Formstack Forms vs. Square 9 Softworks

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

Square 9 Softworks is well suited for unique needs within companies. We have built, renovated, and optimized custom workflows within our archives, designed highly specific interfaces with our ERP platform, and Square 9 Softworks has answered the bell through it all.

• 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

• The software is very flexible, and the technicians were great at implementing our customizations for the PO project.
• While indexing fields in Global Search, the Key Free tool works great.
• Global Search is well-organized. It's easy to navigate and find your documents.
• The process for completing your project was well done. Communicating with individuals at Square 9 who were responsible for different aspects of the project was easy.

Incentivized

• 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

• Overall, it is not as stable as other software. Some errors could not be fixed, such as a form going forward without approval because a user pressed "enter" twice in a row.
• I probably only use 20% of the functionality. Beyond that, I'd have to pay for development. We did that once, and the project that we paid for never was implemented. They allowed us to request a design before my time that was so complicated that they never got it to work. Once I came on board, I implemented a much simpler solution.
• Our upgrade took much, much longer than expected, and was disrupted by so many software issues.

Incentivized

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

We are definitely renewing our SmartSearch. This is the only place all of our companies contracts and regulatory filings are kept. Our company would lose track of all expiring contracts if we did not renew. We would also need to spend many hours figuring out a new organizational system for all of our files, as well as savings the documents from SmartSearch onto the computer.

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

The items I am searching for are easily found. They are found in at least 95% of the searches. The failure rate generally is related to another employees user error or a template error set up by our Square 9 team in house.

Incentivized

Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.

With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.

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

Support is always extremely helpful and responsive. Whenever we have a question, it is simple contacting them and also setting-up an appointment, if necessary. Scheduling the appointment is easy and they are willing to talk on the phone, which is not always true with software companies. Their report support tools are also really east to use.

Incentivized

It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.

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

I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.

Incentivized

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

SharePoint and Square 9 Softworks are similar in some ways and totally different in others. They both do workflow, although Square 9 Workflow gives administrators more options. They both have a repository, although Square 9 GlobalSearch is more structured in terms of customization. Using field values allows for more exact search capabilites. Square 9 AI tools allows administrators to get the correct data off the page more precisely with less effort.

Incentivized

The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.

• 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

• Reduction in human error through manual data entry process now being automated
• Reduction in cost due to automation allowing the function to not require a full time employee
• Reduction in time spent performing the previous manual tasks. Example: on our consolidated shipment days, it could take doc clerk 2-3 hours to prepare master document package. This has been reduced to 30 minutes or less (depending on size of shipment and time needed for OCR to complete)

Incentivized