On 15 July 2026, Zoho announced Zoho Classes 2.0 — “an AI-powered academic LMS for teaching, learning, and student success.” It landed with the kind of coverage that makes every institute owner in India stop and ask the same question: should we be looking at this?
We build a competing platform, so read this with that in mind. But we've tried to write the page we'd want to read: what actually shipped, what it costs (Zoho doesn't print the numbers), and — the part most coverage skips — who it's built for. The short version: Zoho Classes 2.0 is a serious academic LMS aimed at schools, colleges, universities and government institutions. If that's you, especially a government institution in India, it deserves a genuine look. If you run a coaching institute, the fit is a different conversation. Everything below is based on Zoho's own published materials and launch coverage as of 17 July 2026.
What actually shipped
AI Course Builder
Drafts a course from a syllabus, lesson plan or topic — Zoho says in under 30 seconds — producing lesson outlines, reading material, video lesson outlines, assignments with rubrics and adaptive practice tests.
24/7 AI Tutor
A student-facing tutor deliberately fenced to the enrolled course and curriculum subjects, rather than an open-ended chatbot — a sensible design choice for schools.
AI grading with teacher review
Auto-grades MCQs and coding assignments, but requires teacher review before feedback reaches students. Zoho cites savings of roughly 150 hours per semester.
22 Indian languages
AI-generated content and assessments across 22 scheduled Indian languages — the most genuinely differentiated thing in the launch, and hard for global LMS vendors to match.
Academic administration
Student lifecycle from enrolment to completion, at-risk identification, institutional dashboards, syllabus and curriculum management, attendance, and low-code Micro Apps you can build yourself.
Free for government institutions
No product licensing cost for all Central and State Government schools, colleges and universities in India, plus a free tier for any individual teacher with up to 100 students.
This is a relaunch, not a debut
Zoho Classes first launched in May 2020, when Sridhar Vembu positioned it as part of Zoho's COVID response — free for government schools, ₹250 per student per year for private ones, with live sessions, assignments and tests. It grew features through to April 2021, and then its public changelog went quiet for about four and a half years.
What happened in between, per Zoho, was a rebuild: VP Dev Anand Ramasamy says he personally met at least a thousand teachers over roughly five years of development. New Student and Faculty apps appeared in October 2025, and the 2.0 launch followed in July 2026. A nice detail that speaks well of them: Vidya Mandir, the school that beta-tested the original in March 2020, is still a named customer in the 2026 press release.
Note the pricing model flipped along the way — from ₹250 per student per year in 2020 to per-instructor-per-month in 2026. That change matters more than it sounds, and it's worth understanding before you compare quotes.
What Zoho Classes 2.0 costs
There are three tiers: Free for Teachers (up to 100 students), Standard and Pro, billed per instructor per month, with yearly billing advertised as saving up to 23% and currency options in USD, INR, EUR and GBP. On top of that, Zoho charges Indian government schools, colleges and universities no product licensing cost at all — a real commitment that deserves credit.
Here's the quirk: Zoho doesn't publish the Standard and Pro numbers as text. The pricing page loads them dynamically and marks them so search engines won't show them in snippets — which is why searching “Zoho Classes 2.0 pricing” returns articles instead of a price. At launch, one Indian outlet reported ₹500 per teacher per month for private institutions. Treat that as a press report rather than a confirmed rate, and check Zoho's pricing page directly.
The structural point for an institute: per-instructor pricing scales with your faculty count. If you're a 60-teacher school, model that carefully against flat-rate platforms — Vacademy, for comparison, publishes flat plans from ₹4,999/month with no per-student and no per-teacher fees.
Who it's actually for
This is the part the launch coverage mostly skipped, and it's the only question that matters when you're deciding. Zoho's own homepage names the audience: government institutions, universities, colleges and K-12 classrooms. The feature set backs that up — course outcome and programme outcome mapping, UGC/AICTE accreditation compliance, NEP 2020 alignment, competency-based medical education workflows. That's an academic product built for academic institutions, and it's a strong one.
The words “coaching” and “tuition” don't appear. Zoho positions Classes 2.0 against Canvas, Google Classroom and Moodle — academic LMSes — not against coaching-institute platforms. That's not an oversight; it's a deliberate choice about which buyer they serve.
So if you're a government school, a college or a university — particularly one that would benefit from teaching in Marathi, Tamil or Bengali — Zoho Classes 2.0 might be one of the best-value decisions available to you in Indian edtech right now. We're comfortable saying that.
If you run a coaching institute, read this part
A coaching institute is a business that has to win its students every single season. That makes your software requirements different from a school's — a school's students are already enrolled; yours have to be convinced. As of 17 July 2026, the following are not documented in Zoho Classes 2.0's public materials. The product is days old, so read these as “not announced,” not “impossible” — but they're the questions to put to their sales team:
- ·An admissions CRM — lead capture, follow-up automation, counsellor routing, conversion analytics. (You can build admissions apps yourself with their low-code Micro Apps.)
- ·White-label branded apps — students use Zoho-branded Student and Faculty apps; your institute's name on the app icon isn't documented.
- ·Live classes — not listed in the 2.0 materials, notably, since the 2020 app had live sessions.
- ·Fee collection and GST invoicing — the 2020 app collected fees via Zoho Checkout; nothing equivalent appears in the 2.0 launch.
- ·WhatsApp automation and telephony — no mentions anywhere; for Indian institutes, WhatsApp is the parent channel.
- ·Competitive-exam engines — NEET practice tests appear among their templates, but a dedicated JEE/NEET/MHT-CET-pattern engine with sectional cutoffs and variant papers isn't documented.
- ·Public course catalogue and checkout — students join through an institutional account, so selling a course to a stranger on the internet isn't the model.
None of that makes Zoho Classes 2.0 a weak product. It makes it a product for a different buyer. An academic LMS is judged on how well it teaches enrolled students; a coaching platform is judged on that plus whether it fills your batches, collects your fees and carries your brand.
One caveat on everything you're reading right now
Zoho Classes 2.0 is two days old at the time of writing. There are no independent reviews on G2, Capterra or SoftwareSuggest, no Reddit threads, and the new apps have a handful of ratings between them. Nearly every article published so far — including the ones reporting the ₹500 figure — is working from the same press release.
So nobody can honestly tell you yet how it performs at 5,000 concurrent students, how responsive support is, or whether the AI tutor holds up in Marathi. Anyone who claims otherwise is guessing. If you're evaluating, get a trial, load your own syllabus, and judge it yourself — that advice applies to us too.
Where Vacademy fits — and where it doesn't
We won't pretend to be the answer to every question. If you're a government school in India, Zoho's free licensing is an offer we don't match, and their 22-language AI is ahead of ours. Take it.
But if you run a coaching institute, a training academy or an edtech business — where admissions, brand and fees decide whether you grow — that's the product we build:
- Admissions CRM with multi-channel capture, WhatsApp automation and an AI voice agent that calls and qualifies enquiries
- Branded Android, iOS and web apps under your institute's name — included, not a tier upgrade
- Live classes, exam-pattern mock tests, proctoring, variant papers and coding assessments
- Fee collection with UPI + GST invoicing, EMI plans and parent alerts
- Flat plans from ₹4,999/month — no per-student, no per-teacher fees
Related reading
Frequently asked questions
What is Zoho Classes 2.0?+
Zoho Classes 2.0 is an AI-powered academic LMS that Zoho announced on 15 July 2026. It's a rebuilt version of the original Zoho Classes app from 2020, aimed at government institutions, universities, colleges and K-12 schools. Headline features include an AI course builder that drafts a course from a syllabus, a 24/7 AI tutor restricted to enrolled curriculum, AI-assisted grading with teacher review, and AI-generated content in 22 scheduled Indian languages.
Is Zoho Classes 2.0 free?+
It's free in two specific cases. Zoho says there is no product licensing cost for all Central and State Government schools, colleges and universities in India, and it's free for any individual teacher with up to 100 students. Private institutions pay for Standard or Pro plans, billed per instructor per month.
How much does Zoho Classes 2.0 cost for private institutions?+
Zoho does not publish its Standard and Pro prices as static text — the pricing page loads them dynamically and marks them so search engines don't show them in snippets. The plans are billed per instructor per month, with yearly billing advertised as saving up to 23% and currency options in USD, INR, EUR and GBP. One Indian outlet reported ₹500 per teacher per month for private institutions at launch; treat that as a press report and confirm current pricing with Zoho directly.
Is Zoho Classes 2.0 good for coaching institutes?+
Zoho aims it elsewhere. Its own materials name government institutions, universities, colleges and K-12 schools as the audience, with academic features like course/programme outcome mapping and UGC/AICTE accreditation support. Coaching institutes and tuition centres are not a named audience, and the workflows coaching depends on — admissions lead management, branded apps, fee collection, WhatsApp automation, live classes — are not documented in the 2.0 launch materials as of 17 July 2026.
Does Zoho Classes 2.0 have live classes?+
Live classes are not listed in Zoho's Classes 2.0 homepage or launch press release, which is notable because the original 2020 app did support live sessions. The product is new, so this may reflect what has been announced rather than what will exist — check with Zoho if live teaching is central to your institute.
Can I get a white-label app with Zoho Classes 2.0?+
A white-label or institute-branded app is not publicly documented. Students and faculty use Zoho-branded Student and Faculty apps, and the student app requires an institutional account. If your institute's brand needs to be on the app in learners' pockets, that's a key difference from platforms like Vacademy, which publish branded Android, iOS and web apps under your own name.
What's the difference between Zoho Classes 2.0 and Vacademy?+
They're built for different buyers. Zoho Classes 2.0 is an academic LMS for schools, colleges, universities and government institutions, and it's free for Indian government institutions with strong multilingual AI. Vacademy is an operating system for coaching institutes and education businesses: admissions CRM with AI calling, branded apps, live classes, exam-pattern mock tests, fee collection with GST invoicing and an AI content suite, on flat plans from ₹4,999/month.
Sources: Zoho's Classes 2.0 press release and product pages, Zoho's 2020 launch coverage, and Indian trade-press reporting on the July 2026 launch. All claims reflect publicly available information as of 17 July 2026 and may change as the product evolves — verify current features and pricing with Zoho directly.