Companies definitely do and they may have had a hand in the article but I can vouch that most comments here are probably genuine (or maybe I'm just another astroturfer!).
It helps that Zoho's main competitor is GSuite. That's what a lot of us are comparing them against and it's just not very difficult to beat Google's "non-existent unless you spend $millions on ads" support, they could literally have a cat answer support and it'd be an improvement. Anyone who has had to deal with trying and failing to get anything answered by Google and then tried the same with Zoho will have something good to say about them regardless of their product overall.
Zoho's products are also a bit more "traditional" in the way that people on HN tend to enjoy. Their UIs, configuration, features and all aren't very 2024 glittery but they're good for getting shit done and setting stuff up yourself.
And then they're also cheap which HN tends to be sensitive to, here you see many contemplate self-hosting things every time a SaaS increases their pricing. Or write about moving back from Big Cloud to bare metal or Hetzner and co. to save $.
It helps that Zoho's main competitor is GSuite. That's what a lot of us are comparing them against and it's just not very difficult to beat Google's "non-existent unless you spend $millions on ads" support, they could literally have a cat answer support and it'd be an improvement. Anyone who has had to deal with trying and failing to get anything answered by Google and then tried the same with Zoho will have something good to say about them regardless of their product overall.
Zoho's products are also a bit more "traditional" in the way that people on HN tend to enjoy. Their UIs, configuration, features and all aren't very 2024 glittery but they're good for getting shit done and setting stuff up yourself.
And then they're also cheap which HN tends to be sensitive to, here you see many contemplate self-hosting things every time a SaaS increases their pricing. Or write about moving back from Big Cloud to bare metal or Hetzner and co. to save $.