Use Zoho CRM to create leads

Available on: Professional, Business plans

Zoho CRM is a sales and customer relationship platform that helps teams track leads, contacts, and deals.

When you connect your form to Zoho CRM, every submission creates a new lead in your Leads module. You can also update existing leads, set lead attributes like Lead Status straight from your form, and attach uploaded files as links on the lead.

Form Setup

Formspree maps your form inputs to Zoho lead fields by their name attribute. Matching ignores case, spaces, and underscores, so Lead Status, lead_status, and Lead_Status all mean the same thing.

Required Fields

name=“email”

Every submission needs an email address. Formspree uses it to check whether the lead already exists in your CRM. While the plugin is enabled, a form without an email input rejects its submissions.

<input name="email" type="email" required />

name=“name” or name=“lastName”

Zoho requires a Last Name on every lead, so add either a single name input or separate firstName and lastName inputs. Formspree saves a one-word name as the Last Name.

<input name="name" type="text" required />

Optional Lead Fields

These inputs map to the standard Zoho lead fields:

Input name	Zoho lead field
firstName, lastName	First Name, Last Name
company	Company
phone	Phone
website	Website
message	Description
street, city, state, zip, country	Address fields

Mapping Other Zoho Attributes

Formspree maps any other input whose name matches a Zoho lead field, by either its field label or its API name. This covers standard fields like Mobile, Industry, Annual Revenue, and Designation, along with any custom field you’ve added to your Leads module.

To find a field’s API name in Zoho CRM, go to Settings > Developer Hub > APIs and SDK > API names and pick the Leads module.

The same mapping lets you set lead attributes your visitors never see. Add a hidden input named after the Zoho field with the value you want:

<input type="hidden" name="Lead_Status" value="Not Contacted" />
<input type="hidden" name="Lead_Source" value="Website" />

Formspree checks and converts each value before sending it to Zoho:

• Picklist values have to match exactly. For dropdown fields like Lead Status, Rating, or Industry, the submitted value has to be one of the options in your Zoho CRM. Formspree puts any other value in the lead’s Description, so you keep the data.
• Formspree tags every lead with a Lead Source of “Formspree” when your Leads module has that option. Otherwise, set Lead Source from the form using one of your existing options.
• Formspree converts numbers, dates, and checkboxes to match the Zoho field type. A checked checkbox with no value maps to true.
• Any input without a matching Zoho field goes into the lead’s Description as a field: value line, below the message.

File Uploads

If your form has a file input, Formspree attaches the uploaded file to the lead as a link. The file itself stays hosted on Formspree, and Zoho stores the link to it.

Connecting to Zoho CRM

Open your form in the Formspree dashboard, go to the Plugins tab, and select Zoho CRM.

Click Connect to open Zoho’s sign-in page. Formspree supports Zoho accounts in every region (US, EU, India, Australia, Japan, Canada, China, Saudi Arabia, and UK).

Review the requested permissions and click Accept. The Zoho account you sign in with needs access to a Zoho CRM organization.

Back in Formspree, choose whether to Update existing leads, then click Connect to enable the plugin.

You can change the Update existing leads setting anytime by opening the Zoho CRM plugin again.

Update Existing Leads

Formspree looks for an existing lead with the same email address before creating a new one. An email address that’s new to your CRM always creates a new lead.

With the setting off, which is the default, Formspree skips a submission whose email already belongs to a lead and leaves your CRM untouched. Turn it on and Formspree updates that lead with the submission data.

Troubleshooting

• Submissions are rejected with a validation error. The form is missing an email or a name input, and the plugin requires both while it’s enabled.
• The plugin asks you to reconnect. The Zoho session expired, or someone revoked Formspree’s access. Open the plugin and click Connect again.
• Zoho created the lead, but the submission shows an error about attachments. Zoho couldn’t attach the uploaded file link. Formspree still saves the lead, so open the submission in your dashboard to get the file.