Encircle vs. Google Forms

Encircle is the best field software we have ever used. The designer must have worked in the field because every challenge we face has been addressed in the software. The ability to provide our Customers so many types of reporting in real time helps keep our company in the forefront of our Industry.

Google Forms works really well when you need to quickly gather information and store it in a standardized format. It also works well if your organization is already using other Google products.

If you don't use other Google products, another service may be a better fit for you. Additionally, if you need your forms to be highly customized for marketing purposes, for example, you might have an easier time with other tools.

That being said, Google Forms is well supported and is highly flexible and would likely work well for many companies.

Incentivized

• Real time reporting from the job site.
• Very detailed drying reports for all of our water losses
• Interactive reports for our customers including photos and videos.
• Excellent content listing and photography options.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Sometimes it takes a long time to load the job at the site.
• As long as the internet signal is strong the software works beautifully. You can work offline in those cases where the signal is not good or not there at all.

• 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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Google Forms is a very intuitive and easy to use tool, it is not necessary to have a complex knowledge to create advanced forms, it is enough with the functions and aids that the tool offers for the creation of these, even children and students can do it, also the way to export the data is really simple, simply an incredible tool.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Google has a support team but it isn't the most helpful with Forms. I find most of my answers by searching online and watching tutorial videos. I would recommend utilizing online resources before contacting their live support team for help. Just make sure that they are recent videos or directions. Google is constantly updating their interfaces so it is easy for things to get out of date

Incentivized

They fail to have the same features and customer service

We have also used FormAssembly, which is far more advanced with security, analytics, and functionality, but is also more expensive and takes a greater resource investment to train others to use. While FormAssembly can provide a lot more features, and is definitely the better choice for more complex surveys, forms, and applications, Google Forms is a very approachable and easy to use platform. We would recommend Google Forms for smaller businesses with simpler processes, and everyday use for any organization.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Increase in Average Job Size
• Major Increase in the QUALITY of our documentation
• The technician say it takes longer to do the handwritten paperwork, but I would argue that they weren’t doing it the correct way before and if they were, it’s actually faster using Encircle.

• It's difficult to track ROI since Google Forms is used less formally
• [The] positive impact is the actionable results we receive from surveys
• [The] impact is highly dependent on how well the questions are asked, and how seriously the survey is taken by employees

Incentivized