monday.com vs. Zoho Creator Platform

Monday.com is well suited for anyone. I personally believe we're in an age where a paper to do list just doesn't cut it any more. From the stay at home mama to the rocket scientist on the ISS, a clean and organized task management system is needed for the daily grind. Our brains are great at reminding us we need to do something, but not always at the best time. (Ex: finally lay down at night and remember you needed to get some files to your CPA.) Monday.com is a great place to plop all these tasks swimming in our heads so we are reminded to complete them at the appropriate time.

I was researching economic alternatives to achieve this
somehow, and that's when I learned about low-code tools. They're
like a canvas; one can build and achieve anything, and save 90% of
the actual development cost. We researched several solutions and
figured out that Zoho Creator worked the best. We started building
the software in 2017 and it took us about 19 months to get the entire
workflow sorted. However, a boon in disguise was the time that we
got during the Covid lockdown. We put all hands on deck, and in
about 200 days, we had built a much-improved software solution.
We'd built something outstanding, and we knew this because we
were able to see the results.

• Flexible enough to fit our processes rather than making us change what we are familiar with.
• Remote access... whether on a PC or a mobile device, it is accessible anywhere. This would have been a great thing to adopt at the beginning of the Covid Pandemic.
• If things change, or if we come up with new ideas, we can add them to our workflow rather than find out we need to start over!
• We have been using monday.com for less than a year now, and it has replaced the systems that we created and changed over the last 17 years. I don't think our old systems would have held up much longer.

• The ease of creating data collecting forms. Anything from creating a form to import all your old excel documents to creating a mobile on-site application where you can input data directly into the app. For a company like us this can help to eliminate the pen and paper approach to recording data.
• Reporting features are excellent. Slicing and dicing the data from your forms to create any report is possible. Think of it has filters on steroids. The ability to combine data from different forms is a huge plus.
• Dashboards! Zoho Creator has so much depth to it that it's easy for one to get lost if they are not as familiar with Creator, for example an exuctive or decision making manager. This is where dashboards come in. Admins can build intuitive and smart dashboards that combine all the relevant KPI's that a manager needs to see.

• Internal Automations: There should be a little more availability to trigger actions within monday.com itself. For example, it would help tremendously for us to be able to set up a date when clients are automatically transferred into a new board or group.
• Expand on External Modifications: monday.com has recently focused on the aesthetics/look of the application, but I would rather they began focusing on how monday.com operates with other applications. We have a email campaign system (Active Campaign), that does a beautiful job of integrating apps, but monday.com is very limited on their external automation availabilities with campaign systems. Not sure if this would apply to many other business models, but as a CRM- I can see this being beneficial.
• Limiting Access within Boards: monday.com has recently added a limited access to specific boards, but I would love if this feature expanded to where certain team members could only view a board rather than edit it (It is possible that this is available for a higher subscription and we simply do not have access to it at this time).

• 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.

It solves all our needs the exact way we imagined it. coming across monday gave us the feeling that we designed the program ourselves to work for the use cases we had in mind.

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.

A few features could use improvements, but this is one of the best tools on the market for productivity enhancement. I have researched, used, and reviewed several analogous platforms, and none have the intuitive interface offered by Monday.com. While other platforms may offer more in the way of document development or complex management applications, Monday is user-friendly and ready for integration with other work performance tools.

Development and Maintenance of Application is quite friendly in Zoho Creator, the only challenge that we face in terms of moving the application in Sandbox environment, with C6 the latest version, dependent applications are not moved to sandbox, which has created little impact on how development and deployment takes place now.

There have only been 2 instances in the past year where monday.com was down.

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

Everything performs fairly well. Every now and then there are user errors where an employee will not click "ok" on a note they've created and simply exit out (I do wish that something was in place to prevent this, such as a pop "are you finished?")

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

The platform has worked so well that I have not needed to contact their service team yet, so I'm not sure how fast their response times are. I imagine they must be really fast to reply though if people have needed to contact them as infrequently as I have! I marked it as a 10 because I couldn't select the "?" on the slider, but didn't want to give them a 1 for a service that I haven't had an opportunity to use.

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.

To have someone walk you thru the features and capabilities of Monday.com is priceless. Someone also coming along later in the contract to see if you are maximizing the program to suit your company needs is beyond helpful. The staff that have provided this training are fun, creative and very patient.

We signed up for the accounts. Created the accounts. Ran the trial version and tested it live while we were running multiple projects and found that it was fitting our needs perfectly. When the trial ended and we were asked to purchase the full version, we did. We have found other ways to use it and it's a breeze.

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.

We used an excel spreadsheet to track our month end close process previously which created a lot of issues around only one person being able to be in the checklist at any given time. Additionally, we were unable to have excel notify us when a task we need to have completed was done, but Monday.com has completely changed that for us!

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

For it to work across multiple departments and sites, I would like to see improvements made with integrations and automation. For this question, I am acknowledging not only the addition of internal triggers/automation, but also an expansion on external ones.

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

• Time Savings to have a general repository to track ongoing clients across a variety of sources and platforms.
• Increase in closing new business leads that were previously lost in email and forgotten.
• Improved budget planning as I can see at a glance when projects are due and the associated project cost/projected income.

• Again, Creator has allowed the College to make significant savings in workflow practices, clerical administration, photocopying, postage - everything we now do is online. Our efficiencies have been recognised by our users/applicants who view us as a point of differentiation as to how we do business.
• Negative impact - None!