Best Form Automation Platforms for Real Workflow

Last month I explained why real workflow is essential for online forms.

In that article, I proposed the following definition for workflow:

Expanding on this definition, I identified seven requirements for real workflow:

• Allows participants to view and modify the right information at the right time based on who they are
• Lets multiple people participate at the same time
• Captures clear decisions from participants, not just information
• Ensures the appropriate information exists to support these decisions
• Notifies participants when it is time for them to do their part
• Triggers meaningful outcomes based on the decisions people make
• Allows workflow coordinators to quickly understand how the workflow is progressing and assist when needed

Workflow Capability Comparison

I am now going to compare Cognito Forms with three of the top workflow form automation platforms, Jotform, Formstack, and Kissflow, and provide insight into how each platform succeeds in delivering real workflow.

Allows participants to view and modify the right information at the right time based on who they are

With Cognito Forms workflow, you always know who is viewing a form and their role in the workflow. You can fully customize the behavior and appearance of the form using conditional logic based on both the workflow role and status.

JotForm approvals do not support customizing the form in any way based on who is viewing it or even the stage in the approval process. Approvals are a tack-on feature that occurs following form submission.

Formstack’s Workflow Add-On supports sequential workflows defined as a series of steps. Paid users assigned to these steps are only able to view and edit the sections of the form assigned to the step. Formstack Approvals, a completely separate add-on, does not support editing submissions.

Similar to Formstack, Kissflow defines sequential steps forms must progress through during workflows. However, unlike the limitations in Formstack, Kissflow lets you assign permissions for each step to control both section and field-level settings, like visibility.

Lets multiple people participate at the same time

Cognito Forms enables anyone to participate in workflows simultaneously using workflow links, which provide secure access to specific form entries and identify the role of the participant in the workflow. Participants may simultaneously edit information and perform workflow actions, including parallel approvals.

JotForm supports parallel approvals following form submission but does not allow these users to actually modify forms as part of this process. Jotform does not support multiple people editing the same submission at the same time.

Formstack Approvals supports multiple sequential approvers, but not true parallel approvals. Formstack Workflow does not support parallel steps and therefore does not support letting multiple people participate in workflows at the same time.

Kissflow supports parallel steps, which allows different people to work on different aspects of a form at the same time. This capability is limited to specific parallel stages but does support multi-party concurrent engagement in the workflow.

Captures clear decisions from participants

Cognito Forms supports custom actions that can conditionally appear at any point in the workflow to capture decisions from users, such as approvals, purchases, requests for feedback, or reservation confirmations. These actions can directly update the workflow status of the form entry to capture decisions and engage others via workflow notifications.

JotForm Approvals supports custom outcomes beyond approve or deny, along with an optional message or signature. However, the approval outcome is separate from the form submission and cannot be used to customize the form or workflow behavior besides approval routing.

Formstack Approvals only supports approve or reject, and Formstack Workflow only supports moving forward and back between steps, not clear customizable decisions.

Kissflow supports moving forward and back between steps, reassigning steps to others, and rejecting or withdrawing requests, with a clear emphasis on approval workflows but does not support customizable decisions that may fall outside of these fixed outcomes, like placing a workflow on hold or sending a job applicant a technical exercise to complete.

Ensures the appropriate information exists to support these decisions

Cognito Forms supports conditionally showing and requiring fields based on who the user is, the stage/status of the workflow, and the specific action/decision a user makes. For example, managers can be required to enter a reason when declining a request.

JotForm does not support requiring specific information to perform an outcome during their approval process. They do not support editing submission information as part of their workflows.

Formstack Approvals only supports collecting comments. Formstack Workflow conditionally shows sections of the form for each step, thus requiring information to move to the next step.

Similar to Formstack Workflow, Kissflow workflow permissions determine what information is required to complete a step but do not support multiple decisions requiring different information.

Notifies participants when it is time for them to do their part

Cognito Forms sends custom emails for workflow actions, including workflow links allowing participants to continue workflows in their assigned role. Anyone can participate, even non-users.

JotForm sends notification emails as part of approval workflows to prompt participants to make a decision. Anyone can participate, even non-users.

Formstack sends notification emails for both Approvals and Workflow to engage users in workflows. Participants must be a paid user of the organization.

Kissflow sends notification emails for both Approvals and Workflow to engage users in workflows. Participants must be a paid user of the organization.

Triggers meaningful outcomes based on the decisions people make

Cognito Forms workflow actions support updating the workflow status and/or clearing field values to track outcomes. Cognito Forms includes the workflow status, along with the role of the user and their decision/action, when sending form entries to Zapier, Power Automate, Make, or custom webhooks to support triggering meaningful outcomes, like updating a calendar event or sending a Slack message, based on what is happening in the workflow.

JotForm only supports sending emails as part of approval workflows and nothing else. JotForm’s Zapier, Power Automate, and native integrations do not support JotForm approvals as triggers and submission triggers do not include approval outcomes.

Formstack Workflows supports updating form submissions during each workflow step but only triggers integrations at the completion of successful workflows.

Kissflow native integrations support workflow triggers based on the specific outcomes at each step in the workflow, like approve, reject and withdraw. While you cannot create custom outcomes outside of their fixed approval actions, you can trigger meaningful outcomes as workflows progress.

Allows workflow coordinators to quickly understand how the workflow is progressing and assist when needed

Cognito Forms supports creating different views of form entries to organize information based on workflow status, like pending PTO requests or job applicants awaiting interviews. Cognito Forms lets you resend workflow emails and share workflow links for specific workflow roles to reassign responsibilities to others as needed.

While you can view the approval status of submissions in Jotform Tables, you cannot involve others in the ongoing approval workflow or resend workflow emails.

Formstack organizes submissions by workflow step and supports resending workflow emails when managing submissions.

Kissflow organizes submissions by workflow step and supports resending or workflow emails, including reassignment, when managing submissions.

Workflow Price Comparison

While workflow capabilities are important when selecting the right form automation platform, some organizations also care about the cost of these solutions.

The following table summarizes the costs associated with these features. In an attempt to compare apples to apples, prices reflect the minimum possible monthly cost to support core workflow features for up to 10,000 monthly workflows. These prices reflect annual pricing discounts, with the exception of Kissflow which is more expensive for their annual plan.

Formstack and Kissflow lack pricing transparency, so workflow pricing is a bit of a mystery. Formstack Workflows is an additional add-on expense not reflected in this table, or you could also add on Formstack Portals.

For both Formstack and Kissflow, external participation in workflows requires additional payment, which is roughly $300 for 100 monthly active participants for Formstack and likely equally pricey for Kissflow. Cognito Forms and Jotform do not charge for external workflow participants.

Jotform does not support additional internal users to manage workflows unless you upgrade to the Enterprise plan, which is $594/month for five users.

Scenario Comparison

In the previous article defining real workflow, I shared an example of a time-off request. I will now describe how effective each of these platforms are at delivering on the promise of real workflow with this concrete example.

Cognito Forms

In Cognito Forms, you can add workflow capabilities to any form at any time, and modify your workflows as needed. Workflow building is part of the form building process itself, and you can test workflows end-to-end when previewing your forms in the form builder before saving and publishing your changes.

With a Time-Off Request built using Cognito Forms:

• Employees can quickly submit a time-off request.
• Managers receive notifications prompting them to approve or reject the request, requiring a rejection reason when rejecting, but cannot otherwise modify the request itself.
• Employees receive notifications when their requests are either approved or rejected, including the rejection reason, and can either modify or cancel the request at any point. Additionally, the workflow can prevent employees from modifying approved requests occurring in the past.
• Via an integration service like Zapier or Microsoft Power Automate, approved requests automatically appear on an employee’s calendar and any updates to requests update or remove these calendar events.
• Human resources monitors the entire process, making sure requests are approved on a timely basis, and ensuring employee records are up to date.

Jotform

In Jotform, you can attach a Jotform Approval to any form at any time. Since Jotform Approvals is essentially separate from the form itself, you cannot customize the form based on the approval process. Changes made to the form and approval process in their respective builders automatically save as you make updates, so you cannot test these changes before they start affecting the live form. You cannot preview/test the approval process outside of the live form.

With a Time-Off Request built using Jotform:

• Employees can quickly submit a time-off request.
• Managers receive notifications prompting them to approve or reject the request, requiring a rejection reason when rejecting, but cannot otherwise modify the request itself.
• Employees receive notifications when their requests are either approved or rejected, including the rejection reason. Jotform Approvals do not support looping, where outcomes can go back to prior steps in the workflow, because Jotform Approvals expect to terminate when they reach a potential final state like Approved or Rejected. However, you can now configure an approval such that if the employees edit their original request, it will restart the approval process from the beginning.
• Since Jotform Approvals does not support integrations, you cannot automatically update employee calendars to reflect approved time-off requests.
• In Jotform Tables, human resources can monitor approval progress by setting up tables for this purpose but cannot reshare or resend workflow emails directly to move the process along, though you can set up automatic reminder emails.

Formstack

In Formstack, you can purchase either the Approvals or Workflow add-ons, and potentially the Portal add-on, to enable workflows for your forms. With the Workflow add-on, you must start by creating a Workflow form or copying a non-Workflow form as a Workflow form. However, given the limitations of Workflow, which is really designed for a linear flow from one person to the next, Formstack Approvals is a better option for Formstack time-off requests.

With a Time-Off Request built using Formstack:

• Employees can quickly submit a time-off request.
• Managers receive notifications prompting them to approve or reject the request. Managers must be a paid Formstack user ($25/month) to participate in the approval workflow. Managers can provide an optional comment when they deny requests.
• Employees receive notifications when their requests are either approved or denied, including the denial comment, if provided. At this point, the approval workflow is essentially terminated, as employees cannot cancel requests, resubmit denied requests or modify approved requests with Formstack Approvals.
• Formstack only triggers integrations when an approval workflow completes, so it would be possible to use an integration service like Zapier to add an approved request to a calendar. However, there is no support for updating or removing requests, because there is no way for an employee to initiate this.
• Formstack does allow workflow supervisors to view submissions with in-progress workflows and manually change the approval status for pending approvals but does not support delegating to others or sending reminder emails.

Kissflow

In Kissflow, you can add workflow capabilities to any form at any time and modify your workflows as plans change. Changes to workflows only affect new submissions, not in-progress workflows. Workflow building is separate from form building process itself, as are permission settings controlling what fields appear when, but much more convenient and intuitive than Jotform or Formstack. On top plan levels, you can test workflows end-to-end when previewing your forms before saving and publishing your changes.

With a Time-Off Request built using Kissflow:

• Employees can quickly submit a time-off request. Employees must be paid users ($10/month) to participate in the workflow. Plans supporting anonymous forms start at $2000 a month, but anonymous form submitters cannot participate in workflows.
• Managers receive notifications prompting them to approve or reject the request, requiring a rejection reason when rejecting, but cannot otherwise modify the request itself.
• Employees receive notifications when their requests are either approved or rejected, including the rejection reason. While rejections terminate workflows, employees can resubmit prior requests as new submissions. Employees cannot modify requests currently pending approval because only one step can be performed at a given time. Employees cannot modify or cancel approved requests but can withdraw requests prior to approval.
• Via Kissflow’s Zapier integration, approved requests automatically appear on an employee’s calendar. However, there is no way to update or cancel approved requests and subsequently update or remove calendar events.
• Human resources monitors the entire process, making sure requests are approved on a timely basis, and ensuring employee records are up to date. Similar to Cognito Forms, Kissflow supports both resending workflow emails and reassigning workflow steps to others.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are significant differences in the capabilities and cost of these platforms and their ability to actually support real workflows. Here are the final rankings:

1. Cognito Forms successfully delivers on all seven requirements for real workflow, both in the detailed side-by-side comparison and in the real-world exploration of time-off requests.

2. Kissflow comes in second based on capabilities and for almost supporting time-off request management, but also comes with the highest price tag.

3. Formstack comes in third over Jotform with support for triggering meaningful outcomes via integrations, but also has the second-highest price.

4. Finally, Jotform comes in last in this roundup from a workflow capabilities perspective, with a feature set limited to approvals not cohesively integrated with their other offerings.

Stay tuned for the next article in my real workflow series, where I will walk you through the design process for building a time-off request workflow.