Formstack Reviews

Pros
In addition to the ability to build powerful forms using conditional logic, the greatest strength of Formstack (and probably most overlooked) is how a small business can use the response features to automate tasks they are currently wasting time doing manually. For example, you can use Formstack to create a contact form that lets a prospect choose what type of service they are interested in. Using the conditional logic, you can create automatic responses based on what they select (or where they are located, or whatever variable is important in your business) that include additional information -- links to videos, documents, whatever -- instead of having to pay someone to follow up with each contact individually. You can also use this to string together steps in a process: they complete Form 1, and then automatically receive an email confirmation with the link for Form 2, and so on. This functionality has saved our small company hundreds of hours of human time, AND increased customer numbers. For all the value we get out of it, Formstack is a bargain. It's one of those "how did we live without this" tools.

Cons
The look of the webforms themselves is dated - it would be nice if they would invest in some contemporary looking designs so the user sees something more sleek. Also the ability to have self-tallying forms, where someone could check boxes and it would total a dollar amount for a quote, would be fantastic.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
One of the most cost-effective form tools we've found and extremely easy to use. I wish there was a bit more versatility to the type of questions you can add to a form, but overall it's pretty good!

Cons
Our chief complaint was how many workarounds we've had to use in order to get SalesForce integration to work for us. The Formstack for Salesforce product leaves MUCH to be desired (taking away all form customization available in regular formstack) and it has taken hours and multiple team members to be able to streamline our formstack to salesforce process. It's now pretty seamless but it shouldn't have taken that many resources for a simple form-to-opportunity functionality. This came from a frustration in the lack of functionality in list creation, updating, and note creation with Salesforce, none of which worked well at a high level within formstack.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Cons
We're happy with Formstack's functionality, however we're not a big fan of their updated Dashboard in the platform. We used to see a screenshot of big picture stats and our average conversion rate. Now we see a listing with each of our forms, but we don't feel like we're getting the value we used to get through this update.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Love Formstack! We switched from Wufoo and haven't looked back. While the investment was a bit steeper, it was worth it. The user-interface is extremely intuitive; multiple team members including myself were able to jump in right away with minimal orientation/training. We've had no issues with the service or support whatsoever.

Cons
If only to be nitpicky, canned reporting would be nice (conversions this month, conversions last week, etc.) rather than having to manually set the date range. Some sort of safeguard against bogus form completions (asdfasfj@asf;sdfsd.com) would be nice as well.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
If it has worked, it would have been great that you can process credit cards right there in the form. It's also nice how you can save form sections, and there are many options for question/answer templates.

Cons
As soon as I started using Formstack, there was an issue with the payment processor integration where credit card transactions would not go through. I started out using Stripe, and when it didn't work, I contacted support, but none of their solutions fixed it, so I switched to Paypal. I then had the same issues with Paypal. I emailed back and forth with Support for a long time. They offered me the same 4 solutions repeatedly, all of which I tried. I explained to Support that these things weren't helping but it was as if they had amnesia and didn't remember they had already suggested the same things, which didn't work. I sent a message to the Sales team instead to see if they could get me in touch with a different Support professional who knew how to fix this problem (no phone #s on website). Sales said they would escalate the issue. When I didn't hear back for a week, I emailed again asking to cancel my account, and the Sales person said they had emailed support and that "the issue is with your payment processor," which of course I already knew and was the reason for my message in the first place. They continued to insist that the issue was with Paypal. I talked to Paypal support and the problem was not on their end. Many annoying issues with the form creation interface too- like to move questions you have to drag and drop by scrolling through the entire form. And the item/event purchase requires you to give the option of ordering more than one of each item.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 0/10

Pros
Ease of use. Drag and drop is something people just get. Training a staff member on how to build their own forms only takes a few minutes and they get the basics and are off to the races with their work quickly. When you empower your staff to do their job and more it means less work for you so you can focus on the things they can't do. LOGIC! Logic is amazing and so fluid and helpful.

Cons
Cost structure. We have lots of small forms and lots of users, but formstacks structure does not like that. If you build fewer forms and lots of responses it works great. Lots of forms with smaller reponses you hit the cost barriers quickly. Of course if you delete the data it works fine, but if you give formstack as a tool to your staff and you don't want to manage the amount of forms it becomes unwieldy quickly.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Formstack allows users to customize forms to meet their needs. It simplifies both the form design and the collections process. For form design, it offers an intuitive interface that is easy to get started with and includes many ways to control the behaviour of each section on the form. What we liked most about FormStack was the quality control features they had built in to make that forms were being used correctly. Submitted forms could either be approved or rejected before being added to the data pool.

Cons
We didn't have any paper-based issues with Formstack. Formatting the look of the forms themselves was a bit of a pain sometimes with limited options available in the interface.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
It is easy to use for the most part and the forms look nice. They are better than the cheaper-feeling system we used in the past.

Cons
I wish it was easier to link common fields between forms so that if I update a pick list in one place it updates in the others. What they have makes it easy to create new forms but I do have to go back and update them when things change.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
The ability to encrypt submissions and the simplicity of configuring additional users to view submissions. Finance, operations, sales and customer service all use Formstack and onboarding / training these departments was super easy. We set everything up in minutes. The form builder is super intuitive and easy to figure out. Our team loves the customization options around the email notifications. Would highly recommend.

Cons
I don't have any cons as it has served us well since day one.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Ease of Use. Integrations of third party services, customer service

Cons
Really not much. Any time I have had a negative I have called and they have fixed or shown me what to do.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It is completely web based. That is really the only good point about the solution.

Cons
Where do I begin? Our team who used this software constantly received Error: -1 (Submission could not be updated) when editing a form. This was our Care team and they were typing notes from a meeting, and this error would cause all the notes to be lost. We contacted support, and instead of being helpful, they blamed it on the browser (when we had tried all possible browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, and even Edge) and were able to replicate the issue on all of them. Then support said it was our internet connection. After receiving this error, we performed speed tests and were getting higher performance than what our contract said we should get (well above the recommendations Formstack had). Then they said it was because we were using a VPN (which we were not). After all of this, the next person told us to try a different browser, then test internet speed, and then turn off VPN. This nightmare went on for weeks when we finally cut ties with them.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 0/10

Pros
There are a lot of field types that make it easy to construct complex forms and workflows. Add the automation options (webhooks etc) and the product becomes very powerful.

Cons
While we were able to integrate the product into our own software, we had to do some javascript magic to make it happen. If there was an easier way to include formstack forms into our custom software, the product would be near perfect.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Formstack is pretty reliable. I can set it and forget it. It is pretty easy to make fairly complex forms with intelligent conditionals.

Cons
The forms don’t look as modern as other form creation products.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Good features and good functionality. Very good for integrating with google sheets and google drive to make systems more efficient.

Cons
I was moving from a different form generating software and so did the same that I was doing before. They have more sensitive information security which is good. I was given a warning and so I emailed back and after reading their info page re:information security about how I can comply with their policies. Replies were not succinct and while I was trying to figure out how to follow their rules they deactivated my form and disrupted the business operation. Sad face. And angry face at the same time I am sorry I live in Australia and it is 12am here when Formstack is operating. Sad and feel like they don't really care about me much.

Rating breakdown

Pros
the ease with which one can develop a robust form that is easy for use by end users and does not have to have further training to use

Cons
it lacks a certain level of malleability when it comes to the structure and what is standard offerings (ex: i need 5 columns and it only has 4, unable to edit email sent out to end users)

Rating breakdown

Pros
It's fairly simple to copy events to new forms. You can group events together in folders for convenience sake.

Cons
I'm frustrated by a number of problems and lack of features. For examples - The users can't modify their registrations. The confirmation emails are fairly limited in scope and functionality. You can't send emails to all registrants, you can hook up to a third party emailer, but that doesn't work for me with my emailer. There are others, but I don't want to sound like a basher. Overall I'm pretty happy and I make it work for my needs, but I am on the prowl for other solutions.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Ease of Administration and customization

Cons
There isnt much we dont like, it works great for us.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I used the FastForms version of this software. This software is fantastic for basic form needs that require salesforce integration. The software provides an easy to use form builder with a styling tool. Advanced customizations are possible with css and javascript.

Cons
Although it is great that we can customize with css and javascript it would be better if some basic things were included out of the box without requiring javascript or CSS. I'd like to see page specific styling and character counters as out of the box features that don't require custom CSS and javascript. However their customer support is fantastic and they went above and beyond to ensure that the customizations I needed were provided.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
It is very intuitive to use and we were up and running in a day. We set up our first form and were able to review it with our team and implement it the next day.

Rating breakdown

Rating breakdown

Pros
Ease of use; Ability to change quickly and in realtime; Mobile functionality; Reporting able to generate multiple formats.

Cons
Difficult to add graphics to customize form headings; Links to form names are in multiple places; Submit function not intuitive.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Quick and easy to use survey builder. The surveys look clean and are easy to read. The survey question options are vast.

Cons
The results are exported in a hard to read Excel document. Is is hard to build surveys from scratch.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Virtually no time needed to train which makes it ideal to pass to a volunteer. Clean and functional

Cons
wish there were more options to make firms more aesthetically appealing like font and color options

Rating breakdown

Pros
Flexibility, individuality, ease of use, tutorials are strong

Cons
Can't seem to change design of submission pages (add logos etc) to make it a nice document to add into reports when needed

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Formstack is simple to set up and easy to use. You can teach yourself how to create detailed form because it has a very logical setup. The forms generally work exactly how you'd expect them to and editing is simple in case of changes.

Cons
There isn't a whole lot I don't like. It would be nice to have a 'free' tier like competitors have. I have worked with companies that wouldn't need more than a handful of submissions a month, and that puts FormStack out of their price range.

Rating breakdown