Lightning Tools Lightning Forms vs. Zoho Forms

We've used lightning forms on literally dozens of our SharePoint sites now and it's just excellent, especially because it doesn't interfere with our ability to governance and administer the sites

Zoho Forms is well suited for anyone wanting to track items from a specific event or feedback at the conclusion of an event. It is also well suited to track responses. Zoho Forms is less suited for the scenarios where official approval is required because the forms are meant for a single user, and not to be filled out by one person, and then forwarded to another to document the approval. It would also not be good to replace an excel or word document to submit to another department requesting a part number for a new product because again once the form is submitted there is not a way for the second party to 'Update' the existing form and add the part number assigned by the second party.

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.

• So far I have done well, I have had no problems.
• In some cases, I would like to click on one of the registers and send an email.
• A good idea would be an integration with Zoho Mail to create templates within the survey.

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.

It is very easy to use & straight forward for a tech or non-tech user. It is very easy to distribute the form & collect data to evaluate. Lots of features to make the form unique or to collect data in many ways (sliders, wheels, more than just typed data entry). Works great on desktop or mobile devices as well.

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 I found to be more affordable (free tiers works for many businesses). They offered solutions that fit the need & didn't limit features like some of the other services trying to upsell. Jotform offers a lot more add-on features or widgets and has an interesting platform, but it is much more costly for small businesses.

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.

• The biggest pain point we had was getting notified in time of form submission which Zoho Forms has solved and now we do not miss any form submission from a potential lead.
• Our existing customers (50+) were using conventional methods to inform us about issues being faced which was a major hassle for us in providing good customer services. But thanks to Zoho Forms, we now document each issue properly, respond to it in a timely manner and get it resolved with the SLAs.
• We have also used Zoho Forms to have our live chat channel integrated with Zoho Forms to be able to get a form submission from them instantly while chatting with our CSRs.

Incentivized