zoho Marketplace.

"The typical marketplace operator takes a significant cut of each partner sale, up to 30 percent or more in some cases," said Vegesna. "We don't buy into that model. Our developers are doing us a great service by strengthening our ecosystem. We don't believe they should pay us a commission on top of it. That's why we don't charge a cmmission on marketplace transactions."



Launch partners

Some of Zoho's major partners for Zoho Marketplace include:


DocuSign is changing how business gets done by empowering more than 225,000 companies and 85 million users in 188 countries to sign, send, and manage documents anytime, anywhere, on any device, with trust and confidence. The DocuSign Extension for Zoho CRM provides users with the e-signature functionality required to quickly complete approvals and agreements from anywhere, and lets users securely access and sign their documents. DocuSign enables access to send, sign and manage important documents from any device.

Eventbrite is the world's largest event technology platform, which powers two million events around the globe each year. The Eventbrite Extension lets users instantly sync their Eventbrite data such as Events and Tickets, and store them as Campaigns and Contacts respectively. This removes the task of users individually porting their data manually into their CRM and opens up the possibility of connection with their Eventbrite customer base by means of a mass email campaign or a feedback request directly from within Zoho CRM, just by the click of a button.

Screen Magic. SMS Magic Extension for Zoho CRM is created by Screen Magic Mobile Media Pvt Ltd, one of Zoho's official launch partners for the release of the marketplace. It is meant for users to run bulk campaigns with personalized SMS texts across shortcode, toll-free, 1-800 and landline numbers.

SignEasy is a cloud-based, mobile-first solution to electronically sign and fill documents from smartphones, tablets and web. With the SignEasy Extension for Zoho CRM, sales professionals can send documents for signature to their customers directly from Zoho CRM, letting them sign and send the completed documents from any device. The completed documents can be easily accessed later from the respective contact's profile or the Completed Documents section in Zoho CRM.

Zendesk builds software for better customer relationships. Sales and support teams are two of the most crucial touch points for any business. Zoho CRM further enhances it's capabilities with an extension for the Zendesk customer support software, which offers sales professionals more contextual information about their customers, directly synced from their customer support software. Users can sync their Zoho CRM contacts, leads and accounts into their Zendesk account, integrate client support ticket data from Zendesk, or create new tickets for the corresponding Zoho CRM records.

Availability

For more information on the Zoho Marketplace, please visit marketplace.zoho.com. To create your own extensions using Zoho Developer, please visit developer.zoho.com, and for more information on Zoho, visit http://www.zoho.com.

Additional Zoho Resources

Zoho news coverage: http://www.zoho.com/inthenews.html

Zoho press releases: http://www.zoho.com/press.html

Zoho videos: http://youtube.com/zoho

Zoho blogs: http://blogs.zoho.com

Zoho on Twitter (News - Alert): http://www.twitter.com/zoho

Zoho on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zoho

About Zoho

Zoho is THE operating system for business - a single cloud platform with all the necessary applications to run a business entirely from the cloud. Businesses can acquire and manage customers using Zoho's marketing, sales and customer support applications - Campaigns, CRM and Desk -and can then empower employees to create, store and distribute content on the cloud with Zoho's productivity and collaboration applications - Office, Mail and Docs. Additionally, businesses can run their own operations on Zoho's finance and human resources applications - Books, People and Recruit.

More than 20 million users around the world across hundreds of thousands of companies rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses - including Zoho itself. A business can choose to run the entire Zoho suite or just a single application. Zoho applications are available directly through zoho.com, or through an ecosystem of hundreds of worldwide Zoho partners.

Zoho is a division of Zoho Corp., a privately-held and consistently profitable company, with more than 4,000 employees. Zoho is headquartered in Pleasanton, CA (News - Alert) with international headquarters in Chennai, India and offices in Austin, London, Tokyo, and Beijing. For more information, please visit http://www.zoho.com.


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