Google Spreadsheets or Zoho Sheet - which is better at this time?
Monday, June 19, 2006
Interface : In any application, interface is really important because a user is firstly more concerned with ease of use, if he finds it easier to use then only they'll love it to use it, no matter how feature rich a program is. So, interface is really important and in case of Zoho Sheet & Google Spreadsheets, it is Zoho Sheet who wins the interface part. The reason of that is that they have tried to give it the look of excel and have ported the look with a success. They have made sure that they make it easier for the user and provide the ultra familar interface and that is of excel.
I am not saying that Google spreadsheets is difficult to use but still Zoho sheet has got a better interface in all sense, provided you are not looking at the color scheme & sober looks (Google is master in that field). For those who are wondering why exactly I think that Zoho sheet is better in interface :
* Zoho sheet has formula bar which is not present in google spreadsheets.
* Zoho sheet has toolbars similar to Microsoft Excel as compared to Google spreadsheets.
* Zoho sheet gives more of an application kind of look as compared to Google spreadsheets website kind of interface.
Google spreadsheet has a better thing that it shows all the formulas and which can be exteremely simple for users like me, who are not much comfortable with forumlas but still Zoho sheet gets the vote in interface because it has more options.
Features : Now, lets discuss the second important feature (from a users point of view) and that is features of a program or service. The big fact is that I am not the biggest user of spreadsheets and I am really bad at them when it comes to using formulas and all but still I tried to find out the major differences and one of them is that Google Spreadsheets misses CHARTS however Zoho Sheet has it from long time. Google spreadsheets has less support for formulas as compared to Zoho sheets. Both of them allow sharing and collobrative work, however Google spreadsheet gets the edge that it allows the users to chat however Zoho sheet fails in it. Zoho sheet has better options of exporting and allows more file types as compared to Google spreadsheets.
Now, if you are a power spreadsheet user then Zoho sheet is your piece of cake but if you are a user like me then you can also live with Google Spreadsheets.
Future of services : I know this is not the difference which effects today but still it is an important factor because the user base is an important factor. Google as in whole has a very very large user base as compared to Zoho. To be honest Zoho is no where near it. And that is one of the major factors because Google also gets lots attention of the developers and these developers are always ready to develop some constructive features or addons for Google services which Zoho misses a lot. Future of Zoho is good, as they are getting good responce from all the users of online spreadsheets as they are offering better features from all other competitors. However, What I see that Google Spreadsheets will pick up fast in near future.
To sum up : At this point of time, Google spreadsheets is not even near to Zoho sheet in terms of features, interface & ease of use however, the future of Google spreadsheets is much greater as compared to Zoho sheet. To be successful Zoho sheet will have to come up with some good, solid & fast changes in the program so that its usefullness increases fast and users start to shift towards it and rather use Excel, if that happens then it will be difficult for Google to take away that particular group of users from Zoho.
All in all, it will be a good nice contest between the two services and I am sure it will be the user only who will get the benefit of this competition.
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1 Comments:
Thanks for the very nice comparison, Mayank! As you may already know, Zoho Sheet, like the other Zoho applications, is continuously evolving & we are incorporating more features all the time.
commented by Arvind, 9:32 AM
