A role defines the position of the user(s) within the organizational hierarchy. These allow you to permit and restrict data access for the users in your CRM.
A profile defines the set of permissions and accessibility within the Zoho CRM functionality.
Roles define who you are in an organization and what data you can access, and Profiles define what you can do in Zoho CRM with that data.
You can only create roles if you have more than one user in your Zoho CRM account. The Administrator Profile can customize areas such as the Company Details, Fiscal Year, Business Hours, Territory Management, de-duplicate records, Organization Email, and manage currencies.
Users with the Administrator profile will have access to all the data irrespective of the Role assigned to the user. This profile should be reserved for the CRM Admin and upper-level management. Do not give this Profile to all users; doing so is a security vulnerability.
The Standard Profile is a good start, and you have the option to clone this profile and customize it for your users; just be sure there aren’t too many profiles to manage them effectively.
Profiles will help add additional levels of security for your users. For example, if your data sharing settings are set to “Public Read/Write/Delete,” but you do not want your users to delete a record, set that restriction in their Profile.