Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms (Compared)

Are you looking for a Formstack alternative and comparing Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms?

If you’re trying to decide which contact form builder to use on your website, you might be curious to know how WPForms matches up against Formstack vs Google Forms.

In this article, we’ll compare WPForms, Google Forms, and Formstack so you can decide which is the best form builder for you.

Overview: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

Before we start with our comparison of WordPress form builders, let’s take a look a look at the basics behind each.

What Is Formstack?

Formstack is an online form builder that has tools to help you create forms.

It comes with pre-designed templates to pick from for creating forms, metrics reporting, and the ability to collect payments.

It also has a drag and drop interface for adding form fields and customization options for branding your forms.

Now, let’s take a look at the specifics of each contact form to find out whether WPForms is a good Formstack alternative or not.

What Is Google Forms?

Google Forms is also an online form builder that is very popular. It’s free, web-based, and incredibly simple.

What Is WPForms?

Are wondering what WPForms is and why you need it?

WPForms is a beginner-friendly contact form plugin that aims to make creating WordPress forms easy to do no matter how much experience you have.

It comes with plenty of built-in features for creating smart yet powerful online forms, has a variety of fields making your forms completely customizable, and cuts down on the time needed to create stunning forms for your website that convert.

Everything is drag and drop with WPForms. Pair this with the pre-made templates available and you have everything you need to create and launch a WordPress form on your site with one single click.

In addition, WPForms comes with multiple premium addons, making it possible to do things like add surveys and polls to your forms and accept online payments.

Whether you want to create a simple contact form or a more complex online order form, WPForms makes it easy to do.

What to Look for in a Contact Form Builder

There are few things you should focus on when comparing two contact form builder options before making your final decision:

• Ease of Use: It should be easy to use for everyone, even complete beginners.
• Features: There should be plenty of built-in features so you can create unique, powerful forms for your website.
• Support: You should have access to support any time you run into a problem.
• Account Management: Being able to easily access and manage your form entries should be easy to do.
• Integrations: Your forms should integrate with a variety of email service providers, payment gateways, and more, for simplifying the form-building process.
• Price: Price will always play a role in your final decision. In the end, you should get more than what you pay for.

These are some of the most basic things to look for in any contact form builder you consider using on your WordPress website, no matter what kind of forms you’re looking to create.

That’s why in our WPForms vs Formstack comparison, we’ll take a look at how each stacks up against all of these requirements.

Ease of Use: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

Being able to use the contact form builder solution you choose is the key to creating effective and highly converting forms.

If you struggle with creating forms, you won’t get the results you desire. Plus, you’ll lose out on potential leads, conversions, and sales.

Formstack Ease of Use

Formstack is an online form builder that comes with a drag and drop interface that requires no coding, or so that’s the claim.

To add form fields to your form, drag a form field from the choices on the right-hand side to the left-hand side. If you want, you can also use a pre-made template to get you started.

The interface is not very user-friendly because there are so many different options to click on to make changes. For example, click on one of two buttons to create or style your forms. Drag and drop form fields on the actual form itself, or click another button to reorder the fields.

If you want to apply special functionality, you guessed it, click on another button to see which changes you can make and apply them there.

If you want to see a preview of your form after clicking on all of these buttons and making changes, you have to click View Live Form.

Don’t like something on your form? You have to go back to the form builder, make a change, and check out the live preview again. This can quickly become frustrating for the user if there are many changes to be made.

Lastly, getting your form to appear on your website is very confusing for beginners. Not to mention, Formstack mentions that some WordPress themes overpower Formstack styling. To fix this, you will have to override those changes by editing the CSS of your form. This means messing with code, which is not user-friendly.

Google Forms Ease of Use

Google Forms is somewhat easy to use. It’s pretty basic if you aren’t trying to do anything special with the forms or data. It lets you drag fields around, but doesn’t have the best visual builder.

There are even some templates to help you.

The problem with Google Forms’ ease of use is there aren’t many things to do with it, so you can’t really build customizable forms.

WPForms Ease of Use

WPForms is a modern WordPress form builder that focuses on usability and simplicity.

It’s the most beginner-friendly WordPress contact form plugin on the market today and truly requires no coding knowledge to create forms. And to help you get started when you install and activate the plugin, we have created the WPForms challenge, which guides you through creating your first form, so you can get a feel for how easy it is to get a form up and running on your site – all in under five minutes.

And WPForms Lite is 100% free forever.

The paid version of WPForms comes with pre-designed templates that have all the form fields you need to get your form started. And while Formstack has tons of templates to choose from, once you choose one to work with, it’s difficult to find out how to change it once in the form builder. The only other solution seems to be to start all over again, which is annoying.

On the other hand, WPForms has templates for any kind of form you can think of, including survey forms, registration and login forms, job applications, support ticket forms, donation forms, and so much more.

Accessing WPForms’ pre-made templates is easy since they are found right in the WPForms Form Editor. And if you need to change an existing template while customizing the form you’re working on, all you have to do is access the templates and make a change.

WPForms comes with plenty of form fields right out of the box. When you want to add a new field to your form, just drag the field you want from the left-hand panel to your form on the right-hand side.

Then, click on the field to make changes. You can also put fields into columns to create the ideal form layout.

As you make changes to your form and its fields, you’ll see those changes in real-time on your form in the preview panel. There is no back and forth nonsense while creating forms. What you see is what you get, right there in the Form Editor.

For example, the free version of WPForms allows you to accept payments from site visitors on your forms using Stripe, which supports recurring payments. It comes with Single Item, Multiple Item, Dropdown Items, Credit Card, and Total form fields so you can make money online in the easiest way possible.

With WPForms Pro, you can also take payments with Square, PayPal, and Authorize.Net.

This is in addition to unique form fields such as:

• GDPR Agreement
• CAPTCHA
• Section Divider
• Page break
• WPForms Hidden Field
• Password
• Website / URL

If you want a form builder plugin that’s easy to use right out of the box, but still offers a ton of built-in features, WPForms works great as an alternative to Formstack.

Winner: WPForms

Features: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

It’s not enough for your contact form builder to be easy to use. If it’s too basic or doesn’t provide a lot of flexibility, you won’t be able to create powerful forms that grab people’s attention and convince them to convert.

The success of your business depends on how well potential followers or customers can get in touch with you. That’s why an extensive feature set is so important.

Formstack Features

Formstack’s feature set is very limited when compared to what WPForms has to offer.

In fact, here are some of the most blatant limitations:

• There are no specialty form fields like WPForms’ GDPR Agreement, CAPTCHA, or Password fields
• You can only collect a limited number of form entries per month, even on the first tier paid plan
• Each paid plan has a form creation limit
• Although you can customize your forms with themes, each plan has a theme limit
• Since Formstack stores your form entries, and any files that are uploaded to your forms, there are storage limits on all plans
• If your email notifications aren’t sending to you or your site visitors, you have to troubleshoot on your own to fix it
• There are no email service provider integrations on the first tier paid plan, making email marketing difficult

When you want to create forms for your website, and find that the limitations outweigh the feature set, it’s time to look for a Formstack alternative.

Google Forms Features

This simple form builder also has a super limited set of features:

• Limited templates offered
• Offers the ability to easily access and share a form with a team
• Connects to G Suite for business
• Sadly, lacks conditional logic
• Google’s main business focus is not Forms
• Lacks the ability to embed in webpages

You’ll want to make sure the form solution you pick is from a company that specializes in building form software.

WPForms Features

On the other hand, WPForms stands out as more than just a simple form builder because of the sheer amount of built-in features and addons you receive as a customer:

• Smart Conditional Logic: create as many conditional logic rules as you want, on as many forms as you’d like so your users have the best experience possible and your forms convert.
• Entry Management: manage all form entries right in the WordPress dashboard in an organized and easy-to-understand way. Plus, take advantage of the WPForms dashboard widget and see how your forms are performing right in your WordPress dashboard. If you’re starting out with the free version of WPForms, make sure to turn on the Lite Connect feature to save your entries so you can unlock them when you upgrade to Pro.
• File Uploads: enjoy unlimited file uploads on all plans. Plus, easily view them, save them to your Media Library, and even access them in the notification you receive when someone submits a form.
• Automatic Form Confirmations: Choose from three form confirmation types – Message, Show Page, and Redirect, or use a combination of all three using smart conditional logic.
• Survey and Poll Form Creation: add survey or poll forms to your site, collect responses in one convenient location, and access multiple reports displaying results for easy analysis of data.
• Partial Form Saving: capture partial form entries and follow up on those leads to turn abandoning site visitors into subscribers, followers, or customers.
• Exhaustive Spam Protection: enjoy built-in spam protection, enable captchas, customize your own captchas, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, or even use Google invisible reCAPTCHA to protect your forms from spam submissions.
• No Limits: Create as many forms as you want, with as many form fields as you want, and accept as many entries as you like, no matter which plan you choose.
• Form management. WPForms includes tons of advanced form management features, including location tracking, revisions, form tags, and the ability to restore deleted forms from the trash folder.
• Online Signature Capability: collect signatures from site visitors right on your forms for online contracts and agreements.
• Form Permissions and Access Controls: password protect your forms, schedule start and stop dates, limit the number of entries you’ll accept, and even limit form submissions to logged-in users, regardless of which plan you have.
• Geolocation Tracking: learn more about site visitors and their locations with geolocation tracking so you can send targeted email campaigns that are more relevant to them.

If you’re looking for reasons why WPForms serves as a better solution than Formstack, its feature set alone is compelling.

In fact, WPForms’ flexibility gives you a chance to create standout forms that will convert.

Winner: WPForms

Support: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

No matter how much experience you have with form builders or even websites in general, you’re bound to run into problems every now and then.

Since your success hinges on your website working right, including your contact forms, knowing there’s a support team backing you at all times can give you the peace of mind that if something did happen, you’d be okay.

Formstack Support

With Formstack, you can access support in two ways:

1. Using the generic contact form and choosing a topic that hopefully relates to your issue
2. Reading articles in the Resources and Learning section

Formstack’s resource section does not have a search bar, which makes finding a solution very hard. Though there are content types and topics to pick from, if you’re unsure about how to handle an issue, your guess is as good as mine as to where to start.

The level of support you get will depend on how much you pay for your monthly Formstack plan.

Here are some of the most significant support limitations:

• From the first paid tier through the fourth (which will cost you $249 a month!) you do not receive personal onboarding when you sign up
• The first three paid plans (with the third costing you $99 a month!) are not eligible for priority support or technical phone consultations

Want to add priority support to your Formstack plan? Tack on an extra $99/month to your already high monthly bill and you can.

What this says to customers is that even though you are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars a month for forms on your site, you do not pay enough to get priority support, and that if you do want it, you’ll have to pay even more.

Google Forms Support

Here’s one of the biggest pitfalls of Google Forms. The live support is nearly non-existent. Nilch, nada, zero.

However, you can cross your fingers and hope you can find what you need from their docs or from other users using forums.

WPForms Support

If you’re looking for more comprehensive support through a variety of channels, look no further than the best Formstack alternative around: WPForms.

You can access the support ticket system and receive help from the knowledgeable and friendly support team, read through the extensive documentation for configuring every little setting possible, and even check out the blog to learn tips and tricks for creating high-converting, good-looking WordPress forms.

And if you want, you can even check out the official WordPress Repository where people using WPForms Lite get answers to their most pressing questions.

Remember when we mentioned that Formstack doesn’t have an explicit solution to emails not delivering properly when a form is submitted and an email notification goes out?

Well, not only does WPForms have an explicit solution, which is to use the WP Mail SMPT plugin, the support team is knowledgeable about how to set it up on your site and troubleshoot issues if you run into them. We take a proactive approach to helping you get the most out of our easy-to-use WordPress form builder.

Winner: WPForms

Account Management: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

It won’t matter if you’re able to use your online forms to build a bigger email list, collect data based on surveys and polls, or run a nonprofit organization, complete with volunteers, staff, and hosted events, if you can’t manage the entries in an organized and easy way.

Formstack Account Management

There is a glaring difference between the way you manage Formstack forms and WPForms forms: the location.

With Formstack, you have an account on their website where you create and save forms, manage form entries, and analyze results.

The problem is, every time you want to create a form, make a change, view an entry, or check out metrics, you have to log into your account first. Then you have to go back to your WordPress website and re-embed the form with the new code.

This is annoying to have to go back and forth between your website and Formstack account.

Google Forms Account Management

You can manage your account from within your Google dashboard, but it isn’t easy to share with others unless using G Suite. Google Forms really lacks here.

WPForms Account Management

On the other hand, WPForms lets you conveniently manage your forms all within the WordPress dashboard so you never have to leave your website.

For example, you can do the following:

• View forms you’ve already created
• Create new forms
• Access form entries
• Configure settings related to: your license, email, CAPTCHA, validation messages, payments, integrations, and more
• Use the import and export tools
• Activate addons that can be used on your forms immediately

And if you want to get a bird’s eye view of how your forms are performing, take a look at the WPForms dashboard widget. You can see how many total form entries your forms have, as well as a graph view over 7 or 30 days, without ever having to click into your entry management section.

This is perfect for those times you want to monitor a form that means a lot to you in the quickest way possible.

Managing your website’s forms shouldn’t be difficult. WPForms makes sure it’s not.

Winner: WPForms

Integrations: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

If you’re going to pay for a WordPress form builder, it better integrate with other platforms to make form creation even better.

Formstack Integrations

Formstack offers dozens of third-party integrations.

For instance, you can integrate with popular tools like Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google Drive. The problem is, if you want to integrate with any of these third-party tools, you have to do so individually. This takes time and makes the process of connecting your forms to helpful tools you rely on to run your business difficult.

For those collecting payments on their forms, Formstack has 10 payment gateway integrations to choose from. That said, having too many payment processors to deal with can make your job harder and more expensive since that means you’ll have to manage 10 different accounts.

Lastly, you can connect your forms to email service providers like MailChimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact.

Google Forms Integrations

None directly. You’ll have to use a tool like Zapier.

WPForms Integrations

WPForms integrates with 3 of the most popular and widely used payment processors — PayPal, Authorize.Net, and Stripe — making life easy for you and your customers. And to top it off, WPForms accepts recurring Stripe payments, which makes collecting donations and subscription or membership payments a cinch.

In addition, thanks to the Zapier addon, WPForms integrates with over 6,000 different web apps from CRMs to invoicing software, and calendar systems to instant messengers.

For example, you can easily interconnect your forms to apps such as:

• Asana
• QuickBooks
• Google Calendar
• Jira
• and much more

Lastly, WPForms integrates with the top email marketing service providers:

• Constant Contact
• Drip
• Mailchimp
• AWeber
• GetResponse
• MailerLite
• And more

Being able to connect your WordPress forms to various third-party platforms is a must when choosing the right form builder solution for your needs. And since connecting to these 3rd party tools using Zapier involves the same process every time, getting connected is easy.

Winner: Tie

Price: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms

Price will almost always play a significant role in whether you decide to use a certain WordPress form builder solution or not.

Make sure to determine your budget before you conduct your research, and look into what your potential solutions cost upfront so you don’t end up paying too much for too little.

Price of Formstack

Formstack has 4 high-priced premium plans to choose from ranging from $19/month to $249/month.

Each plan has its own form, entry, user, theme, and upload storage limits. In addition, to unlock some of their best features, you have to invest in the most expensive premium plans, making form creation expensive for site owners. And if you decide to pay annually, you get a small break on the price, but no flexibility when it comes to the limitations.

For instance, you can accept payments on your forms with payment processors other than credit cards, integrate with email service providers, integrate with popular third-party tools, and receive priority support only if you use the Silver plan or higher, which will put you in the red a hefty $59/month.

If the number of form entries goes over the limit for the plan you’re using, you will not incur any overage charges. However, if your form entries exceed the form submission limit, all future entries will be sent right to your email. This not only makes managing your form entries difficult, it has the potential to flood your inbox and make running your business a hassle.

Lastly, there is no money-back guarantee to be found on Formstack’s website, so if you don’t like what you’ve paid for you’re out of luck.

Price of Google Forms

Here’s why Google Forms is so popular. It’s completely free! But it just simply isn’t a comparable solution to these WordPress plugins.

Price of WPForms

On the other hand, WPForms comes in at significantly lower price points, ranging from $39.50/year for the Basic plan to $299.50/year for the Elite plan.

This is a far cry from the expensive payments you’ll have to make even with Formstack’s most basic premium plan.

In fact, with each plan upgrade, you can access more email service provider integrations, addons, and priority support and still pay far less than Formstack’s lowest paid plans.

For instance, to accept PayPal or Square payments on your online forms, you’ll need the Pro plan, which also happens to be our most popular plan. At $199.50 for the year, this plan’s price pales in comparison to Formstacks’s equivalent plan, which will set you back over $700/year.

And it comes with a ton more features too, making this the most cost-effective form builder solution.

WPForms offers a 14-day 100% money-back guarantee on all premium plans, so if you change your mind for whatever reason, you’ll get your money back.

And lastly, WPForms sticks by the motto “Simple Prices. No Surprises,” meaning there are no overage charges like the ones found in Formstack.

Winner: WPForms

Conclusion: Formstack vs Google Forms vs WPForms: Which Is Better?

Ok, so which form builder is the best?

Is It Formstack? No.

Formstack is not a viable form creation solution. It doesn’t have a user-friendly interface or the right features. Also, it has way too many limitations when it comes to styling, form entries, and storage of file uploads.

It’s also very expensive for the features you do receive. Plus it doesn’t provide the kind of stellar support one would expect when using a premium service. It forces you to handle email marketing manually unless you shell out a ton of money for the next level plan.

Is It Google Forms? No.

And Google Forms just isn’t fit for small businesses, period. It doesn’t have the necessary functionality. Conditional Logic on forms is so important these days, and they just don’t have it.

Is It WPForms? Yes.

On the other hand, WPForms continues to grow in popularity, now with over 10 million downloads, because it offers businesses a faster, easier way to create online forms that go beyond the basics. You can create any kind of form imaginable, not break the bank doing so, and manage your forms right in your WordPress dashboard.

In fact, price points, feature sets, ease of use, and superior support are all reasons why the most successful business owners choose WPForms as their WordPress form builder solution.

Next, Check Out These WPForms Comparisons

And there you have it! A comparison of WPForms vs Formstack, with WPForms coming out at the clear winner. If you’re still on the fence about whether WPForms is the very best Formstack alternative, make sure to see what our happy customers have to say.

And if you love comparison posts, check these out:

• WPForms vs Wufoo Compared
• WPForms vs Contact Form 7
• Tableau vs WPForms
• WPForms vs SurveyMonkey

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.

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