Written By:

Justin Jackson  |  Salesforce Consultant

Data collection is one of the many engines that keep a business running. Consider all the ways your organization collects data and the automation that takes place. There’s probably a newsletter sign-up on your website, contact forms for lead generation, intake forms for customer support tickets, order forms to process customer orders, webinar signups, and many more.

Efficient data collection is a requirement to streamline operational efficiency within your organization. It allows you to understand your customers, their needs, how to best serve them, and how to turn that data into a list of action items for internal teams.

The problems most businesses face when it comes to data collection include:

1. 1. Collecting data to a single source of truth
   2. Cohesion of how data is collected across multiple departments
   3. Preventing duplicate data
   4. Deciding how to build the data collection engine
   5. Integrating digital forms with the single source of truth

A prerequisite to operational efficiency in managing customer data is deciding on your single source of truth. If your organization has yet to decide on a CRM for your data entry and collection, The CRM Firm can help. Contact us HERE.

For this article, we will be talking about data capture within Salesforce CRM. The Salesforce platform offers basic data collection functionality for use cases such as web-to-lead and web-to-case. But, due to Salesforce’s wide array of products, they can only truly specialize in a limited number of niches. To this point, data collection is not one of the functionalities Salesforce has chosen to pursue.

To better paint the picture, Salesforce data capture capabilities are comparable to the General Motors of the EV world, not Tesla. General Motors makes gas-powered, economical compact vehicles, luxury SUVs, high-performance sports cars, and sometimes electric vehicles. Tesla specializes in the manufacturing of EVs.

For this reason, third-party tools for data collection exist in the Salesforce world.

So what are the limitations of Salesforce data collection?

The answer to this question will help you understand when to look at those third-party tools for help. Lucky for you, I’ve already done the research:

1. 1. Complexity – Setting up web-to-lead forms or web-to-case can be difficult to configure for someone with a non-technical background.
   2. Minimally Customizable – Customizing, branding, and designing Salesforce forms is limited and difficult to match to website branding.
   3. No Conditional Logic – If you want to hide fields or sections dynamically based on user inputs you’ll need another tool.
   4. 500 Daily Limit – Salesforce’s native web-to-lead has a 500 daily limit

Basically, if you need a tool that offers ease-of-use for building forms, allows for simple customization and branding within page layouts, conditional logic, and branching to have pages dynamically show or hide, higher volume than 500/day, and forms generally longer than 5 fields, another tool will likely serve you better.

Enter third-party form tools.

Formstack vs. FormAssembly vs. JotForm

Over the past few years, two Titans have emerged as the leaders in the Salesforce forms space.

Formstack (formerly FormSpring) was conceived in 2006 in Indiana and began to see exponential growth following multiple acquisitions between 2017-2020 involving dynamic document generation (Formstack Documents) and an eSignature tool (Formstack Sign). 

FormAssembly, also founded in 2006 in Indiana, has found much of its growth in third-party connectors and dynamic workflows.

Finally, JotForm has been making more noise in the last few years with its introduction of PDF editor and eSignature features.

Let’s dig into each of these tools and their features and limitations

Formstack

Formstack fills the gaps of all the limitations of Salesforce’s out-of-the-box data collection capabilities.

Users tend to like Formstack for its ease of use, the fact that it is administered and configured inside of Salesforce, and the data prefill functionality. With its native-to-Salesforce design, users don’t have to leave their Salesforce account to create Salesforce forms. Formstack is built and designed completely with Salesforce’s native coding language, Apex, and Visualforce pages.

This furthers the value of having Salesforce as your single source of truth.

Formstack also provides an intuitive user interface (UI) and a dynamic data model branch that allows users to select the Salesforce objects and fields they want to include in their form. Because of this, you are building forms directly with your Salesforce API fields. This means there is no mapping process to ensure data maps from the form field to your Salesforce field. Formstack handles this for you.

Other features that Formstack touts include:

• • Native in Salesforce UI
  • Data Prefill
  • Conditional Logic
  • Payment Collection
  • Data Collection to Junction or Grandchild Objects

Most recently, Formstack has been working on Formstack Suite, an all-in-one offering of digital forms, document generation, eSignatures, and their new workflow product, Copilot.

Best of Formstack: Prefilling data, HIPAA compliance, ease of use, and support

Common Use Cases: Event registration, donation forms, college applications, loan applications

FormAssembly

Unlike Formstack, FormAssembly is administered and configured outside of Salesforce. While this can introduce some complexity for non-technical users, it also offers an element of flexibility that is often overlooked.

FormAssembly offers a Salesforce connector with multi-step connection points for on-form load, on-submit, and after-submit. This allows the form administrator to choose which fields to prefill from Salesforce, which fields to update on submission, and what should occur after the form is submitted. This provides flexibility that Formstack does not because Formstack will prefill every field on the form that currently has a value in Salesforce, and does not allow for dynamic after-submit actions.

Beyond Salesforce, FormAssembly can connect with other systems via API & webhooks expanding utility across your entire tech stack.

Other feature strengths of FormAssembly include:

• • Data Prefill
  • Prefill by Query Parameter
  • Conditional Logic
  • Form-to-Form Prefilling by Dynamic Redirect or “Daisy-Chaining”
  • Payments including ACH
  • Workflows

Best of FormAssembly: Prefilling data, Workflows or multi-step forms, HIPAA/GDPR/PCI compliance, flexibility, and additional connectors

Common Use Cases: long applications, multi-step forms, program management, case management, member management

JOTFORM

JotForm is not to be counted out when it comes to powerhouse third-party form tools for Salesforce. Just like Formstack and FormAssembly, JotForm touts action-packed features like dynamic prefill, a no-code user interface, and even allows the user to configure the tool to be managed in either the JotForm UI OR the Salesforce UI with the JotForm UI iFramed in.

JotForm has gone a similar route as Formstack in beefing up its capabilities beyond data collection to include Document Generation and an eSignature tool.

What stands out most about JotForm is the clean user interface and generally intuitive user experience. Additionally, with an extensive offering of connectors, JotForm might provide the best of both worlds compared to the truly native Formstack and non-native FormAssembly.

Strengths of JotForm include:

• • Data Prefill
  • Payments including ACH
  • Form Translation
  • Ease of use
  • Styling & Branding

Best of JotForm: Ease of use, flexibility, additional connectors

Common Use Cases: Intake forms, order forms, surveys, HIPAA compliance

PRICING

FormAssembly doesn’t post any pricing publicly on their website, which means you’ll have to engage with their Sales team. Additionally, the Salesforce connector is an add-on regardless of the plan you choose.

With Jotform, the Salesforce integration is available on their free (Starter) plan, but with only 5 forms, 100 form submission/mo, and 10 fields/form, you’ll likely want something more.

Formstack’s native forms start at $225/mo with unlimited forms, 1000 form submissions/mo , and contain about every feature excluding Experience Cloud forms and end-to-end encryption.

FormAssembly and JotForm create a low barrier for entry and will work with you to assign the plan based on your volume and needs, while Formstack cuts right to the chase and offers practically every feature with their Starter license at $225/mo.

Which Tool is Best?

Formstack is likely the best choice for ease of use and keeping users inside the Salesforce UI, with use cases involving form data prefill & high-security standards, and scenarios where non-technical individuals need to develop forms.

FormAssembly is the ideal solution for use cases requiring flexibility, the power to assemble dynamic workflows with Salesforce + other connectors, data prefill, and the end-user’s need to query the database based on a unique identifier, such as Member ID, to retrieve existing information.

JotForm is a suitable third option, offering all the main features of its competitors, likely at a lower cost.