Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. ProProfs Survey Maker

Overall, there are many use cases for which Lightning Forms provides a slick, easy to develop and extremely useful solution. Request forms that need to be actioned and inspection forms are the scenarios that we have used them for so far, which have seen a lot of success. We have decided that other scenarios that are perhaps more sensitive, for instance forms that may contain special category data relating to our customers, are less appropriate given the permissions/licensing constraints of both SharePoint and Lightning Forms.

If you have many hours to spend on the phone or chat with customer service and want to save $100, ProProfs is your platform. For those with limited time to invest, it's worth spending a bit more to get quality service and functionality without a hassle.

• Simple user interface - users of the forms intuitively aware of how/where to input information. This is in part due to being able to show or hide different questions or areas of the form, and making them required or not, based on previous answers.
• Low/simple code - building complex forms with automation and multiple dependencies or lookups is relatively easy once you get started. You have the power of JavaScript to use and do some quite clever things if you can get to grips with it - a lot of solutions are only a Google away.
• As it is based on SharePoint, it integrates perfectly with the rest of the M365 suite. Things like PowerAutomate enhance its functionality even further.

• ProProfs is cheaper than its competitors.

• The styling of the form can sometimes be slightly awkward to use depending on what you're looking to do. For instance, if I was looking to highlight fields that users have missed (left empty), I would need to set up a validation for that question and then set a style for that particular field for when it is invalid. When you have a large and complex form with lots of dependencies, this is awkward.
• Support for complex and niche issues is slightly lacking in my experience. I submitted a helpdesk ticket for help with a strange issue I couldn't figure out, which took several weeks to get a response to. Because it is niche, it's more difficult to find an answer by searching the internet. Luckily, knowing there is likely to always be a fix if you find the right place/use the right formula, I manage to resolve the issue with some trial and error.
• It is disappointing that Lightning Forms does not integrate with the MS Lists app. Having the ability to access the form through the list app would add in a lot of useful functionality, including a better experience for users when taking photos to add as attachments.

• [I feel] Customer service closes tickets without resolving the issues first....and there are a lot of issues.
• I paid for the upgraded version, but couldn't get the upgraded functionality without spending days on the phone, chat, and remote desktop with customer service.
• We paid for 500 responses/month, but the survey closed before we reached that number. We asked for a refund so we could pay for another month of advertising, but they ignored the request, instead giving us more days to use the platform (not sure how this was supposed to help).
• Every time you view the Welcome Page, the changes to font and formatting revert back to default and you must re-do them every time.
• The reports aren't what you expect. They are very limited. I expected Q1- 75% answered Yes, 25% No. Instead the reports are listed across columns in an Excel spreadsheet with every respondent's answer in the rows below. The stats are a bit better, but I don't think you can share them with others.
• Very limited functionality in the free or 1st upgrade. You need to go to premium and get on the phone with customer service to get basic functions that appear in Survey Monkey. {I think] their advertising is misleading.

It is very user friendly both to me who is building the content (with little background knowledge of coding etc., other than what I have picked up from using products like PowerAutomate, PowerBI, a bit of html etc.) and to end users of varying levels of IT proficiency. This has been extremely important as we have used the forms to make relatively large process changes, and need to have our users on board and seeing that it is actually easier than it was before.

They shouldn't have opened for public use before they figured out their tech glitches, functionality, how to report, billing issues, and customer service. [I feel] it's poorly run and creates hassle, negative ROI, and frustration for organizations using the platform. Unfortunately, needing to call or email ProProfs every week to get the platform to work is not a good service model.

Some support has been okay, but in one instance of a fairly complex problem, the support team were not able to provide me with a fix within a few weeks, before I was able to find a workaround myself.

The customer service is not well trained on the issues I've needed to call about. There doesn't seem to be good interaction cross-department at ProProfs and every time I talk to someone new, I have to re-explain the situation or they blame the situation on another department. They don't get quick results for the client.

We were using Microsoft Forms, SharePoint Lists and PowerAutomate to attempt to do much of what we are currently doing. Functionality is very limited in comparison. The ability to make questions required based on previous answers was a massive improvement from normal SharePoint List forms and has greatly improved the quality of data. Also just the very visual display and customisation is much better.

ProProfs feel like a garage start-up that didn't really figure out the functionality or customer service before they launched, while Survey Monkey is reputable and reliable. ProProfs has very limited reporting, but Survey Monkey is exactly what you expect with the basic package- analyzing percentages of each response. Survey Monkey is more customizable, even if you have to pay a bit more.

• We changed the process by which site colleagues report repairs on behalf of customers. Instead of emailing them into a shared inbox, they now report them using a lightning form. We have seen a great improvement in the time taken for our team to log the repair issue from the time is arrives with them.
• We anticipate that streamlining our void property reletting process by using a SharePoint kanban board view with lightning forms (providing a single platform for all things void) will reduce avoidable days vacant and therefore reduce our void loss.

• Negative ROI based on extra money spent on upgrading, losing days with the survey not being upgraded on time, losing money on external advertising when the survey closed early, and losing many work hours reaching out to customer service.