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Zoho Cliq

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Zoho Corporation · cliq.zoho.com

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Zoho Cliq: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Zoho Cliq: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Zoho Cliq at a glance

Vendor
Zoho Corporation
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Zoho Cliq 2/5, the mean of 6 judges. Zoho Cliq is a cloud business-messaging service from Zoho Corporation. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 13 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 15 Oct 2026. all sources

Zoho Cliq alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Team Lead

Weighted verdict

Runs a distributed team and needs the tool people actually open. Wants threads that stay readable, search that finds last spring's decision, and channels that can be tidied without losing history. Unmoved by feature lists that do not survive a busy Tuesday.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Team Lead

Panel median The Team Lead This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Team Lead
Channels, threads & search 2 of 5 2 of 5
Encryption & access control 3 of 5 3 of 5
Retention, discovery & co-determination 2 of 5 2 of 5
Deployment & data custody 1 of 5 1 of 5
Integrations & extensibility 3 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 1 of 5 0.5 of 5

Channels, threads & search

How this is scored

The daily surface: channel model, threading, mentions, files, and whether search can find a decision made eighteen months ago.

0 — Flat group chats with no threads; search covers recent messages only, and history is capped.

3 — Channels and direct messages with basic search, but threading is awkward or absent and file handling is a plain attachment list.

5 — Public and private channels, real threads, mentions and reactions, file sharing with previews, and full-text search across the whole history.

8 — Cross-organisation or guest channels with clear boundaries, message editing history, pinned and saved items, search with filters by channel, person and date, and a documented history limit or none at all.

10 — The archive is a working knowledge base: search that ranks well across years, threads that stay readable, channel lifecycle management (archive, rename, merge) without losing history, and export of a conversation in a form a human can read.

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The Team Lead

Channels come in organisation, team, external and personal categories with permission controls over who can post or add people, and unified search spans messages, users, channels and departments with tags to narrow results. The word "threads" appears only where the AI-server page lists what an agent can reach, with nothing on how threads read for a human. I found no public information on mentions, reactions, file previews, search filters by person and date, or any documented history limit, which is exactly what decides whether the archive can answer an eighteen-month-old question. 2 3 8

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Encryption & access control

How this is scored

What is encrypted and against whom, plus who can reach which room. Judged on documented mechanism, since "encrypted" in this category usually means the vendor holds the keys.

0 — Transport encryption only, undocumented; no role model beyond admin, guests indistinguishable from members.

3 — TLS and encryption at rest with vendor-held keys, basic roles, and guest access that mostly works.

5 — The above plus configurable roles per channel, SSO, guest accounts with scoped visibility, and a clear statement of what the vendor can read.

8 — Optional end-to-end encryption for direct messages or private rooms with the trade-offs named, device verification, session management an admin can revoke, and documented key handling.

10 — End-to-end encryption as a first-class mode — documented or open cryptography, cross-device key management that ordinary users survive, identity verification, and the vendor stating plainly what it cannot decrypt.

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The Team Lead

Transport and at-rest encryption are documented in unusual depth — AES 256 with a key hierarchy, six-month rotation, restricted and audited access to the key service, bring-your-own-key through six external key managers, plus role-based access, two-factor and IP restrictions. I found no public information on end-to-end encryption, device verification or admin-revocable sessions, and no plain statement of what the vendor itself can read, so the keys sit with the provider unless a customer brings their own. 3 4 5

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Retention, discovery & co-determination

How this is scored

The archive as a legal object: retention policies, export for discovery, audit, and the monitoring features a works council will ask to have switched off.

0 — No retention policy, no export beyond a manual copy, no audit log, and presence or activity analytics that cannot be disabled.

3 — Manual export of some data and a global history limit, but no per-channel retention, no audit log and no admin control over analytics.

5 — Configurable retention per channel or workspace, admin export in a documented format, an audit log of administrative actions, and status or presence that a user can control.

8 — Legal-hold and eDiscovery export including edits and deletions, retention executed per policy and evidenced, full admin audit trail, and activity analytics switchable off organisation-wide.

10 — Built to pass a works agreement and a subpoena on the same day: granular retention with documented deletion, discovery export a lawyer can use, complete audit, and no individual-level productivity scoring anywhere in the product.

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The Team Lead

Retention policies, eDiscovery and audit logs are each named in a single line on the security page, and archiving of conversations is claimed on the product pages. I found no public information on per-channel retention, legal hold, export of edits and deletions, or whether presence and activity analytics can be switched off. The one export that is documented — emails as EML inside a ZIP — belongs to Zoho Mail rather than Cliq conversations, so a discovery format a lawyer could use for chat is not evidenced. 3 4 7

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Deployment & data custody

How this is scored

Whether the customer can hold their own archive: self-hosting, private cloud, open source, federation, and what an exit actually looks like.

0 — Cloud-only, proprietary, with export limited to a partial archive.

3 — Cloud-only, but with a documented full export in an open-ish format.

5 — A private-cloud or dedicated-instance option, or a self-hosted edition that lags the cloud significantly; full export documented.

8 — A genuine self-hosted edition close to feature parity, or open-source core with a documented upgrade path, plus complete export including files and metadata.

10 — Custody is the customer's: open-source or source-available server, self-hosting supported as a first-class deployment, open protocol or federation, and a migration path in and out that the vendor documents rather than resists.

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The Team Lead

Everything captured describes a cloud service — an admin panel, an Active Directory sync tool, extensions offered across regions — and I found no public information on a self-hosted edition, a private instance or open-source code. Import and export of Cliq user data is claimed but without a documented format or scope. The documented ZIP-of-EML export covers mail rather than chat history, so an exit path for the actual archive is not evidenced. 3 7 9

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Integrations & extensibility

How this is scored

Bots, webhooks, app framework, identity — whether the chat becomes the place work is noticed, and whether that is buildable without a partner agreement.

0 — No API, no webhooks, no bots.

3 — Incoming webhooks and a handful of native integrations; no bot framework, no documented limits.

5 — Documented REST API, incoming and outgoing webhooks, slash commands, a bot account model, and SSO.

8 — A proper app framework with interactive components, event subscriptions with retries, SCIM provisioning, documented rate limits and a sandbox.

10 — A platform: versioned API with a deprecation policy, an app directory or plugin system with permissions a customer can audit, and integrations the vendor maintains rather than lists.

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The Team Lead

There is a genuine platform here: over fifty integrations and flexible APIs are claimed, two fully documented bots with slash commands, widgets, install scoping between organisation and team, per-action consent prompts, and a model-agnostic MCP server exposing channels, threads and roles to external clients. I found no public information on webhooks, SCIM provisioning, documented rate limits or a sandbox, so the extensibility story rests on vendor-built extensions rather than something a customer can audit and build on independently. 3 8 10 11

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where the archive and its metadata live, who the contracting entity is, which subprocessors touch it. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; scored here as this buyer weighs it.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated or non-EU, subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU data residency offered for message content while metadata, search indexes or support tooling remain non-EU, or the contracting entity sits outside the EU.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — notifications, AI features, analytics — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, full subprocessor list published, any non-EU processing named with its legal basis.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, certification published, and a self-hosted option that removes the question.

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The Team Lead

Legal entity, ownership, data residency and subprocessor exposure are all listed as unknown, and I found no public information on where the archive and its search index live or under which contracting entity. The only European signal is an EU support address and EU appearing among extension regions, which is a long way from named infrastructure or a published subprocessor list. 3 8 11

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the annual invoice for their headcount — including the retention, compliance and guest features they actually need — from public pages alone.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A per-user headline exists, but the tier where retention control, SSO or compliance export begins is unstated.

5 — Per-user prices public with billing period stated, but at least one commonly needed capability (unlimited history, SSO, eDiscovery) sits in an unpriced enterprise tier.

8 — Every tier priced publicly with per-user maths, history and storage limits, feature boundaries, minimum term and VAT treatment stated; self-hosted licensing priced too where offered.

10 — Complete price computability: annual invoice derivable for a given headcount and deployment choice, including guest users, storage and any per-instance licence.

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The Team Lead

I found no public prices at all — no per-user figure, no billing period, no indication of which tier carries retention control, single sign-on or compliance export. The only tier information anywhere is poll-count limits naming Free, Standard, Professional and Enterprise plans, which tells me the tiers exist but not what any of them costs, so the annual invoice is a sales conversation. 10

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Zoho Cliq

Is Zoho Cliq European?

Not determined: the vendor’s pages as captured do not say where Zoho Cliq is based.

Where does Zoho Cliq store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026.

Does Zoho Cliq have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 13 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Zoho Cliq?

As of 21 Oct 2026, the panel rates Element (3.5/5), Mattermost (3.5/5) and Stackfield (3/5) highest among the other 19 Business Instant Messaging products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Element (UK / wider Europe). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Zoho Cliq alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

Do you know more about Zoho Cliq? Tell us Report an error on this page

Sources (11)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor page cliq.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Channels, threads & search — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Encryption & access control — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Retention, discovery & co-determination — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Deployment & data custody — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  10. 10 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →
  11. 11 Integrations & extensibility — found from sitemap www.zoho.com Checked 13 Oct 2026 Details →