When you’re shopping for new tech, you just want someone to tell it to you straight.
But Google searches, marketing materials, and even reviews can be misleading. What do you get? Where does the tool fall short? What should you know before you sign on the dotted line?
Every company claims to be the best. Yet, not every company can claim a whole suite of workflow tools in one platform. You could hunt for individual products that help you capture data, generate documents, sign electronically, and automate your office workflows. However, each tool requires its own implementation, training, login, payment, and upkeep. Isn’t extra work what you’re trying to avoid?
Tools like Jotform, FormAssembly, Conga, Titan, and Docusign are good at helping you accomplish specific tasks like building forms, generating documents from Salesforce data, or signing contracts online. Only Formstack helps you do it all in one visual workflow builder and provides the power of AI to save you even more time.
Here’s how we know.
Jotform
Jotform is an online form builder that primarily serves nonprofits, educational institutions, small businesses, and enterprises.
The Skinny
Jotform is great for small companies or businesses that are just starting out. They’re known for releasing new features frequently and supporting customers with extensive education tools like YouTube videos, help documentation, and webinars. Jotform even offers a free version for up to five forms, 100 fields per form, and 100 monthly submissions.
But beware—“free” can be costly. Once you reach your submission limits, all new submissions are disabled. And what can you do with your data after you’ve captured it? Without a document generator, you’re forced to feed it into yet another platform.
Features are great too, but not at the expense of UI updates. You need a partner that will listen to your users’ feedback to simplify your entire workflow automation process.
Plus, only Jotform’s top-tier subscription comes with HIPAA compliance, causing problems for healthcare organizations.
Bottom line: Jotform solves for the now. But if you’re planning on growing your business, you’ll need something that can scale with you. Formstack is focused on solving problems that impact your whole business, not just your forms function.
Compare: Jotform vs. Formstack
FormAssembly
FormAssembly offers data collection software for companies across multiple industries.
The Skinny
FormAssembly is a forms-only product that provides integrations and analytics so you can “not only collect data, but leverage it.”
For Salesforce customers, FormAssembly may describe a ‘native integration’, but that means native to FormAssembly, not Salesforce - so this means an integration that requires manual field mappings between forms and Salesforce fields and the complexity of managing and troubleshooting a bi-directional data sync between disparate systems.
In contrast Formstack’s Forms for Salesforce is a native Salesforce product – accessed directly through your Salesforce org; forms built dragging and dropping from your data model; and data both processed and stored local to your Salesforce org.
Our native Salesforce capabilities save you time in configurations and setup—no connectors, no mapping, and no integrations required – which means faster implementations and solutions that you can easily evolve and edit over time. Our NativeCloud works with Salesforce Shield & encrypted Salesforce fields and runs on all Salesforce high compliance clouds, including GovCloud, HealthCloud, and Financial Services Cloud. Customers with data residency requirements in Canada, Australia, Europe, or other geographies also love this solution, as all data is processed and stored locally in the Salesforce org.
Formstack also provides Formstack Documents for Salesforce as our second AppExchange product, meaning a single source solution for data collection, document automation, and digital signature - while FormAssembly stays in the data collection lane. Formstack is known for both customer support and a strong partner network to ensure you are reaching success with your solutions. We also offer more connection opportunities outside of Salesforce with over 200 integrations and API connections.
Bottom line: FormAssembly offers a single solution to a growing data capture and usage problem. Formstack is a holistic solution that allows you to collect and activate your data across Forms, Documents, e-signatures, and workflows through third-party connections via webhooks and API. For Salesforce customers, Formstack offers a native solution that provides massive benefits around time to value, ease of administration, and security vs. any external form builder such as FormAssembly.
Compare: FormAssembly vs. Formstack
Conga
Conga is a revenue lifecycle platform that offers CPQ, document automation, and contract management.
The Skinny
Conga made a name for itself in the contract lifecycle management space. But is a name more important—or a solution that will solve for your broader use case?
Conga excels at redlining functionality within contracts. It’s best to consider how much redlining your organization requires in contracts and weigh that against other functionality you’ll need. If you’re not in insurance or legal and your organization doesn’t use redlining heavily, it may be best to look for a more complete solution.
Conga also requires a minimum of 10 users, increasing your starting costs and prices based on users, which can lead to excessive costs not aligning with the value you get from the software. Conga is also known for gating key features such as automation that will lead to expensive upgrades down the road. Conga’s focus on other areas around the revenue lifecycle has taken their eye off the ball for document automation use cases, which often translates to difficulties getting support for these use cases.
Bottom line: Conga is a popular name in the contract lifecycle game and offers the “bells and whistles” of contract software. It’s also known for complex implementation, lengthening the time it takes your team to get up and running. How long can you afford to wait? Formstack offers more than contracts—in less time. Unlike Conga, we give your team data collection capabilities, and they can turn into branded, professional documents that are easy to sign and route to the next step of the process. Be sure to consider how many users you’ll require, how long you can wait to go live, and if your needs extend beyond just contracts to entire workflows.
Keep Reading: Formstack Documents vs Conga – A Fresh Take on Salesforce Document Generation
Titan
Titan is a zero-code platform for Salesforce forms, document generation, web applications, surveys, flows, and more.
The Skinny
Like Formstack, Titan understands the importance of uniting data collection, document generation, e-signature, and workflows in one ecosystem. Titan places particular emphasis on scale and Salesforce acceleration with no-code tools. New users can also try the product free for six months.
But the reality of no-code software is you need an intuitive interface to truly remove complexities. Titan’s UI may still leave you befuddled with complex terminology, whereas Formstack is easy for anyone to understand and use. Meaningful Salesforce integration also means reliable mapping. Formstack is a native Salesforce program with unmatched mapping that helps you place objects exactly where they need to go.
While six months free is nice, renegotiating or finding a new provider after your team has become ingrained in the product can be maddening. Also, look out for renewals without warning and sudden price increases.
Bottom line: Titan and Formstack both tout no-code software—but we really mean it. If your team isn’t used to terms like “HTML building,” “debug mode,” or “if not found run,” you may need to hire someone to interpret and run the program. At Formstack, if you can drag and drop, you can design your own workflows. And even when you need help, we offer white-glove customer service that feels more like a partnership—not a criticism of your technical knowledge.
Docusign
Docusign is a platform for sending, signing, and managing contracts in one place.
The Skinny
DocuSign was one of the first companies in the e-signature game, so it’s well-versed in contract management. But signing is only one part of a much larger workflow that includes data collection, document generation, e-signature, and digital workflows. That means your data is never siloed. You can use it again and again to re-engage your prospects, customers, and other audiences.
Docusign’s cost structure is also designed around “envelopes,” or digital containers that hold one or many documents for signing. But if you exceed your envelope limit, you’ll pay extra just to continue your workloads. Once you’ve used the platform for about a year, be prepared for your “custom price” to change (sometimes considerably) based on your company’s regular usage. Formstack offers transparent pricing—not just for one year, but for renewal costs too.
Bottom line: Docusign is really good at one thing. But it leaves your data trapped in PDFs instead of in flexible workflows that serve multiple purposes. Formstack Sign is part of the Formstack Suite of digital workflow tools that help you collect data, generate professional documents, route them for signature, and store for later. And when you need to add customization, Formstack ensures consistency across all parts of the process.
Compare: Docusign vs. Formstack
The Choice is Yours
Every tech vendor you explore has its pros and cons. Before you sign on the dotted line, ask yourself:
- What functionality matters most to our organization?
- Are we prepared for sudden price hikes, or do we need more transparency?
- Can we make do with setting up our own integrations, or do we need native capabilities? Is there someone at our company who can manage these connections?
- Am I solving for a single problem now? Or anticipating how work will flow as our company grows?
Don’t have answers? We can help. Give us a shout or try Formstack yourself (free) for two weeks.
