High Level of Functionality and Integration without the need for a degree in Programming
Updated February 04, 2015

High Level of Functionality and Integration without the need for a degree in Programming

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

Software Version

Basic

Overall Satisfaction with Formstack

We use Formstack across two departments for both our annual season subscription pre-sale orders as well as more regularly as a tool to manage our volunteer sign-ups for upcoming performances, lost & found reporting, and volunteer inquiries. Formstack has allowed us to easily integrate some of these items on to pages of our website such as the lost and found reporting and volunteer inquiries. The volunteer sign-ups are now a much more efficient system given our needs and make it both easy for our volunteers to fill out, especially given that many of them are older and not as technically savvy, and quick for our volunteer coordinator to download and assign performances. Overall, it is a relatively inexpensive system but can help with several functions.
  • Formstack has a very user friendly interface for setting up the forms/surveys. A lot of the items are easy to drop in and customize for basic users. The terminology is very straight forward.
  • For more intermediate to advanced users, there is a lot more functionality that can open up and the ability to incorporate responsive forms is great. The shorter a form is or appears to the person filling it out is beneficial, and Formstack allows you to show only applicable fields rather than having fields that are present that someone has to skip over.
  • The integration with 3rd party systems is also pretty easy to manage. I also utilize Formstack for a non-profit I volunteer for and there, we have Formstack synced to Google Docs for some data hosting and Constant Contact for our email host and had no trouble connecting the systems and even customizing some filtered email lists.
  • As I stated in one of my pros, Formstack integrates well with Google Docs for data hosting. The reason why we utilize this is because there is not an easy table view of data in Formstack. You can view each complete entry separately or you can view charts and averages, but it's not easy to reference otherwise.
  • There isn't an easy way to undo when creating/editing forms. There have been a few occasions where I have accidentally deleted a portion of credit card information and have had to delete all of the rest and reinsert and connect the elements.
  • Managing the themes can sometimes be tough to do as there isn't a clear 'preview' option for that screen and you have to toggle back and refresh a form to see how it will layout on the page and go back and forth a bit to determine the best look/fit.
  • Formstack has given us a much more streamlined system for volunteer inquiries and lost and found. The forms populate our spreadsheets directly so we don't have to spend time transcribing and responding immediately with the "we're on it" message. We have the time and focus to be able to follow up only once we have an update. It has saved a lot of time there.
  • Formstack is much more user friendly than the old Drupal system we were using for our volunteer sign-ups. As a result, our Volunteer Coordinator is able to not only turn out the updated form more quickly but she is also able to provide additional detail in the options to our volunteers and track these details without it having to include a lengthy notes section at the end of the forms.
Drupal is a much more customizable platform, however you must have someone build the forms first and then you can work with them if you do not have the programming knowledge. If you have any changes to make, it can sometimes be both a time consuming and difficult process. Formstack is much more efficient if you do not have an in house programmer.
If you are looking to get more functionality without needing a massive amount of customization or web design/programming skill then Formstack is an excellent option. There is a lot of integration built in to the system and it is laid out in a very straight forward and easy format. You will have some restrictions on the layout of the forms, colors, and backgrounds but the look of the forms are not unpleasant or difficult to use. Overall it is a very good product for the associated costs.

Using Formstack

Formstack makes it very easy to update and reuse forms as you have alternate uses for them that are similar to prior projects. If you know what you need and don't want to build it from scratch, you can take a previous form you've built or a template they have offered and start there.