Migrate from Basic Online CRM to Zoho CRM

Basic Online CRM Contact records map to Zoho CRM Contacts with name, email, phone, and address fields transferred directly. Any non-standard fields land as custom properties in Zoho, created during the pre-migration schema phase. Email uniqueness is validated against Zoho's duplicate detection rules during import. The Zoho Contact module is available on all Zoho editions including Free.

Basic Online CRM Companies map to Zoho CRM Accounts. Companies are a flat list without subsidiaries or hierarchies in Basic Online CRM, so they import as top-level Accounts in Zoho. We use company name as the dedupe key. Accounts must be created before any Contact import if Contacts reference them, to satisfy Zoho's lookup relationship requirements.

Basic Online CRM Deals map to Zoho CRM Deals with deal name, amount, stage, and expected close date transferred directly. The key migration complexity is the Deal-to-Contact association: Basic Online CRM stores the linked Contact as an internal numeric ID rather than name or email. We cross-reference the ID against the exported contact list during the transform phase and recreate the association in Zoho by Contact name match. If a Deal references a deleted Contact, we flag it as an orphaned Deal for customer resolution.

Basic Online CRM pipeline stages map to Zoho CRM Deal Stage values. We capture the stage name, order, and probability from Basic Online CRM and create matching stages in Zoho before Deal import. Stage probability percentages are set to match Basic Online CRM values. The Zoho stage configuration is available from Standard tier up.

Basic Online CRM Notes are free-text, untyped entries that map to Zoho CRM Notes. We preserve the note body as plain text. Timestamps that were not explicitly set in Basic Online CRM are lost because the platform does not surface record-level creation dates in exports. Notes attach to the parent Contact, Account, or Deal record by name match. No attachment content migrates because Basic Online CRM does not store file attachments natively.

Basic Online CRM task records are simple title-and-status items with no enforced due dates or assignees. They map to Zoho CRM Tasks with the task subject as title and status mapped to Zoho Task Status values. Owner assignment is set to the customer-designated Zoho User at bulk import time because Basic Online CRM does not surface owner assignment in its exports. Zoho Tasks are available on all editions including Free.

Basic Online CRM custom fields are stored as raw strings with no type metadata. We migrate them as-is and ask customers to confirm intended data types (date, number, dropdown, multi-select, lookup) before Zoho schema creation. Date fields in particular may appear as 'Jan 15 2024' in one export and '15/01/2024' in another; we standardise these during the transform phase but ask customers to validate mappings before final import. Custom fields are not available in Zoho CRM Free edition; customers on Free must upgrade to Standard or above before migration.

Basic Online CRM does not surface record-level owner assignment in its exports. We ask customers upfront which team member should own migrated records in Zoho CRM and apply bulk owner assignment during write-back. The customer's admin provisions Zoho Users before migration (or during migration if the owner count is small). Owner resolution is a prerequisite step before Deal import because Zoho Deals require an OwnerId at insert time.

Basic Online CRM does not store file attachments natively. Any documents referenced in Notes or Deal descriptions must be sourced externally and re-uploaded after migration. We include a pre-migration checklist item asking customers to identify and inventory any such files. Zoho CRM supports attachments on all standard modules from Standard tier up, with file storage limits varying by edition.

Basic Online CRM CSV exports truncate at approximately 5,000 rows per download. For instances above this threshold, we split large exports into multiple CSV files, process each batch independently, and merge them before writing to Zoho. Zoho's Data Migration Wizard accepts CSV files up to 5 GB each with a total cap of 25 GB and a limit of 200 files per migration job. We handle the file naming convention (underscore-C suffix for custom modules) and ZIP packaging per Zoho requirements.