Formstack in Higher Education Admission
July 25, 2014

Formstack in Higher Education Admission

Ryan Spear | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Manager

Overall Satisfaction with Formstack

Multiple offices across our campus utilize Formstack to meet their needs from the alumni office using a form to manage registration for alumni events, the student life office for roommate pairing to the admission office for visitor registration. We've currently maxed out our number of users under the Manager level (10 users). This is a good problem as it shows that the form building process is intuitive enough to allow multiple users to manage their own forms with only a bit of training.

We have a few users that are admins where some have only access to certain forms. This benefit has been helpful in managing our users. For the basic users - those that just need to log in from time to time to access new submissions or to make minor changes to forms - the latest update has been pretty helpful to that end. For the more advanced users, there are excellent features that both add the ability to analyze form submission trends as well as to build more advanced features (like tracking progress, form saving, email kick-backs, etc.). Only minor critique: sporadically, a notification email will not be sent when a form is submitted. Very sporadically but enough that it isn't a "fool-proof" process if you only rely on the notification email rather than logging in to check for new submissions.
  • Ease of use - basic users can get the hang of it pretty quickly.
  • Advanced features - those that want to make "fancier" forms can do so.
  • Flexibility - can be used to meet a variety of needs in a variety of different situations.
  • Consistency - some sporadic issues of notification emails not being sent.
  • Positive - ability to analyze submission trends - e.g. when a marketing email is sent, looking at increased form viewing and submissions in relation to the sending of the campaign.
  • Immediate response - those that submit forms receive immediate response that their form has been submitted.
It's been great so far. Our only decision might be to increase our account as we are consistently running up to our limit of 100 forms. It would be nice to have a plan between 100 and 1000 forms that might be better suited to small businesses/non-profits of our size.
It is well suited for event registration and miscellaneous form needs (writing evaluations of admission recruiting events, etc.). We do not currently use it as our application for admission although one of our affiliate programs does. Not sure if we're in the position where we'd put all of our eggs in one basket, in that sense.

Using Formstack

It's been great!
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Adding new fields
  • Modifying existing fields
  • Setting up kick-back emails and notifications
  • More advanced features like conditional logic (more about the user, though)
Yes - I use it rarely - usually only to check on a form around a deadline. It's helpful to have at least that feature.