Celebrating 10 Years of Cognito Forms

After several years of planning by a small but mighty group of IT consultants, Cognito Forms launched on December 10th, 2013. We aimed to make a product that would help businesses rethink their workflows and solve the unique challenges that came with custom software solutions – without the need to hire developers.

So, we set out to create a platform that’s easy for anyone to use but is robust enough to handle complex business processes. Since then, we’ve stayed committed to our goal – continuously improving the platform, making it more functional and efficient while empowering users worldwide. And after 10 years, we’re proud of our impact.

We’ve also witnessed users across the globe achieving incredible feats with our online forms.

Whether it be a nonprofit in Canada powering their membership renewal, a law office in New Zealand automating their document generation workflow, or even a technical college in Wisconsin streamlining their admissions process, Cognito Forms is dedicated to crafting the smoothest online form experience and providing you with simpler paths to accomplish your objectives.

Because let’s face it, online forms are a powerful tool that help you work more efficiently.

Our New Design

Since our launch, our product has changed quite a bit. Back then, we aimed to create a unique tool that didn’t exist. Our solution? A form builder going beyond data collection, enabling anyone to use robust calculations with an easy-to-understand, no-code experience.

We launched, expanded, and continuously added features. As our product advanced, it evolved from a form builder to a mature tool used globally for digital transformation.

As we outgrew our old look, we rebranded with an updated logo, introduced new brand colors, and re-designed our website, all while keeping the same goal in mind – a product that’s simple and easy to collect results from.

Our new site’s cleaner design reflected our ongoing commitment to simplicity. We always aim to provide you with tools that simplify complex work – easy to learn, grow with, and subscribe to, and the moving concentric circles symbolize our platform’s role in your work life – that your forms and automations are always working for you behind the scenes. Eventually, we mirrored this new look into a new form-building experience for our users.

Essentially, our new design was made with you in mind and inspired by our users.

The Era of Workflow

In the 10 years as a company, we’ve released enhancements requested by our users to make their lives easier and more productive – including one of our most comprehensive features, workflow automation.

According to a Mckinsey study, more organizations are pursuing workflow automation now more than ever.

Workflow automation gave a whole new definition to our product. In the era of remote and hybrid work, in-person engagement is no longer guaranteed. This shift has underscored the limitations of paper forms and processes like applications, contracts, expense reports, etc.

"Releasing these incredible new workflow capabilities marked an important milestone in our journey and a significant step forward in our vision for enabling these connections. Although these new capabilities altered the way you used Cognito Forms, we also believe that these deeply integrated changes were necessary to offer a cohesive and comprehensive workflow-building solution,” says CEO Jamie Thomas.

Workflow automation isn’t limited to the tech-savvy. We wanted to create a tool for everyone, allowing you to streamline and automate tasks in your daily apps. And by embracing workflow automation, you’ll save time on manual tasks, gain deeper business insights, and expand your capabilities without overwhelming yourself.

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 using conditional logic based on both the workflow role and status – and feel confident that the right work is getting done at the right time.

Looking to the Future

Everything we do is inspired by the amazing things our base of over 1 million users do, with over 3 million forms created and over 335 million entries. Because of this, Cognito Forms is more committed than ever to keeping your data safe.

And we couldn’t do it without our team. From intern to CEO, our company has a clear vision in mind each day when they show up to work (virtually and in-person). The team has grown exponentially as a group of bright individuals collaborating to make the product better each day. We’re also excited to announce that our office is moving to a bigger location! We’ve spent the past several years in a building in the heart of Columbia, SC – our old office served us well, but we’re thrilled to be moving into a larger space.

We’re eager to build on the groundwork of the past decade, assisting more people in forming stronger connections with their customers and unlocking boundless growth opportunities.

Thank you for 10 years. We hope we’ve created something that helps you accomplish great things. If you’d like to tell us about it, drop our team a note to let them know.