Zoho Creator is unbelievably powerful. It would be tough to find a database need that it wouldn't handle with ease.
November 14, 2021

Zoho Creator is unbelievably powerful. It would be tough to find a database need that it wouldn't handle with ease.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho Creator

We publish books. About 200 per year. Each book has around 50 separate pieces of data associated with it. Publication date, warehouse due date, printers, print quantities, trim size, editorial team, etc. We use Zoho Creator as our "bible" for all books we own and publish. It is the one-stop source for all authoritative data regarding each title we publish. The entire company uses our custom-built Creator database to maintain ongoing updates of every title, of which we now have thousands.

Pros

  • Extremely customizable for any need
  • Excellent options for reports, both public and private
  • Powerful ability to link databases for deeper sets of data
  • Very very powerful programming language for custom applications

Cons

  • Zoho Creator's new version isn't as well documented as older versions. The changes were dramatic so it's hard to find help relevant to Version 5.
  • Zoho Creator is so powerful, it is sometimes TOO powerful. It can be intimidating if your needs are very basic.
  • The new version of Zoho Creator was meant to be more intuitive, but after using it compared to the previous version 4, we find it's often more difficult to accomplish the same tasks.
  • The search feature, while powerful, is also cumbersome. Ideally, it would be simplified if possible.
  • Incredible ease of customization (adding new fields, hiding obsolete ones, linking to secondary databases)
  • Good security allows various levels of view/edit/programming access to the appropriate personnel as needed
  • Creating reports is a breeze. When a department needs only a specific subset of data, creating a custom report for their specific needs takes only moments. It's very, very easy.
  • In 6 years of use, Zoho Creator's uptime has been exemplary. Its uptime has been far better than that of other tools we use for project management.
  • We originally began maintaining the data in a shared Excel spreadsheet which quickly became unworkable due to version conflicts. Zoho Creator solved this immediately.
  • After outgrowing Excel, we migrated to a Google Sheet to maintain our data, but its lack of report abilities limited us. Zoho Creator's reports solved this immediately.
  • Support, when needed, can be a little spotty. Tech Support does not always have the best English skills, and communicating problems can at times be a bit challenging. Their support usually gets things taken care of for you eventually, but getting there can be trying at times. This has held us back at times in our company.
Trello is a very different kind of tool, and what it does is better in that it is far simpler. But there's no way Trello could ever maintain the same kind of data that Zoho Creator does. It's not really a fair comparison because Trello isn't intended to be the same kind of tool as Zoho Creator, however.

Do you think Zoho Creator delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho Creator's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho Creator live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho Creator go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho Creator again?

Yes

I have a software web app development background, so we considered hand-rolling an in-house MYSQL application for our needs. But, programming a home-grown web app also requires a dedicated programmer and some deep thought regarding specifications. Within just a couple of hours, I developed a tool in Zoho Creator (easily expandable) that accomplished the same tasks. It saved us a considerable amount of frontend and backend programming. Nothing can truly fit EVERY need, so some extremely specialized applications might find Zoho Creator limiting, but for the bulk of normal, everyday database management, Zoho Creator is an excellent tool. The fringe cases where Zoho Creator's off-the-shelf abilities may not be enough could be addressed in a number of creative ways, be it linking to outside data or using their custom programming language to hand-code specific needs. It is very, very powerful. The only place where it may not be appropriate is if someone needed extensive front-end customization (although data can still be pulled using its API for display externally). It may be too powerful for extremely basic needs. Overall, however, it is hard to find fault with this system.

Zoho Creator Feature Ratings

Low-Code Development
9.0
Visual Modeling
7
Drag-and-drop Interfaces
9
Platform Security
9
Platform User Management
9
Reusability
10
Platform Scalability
10

Zoho Creator Support

I tend to believe that most of Zoho's support team speaks English as a second language. As such, communicating issues to them, knowing they comprehend the problem, and then getting solutions can be challenging. While their support team does tend to be very knowledgeable, the language barrier has more than once presented problems in the process. I understand it may not be a good financial decision to host an American-based support center, but it would certainly make for a better support experience.
ProsCons
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
No escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
I did not purchase premium support. Zoho's product is powerful and intuitive enough that I can usually solve issues on my own. Therefore, I rarely need support, but when I do, it us cumbersome and a chore.
I don't believe I have ever had an "exceptional" support experience with Zoho. My support needs are minimal. They have always answered my questions, and were courteous in the process of doing so, but it was still cumbersome. One might say my experience with their support team was "not bad, not great".

Zoho Creator Reliability

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.
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.
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.

Upgrading Zoho Creator

Yes - We happily used Creator 4 for years and at the end of 2020 were forced to upgrade to their new Creator 5 platform.

The upgrade only took seconds, but the learning curve to use the new UI was more steep than anyone on our staff would have liked. The version 5 interface was so drastically different, almost everything had to be re-learned. Nothing was the same. The upgrade, frankly, was TOO drastic.
  • Creator 5 has no advantages for our organization over Creator 4.
  • We were forced to upgrade. Had we not been forced to do so, we would have stayed with Creator 4.
  • Companywide, all our staff felt that Creator 4 was superior to Creator 5. The UI was far, far easier to use. Basic things are now hidden behind "wizards" or "helpers" or interstitial choice screens. Our whole company wants version 4 back.
  • Please don't do another upgrade of the UI. We still haven't adjusted to the Version 5 upgrade, and it has been a year.
Yes - Zoho recently changed their pricing structure. Simple, key features like Database Backups were removed from the previous "basic" version. In order to back up our mission-critical databases, we were forced to upgrade to a package that was twice the price. The only ... literally the ONLY benefit of this double in price, was retaining the previous ability to backup and restore our data. The price for the power is reasonable I suppose, but paying double for one feature that we previously had with a lesser package was not a welcome change.

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