Jotform vs Formstack: The surprising differences

Testing and comparing online form builders is fun! 

Said no one ever.

Although form builders can make a world of difference to your business, do you really want to spend hours comparing Jotform vs Formstack? We know you don’t, and we did all the heavy lifting so you can make the right decision in a matter of minutes.

In this post, we’ll analyze Jotform and Formstack to help you understand their key features and notable differences.

Let’s take a closer look!

Key takeaways

• Jotform offers a user-friendly interface with thousands of editable templates and advanced design customization. It features a modest free plan and competitively priced paid options.

• Formstack stands out with its combination of forms and workflow automation tools. The platform’s higher price point reflects its enterprise-level focus and superior security features that protect sensitive data.

Jotform vs Formstack: Comparison table

We’ll discuss the details of both tools in a minute, but we’d like you to check out this head-to-head comparison table first. Here are the most notable details:

Comparing the key features: Formstack vs Jotform

The main difference between the two is that Formstack adds a suite of productivity tools to the system, which makes it more robust than the standard online form builder. However, we’ll only focus on their data collection abilities to help you make the right choice.

Learning curve

Jotform makes things really simple — new users can quickly get up to speed with creating forms without needing any technical knowledge whatsoever. All it takes is to sign up and click ‘Create form’ to start building your first request.

You can start from scratch, pick one of many Jotform templates, import and convert an existing form, or create a signable document. In each case, you’ll start working on it in a matter of seconds:

Formstack has a slightly steeper learning curve, but it’s nothing to worry about. While the initial navigation may feel a bit overwhelming for beginners, the platform is intuitive enough to help you figure everything out. When you click the ‘Create form’ button, Formstack lets you choose between making a form and a survey. 

We decided to build a form from its Course Evaluation template:

Things become a lot simpler from this point on because you’ll find the usual form-building features on the left side of the dashboard.

Customization 

Before you begin working on your first request, Jotform will suggest adding a company logo and name to use in all of your forms. It’s a nice way to take care of the basic branding elements in advance. But that’s just the starting point as Jotform lets you rearrange almost every design element you can think of. 

For one, there’s the ‘Form elements’ section on the left-hand side of the dashboard where you can add one of 40+ field types. Apart from the typical form questions, these also include payments, electronic signatures, and widgets such as configurable lists and image sliders.

Jotform ‘Form designer’ is on the right.

This is where you can customize colors, styles, themes, and layouts to create highly personalized forms that align with your brand identity. What’s more, Jotform supports custom CSS for advanced design tweaks to give you full control over the look and feel of your requests.

Formstack also provides many ways to customize content in your online forms, though it leans more towards functional improvements and data management rather than pure design.

Its branding options are solid — they allow you to incorporate your logo, color schemes, and custom messaging to maintain a consistent brand presence. Customization options (field types and style) are on the left-hand side of the dashboard:

In addition, Formstack gives you powerful conditional logic features so you can create complex and dynamic forms tailored to specific business needs. That way, Formstack maintains a good balance between professionalism and sophisticated design customization.

Templates

The best part of working with Jotform is its massive library of ready-made templates: it contains more than 10,000 editable templates for all types of data collection projects. More importantly, Jotform makes the research process easy by adding multiple filters such as industry, language, layout, and profession.

It’s hard to compete with such a gigantic library, but it’s fair to say that Formstack also features a decent collection of 350+ templates. These are mainly focused on business operations, education, healthcare, IT, and human resources.

Third-party integrations

Jotform offers connections with over 250 third-party applications, giving you the chance to further improve its functionalities. Integrations with many popular tools are available in a few clicks: Google Drive, Google Sheets, Dropbox, PayPal, Mailchimp, and so on. Simply put, you can quickly streamline operations by automatically syncing form data with CRM systems, email marketing platforms, and project management tools. 

Formstack also offers impressive integration capabilities, particularly suited for businesses that require advanced workflow automation and data management. For example, it automatically connects with major applications like Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Sheets, and multiple payment gateways. Overall, 179 integrations are available in Formstack.

Pricing plans

If you only need a form builder without additional productivity solutions, you’ll probably choose Jotform because it’s cheaper. Here are your options:

• Jotform Free: It includes all form features with a low form limit and storage capacity

• Bronze: $34 per month

• Silver: $39 per month

• Gold: $99 per month

• Enterprise: Available upon request

Formstack has a wider range of pricing options, including the ones for Salesforce solutions and document automation, but we’ll focus on its data capturing plans:

• Forms: $83 per month

• Suite: $250 per month

• Enterprise: Available upon request

Content Snare: A user-friendly alternative with auto-save

There’s no denying that Formstack and Jotform are excellent tools, but there is another option that does an even better job for client-facing businesses.

It’s called Content Snare.

Don’t get us wrong: we’re not just praising our own tool for no particular reason. Content Snare offers all the standard form-building features and adds unique functionalities to the process.

For one, it has an auto-save feature that lets respondents pick up where they left off without going through the same questions all over again:

This is a major improvement as both Jotform and Formstack users have to manually save progress. If they don’t, they’ll have to complete an entire form in a single sitting — a huge inconvenience for respondents filling out dozens or hundreds of form fields.

Another benefit is that your clients can post questions right within Content Snare forms:

Thanks to in-form conversations, it’s easy to provide additional instructions without a single phone call, SMS, or annoying email thread.

Related: How this accounting firm overhauled its information-collection process using Content Snare

Thirdly, you can approve respondents’ answers to lock them from further changes. Alternatively, it’s possible to reject their inputs and leave comments to explain what’s wrong without sending yet another email:

The bottom line is that Content Snare gives you almost everything you’d expect from Jotform and Formstack (or other form builders) while adding a few extras to improve the overall experience for your clients.

This is exactly why Content Snare users see a 77% reduction in data collection costs and spend 71% less time gathering information from their clients. 

Sounds interesting? 

Sign up for a free trial right now to test Content Snare for 14 days. 

You and your clients are going to love it!