Formstack Forms vs. Google Forms

Google Forms

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Formstack Forms	Score 7.9 out of 10	N/A	Formstack is an online form building solution. Its drag-and-drop web form creator gives digital marketers a tool for online data collection and engagement. Users can collect payments and pass form data to popular marketing apps through third-party integrations. With Formstack, users can capture responses, store the information and share it with their teams.	N/A
Google Forms	Score 8.9 out of 10	N/A	Google Forms is an app for creating forms and surveys, and is part of Google Apps for Work. The product focuses on ease of use; the interface is similar to a document editor, with drop down lists of options and drag and drop question re-ordering. Users can embed images and video into surveys. Users can also program the question flow with custom logic. Google sends users basic summaries of the survey results automatically, or users can export the raw survey results data and analyze it via…	N/A

Pricing

Formstack Forms

Google Forms

Editions & Modules

Enterprise: Contact sales team

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Formstack Forms	Google Forms
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

Plans start at $50/month (billed annually), including: 20 Digital Forms 1,000 Submissions Per Form 14,400 API Calls Per Day Drag-and-Drop Form Builder Custom Themes Payment Integrations Salesforce Integration SSO User Management Form Prefill

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Formstack Forms	Google Forms
Considered Both Products	Formstack Forms Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms SurveyMonkey, Constant Contact and HubSpot Marketing Hub Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I haven't used SurveyMonkey in a while, but in my recent experience, Formstack Forms offers great functionality and ALSO integrates with the other Formstack products we have, such as Formstack Documents and Formstack Sign. This additional perk of integrations makes the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms Cheaper than most alternatives and very easy to use Other systems can be more complicated to setup The system can be access from most anywhere Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I feel like Formstack is Google forms on steroids. They both serve the same purpose and I have more experience using Google forms but feel like I have more resources at my disposal with Formstack. Honestly, these are 2 only products I would use in this category, with Formstack … Incentivized Helpful? Shreyas Mecheri Associate Director Chose Formstack Forms Wufoo and Formstack are very similar - almost as if they were built by the same company or ex-employees. Except Formstack UI was better and modern at least when we selected it. While the team was happy with Wufoo and Surveymonkey, our IT team picked Formstack based on their … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms We used Survey Monkey previously and the process of pulling data, reporting, and integrating the data was much easier and faster. The page logic let us shorten the end-user experience, and the layout and design were significantly improved. Our end-users reported a better user … Incentivized Helpful? Laurance J. Specht Manager of Personalized Learning and Dean of Instruction Chose Formstack Forms Flexibility, tools and ROI are the reasons we chose Formstack. Data being exportable to other tools and systems we use also helped to make this determination. The level of complexity and conditional logic it has even at its most basic levels gives it an edge over most … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I found Blackbaud NetCommunity to have a much steeper learning curve, and to be fairly expensive. I opted to use Formstack instead, which meant exporting/importing data with some regularity. Incentivized Helpful? Patrick Stephens Director Of Communications Chose Formstack Forms Formstack just had more versatility. We had to start in a rush and they gave us what we needed to hit the ground running. They didn't delay or bog us down with complicated sales pitches, and didn't leave us in the dark on what to do. We didn't need to google how to use the … Incentivized Helpful? Brett Doucette, ABC, MBA Digital Marketing Manager Chose Formstack Forms I am not aware of other competitors out there to FormStack other than modules or plug-ins deployed on WordPress or Drupal built sites. I do think that forms deployed through marketing automation platforms (HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot) are better alternatives due to the if-then … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I didn't evaluate any other products. Incentivized Helpful? Tim Roe Project Manager, Web Services Chose Formstack Forms Formstack proved to be more robust, easier to use and friendlier to work with when questions/issues emerged. Incentivized Helpful? Nicole McCormick Project Manager Chose Formstack Forms Formstack was much easier to use. Drag and drop creation made organizing and reorganizing easy. Forms were easy to brand and looked professional. Easy field creation and the breadth of field options made Formstack the forerunner. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I have never used anything like Formstack before! Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I have began switching over to Form Assembly for our new sales cycle but have not started using it yet. I cannot give a good product evaluation or comparison because Formstack is the only product I have used. Incentivized Helpful? Mitchel Laman Consultant Chose Formstack Forms 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms We have found that no other software gives us the freedom that Formstack does to be creative in our form building. Formstack has by far the most user-friendly interface of any other product we have used. We especially like the Digital Signature, SubAccounts and Calculating … Incentivized Helpful? Jason Fluegge Sponsorship & Special Projects Manager Chose Formstack 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. … Incentivized Helpful? Sarah Meerschaert Proposal and Technical Writer Chose Formstack Forms Formstack allows for multiple users and provides a cleaner UI with richer features and automatic data analysis. GoogleForms is a free alternative, but offers none of these features. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Formstack Forms I've created multiple webforms from scratch & the Formstack API is much more efficient in both creating and managing/updating forms. When I was initially evaluating products (about a dozen or so), Formstack had the cleanest interface and most third-party integrations (payments, … Incentivized Helpful?	Google Forms Mark Burlinson Communication Coach Chose Google Forms SurveyMonkey Incentivized Helpful? Maria Sergeeva UX and Content Designer Chose Google Forms SurveyMonkey works well for serious surveys, but it would be too difficult and expensive to use it for every small event. QuestionPro Live Polls is also good, but it is primarily used during specific events, such as Zoom webinars, to collect questions from participants. Google … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms They are pretty similar, but Google Forms is better from a cost perspective. They are both simple to use and are great options for creating + sending out surveys. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms I haven't used that many other form applications before unless they were standalone applications like Microsoft Word. I used this program, and it was ok, but it requires a paid subscription, and someone renews it yearly. This can be too complicated for some users, such as older … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms Cognito forms are really great because of the high degree of customisation that can be done. You can seriously build some amazing workflows using them which we do use for more intricate projects Incentivized Helpful? Susan Pratt Property Manager Chose Google Forms The free feature is the best feature! Incentivized Helpful? SB Shannon Brennan Center Director Chose Google Forms I think that the Google version of forms is easier to use for both those making the forms and those filling them in than it's Microsoft equivalent. Google's products are more widely used and understood by the public, and they function at a higher level. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms JotForm is good too and gives theming & CSS priority. However, I don't think the theme is important in forms, we chose Google Forms because we needed simplicity. Incentivized Helpful? Wulfran Yao Managing Director Chose Google Forms Jotform, Zoho Forms and Typeform Incentivized Helpful? Shannon Allen Recruiter Chose Google Forms For strictly forms with data driven insights Google forms is the most efficient and hands down easiest choice to go with. It offers a ton of vast and robust features that helps with integrations and many more. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms Google Forms is easy to use and affordable. The biggest benefit, however, is that our organization already uses other Google products heavily. Because of this Google Forms was our top choice. Some smaller departments in our organization still use other solutions, such as … Incentivized Helpful? Caroline Dobson Human Resources Generalist Chose Google Forms Google Forms is a much more basic tool for collecting feedback. It's better for small events or very basic responses. Survey Monkey is better for getting in-depth insights into data, including insights trends and a better presentation of the data in exportable graphs. But … Incentivized Helpful? AC Anomita Chandra Business Analyst Chose Google Forms I selected Google Forms because of its efficient and quick customer service. I had used other platforms earlier and had trouble connecting with their team for issues. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms Google Forms is great because it is free and easy to use. Formative has great features because it is able to give live feedback of responses and it has multiple question types but it is also expensive to subscribe to. Google Forms is very powerful because, in addition to the … Incentivized Helpful? Kim Grewe Instructional Designer Chose Google Forms I have been using Google Forms since it started in 2008. I have never explored other alternatives for creating surveys. I like the intuitive design and the visual output of data in charts and graphs. It's easy to share the survey with others. Google Forms embed seamlessly in … Incentivized Helpful? SS Shany Liany Saepudin Software Quality Assurance Analyst Chose Google Forms Personally, I never use other products to conduct surveys other than Google Forms, because I think Google Forms is very comfortable and easy to use. Incentivized Helpful? Carolina Reyes Ingeniero Soporte NOC1 Chose Google Forms Although both platforms offer similar functionalities, Google Form has a personal advantage and it is the impeccable integration with the different applications of the Google suite, this allows to make use of all of them in a transparent way, which in the work environment … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms We use Google Forms now instead of Survey Monkey. The question types are fairly similar and both are easy to use but Google Forms is definitely a "lighter" survey tool than Survey Monkey. It fits our day-to-day needs as we don't do robust surveys requiring large amounts of … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms We have also used FormAssembly, which is far more advanced with security, analytics, and functionality, but is also more expensive and takes a greater resource investment to train others to use. While FormAssembly can provide a lot more features, and is definitely the better … Incentivized Helpful? Liz Duffié VP, People & Culture Chose Google Forms I use both SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. Google Forms are nice for quick and simple everyday information collecting. SurveyMonkey is used for a more robust detailed information collecting where I can dive into analytics/results in a more detailed manner. Incentivized Helpful? Andrea Hester Director Of Operations Chose Google Forms Google Forms is more basic than Typeform in terms of design style options and flexibility, but it has an easier-to-use interface. It is slightly less robust in terms of logic and crowd-sourced responses than SurveyMonkey. In general, it's a good option for generating a quick, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms Google Forms definitely isn't as robust as some of the more professional tools out there. However, in my experience, I usually don't need a robust survey tool. I just need to quickly set up a survey or screener. In addition, I love how simple it is to add collaborators to … Incentivized Helpful? Joshua Welsh Associate Professor Chose Google Forms Google Forms is easier to use than Qualtrics, but has less robust capabilities, especially in terms of sharing, permissions, survey logic, and reporting features. I also find Google easier to use than the Microsoft Forms tool, but again Microsoft might have better options in … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Google Forms Simpler to use and mostly related with an alternative to a robust forms and questionnaire option. Many other tools are not only forms. Incentivized Helpful? BS Brett Schenker Email Deliverability Specialist Chose Google Forms SurveyMonkey is great but it costs money to get its full power while Google Forms can do a lot of the same but for free. When it comes to simply surveys/data intake, Google Forms is far easier to use and much cheaper. Incentivized Helpful?

Features

Formstack Forms

Google Forms

Survey Format & Appearance

Comparison of Survey Format & Appearance features of Product A and Product B
	Formstack Forms 7.2 Ratings 10% below category average	Google Forms 7.9 Ratings 1% below category average
Survey templates	7.50 Ratings	8.70 Ratings
Themes	4.50 Ratings	7.00 Ratings
Custom logo/branding	9.50 Ratings	8.00 Ratings

Survey Content

Comparison of Survey Content features of Product A and Product B
	Formstack Forms 7.5 Ratings 13% below category average	Google Forms 9.4 Ratings 10% above category average
Changes to live survey	5.50 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Question design help	8.00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Multiple question types	9.00 Ratings	9.20 Ratings

Survey Logic

Comparison of Survey Logic features of Product A and Product B
	Formstack Forms 6.6 Ratings 22% below category average	Google Forms 8.5 Ratings 3% above category average
Survey logic flexibility	6.60 Ratings	8.50 Ratings

Survey Reporting & Analytics

Comparison of Survey Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
	Formstack Forms 8.3 Ratings 2% above category average	Google Forms 9.1 Ratings 11% above category average
Response tracking	10.00 Ratings	8.90 Ratings
Data export	10.00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Standard reports	5.60 Ratings	8.80 Ratings
Custom reports	5.60 Ratings	9.50 Ratings
Analytics	10.00 Ratings	9.30 Ratings

Survey Administration & Security

Comparison of Survey Administration & Security features of Product A and Product B
	Formstack Forms 10.0 Ratings 14% above category average	Google Forms 9.9 Ratings 13% above category average
Access controls	10.00 Ratings	9.80 Ratings
Compliance	10.00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings

Survey Distribution

Comparison of Survey Distribution features of Product A and Product B
	Formstack Forms 8.0 Ratings 3% below category average	Google Forms 9.1 Ratings 10% above category average
Vendor-offered crowdsourcing	8.00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Respondent restrictions	8.00 Ratings	9.30 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Formstack Forms	Google Forms
Small Businesses	Square 9 Softworks Score 9.1 out of 10	Square 9 Softworks Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Qualaroo Score 6.1 out of 10	Qualaroo Score 6.1 out of 10
Enterprises	Verint Voice of the Customer Score 10.0 out of 10	Verint Voice of the Customer Score 10.0 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Formstack Forms	Google Forms
Likelihood to Recommend	8.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.1 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Usability	8.5 (0 ratings)	9.8 (0 ratings)
Availability	10.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Performance	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Support Rating	4.1 (0 ratings)	8.0 (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	10.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	- (0 ratings)	3.0 (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Formstack Forms	Google Forms
Likelihood to Recommend	Formstack makes it easy to create a variety of forms. I have used it for event interest and registrations, email list sign-ups, and surveys. I have found it easy to customize, and easy to export data for import into other systems (e.g., CRM). Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Appropriate Scenarios Data collection Formative assessment Survey/questionnaire File uploads (Can be limited to particular sizes or file types). Inappropriate Scenarios Lessons where you need instant feedback to answers rather than waiting for the whole form to be completed. File Uploads where not all of the users have Google accounts. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	Formstack allowed us to customize the look and feel of our forms to match our branding. It was easy for our engineers to integrate the forms within our onboarding process to deliver a seamless experience. Formstack integrates well with HubSpot, our marketing automation platform of choice. Formstack offered us a lot of flexibility in the types/formats of questions we could deploy (open-ended text, multi-choice, single choice, etc.). This made it easy to get data the way we wanted and facilitated getting that data into HubSpot. Incentivized Josh Summerhays Marketing Director Read full review	Capture of information from clients and/or consultants for real-time analysis. Knowledge evaluation for our work team, the predefined templates allow the creation of tests and knowledge tests that are very didactic and easy to grade. The acquired data is cleanly integrated with google spreadsheets allowing for fast and accurate analysis. The form completion notifications are customizable and do their job well. Incentivized Carolina Reyes Ingeniero Soporte NOC1 Read full review
Cons	Buggy Updates: Formstack tends to make on-the-fly updates that break features. We run into this about once a year Appearance: the forms are starting to look dated compared to some of the competitors (looking at you, Typeform) Dynamic Data: passing data from one field to another is not-exactly doable Paid Add-Ons: the price for Formstack is already an arm and a leg; the fact that they have additional monthly paid add-ons is frustrating User Limits: user accounts barely do anything outside of 'view/edit' permissions, thus the low volume allocated seems a bit greedy at $10/user/mo for more Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Edit view limits the questions as seen by viewers. The view function is nice to toggle between to see what the question will look like, but the edit view of some questions (like checkboxes) is confusing for the editor. It would be wonderful to be able to assign responses to go to specific users. The user needs to go into the responses section and select the option to receive notifications, versus the owner of the form being able to do that. Having a dependency feature for questions (in addition to sections) would be very helpful, so that if a question is answered a certain way, another question appears. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	Our user base has come to rely on Formstack to get forms done. The Formstack tools make it easy to start from scratch or copy an existing form to "quick start" a new, similar form. The price is right and frees up IT staff to do more transformative work. Incentivized Tim Roe Project Manager, Web Services Read full review	I will definitely renew my use of Google Forms because I really like the ease of use and the number of tools that Google forms provide. I also love that I can administer a test in real-time and get results in a timely manner Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Usability	I give it this rating because Ali feel like just about anyone can use this. Now with 7 billion people in the work I understand that’s not the case but I feel like Formstack get it pretty simple where a majority of humans could use it and navigate through. The only reason I didn’t give it a higher rating is because I think Google Forms is a little easier to use and that it’s pretty much impossible for any product to get a 10 on usability in my opinion. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	The interface is simple and intuitive. The first time you use Google Forms, it has a built in tutorial that goes through all the basics. Most people can pick up how to use it with minimal support. There are some advanced features that require a bit more work but there are plenty of videos and directions online. Google has a great support section that is easy to follow Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Reliability and Availability	No answers on this topic	In the years I've used GoogleForms I've never ran into any issues with the reliability or availability. Google is a gigantic company with essentially limitless resources which makes it very easy to trust that I will continue to be able to enjoy the same reliability I've come to know and expect from GoogleForms Incentivized Ashlie Pappas Founder Read full review
Performance	No answers on this topic	One of the things that comes as a benefit of the lack to create complex logic branching and truly custom design is that there isn't lot of room to bog down the software. GoogleForms has always loaded just as fast as my internet service and device would allow it. I'm not sure about front end integrations or integrations into the form itself, as I've never explored it, but on the backend, I've never had any issues with integrations channeling from GoogleForms from the GoogleForms's end of things. Incentivized Ashlie Pappas Founder Read full review
Support Rating	Formstack has awesome support! They are always quick to respond and genuinely care for their clients' success. They will work with you to find a solution or let developers know about your feature request. There are a few things on the feature request forum that I wish they would implement sooner, but I am at least grateful that they give clients a space to voice their ideas and take them into consideration. Incentivized Cassie Dull Assistant Director of Communications, Online Read full review	I have not had to use Google Forms support - it's always worked as expected. However, with other Google products, I've always been able to find a plethora of resources for answering questions or dealing with issues. The benefit of Google is how widely adopted its products are and how robust its support is. Incentivized Andrea Hester Director Of Operations Read full review
Implementation Rating	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. Incentivized Mitchel Laman Consultant Read full review	No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered	Formstack just had more versatility. We had to start in a rush and they gave us what we needed to hit the ground running. They didn't delay or bog us down with complicated sales pitches, and didn't leave us in the dark on what to do. We didn't need to google how to use the program! Incentivized Patrick Stephens Director Of Communications Read full review	Google Forms is easy to use and affordable. The biggest benefit, however, is that our organization already uses other Google products heavily. Because of this Google Forms was our top choice. Some smaller departments in our organization still use other solutions, such as SurveyMonkey, but as a whole it has been helpful to standardize on a single product. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Scalability	No answers on this topic	GoogleForms lacks the ability for complex logic branching and the ability to truly design it in a custom manner. It's pretty obvious when you land on a GoogleForm that it is in fact a GoogleForm. This rating solely reflects the lack of flexibility which in turn makes it something that wouldn't usually be scaled. That being said, if needing to scale a simple solution, GoogleForms would be up for the job. Incentivized Ashlie Pappas Founder Read full review
Return on Investment	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. Incentivized Ryan Spear Associate Director of Admission Operations Read full review	Google Forms provides us a vehicle to gauge faculty and student response to our online courses and their features in real time so that we can keep our courses updated for students and faculty who facilitate them. Since Google is free, provides storage space, and provides Shared Drives (at least in our institutional account), using Google Forms helps us manage our data. We support over 400 courses with thousands of sections so Google Forms helps us manage the data coming out of these courses, mostly student and faculty feedback about what is working and what is not. We encourage our faculty to use Google Forms to survey their students for prior knowledge, for interest inventories, and the like. It's incredibly nimble and useful for collecting data quickly and presenting results in easy-to-understand charts and graphs. Incentivized Kim Grewe Instructional Designer Read full review
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