Desk.com (discontinued) vs. Google Forms

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Desk.com (discontinued)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Desk.com was a helpdesk, ticketing, and customer support product offered by Salesforce, and oriented towards the needs of small businesses. It is no longer sold and support has been discontinued. Salesforce recommends its modern Service Cloud as a replacement.N/A
Google Forms
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Google Forms is an app for creating forms and surveys, and is part of Google Apps for Work. The product focuses on ease of use; the interface is similar to a document editor, with drop down lists of options and drag and drop question re-ordering. Users can embed images and video into surveys. Users can also program the question flow with custom logic. Google sends users basic summaries of the survey results automatically, or users can export the raw survey results data and analyze it via…N/A
Pricing
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Features
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Survey Format & Appearance
Comparison of Survey Format & Appearance features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Google Forms
6.6
122 Ratings
19% below category average
Survey templates00 Ratings7.7113 Ratings
Themes00 Ratings6.0111 Ratings
Custom logo/branding00 Ratings6.199 Ratings
Survey Content
Comparison of Survey Content features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Google Forms
8.0
120 Ratings
6% below category average
Changes to live survey00 Ratings9.0114 Ratings
Question design help00 Ratings7.297 Ratings
Multiple question types00 Ratings7.9119 Ratings
Survey Logic
Comparison of Survey Logic features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Google Forms
7.0
109 Ratings
17% below category average
Survey logic flexibility00 Ratings7.0109 Ratings
Survey Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Survey Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Google Forms
8.4
121 Ratings
4% above category average
Response tracking00 Ratings8.2119 Ratings
Data export00 Ratings8.1115 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings7.9112 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings9.285 Ratings
Analytics00 Ratings8.493 Ratings
Survey Administration & Security
Comparison of Survey Administration & Security features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
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Ratings
Google Forms
8.1
115 Ratings
6% below category average
Access controls00 Ratings8.0112 Ratings
Compliance00 Ratings8.189 Ratings
Survey Distribution
Comparison of Survey Distribution features of Product A and Product B
Desk.com (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Google Forms
7.7
89 Ratings
5% below category average
Vendor-offered crowdsourcing00 Ratings7.841 Ratings
Respondent restrictions00 Ratings7.587 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Qualaroo
Qualaroo
Score 7.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
Verint Voice of the Customer
Verint Voice of the Customer
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(38 ratings)
9.7
(116 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.4
(14 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(19 ratings)
9.2
(56 ratings)
Availability
1.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(21 ratings)
8.0
(48 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Desk.com (discontinued)Google Forms
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
Once I had to search the logs to find cases and data on a particular keyword, but I was not able to do so as there was no search tool available, nor was there a sort or filter tool. I was totally frustrated as I had to skim through the data to complete my task manually.
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Google
Google Forms is great for simple surveys, such as quick polls, but any logic beyond conditional pages is not supported. Google Forms is best used when the survey participants have and are permitted to use a Google Account to fill out the form; we ran into issues with hospital IT departments. I don't believe there's a better free tool out there than Google Forms, though.
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • Desk.com automatically tracks analytics on all cases coming in and going out.
  • Desk.com helps prevent multiple people from working on the same case. However, it does allow us to assign the case to someone else if we feel that person is more qualified to address the case.
  • Desk.com has very few bugs or server issues that we've seen. This helps prevent any delays in communicating with our customers.
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Google
  • Live results: When a user completes the form the results are added instantly.
  • Easy to create: Google Forms has a simple interface that allows for a wide range of question types. Google will even try to guess the question type based on the question (but this can be overridden).
  • Answers export to Google Sheets: It is easy to have each response to your form add a row to a Google Sheet, allowing for further analysis or processing.
  • Ability to automatically collect email addresses within a domain: If you have a form that has been shared with users in your domain, you can set it to automatically collect the users' email addresses without them needing to type it in. Makes checking whether all students have completed the form easy.
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • Internal knowledge tools are clunky and annoying to access, outside the regular workflow of everyday staff
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in business rules and custom fields
  • Arbitrary and confusing limitations in case handling - for example, if you begin a case as a phone call you CANNOT email the customer from the case. As though no one working at Desk has ever sent a follow-up email...?
  • Not very good for B2B, mid-to-large businesses. Difficult to set business rules based on company information (for example, service level/tier) and nearly impossible to track key stakeholders and get clear insight into the relationship at a high level
  • Reporting tools are clunky, slow, and just all-around pretty useless
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Google
  • Sometimes finding the output -- a Google Sheet with all responses-- is a little difficult. It's also sometimes confusing to figure out how to get back into the Google Form Survey itself.
  • As always, sharing among an institutional Google account and your personal Google account can be frustrating. You have to make a copy and can't share across the two different accounts very easily.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
We will be very likely to renew our contract with Desk.com. It is easy to use, and provides us with everything we need to keep our customers and employees happy. They have also been very helpful in catering the application to our specific and unique needs, including working across brands and adding specific content for our products
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Google
I will definitely renew my use of Google Forms because I really like the ease of use and the number of tools that Google forms provide. I also love that I can administer a test in real-time and get results in a timely manner
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Usability
Discontinued Products
Desk.com and Salesforce Service Cloud's usability is seamless to get up and running, administer, and scale across the organization. It allows us to get up and running in days rather than weeks and has transformed our customer support teams globally into efficient, world-class teams. The best practices that the Salesforce and Desk.com teams provide are also very valuable, as we have the right case studies and tips to implement right away in our organization.
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Google
Overall ease of use for staff, volunteers, and adult learners, and easy to get reports and to share reports via Sheets. As a free tool, it does more than expected. Easy to change the look and brand it to your organization, or just make it more fun, depending on what you want to use it for.
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Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
We've never had a problem with Desk.com's availability.
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Google
In the years I've used GoogleForms I've never ran into any issues with the reliability or availability. Google is a gigantic company with essentially limitless resources which makes it very easy to trust that I will continue to be able to enjoy the same reliability I've come to know and expect from GoogleForms
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Performance
Discontinued Products
Fast, responsive, gorgeous, and fun. It's always run like a thoroughbred for me.
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Google
One of the things that comes as a benefit of the lack to create complex logic branching and truly custom design is that there isn't lot of room to bog down the software. GoogleForms has always loaded just as fast as my internet service and device would allow it. I'm not sure about front end integrations or integrations into the form itself, as I've never explored it, but on the backend, I've never had any issues with integrations channeling from GoogleForms from the GoogleForms's end of things.
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Support Rating
Discontinued Products
Their support leaves much to be desired. They do not respond quickly and do not follow up with feature requests. There is also a lack of on-demand or live training available for the teams to use as they learn a new tool. Because there is so much customization, a lot of questions do come up regularly.
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Google
We haven't used much official support for Google Forms. However, because it is so widely used, there are a ton of articles and guides available online to help administrators of varying technical abilities to work through problems that arise. Additionally, Google provides an official support forum where there are discussions with other users as well as Google developers that can help address issues if needed.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
As I stated earlier, implementation of Desk.com went more smoothly than most. The resources in the "Support Center" are fantastic, and I never ran into anything that left me stumped, angry, or disappointed.
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Google
Google Forms doesn't really require "implementation": simply log into GDrive and create a survey! You can configure settings per survey to, for example, automatically write responses to a GSheet.
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Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
Overall, it performs a lot better than all three combined, with a lot fewer glitches and a lot more user-friendly and user experience efficiency. Any new link that needs to be done, takes a lot less time to execute on desk compared to the three others. Simply advanced when it comes to execution this platform is.
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Google
Although both platforms offer similar functionalities, Google Form has a personal advantage and it is the impeccable integration with the different applications of the Google suite, this allows to make use of all of them in a transparent way, which in the work environment allows to perform work efficiently and without affecting the quality of it.
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Scalability
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Google
GoogleForms lacks the ability for complex logic branching and the ability to truly design it in a custom manner. It's pretty obvious when you land on a GoogleForm that it is in fact a GoogleForm. This rating solely reflects the lack of flexibility which in turn makes it something that wouldn't usually be scaled. That being said, if needing to scale a simple solution, GoogleForms would be up for the job.
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Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • Better customer service and employee efficiency when dealing with cases
  • It's so universal, meaning that everyone can use it and it's easy to understand.
  • The only negative impact is that our IT department who is assigned tickets has responded to customers instead of to the local reps and we have to ensure they know to change the email if it's assigned to them.
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Google
  • High positive impact and return of investment; easy to use and seamlessly integrated with current Google Drive and Suite
  • Ability to create surveys on demand and quickly, saving time and energy
  • Easy to train others in using Google Forms so that there is not a bottleneck of knowledge
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ScreenShots

Desk.com (discontinued) Screenshots

Screenshot of Desk.com ConsoleScreenshot of Desk.com Issue ScreenScreenshot of Desk.com Reporting and Analytics