Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Zoho Forms

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.

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

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

• 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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

• 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.

• 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