Many programs—especially bulk emailers and payment systems—have their own form creators which will generate a form for your website, but that form is single-purpose, processing data for only that one program. Its great that services provide these form-creation features, but they just don’t cover situations like automatically processing a payment, adding a person to your CRM, and placing them on a bulk email list.
Up until recently this sort of data processing could only be done by paying a developer to build a customized HTML/javascript form that would send information out to all the services you employed. But with so many people using the same set of popular services out there, a clear space in the market has developed for data collection form experts to simplify the process and give more control to site owners.
That space has been filled by services like Wufoo, FormSpring, and StringTwo software, which offer data collection forms that are incredibly easy to build and even easier to plug-in to a whole variety of other services.
Wufoo - The biggest feature offered by WuFoo is its incredibly wide range of 3rd party integrations. The bulk emailers covered are Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, CakeMail, and Sendloop. Website building services Yola and BroadChoice are coveredalong with Amazon’s human-powered automation service Mechanical Turk, which is a big plus for anyone needing data review to be done by hand but outside their own shop.
Wufoo notably covers a whole range of payment option integration—PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net, USA ePay and FreshBooks are all covered.
HighRise, our favorite simple CRM solution, is also on the list along with a handful of other services.
For more on WuFoo, take their product tour.
FormSpring FormStack - With drop-dead easy drag and drop interface, FormSpring FormStack is a technical solution fit for even the most non-technical person. FormSpring FormStack’s functionality and ease-of-use is covered on their What it Does page which includes a quick video overview.
Though FormSpring FormStack doesn’t integrate with as many services as WuFoo, it does offer integration with SalesForce. So if you’re a SalesForce user, FormSpring FormStack is your solution for data collection.
HighRise is also covered by FormSpring FormStack along with bulk emailers Campaign Monitor, Email Center Pro, Exact Target, and MailChimp. Rounding out the roster of 3rd-party integrations are Google Apps, the accounting solutions FreshBooks, and TypePad for painlessly dropping forms into your blog.
Update 6/7/2010: FormSpring has changed its name to FormStack.
StringTwo - If you’re an advanced user who would rather implement a licensed software solution than pay a monthly fee, then StringTwo may be your answer. Currently, StringTwo offers form processors for HighRise or FreshBooks for $39.00. Both processors create new contact records in HighRise or FreshBooks when any data is added to them, which could be an issue for businesses that see a lot of repeat traffic through their website. That said, if you’re just looking to get information into HighRise or Freshbooks, why choose anything else? The cost savings make the one-time implementation well worth the effort.
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