Posted in Forms Automation

The Best Formstack Alternative: frevvo vs. Formstack

At its core, Formstack is a drag-and-drop form builder with optional, add-on features.

It’s great for basic use cases and workflows involving a form.

Organizing an event and need to create a form for registrations and payments? Formstack has you covered.

Setting up a simple workflow where a completed form gets automatically sent from person A to person B? Formstack can do that.*

*If you pay extra.

But Formstack isn’t much help when your form-based workflows get even slightly complicated.

You don’t have to take our word for it:  

Their workflow feature is still half-baked. Lacks enhanced features like logic & ending the workflow mid-step Review on TrustRadius by Kow S.

What do I dislike? The lack of true workflow features, in particular the inability to send a form back to the submitter for amendment. Currently, you can only reject a form. Validated Reviewer on G2

Imagine combining an intuitive, drag-and-drop form builder with a simple—yet powerful—workflow designer.

A workflow designer that could quickly automate business processes of any complexity. That could customize workflow automations around your specific business needs and requirements. All without coding or I.T.

And make it all available for one, straightforward price.

That’s frevvo.

frevvo: Everything Great about Formstack + Everything You Need for Better Business Performance

Many workflows start with a form.

Just like Formstack, frevvo features an intuitive, drag-and-drop form builder. Built-in templates make it easy to get a quick start. Resulting forms are attractive and mobile-friendly.

But unlike FormStack, frevvo specializes in adding power-user form features that anyone can use thanks to our visual, no-code tools.

Populating form fields with data from a database
frevvo’s drag-and-drop form builder

These powerful features allow you to customize your forms to your business’s specific rules and procedures:

Advanced Form Field Options

Create sophisticated layouts in your most-dense business forms with fillable tables, complex repeating sections, and frevvo’s column-based grid layout.  

Dynamic Behavior

dynamic behavior

Every organization has its own rules, standards, and practices. Anyone can use frevvo’s Visual Rule Builder to easily add all sorts of dynamic behavior to your forms, including calculations, custom validations, and dependencies.

Its many built-in functions mean you can create even the most complex rule combinations–all without coding. (Of course, if you want to code a business rule in JavaScript, you can do that, too.) 

Streamline the form-completion process for your users, and eliminate the need to chase down missing or erroneous information.

Digital Signatures

Digital signatures

Encrypted digital signatures are a standard feature included with frevvo — add digital signature fields to any form, regardless of your number of users.

Meanwhile, Formstack charges $15+ per user for its Formstack Sign add-on.

Dynamic PDF Generation

Dynamic PDF generation

With frevvo’s drag-and-drop PDF mapper, you can map form fields to any PDF document.

That means a new employee can submit her information–including digital signature–in a user-friendly, online frevvo form, and frevvo will auto-populate an official government PDF like a W-4 or I-9.

You just can’t do this with Formstack. Formstack offers form-to-PDF generation in one of their upgrade plans, but you can’t map information to any PDF – your PDF design options are limited.

Where Else frevvo Really Shines: Workflows and More

A Simple, Drag-and-Drop Workflow Designer for Even the Most Complex Workflows

Our goal is to help you automate your workflows–no matter how complex–as quickly and easily as possible using intuitive, visual tools. 

Let our built-in wizards guide you through setting up automated workflows with frevvo’s drag-and-drop workflow designer. Or simply customize one of our built-in workflow templates. 

Contrast this with Formstack: Creating workflows with Formstack requires purchasing an add-on with frustrating, non-visual tools. It’s not built to support anything but very straightforward workflows.

frevvo workflows vs formstack

In frevvo, your workflows are designed like a flow chart — the way you’d intuitively design a process. These visualizations also make it easier to share and explain your workflows to stakeholders.

Reminders & Escalations 

With frevvo, no one has to spend time calling or emailing to chase down a late or errant approval. Reminders and auto-escalations–which are missing from Formstack–are built-in, so you customize them to your needs at any stage of a workflow. 

Workflow Audit Trails 

When you request approval for a vacation, a purchase order, or a timesheet, you want to know its current status. Is it stuck with your manager, on the VP’s desk, or somewhere else? With complex approval chains, figuring out where your workflow is can be daunting.

With frevvo, it’s a piece of cake. Every workflow comes with its own audit trail, so you can see a workflow’s history, check the status of a workflow at any time, and easily satisfy compliance and regulatory requirements. 

workflow audit trail
Check the status of any workflow using the built-in audit trail

Formstack doesn’t appear to have any audit history functionality built-in. That means having to manually chase down the status of a workflow.

Dynamic Form Routing for Any Approval process

frevvo is built on the understanding that real-world business processes are complex and often involve long and shifting chains of approvals.

With frevvo, visual wizards walk you through configuring each workflow step to automatically route forms to an email address, to specific users, or to an assigned role

You even have the flexibility to dynamically define a recipient at runtime based on data entered into a form. Need approvals over $10,000 to go to a VP instead of a manager? Set it and forget it using simple, visual tools. No coding required.  

workflow rule builder
Configure dynamic workflow routing without any coding

Integrations for Better Business Operations

Formstack’s integrations focus on customer data in the cloud – whether from CRMs, email marketing platforms, or payment processors. Need robust options for integrating with payments processors? Formstack is a great way to go.

frevvo distinguishes itself by connecting with your business data, whether it’s cloud-based or local. That’s how we can help your operations run more smoothly and efficiently.

With two-way secure connections to your SQL database, you can auto-populate fields in business forms and auto-save completed form data to internal systems. Speed up form-based processes and dramatically reduce data entry (and inevitable errors that result).

Integrating a form with business systems to populate customer data
Auto-populate forms by connecting frevvo to your database

Or automatically save documents to your Electronic Document Management (EDM) system. Or set up a read/write connection with Google Apps / Google Drive

Whatever makes the most sense for your operations, frevvo has flexible options to set up time-saving integrations.

Secure and Flexible Deployments

Formstack is only available in the cloud. This is a fine choice for many customers. 

Some customers have more strict security requirements, or they’re subject to regulatory requirements. 

That’s why frevvo gives customers a choice: they can use our secure, robust cloud-based platform or our downloadable on-premise solution that installs and operates behind the customer’s firewall. Both options offer the same set of features.

Customer Onboarding & Training

We want you and your organization to have the onboarding and training you need to make your workflow automation projects successful. 

We offer comprehensive onboarding, hands-on assistance, and access to weekly training classes — all included in the price of every purchase

Formstack appears to offer personal onboarding with a Customer Success manager for their most expensive Enterprise plan. The only available training appears to be via online videos. Otherwise, you’re on your own. 

Straightforward Pricing

Formstack offers five pricing plans, each with different user access and feature limitations. Want workflow capabilities or access to “advanced” integrations? You’ll need to talk to their sales team about purchasing an add-on.

Simplicity is a theme we want to color every experience you have with frevvo.

That’s why frevvo has one, straightforward price, based on your usage. 

With that price, you get unlimited users, access to all features, and unlimited forms and workflows

Plus, we offer a 30-day free trial.

Our Customers Say It Best

frevvo vs Formstack customer reviews

Ready to try the best Formstack alternative?

Get a drag-and-drop form builder, complete workflow designer, and more. Try frevvo free for 30-days.