Bonita is an open-source business process and workflow management platform created by the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science. It is available as a free community edition or as a commercial subscription product.
N/A
Zoho Creator
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Zoho Creator is a low-code application development platform for building enterprise-class applications that run on mobile, tablet, and web. It is designed to allow users to create custom forms, configure workflows, build pages, and deploy apps quickly.
$8
per month per user
Pricing
Bonita Platform
Zoho Creator
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$8
per month per user
Professional
$20
per month per user
Enterprise
$25
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bonita Platform
Zoho Creator
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
Add-ons:
Customer Portal: $100/month onwards
Premium Support : 20% of license fees
Enterprise support: 25% of license fees
Very good : to design and execute business processes with just a few data. You can use BDM and it’s easy. It’s really easy to get data from external applications using custom connectors. less appropriate : if you use complex BDM tree objects, using them in form can significantly decrease performance. Be careful to follow guidelines that are given in Bonita Documentation.
A specific incident is where we were proud using zoho , was when we challenged a MNC who has more than 10k employees, for providing a same service matching them technically, where we are a small organisation in size comparing them having around 70 employees. The less appropriate is where , implementing accounting system properly integrating with the existing operatoins.Need lot of improvement on this Also more easy integration with Zoho Books
Bonita seems particularly suited for processes requiring a great deal of human interaction. Its user model allows you to control access to business processes in a fine-grained way. This allows for business processes to move smoothly between users and services as the process advances.
The definition and usage of custom forms from the latest version of Bonita seems particularly powerful. It allows for a thorough customization of the look-and-feel and does not require complex developments.
The web interface and administration section have greatly improved in the latest versions. Installation and configuration of processes has become more flexible and more structured. The administration section gives a good view on failed processes, allowing to analyse problems in an efficient way.
The ease of creating data collecting forms. Anything from creating a form to import all your old excel documents to creating a mobile on-site application where you can input data directly into the app. For a company like us this can help to eliminate the pen and paper approach to recording data.
Reporting features are excellent. Slicing and dicing the data from your forms to create any report is possible. Think of it has filters on steroids. The ability to combine data from different forms is a huge plus.
Dashboards! Zoho Creator has so much depth to it that it's easy for one to get lost if they are not as familiar with Creator, for example an exuctive or decision making manager. This is where dashboards come in. Admins can build intuitive and smart dashboards that combine all the relevant KPI's that a manager needs to see.
There is a learning curve beyond the boot camps that needs to be addressed with more structured curriculum.
The full stack technologies are industry standard, but these [are] challenging to learn and could use a learning path and orientation. There's probably opportunity for third-parties here to help with learning and adoption.
In C6, the new setup of permissions is not logical. Admins now have access to every application rather than specific applications, which impacts data confidentiality.
In C6, the new feature for having multiple environments is very limited as it does not work for ZOHO Creator applications that are linked to other Zoho Creator applications in the same workspace - which is not logical at all.
In C6, the revised permissions for Developers do not allow the developer to assign permissions to users or to publish forms, reports, pages, etc....which again is not logical.
Today Zoho Creator is included in our current plan from Zoho One, but if it was needed to pay apart it should be done because the software we created became very important for our team. The use of Zoho Creator contributes to endorse the Zoho One subscription year after year.
Bonita Platform has allowed us to develop GUI relatively fast using its UI Designer while being able to seamlessly integrate our business logic in Java in a BPMN2 process diagram. It gives a nice productivity boost but still requires programming know-how to be able to deliver the final solution to your business problems.
Its quite easy if one has the need, interest and passion to build applications and solutions through low-code. One example would be, that my finance head who has absolutely nothing to do with tech and apps, is now able to create apps and manage Zoho Creator all by himself. So its all about the interest and how much time we put to learn the tool. Having said that, its quite easy to learn the tool and create anything that's within our scope of knowledge.
In an earlier comment, I mentioned Zoho's excellent uptime. I have been using the system for over 6 years, and have experienced only momentary outages, and of those, only a hand full over the years. It is extremely reliable
Engine itself is efficient enough for most cases I dealt with. It can also be extended by clustering. I have done performance tests with JMeter and only managed to induce the crash of... JMeter. If there are efficiency issues they usually concern bad design/implementation of created apps or bottlenecks in integrated systems. Although I have met two cases with efficiency loss.
1. Java 7 related PermGen saturation caused by big number of installed apps (there is no jar dependency reusal between apps option).
2. Big number of waiting event handlers in processes stresses the database.
We do not integrate Zoho with other systems at this time, but rarely are searches, database exports, record edits or creation tasks ever slow enough to notice. It is quite usable
I recommend Zoho Creator very often. A lot of companies go big earlier than they need to and spend way too much on SalesForce & Marketo. I worked for a small company with some limited budget that pivoted to sell it's product to the Enterprise. Zoho Creator was incredibly easy to set up, intuitive to use, and contains all the most essential features that most users need and seek in SalesForce. We integrated with MailChimp & Unbounce and were able to be incredibly useful in acquiring leads, nurturing them, and tracking pipeline in Zoho Creator. Our small sales team found it very easy to use and loved it.
Even if it is a easy to use platform, it got some issues on the implementation that could easily handle by IT teams. In our scenario this team don't exist anymore, and the business/marketing team had their expectations that it was quickier to be implemented. So, consider a professional help on this implementation could be cost more (of cource) but it would be helpful to manage the issues and expectations.
The Bonita platform is by far the most complete and flexible solution as a BPM suite with the added advantage that the Community edition is usable for production deployment. From a cost perspective, Bonitasoft licenses the subscription edition per server with no limitations as to hardware, users, processes, etc.
I could use Excel to do what I need but prefer to use Zoho Creator for the main reasons of being very secure, fast, easily accessible, cloud based, etc. The CSV import option is a huge time saver, I can import CSV or TXT files directly into Zoho Creator in seconds
Respect of BPMN standard over the long term. Good enhancements by Bonitasoft for new use cases, for example the introduction of a real form editor even if it has been technically difficult to manage. Once done though, we have far greater possibility of human interaction.
Zoho is incredibly versatile. Much thought was put in to the way the platform functions. I've yet to face a situation where Zoho would not be able to do what I needed. That being said, because of its power, it can also be a bit intimidating technically. Simple needs are simple. More complex needs are ... more complex! Overall, it's a powerful, robust platform
