Formstack is a workflow automation software offering a variety of products, including Forms, Document, Sign, Formstack Suite, and Formstack for Salesforce. Formstack Document helps you automatically generate and manage documents from data collected through forms or other sources. While this tool gets the job done, its high-end pricing and other drawbacks drive users to seek Formstack Document alternatives.
We've reviewed ten of them based on their features, ideal users, and pricing to help you make an informed decision.
But first, let's clarify...
Why You Might Need Formstack Alternatives?
When rewind feedback from Formstack Document users, three reasons often come up for considering an alternative:
1. Formstack Lacks Responsive Customer Support
Review sites are inundated with complaints about Formstack's inadequate customer support. Formstack’s exclusive reliance on email support is a major downside and customers are often forced to repeatedly contact support to quell their issues. Moreover, Formstack frequently exhibits delays or fails to respond at all. Consequently, if you encounter any bugs near a contract deadline, it’s highly probable that Formstack will result financial losses for you.
2. Formstack Pricing Plans are Expensive and Inflexible
Formstack offers only two standard pricing plans, which is heavy on the wallets for users with minimal needs and impacts scalability for the heavy hitters. For instance, the starting price of $92 isn't suitable for users with minimal needs, as evidenced by this verified user:
Similarly, those with extensive automation needs will face brick wall with the number of templates and merges, pushing them towards the Suite plan. Despite being double the starting price, this plan only provides 100 more merges and includes other Formstack products you may not need.
3. Time-Consuming Document Creation and Merges
Although Formstack positions itself as a form builder and a data collection software, it sports a document editor and merge field capabilities to automate document creation workflows.
Users have complained that the document generation process in Formstack is time-consuming. The primary purpose of a document automation tool is to save time. If a tool can't guarantee that, it defeats the purpose.
10 Best Formstack Alternatives and Competitors in 2024
1.Docupilot
Docupilot provides features to automate document creation workflows, saving you time, reducing errors, and ensuring brand consistency. With Docupilot, you can build templates, make them dynamic, generate personalized bulk documents, store or sign them.
But that's not all. Docupilot aims to democratize document automation for businesses of all sizes and teams with its easy-to-use interface, flexible pricing plans, and responsive customer support.
A Formstack Document user turned Docupilot user, sums it up well:
As you've seen, Docupilot is the best Formstack alternative that's equally feature-rich, easier to set up, with better customer support, and budget-friendly pricing.
Let's talk more about what sets Docupilot apart.
Easy to Create Templates and Automate Document Creation
With Docupilot, your repetitive documents can become automated dynamic templates in four steps.
Step 1: Import your existing document in various formats like Excel, LawCloud, MS Word, or Google Docs, or create from scratch with Docupilot’s native document builder featuring rich formatting tools like header, images, tables, page breaks, and more.
Step 2: Insert dynamic field placeholders including text, numbers, dates, and images. Add conditions, loops, and tables to automate dynamic content insertion.
Step 3: Integrate with your existing data sources using Zapier or Make to automate bulk document creation.
Step 4: Automate your document delivery to your recipient email, storage platform like Dropbox or DocuSign for e-signing.
Dynamic Map, QR Code, Barcode
Docupilot offers dynamic maps, QR codes, and barcodes to increase your document's relevance and make it more interactive. How do they help you?
Dynamic maps allow you to integrate visual location data, such as delivery routes, event locations, or property listings, into your documents from Google Maps. For instance, you can showcase property locations in your real estate contracts.
With dynamic QR codes, you can encode additional information or actions directly from your data sources for your user’s easy access. For example, you can create a QR code to embed dynamic invitation IDs in your invitation letters.
Dynamic barcodes are particularly useful in sales orders for identifying the order and providing access to information about the products, customers, delivery addresses, and shipping methods.
Responsive Customer Support
Despite our effort to make Docupilot the most intuitive document automation software, we understand that occasional issues are inevitable and you may require clarification for certain features. This is why we prioritize customer support. But don't take our word for it, evidence is littered all over review sites. Here's one from a verified user.
This review is a testament to how far we can go to make our users happy. Hence, you can rely on our support to make your Docupilot's journey as smooth as possible.
Pricing
In the bid to make Docupilot inclusive for all business sizes, we offer six pricing plans which include:
- Starter: $29
- Plus: $99
- Pro: $149
- Premium: $199
- Business: $399
- Enterprise: $699
All plans come with unlimited templates, testing, and third-party integrations. Needless to say, you'll hardly find a more competitive price in the market. If you’re ready to take Docupilot on a test drive, sign up for a free 30-day trial.
2.PandaDoc
PandaDoc sets itself apart with its appealing UI and 1000+ templates. It simplifies document creation with its no-code interface and drag-and-drop document builder. Also, it integrates seamlessly with Zapier and many CRM tools to connect with different data sources and furthers its document workflow automation capabilities beyond its native use cases.
However, it’s not very budget-friendly, as most of its best features are reserved for the higher-tier plans, often leaving you with no choice but to upgrade.
Who is PandaDoc for?
PandaDoc is ideal for users who need visually appealing templates to kickstart their document creation process.
Features
- Native e-signature tool for collecting signatures from anywhere and on any device
- Over 1000 templates of different types of documents across various industries to help you jumpstart your document creation.
- A document repository searchable by date, status, and recipient, to enable you store, access and manage your documents from one central location
- Audit trail and history to track how your document moves through workflows and see how people engage with it, providing valuable insights for improvement and security.
Pricing
- Essentials: $19/month
- Enterprise: talk to sales
3.Proposify
As the name suggests, Proposify is primarily a proposal software. It’s no-code, easy to use, and integrates natively with numerous sales tools and payment processors like Stripe to facilitate deal closing.
However, it lacks merge fields, making it impossible to create bulk documents. Many users also complain about the editor being buggy and some functionalities not working properly. On the positive side, the customer support is fairly good.
Who is Proposify for?
Proposify is explicitly designed for sales teams who want to automate proposal creation and close deals faster.
Features
- Native signature tool that supports multiple signatures.
- Mobile app that makes approving proposals easy
- Permission and access control to lock document sections and request approvals based on certain conditions.
- Metrics and Analytics to gain insight into your client's interaction with the document such as number of views, time spent on page, and activities performed.
Pricing
- Team: $49/user/month
- Business: contact sales
4.Conga Composer
Conga Composer is a Salesforce app that enables users to generate and customize quotes, proposals, presentations, invoices, contracts, and reports using data from Salesforce.
Users have reported issues with its glitchiness and subpar customer support. Additionally, Conga Composer lacks standard pricing, making it difficult to trust their pricing structure.
Features
- Generate template documents and map Salesforce data fields to specific areas within the templates to ensure accurate data.
- Integrate with congaSign to ensure easy and secure e-signing
- Automatically email generated documents directly from Salesforce
- Batch processing enables users to generate multiple documents simultaneously.
Pricing
Contact sales for pricing.
5.Concord
Concord is another Formstack Document alternative that excels in its collaboration features. It allows you to track edits, redline, chat, comment, and approve documents in real time.
However, it lacks extensive document formatting tools, conditional logic, and bulk document creation capabilities.
Who is Concord for?
Concord is best for users who want to track client interactions and negotiations in one place.
Features
- Bulk upload external documents compressed into a single Zip file
- Customizable report to track parameters of your choice, share or download them.
- Integrates with apps like email, sales forces, Google Drive, and Zapier to extend its functionality.
- Native signing tool for collecting signatures within the document
Pricing
- Essentials: $49/user/month
- Business: $79/user/month
- Enterprise: contact sales
6.Fluent
Fluent is a low-code document management tool that can be self-hosted or used in the cloud. It integrates with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, allowing users to design templates and generate documents at scale with minimal coding.
However, its pricing isn't transparent, requiring you to contact sales for a custom quote. Despite this, users commend its customer support.
Who is Fluent for?
Fluent is particularly useful for enterprises as it supports a wide range of data sources like JSON, XML, SQL Server, Oracle, and Salesforce.
Features
- Fluent engine feature for merging data from multiple sources into document templates
- Microsoft Office ad on for easy template creation within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
- SDK that supports embedding automated reporting into various applications
- Centralized Template Manager for managing templates, including version control and accessibility, ensuring consistency and compliance across documents
Pricing
Custom quote, Contact sales
7.Docomotion
Docomotion is another document generation and automation solution specifically designed for Salesforce users. It's Microsoft Word-based and allows you to easily create templates with drag-and-drop visual editor.
Who is Docomotion for?
Docomotion is designed for Salesforce users who require seamless document generation and management directly within their Salesforce environment.
Features
- Automate documents by integrating with Salesforce data
- Integrates with Salesforce’s Lightning Flow and Process Builder to automate document generation based on predefined triggers
- Mass generation feature allows users to generate multiple documents in bulk
Pricing
- Starter: $10/user/month
- Gold: $20/user/month
- Platinum: $30/user/month
8.OneFlow
If your main priority is contract automation and management, OneNote is a suitable choice. It's no-code, user-friendly, and offers tools to create contract templates, sign them, and manage them all in one place.
If you're creating contracts for personal use and have limited funds, Oneflow offers a free forever plan that allows you to create PDF contracts. Keep in mind, though, that Oneflow has limited editing tools which may affect your ability to create professional documents..
Who is Oneflow for?
Oneflow is perfect for businesses solely focused on managing their contracts.
Features
- Allow real-time collaboration with team members and clients
- Offers various premade templates for different contracts including freelance agreements, leases, service contracts, and more.
- Integrate seamlessly with tools across various industries, simplifying the creation of automated contracts for different teams.
Pricing
- Essentials: £17
- Business: £45
- Enterprise: talk to sales
9.Qwilr
Qwilr is another sales-focused document automation tool designed to help businesses easily create documents such as proposals, quotes, reports, and presentations with drag-and-drop functionality. It includes a library of royalty-free stock images from Unsplash to enhance your documents' visual appeal.
Moreover, Qwilr is praised for its responsive customer support.
Who is Qwilr for?
Qwilr is ideal for sales teams who are looking for an easy-to-use document automation tool
Features
- Integrations include Hubspot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Slack, Stripe, QuickBooks and Zapier
- Customize with brand colors and fonts to keep your documents consistent
- Embed videos, links, sheets forms, and an ROI calculator
- Personalize and automate documents with merge fields and data source integration
Pricing
- Business: $35/user/month
- Enterprise: $59/user/month
10.Templafy
Templafy is a low-code document automation tool that allows you to create, edit, manage, and automate branded and compliant documents within Microsoft Office. It enables the creation of both static and dynamic templates using smart fields that can be populated based on user's profile, response forms, or data sources.
However, Templafy has a learning curve, lacks standard pricing, and users have reported compatibility issues with other software, including Microsoft Teams and Outlook.
Who is Pandadoc for?
With the majority of Templafy’s customers being primarily enterprise businesses, it’s safe to say it's most suited for enterprise-level organizations.
Features
- AI assistant to help with document drafting and provide intelligent suggestions within the document creation process.
- Document classification based on security level using tags such as personal, public, general, confidential, and highly confidential.
- Integrates with Google Workspace, Microsoft Suite, and other unpopular tools
- Templafy's clean-up presentation allows you to scan documents for formatting, terminology, and grammar errors automatically.
Pricing
Custom pricing
Docupilot: a Better and Affordable Formstack Alternative
As mentioned earlier, while Formstack Documents gets the job done, it handicaps users from scaling platform adoption due to its email-only customer support, affordability, and ease of use.
The 10 tools mentioned above are top Formstack alternatives, and we recommend trying them out to find the best fit for your needs.
However, if you're seeking a tool that former Formstack users have identified as the best alternative, consider giving Docupilot a try. Sign up for a 30-day free trial with no credit card required.
Formstack Alternative FAQs
What is better than Formstack?
Docupilot is better than Formstack, especially in pricing, ease of use, and customer support
What is the difference between PandaDoc and Formstack?
PandaDoc has an extensive template library and it's more affordable than Formstack
What format are Formstack documents?
Formstack documents can generate documents in Word, Excel, PDF, and PowerPoint.
