Cognito Forms

Kommentare: I love that Cognito keeps on improving. I hope to see them continue making the user experience better.
Thank you!

Vorteile: I have been using Cognito to collect data from two schools. The system is pretty intuitive, and once you have used it for awhile, a lot of things are clearer. For example, to name the columns or categories for when you are ready to export a file to excel, you can simply customize the field names, which helps a lot. The forms embed nicely on a website.
The emails sent to customers is great.
I love that I can work with others on these forms; that has been excellent. The Support for Cognito has been excellent; they are swift and comprehensive in their help.
The forms really allow for you to do a lot.

Nachteile: Some of the problems I have run into are the following:
--placing an image in the form header has been tricky. I can't easily place it as I'd like.
--I initially named the organization something, and I'd like to change it. I can't easily do that now because the form links are according to the original organization name. It certainly is possible, but it will take some time to fix.
--Sometimes it's clear that the server is busy, and it does not work well on Safari (nothing really does, though)
--I wish there was an easier way to have people make sure they paid for something before they filled out a form (which ultimately requires payment for submission). It's not clear how to do this.

Kommentare: I was able to build a form - with no coding knowledge - that I have been dreaming about for years. I am now able to present only the information to my clients that is relevant to them and drastically reduce the amount of time they have to spend reading and filling out the bankruptcy questionnaire. For instance, imagine asking a client "how many vehicles do you have" and then having to do it the old way and tell them to "include and additional sheet for each extra vehicle" Now, with repeating sections, I can ask "Do you have a vehicle"? If they say "yes", a repeating section pops, and they can enter the information for as many vehicles as they want. if they don't have a vehicle they won't have to read another word about vehicles. The more variable the potential information is, the more mileage you get out of conditional logic and repeating sections. I don't want any other bankruptcy attorneys to find out about Cognito forms. I want to maintain my edge! Using the palm pilot, iphone, analogy. Everybody knew for a long time what they wanted a hand held device to do and they got all excited about the palm pilot more for its promise than its reality. You had to have the little stylus, use the new little language, etc. It just wasn't actually useful yet. I feel that way about most form builders compared to Cognito. They have had a lot of promise but not a lot of delivery. Cognito delivers something that is usable without having to twist and turn and try to imagine it doing what you would really like it to do. Anybody (who couldn't do the rubix cube) that ever wished that when the client answers "yes" to this question that this other question will pop up, is finally going to get their wish when they sign up with Cognito. You may have noticed tons of businesses still use paper forms. For client oriented businesses, Doctors, CPA's, Attorneys, etc. the form and the ability to make it easy to fill and dynamic, and the ability to actually use the captured data without reentering stuff from printed forms is a fundamental long standing issue and opportunity that until now only had a palm pilot solutions. The solution to the form problem can enhance everything the business is doing. The ability to include links to help text, payment options, conditional logic, repeating sections, etc. could finally move people to actually get the value from form builders that we have all been dreaming about for years.

Vorteile: Many form builders make it difficult to pack a lot of information in the smallest space possible. They get all big and fluffy. Filling out the completed form feels either like a full blown software experience like using Turbotax or like trying to tack balloons to a board in a light breeze. Cognito forms feel tight, light,compact, intuitive and the perfect extension of the paper form you are trying to replace and make dynamic. The forms look like a nice clean paper or fillable pdf, only online. Others also make conditional logic feel like programming. This is the genius of
Cognito forms from my perspective. They are in a class with "Butler for Trello" in terms of conditional logic. I have been dreaming of such a form builder to make my "ultimate, online bankruptcy intake form" for years now. It just didn't exist. Now it does. And it appears it will be getting better and better. I could have nightmares about them potentially going out of business or going a different direction with the product. It's that good and that unique, and that on target. Choosing to make the builder and forms sleek, compact and pdf-like, and solving the conditional logic gap makes other form builders feel like using a pal-pilot while Cognito is an iphone. I look forward to exploring what I can do with the back end and integrations with Zapier and my other programs, but I am quite certain I have found the form builder that is the "Trello" of the form building world.

Nachteile: The builder has a "preview" function, which is great, but I love, love, love, how I can send the actual form link to myself and open the form on one monitor and the builder on the other and see exactly what the bankruptcy client will be seeing and just refresh to see my changes. I admit. I just like looking at it. It looks so good compared to the competition. I like looking at that crisp compact form on my screen. Its like driving a honda or toyota compared to an old 1970's buick. The builder itself is so intuitive and comfortable to work with. It doesn't fight with you or leave you wondering what to do next. But... I am supposed to mention an issue or "con". I love how I can refresh, but it may be that my form is getting pretty large and has tons of conditional logic going on, but a couple of times when I have attempted to save it sits and spins and especially when I have attempted to apply conditional logic to a question stating "when question A is "Yes" Show questions B,C, and D, for instance. it takes quite a while to pull up the interface. If the servers are overwhelmed, then by all means, investors, get them some money. We need more servers!! Also, it would be nice when dragging and dropping fields if there was an undo button. When you accidentally drop a field inaccurately it can be hard to move everything back into place. I have learned to cut and paste instead of drag and drop. Cognito. I Love you. You make my life complete!

Kommentare: Ease, Peace of Mind, and complete organization of our online ordering system! Thanks!

Vorteile: I love that I am able to use CognitoForms on my website to help customers arrange orders. The calculation function allows me to block dates that we are not open or booked which is above and beyond what I was expecting it to be. Never have I ever had any glitches or orders missed because of not getting orders notifications.I started with CognitoForms afters my website thru VistaPrint would not send any forms that customers submitted to me, but would notify the customers it was successfully submitted (bull hockey). I would get a call from a customer that submitted a form 2 days prior and I had no notice about it coming in. FRUSTRATING! And the automated email to the customers "from our business" makes us look super sharp and efficient in addition to letting them know the details they requested and that they're order was successful! I love love love these guys and couldn't find anything at all to complain about! Support is top notch too! You really are the best hands down!

Nachteile: Not a THING!! If I could recommend anything to help make this already phenomenal program better is maybe a "Reservation Calendar" view, where it allows customers to see a full calendar versus a Date Selection box, and maybe add a calculation for "Next Available Date" when used with limited quanity for the Date field. But that's hardly a con, just a suggestion! :o}

Kommentare: I have used Cognito for 4-years on a number of simple websites for contact forms right through to complex medical referral systems generating custom PDF output and mapping data to several outputs.

Vorteile: Cognito is now a well established SaaS product, which is really important because in the world of forms they come and go pretty fast. The feature set is excellent and continues to steadily (not rapidly) evolve. Integration with outside apps is served very well either through Zapier, Integromat or direct webhooks to your own apps. The payment features are well considered and offer calculated amounts and lots of good conditional logic often required in a payment pipeline. The ability to embed forms anywhere with or without Cognito CSS is great too, I usually use the oddly named "Chameleon theme" to easily blend in with my own website CSS PDF generation is brilliant too, especially the ability to edit your own templates

Nachteile: The design and branding of their own website is pretty retro and off putting for what is actually a state of the art SaaS form and data handling app. The form fields are improving but have sometimes lagged behind in using modern controls such as good date pickers. Form validation is a bit lacklustre in terms of behaviour and styling options We're all waiting for subscription management with Stripe!!

Kommentare: Cognito Forms was a life saver for my firm. Previously I was handing out a HUGE pdf or printed intake form that gathered all kinds of information required to build a comprehensive estate plan. Some folks like Adobe and knew how to complete it with that, but most didn't. I would get hand-written packets back which created issues. I could tell when they were tired of writing because I couldn't read it any longer. Enter Cognito Forms. It took some time to build, but it was completely worth the time. I now just send a link to my clients and they enter in all the information. The feedback has been wonderfully positive. It's easy to navigate, they like stopping and resuming (that was a deal-breaker for me and Cognito Forms was one of the few that have this option), and being able to type in the information easily was great. I asked some long-time clients if they would be willing to test it out and give a comparison and they all agreed the online form was excellent and much better than the old one. Thank you Cognito for making my life (and my clients' lives) better!

Vorteile: Very easy to use
Appealing to the eye
Ability to preview the form while building
Notifications with submissions
Reporting
Ability for users to stop and resume

Nachteile: Tables* *Initially, I wrote down the ability to have a repeating table; however, it was just user error. I watched one of the training videos and voila, there it was.