IBM Business Automation Workflow vs. Zoho Creator

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Business Automation Workflow
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow is a solution that helps users automate digital workflows to increase productivity, efficiency and insights — on premises or on cloud.N/A
Zoho Creator
Score 8.9 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
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho 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
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho Creator
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsAdd-ons: Customer Portal: $100/month onwards Premium Support : 20% of license fees Enterprise support: 25% of license fees
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho Creator
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho Creator
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
20% above category average
Zoho Creator
-
Ratings
Dashboards10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom reports10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
18% above category average
Zoho Creator
-
Ratings
Process designer10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Process simulation10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Business rules engine10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
SOA support10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Process player10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Support for modeling languages10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Form builder10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Model execution10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
3 Ratings
20% above category average
Zoho Creator
-
Ratings
Social collaboration tools10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
21% above category average
Zoho Creator
-
Ratings
Content management10.04 Ratings00 Ratings
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
-
Ratings
Zoho Creator
8.1
17 Ratings
5% below category average
Visual Modeling00 Ratings6.816 Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces00 Ratings8.716 Ratings
Platform Security00 Ratings8.817 Ratings
Platform User Management00 Ratings7.917 Ratings
Reusability00 Ratings7.917 Ratings
Platform Scalability00 Ratings8.617 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho Creator
Small Businesses
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Square 9 Softworks
Square 9 Softworks
Score 9.7 out of 10
Quixy
Quixy
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
Score 9.1 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho Creator
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(8 ratings)
9.4
(23 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
7.5
(17 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.7
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Business Automation WorkflowZoho Creator
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Have your process first on paper Its important to first document the process before venturing into BPMS. It will save a lot of pain and heartaches. A BPM tool is no magic bullet, it merely automates your process. Its upto you to put visibility and tracking on top of it. Provide monitoring so that you get a chance to improve your process continously. BPM is not an application If you are trying to build an application with BPM, chances are that your are alraedy failing. BPM must be a strategic initiative for an organization. Yes, you build Dashboards, Reports and other software in BPMS, however you do it at a process level not at an application level. http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/bpm-initiative.html Know the difference between process data and business data http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/lombardi-best-practices.html http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2012/02/bpm-system-architecture.html
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Zoho
If you are using some application of Zoho and want some more functionality into it, Use Zoho creator to develop a separate app as per requirement and integrate it with your Zoho App. Small organization can use creator to make apps but it can be used for small range of storage, For Large organization , it may be not feasible.
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Pros
IBM
  • System does a great job normalizing business process and automating order processing tasks. Before TeamWorks, the process was much more manual and more expensive staff ($65k to $70K) were required to manage the process. Since implementing TeamWorks, we need much lower-skilled workers to manage order processing.
  • System ensures that we have consistent data across all systems.
  • Rules engine is really the “company playbook” – it is the heart and soul of how the company works. It handles thousands of orders per day
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Zoho
  • Accountability for each employee work which is very vital for any organization
  • Making operations very simple even that a simple lay man would be able to perform detailed work like a pro
  • Data tracking in live was made possible
  • Using proper Manpower for the work they are apt.
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Cons
IBM
  • The system gets crashed when many instances go into the queue stage. The system even crashes and sometimes restarts automatically when the load on the server increases. We had to develop a separate software for this and maintain the same.
  • We cannot manipulate the data during run time. It is difficult to develop user-interfaces with complex functionality.
  • In order to consume external services that follow HTTP protocol, we need to use IDE for that, and consuming services from IDE takes a lot of time to give a response.
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Zoho
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
This particular decision will be made by other people. Overall IBM BPM is the best BPM engine that I have worked with. It is implemented at our company and IT and business are already somewhat familiar with it. Therefore if asked I will recommend renewal as long as the price is reasonable.
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Zoho
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.
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Usability
IBM
• The system is easy enough to use but, by definition, is a complex tool. However, they have done a good job generally balancing tool complexity / capability with usability. When comparing to MS Biz Talk, for example, Biz Talk has less functionality but is actually harder to use.
• Software is very flexible. For somebody with the right technical background, it’s quite easy to write some Java code to overcome any hurdles or make the product do what is needed
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Zoho
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.
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Reliability and Availability
IBM
No answers on this topic
Zoho
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
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Performance
IBM
No answers on this topic
Zoho
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
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Support Rating
IBM
Issues can be raised through tickets and it works based on the priority of the issue. The Support Team response is also good and the solution is provided in a short span of time. In a case where the issue is serious, they try to find out the root cause and provide an alternative for it.
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Zoho
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.
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In-Person Training
IBM
• Attended on premise sysadmin training for 4 days, 8 hours per day. Although further follow-up training was available, I never felt the need to go back. Training was very hands-on with real modeling (rather than just following a manual). Very effective.
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Zoho
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
• Very satisfied – not too difficult at all.
• We had a consultant available as part of our contract, but we didn’t really need to use (except for some advice on ActiveDirectory and single sign-on)
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Zoho
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.
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
Pega Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product. However Pega, falls short on integration centric capabilities and very rigid to customize. On the other hand IBM comes with array of products which suits needs of varying degree. Advanced integration is solved by BPEL Process Server which has support for state based patterns and mediation. Dynamic rules and event management can be solved with WODM, Cloud to on-premise connectivity with Cast Iron, Enterprise gateway and security usecases with DataPower, Social BPM with IBM BPM , WODM, mobify with Worklight. Pega has a little bit of eveything here and there. It solves the dynamic rule management, brings out the flavor of Social BPM and mobility with Antenna ( I guess) and predictive analytics as well in one single suite. There are certain usecases which needs to have a little bit of everything, however this little bits and pieces of functionality when its blows, Pega would have problems to scale. With IBM its a bit nightmare to maintain a variety of technologies, however you can wish to go for one without the other and go for something only when you truly need it. Pega vs IBM Its difficult to pick a winner. In nutshell when you want a full scale BPM with rich integration capabilities go for IBM BPM. On the other hand if you hava mature integration capability already, Pega can yield quick results for you as well. Pega's strength is its methodology. IBM BPM's strength is integration. Actually you can't go wrong with both in terms of implementation. My strong recommendation is to invest time to process analysis and pick a good vendor to support consulting and implementation.
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Zoho
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
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Scalability
IBM
It scales from small team interactions to business processes serving thousands of employees, as well as straight-through-processing needs that go well beyond. Of course, scale is always in the eye of the beholder, but IBM BPM does a good job of giving you all of the hooks, APIs, and data that you need to take on whatever scaling approaches you need to meet the load
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Zoho
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
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Return on Investment
IBM
  • It has added value to the upper management to give visibility into what is happening at any time in the enterprise.
  • Boosted employee morale because it gives them all the information to work the case/task in a single location.
  • Identifies bottlenecks and improves the turnover.
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Zoho
  • With using Zoho Creator we are able to build apps that we may otherwise pay a pretty penny for. We may risk some features we could get from a 3rd party app but the fact that the data we do collect can easily syn with our CRM and Accounting systems makes up for this.
  • Negatively speaking, it takes time to fine tune and really craft your application. I am not a coder, nor do I have a coding background, so patience is key as you design and build out your application.
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ScreenShots

Zoho Creator Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-Platform App builderScreenshot of Dashboards created using Zoho CreatorScreenshot of An overview of Hotel management dashboardScreenshot of Schedule and manage eventsScreenshot of BI and AnalyticsScreenshot of Help Desk overview