LibreOffice vs. Zoho Forms

If you're working with numbers, LibreOffice doesn't get in your way and try to make changes as it sees fit, forcing you to repeatedly go back and undo processes you didn't want, didn't ask for, and that have no place in the document you are trying to produce. All I want to do is assemble the data, process it for the task at hand, and then print it for distribution. LibreOffice allows me to do that.

Zoho Forms is great for customer surveys, collection of data, onboarding clients, instances where you need a signature. Might be less appropriate for some businesses depending upon branding messages. Zoho Forms has some disclaimers that appear on forms i.e. not to enter personal information, credit cards, passwords, etc. so depends upon the intent & purposes of the form data collection, whether it would be a solution that would fit every business model.

Incentivized

• Tools like speeling, grammar, and thesaurus are super fast and intuitive
• Read-only content can be created by adding a section and password
• The right-click menus are very intuitive and change on the fly with what is needed depending on the content and situation
• Documents can be saved natively as *.docx or *.xlsx

Incentivized

• Its feature of sending alerts in real time is my favorite feature. Whenever someone fills an inquiry form, I get alert immediately.
• It has a mobile app also which makes this software usable at anytime and anywhere.
• It's a cloud based application so users don't need so save anything on their system and they don't need to be dependent on their system. They can access their forms from any system.

Incentivized

• It doesn't provide all the functions it should with a paid subscription.
• There are features that are only available with Premium and I have premium and they are still not available.
• Paying for the premium version doesn't provide additional services than free version
• Customer service is nonresponsive and has been nonresponsive for years even prior to COVID.

• Zoho Forms could improve if the Super Admin had access to view all reports from org users, not just view the name
• Audit history tracking needs to be extended, many of our older forms show no history past the creation date

Incentivized

We use it consistently and have a lot of documents in the OpenDocument format so it will be necessary to use LibreOffice or a compatible product such as Openoffice in the future to be able to open these files. Because the license fee for Libreoffice is zero it is not very costly to keep using it - the costs are mostly for keeping it installed on the office PCs and regularly updated, and solving employee issues with the user support.

Incentivized

For all of the reasons in the foregoing evaluation. Its menus are clean, intuitive and straightforward. Any function I need to use can be accessed via keystrokes, without having to stop, move my hand to the mouse, deal with it, and then get back to the keyboard to proceed. It helps me keep my mind on my work and not worry about dealing with the mouse all the time.

The user interface and user experience is outstanding, seems like a lot of hard work has been put into it by the design, development and product teams. The fonts used are optimal, the icons and menu bars are well placed, the colors are very friendly to the eye and the standard white background is beautifully adjusted to the user expectations. The sliders are well designed and you can easily find whatever menu/option/feature you are looking for without much hassle.

Incentivized

Libreoffice is a desktop app not requiring any server part so it is always available when the PC is working normally. Installing it on another machine if one PC fails is very quick and easy. This is a non-issue.

Incentivized

For big/imported tables or text documents with images loaded from the internet it is sometimes getting very slow, RAM and CPU intensive, and sometimes even hangs due to some memory leaks or other bugs. This is a long-term problem and is still not resolved perfectly.

Incentivized

Support is not officially offered. However, you can find answers to any usage questions or trouble-shooting online easily, typically starting with a Google search. (I believe that all forums / tips for OpenOffice apply equally to LibreOffice, and vice versa.) While Microsoft Office, for example, officially includes support, I find that typically you end up going to a Google search in any case. So, this is not really a downside. However, in all these cases, you end up doing a lot of figuring things out for yourself.

Incentivized

So far we have not faced any issue while using the software but our customer journey has been breathtaking so far, which obviously i am expecting, should be the case of the support of Zoho Forms as well. However we have explored their support channels; you can easily find the contact us form in the profile slider and there are other resources available with a single click like Help Menu, What's New Menu, Blogs and Forums. However i could not find any live chat or support with the Free version.

Incentivized

Generally easy to perform, issues are how to ensure regular automatic updates on Mac OS X. Fortunatly we have only a few machines with OS X run by management and we can do these updates manually occasionally. Windows updates are quite easy with the support of third party software such as Ninite or Chocolatey, and Linux updates are super-easy thanks to the package manager (apt-get).

Incentivized

I think it is fair to say this:

• If you are looking for a well-rounded, GNU-licensed product that will encompass word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database then LibreOffice is probably all you need.
• For online collaboration, links with cloud storage, and more robust support, Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs are probably what you or your organization needs.
• LibreOffice is at its best for regular document creation and spreadsheet management. It is more cumbersome when it comes to fonts but also when it comes to linkages with cloud-based services. It is there, but you need some more computer knowledge to make it work.
• There are other free alternatives, most notably Apache Open Office, which is also a very good alternative if you do not like LibreOffice.

Having said that, I honestly think off-line computers or laptops used off-site can certainly benefit from having LibreOffice installed.

Incentivized

Zoho Forms is just as good as Google Forms. I believe that ZF is easier to use. I have not used GF as extensively as ZF. I will be evaluating GF in the very near future. I selected ZF mainly because it easily integrates with its own Zoho applications quickly and with very little difficulty.

Incentivized

With more users using it in the company there are more cases when a simultaneous editing of the same document is needed and this feature is lacking in Libreoffice even though the files concerned are shared and synced by some solution (we use ownCloud). Google Docs or MS Office365 via Sharepoint/Onedrive offer a better function for this.

Incentivized

• I am able to quickly create and edit word processing documents and spreadsheets which are for all intents and purposes equivalent to documents I could create and edit in other tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs/Sheets.
• Lack of an online portal for sharing documents necessitates the use of Google Sheets for automation/integration. Ideal would be an all-in-one solution.
• Having open-source software that provides common functionality eliminates the need for expensive licenses.
• Lack of dedicated support is negligible. Most issues can be resolved using online search.

Incentivized

• All positive. Zoho Forms is just another tool from the Zoho toolbox that adds value for us.
• ROI is hard to say since we are a Zoho One user. Providing an amazing customer experience is what we strive for and this tool is part of that customer experience. It may have a small effect within our internal process but it is a customer facing and customer interaction point/application so it is crucial that it performs optimally.

Incentivized