Formstack is Solid in SaaS Data Collection
Updated September 30, 2015

Formstack is Solid in SaaS Data Collection

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

Software Version

Basic

Modules Used

  • Integration Hub

Overall Satisfaction with Formstack Forms

I have used Formstack with multiple organizations I have volunteered and consulted with over the past five years. Some of the uses include:

  • Event registration data collection and payments with PayPal for High Performance driving events
  • Event registration and payment collection for various charitable and non-profit events
  • Fannie Mae form 1003 data collection for the loan origination process
  • Small merchandise sales and order fulfillment
  • Salesforce and general 'form' data collection and request processes
In all but one case, each of my use cases and experience with Formstack has been connecting and integrating it with WordPress sites. My driving reason for using Formstack was the ability to easily connect to WordPress and begin the collecting and routing of end-user data.
  • Formstack integrates very well with WordPress. A simple plug-in install and any WordPress site is ready to begin collecting data.
  • Formstack has a plethora of options for the actual routing of data. Not only can you store data in the FormStack cloud for future retrieval, you have the ability to route the data to your own email, others email (for confirmation), or integrate with Google Docs
  • The management and flow process of forms is quite advanced. From calculations to conditional based logic, Formstack is capable of quite advanced, quasi-'systems' type data routing. This makes data collecting and the conditional collecting of data (i.e. if this, then collect that) very easy
  • Formstack is missing what I might consider some major integrations: it has Salesforce, but no NetSuite; it has Google Apps, but no Office 365
  • While the data routing options are impressive, one area that would be incredible would be the integration or data feeding of third party databases. For example, if data collected could be pushed to another cloud-based on on-premise PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL Server instance, the ability to use the collected data with other integrated systems would be incredible.
  • In my opinion, Formstack can be a little pricey in the tiers. For not much money you can get into the service, but it's easy to quickly run out of space and need to jump to a more expensive tier
  • Using Formstack, I have been able to - on multiple occasions - stand up professional quality, web-based, data and payment collecting applications in literally days and not weeks. The "time to live" using Formstack is incredible.
  • With a Formstack account, you will find yourself often using it to "collect data." The simplicity combined with the professionalism makes it a go-to choice over alternatives such as email and manual data collection, or even SharePoint lists or shared Google Docs
For run of the mill data collection, I have used Google Forms, Office 365 Excel Forms, and SharePoint lists. And in WordPress I have used Gravity Forms.

Google Forms and Office 365 are nice tools with not nearly the same feature-set available from Formstack. While they are usually included with your SaaS subscription, they just don't offer as much formatting and conditional routing, nor the integration and notifications to other systems.

SharePoint requires a huge capital investment and a PhD in order to build data collection mechanisms. Even though forms and data can integrate very well to MS SQL databases on the back end, they are clunky and dated in their operations.

Gravity Forms is a solid competitor in the WordPress space. Often costing less with the ability to collect the data to a local database (mySQL). The feature set of Gravity is geared towards a different need and in my case Formstack was a better fit in all situations.
Well written, modern software. Works as expected for software of 'today.' Does not operate like something from five or ten years ago...like a legacy platform. Continuous improvements are nice to see.
Formstack is best suited for (1) customer-facing, web-based form collection and (2) advanced form functionality. If your company is a subscriber to Google Apps or Office 365, basic form functionality is provided as part of the service. However, in both of the cases listed above, the functionality and options are nowhere near what is available through Formstack.

Said another way, if you need to quickly collect shirt sizes for the employees of your organization, there are plenty of easy to use web-based form mechanisms. But if you need conditional routing or are sensitive to the look-and-feel of your data collection, Formstack is the way to go. It is possible to seamlessly connect to your web site where customers will not even know you are using a third party data collector.

Using Formstack Forms

The product is solid and a leader in it's space.

Formstack Forms Implementation

We implemented on one of the earlier versions. Through continuous engineering improvements, the interface keeps getting easier and more intuitive. Therefore, later implementations keep getting easier and better.

Formstack Forms Reliability