Formsite vs Formstack
An independent, review-free comparison compiled by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Both products are profiled in full, and neither can pay for placement here.
The short answer
Editorial assessmentFormsite compared with Formstack
Formstack owns Formsite, having acquired it in December 2023, and the two overlap heavily on documents, workflow, and approvals. Formstack is the larger, more expensive platform with a broader Documents and Sign product line and enterprise governance; Formsite is the cheaper, narrower tool that reaches most of the same outcomes for a small business. Buy Formsite if the price gap matters and you can live with the per-form results ceiling; buy Formstack if you want the vendor's strategic product rather than its acquisition.
Choose Formsite if
Small businesses and departments running long, procedural, document-producing forms (applications, orders, inspections, registrations) across many separate forms rather than one high-volume one, who need save-and-return, calculations, and a PDF at the end.
Choose Formstack if
Operations, HR, finance, and compliance teams at small and mid-sized organizations that need many moderate-volume forms feeding approvals, generated documents, and signatures, and especially Salesforce-centred businesses that want forms built natively inside the org.
Side by side
13 attributes| Attribute | Formsite | Formstack |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Forms | Forms |
| Starting price | $0 (Free), then $21 per month or $249.95 per year (Personal) (free plan available) | $83 per month billed annually ($996 a year) for the Forms plan (14 days trial) |
| Pricing model | Six service levels priced on forms, stored results per form, file space, and sub-users; billed monthly or annually, with paid add-ons for storage, sub-users, and result documents. | Per-account annual or monthly subscription with submissions metered per form rather than per account, a fixed number of builder users, and a pooled storage allowance. Compliance features are add-ons. |
| Free plan | Free allows 5 forms, 10 stored results per form, and 50MB of file space, with export included. It is a demonstration allowance, not a usable production tier. | No |
| Free trial | A 14-day trial that automatically downgrades to the Free service level rather than expiring | 14 days, no credit card required |
| Best for | Small businesses and departments running long, procedural, document-producing forms (applications, orders, inspections, registrations) across many separate forms rather than one high-volume one, who need save-and-return, calculations, and a PDF at the end. | Operations, HR, finance, and compliance teams at small and mid-sized organizations that need many moderate-volume forms feeding approvals, generated documents, and signatures, and especially Salesforce-centred businesses that want forms built natively inside the org. |
| Setup time | A simple form takes an hour. A real multi-page application with logic, calculations, save-and-return, and a result document template is a day or two of work, and the document template is the slowest part. | A single form takes under an hour. A full Suite workflow with approval routing, a merged document template, and a signature step is a multi-day project, and the Salesforce-native edition should be scoped as a proper implementation rather than an afternoon. |
| Learning curve | Moderate. The builder is dense and the terminology is its own (items, service levels, results, server post), so the first form is slower than it should be. Once the vocabulary lands it is straightforward. | Moderate. The form builder is straightforward, but document templating and approval routing require thinking through the process before configuring it, and the Salesforce edition assumes someone who understands the org's object model. |
| Platforms | Web application, Hosted form pages, Iframe and JavaScript embeds, QR code publishing, Mobile-responsive rendered forms | Web app, Hosted forms and embeds, Salesforce-native application, Experience Cloud components |
| Compliance | Secure submission handling and encryption in transit, reCAPTCHA spam protection, No published HIPAA business associate agreement, No published WCAG or Section 508 conformance statement | HIPAA available as a purchasable add-on, PCI-oriented payment handling via processor integrations, GDPR data processing terms, Salesforce Shield compatibility in the Salesforce edition |
| Founded | 1998 | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Chicago area, Illinois, United States | Fishers, Indiana, United States |
| Ownership | Owned by Formstack since December 2023 | Privately held, growth-equity backed by Silversmith Capital Partners and PSG; parent entity rebranded to Intellistack in 2025 |
Strengths and limitations
Formsite
Strengths
- Save and Return is genuine partial capture with a resume link, which almost nothing else in this price band offers and which transforms completion rates on long forms.
- PDF and Word result documents turn each submission into a filed artefact that can be routed, attached, and stored, which is the whole point for application and order workflows.
- A calculation engine plus over fifty item types makes it capable of order forms and scored assessments that simpler builders cannot express.
- Unlimited approval workflows from the $59 Business tier, which is a Formstack-class feature at a small-business price.
Limitations
- The per-form results ceiling is the wrong shape for most modern use cases, and hitting it stops the form and shows visitors an error rather than billing you for overage.
- The rendered forms and the builder both look dated, which matters when the form is the first thing a customer sees.
- Sub-users are excluded from the two cheapest plans and cost $10 a month each thereafter, so team use is more expensive than the headline price suggests.
- No published HIPAA business associate agreement, no WCAG or Section 508 conformance commitment, and no stated EU or UK data residency option.
Formstack
Strengths
- Per-form submission metering suits organizations with many moderate-volume forms far better than the account-wide meters used by the rest of the category.
- Forms, document generation, e-signature, and approval routing in one subscription replaces three or four separate vendors.
- Unlimited e-signatures with no per-envelope fee on the Suite plan, which is a direct saving against per-document signature pricing.
- The deepest Salesforce integration in this category: native forms inside the org, dynamic prefill, progressive data capture, Experience Cloud, and Shield compatibility.
Limitations
- No free plan of any kind, only a 14-day trial, in a category where several credible competitors give away unlimited responses.
- The entry plan includes a single builder user, so any team collaboration means paying for extra seats or moving to Suite.
- API access is presented as an Enterprise feature rather than being included on paid self-serve plans.
- The per-form cap is punishing for a single high-traffic form, which is the most common marketing use case.
Pricing compared
Formsite
Six service levels priced on forms, stored results per form, file space, and sub-users; billed monthly or annually, with paid add-ons for storage, sub-users, and result documents.
- Free$0
- Personal$21
- Professional$34
- Business$59
- Business+$84
- Enterprise$209
Model it at 500 submissions a month against one form and Formsite looks bad: Personal at $249.95 a year fills its 500-result table in month one and then stops, so you are really on Professional at $399.95 and deleting results every month. Model the same 500 spread across ten forms and it looks fine. At 5,000 a month on a single form you need Business+ at $999.95 a year, where Zoho Forms would charge $120 and forms.app nothing. The honest read is that Formsite is priced for accounts with many low-volume procedural forms and is expensive for anything with concentrated traffic. What you are buying at the top of that range is save-and-return, result documents, and approval workflows, which very few competitors under $1,000 a year offer at all.
Formstack
Per-account annual or monthly subscription with submissions metered per form rather than per account, a fixed number of builder users, and a pooled storage allowance. Compliance features are add-ons.
- Forms$83
- Suite$250
- Salesforce SolutionsCustom
- EnterpriseCustom
Formstack is poor value as a form builder and reasonable value as a small workflow platform. Paying $996 a year for 25 forms and one builder user makes no sense next to Jotform's $468 Silver tier or Tally's free plan if all you need is capture. It starts to make sense at the Suite level, where $3,000 a year buys forms, unlimited e-signature, and automated document generation that would otherwise be a form subscription plus a signature vendor plus a merge tool. The per-form meter is a real advantage for organizations with a wide, shallow portfolio of forms and a real penalty for anyone with one popular form. Salesforce-native operation is the strongest single reason to pay the premium, and if you are not a Salesforce shop it is worth asking honestly whether you are buying the thing that justifies the price.
Editorial verdict on each
Formsite
Formsite is a specialist wearing a generalist's label. For long procedural forms that must be resumable, calculate a total, produce a PDF, and pass through an approval, it does at $699.95 a year what Formstack charges considerably more for, and save-and-return alone justifies the look of the thing. Buy it for applications, orders, inspections, and registrations spread across many separate forms. Do not buy it for a single high-traffic form, because the per-form stored-results ceiling will fill and your visitors will start seeing an error page instead of a confirmation, and there is no overage option to save you. Also weigh the ownership question honestly: Formstack now owns a direct competitor to its own product, and while nothing suggests Formsite is going away, nothing suggests it is the future either. Export regularly, which you will be doing anyway.
Read the full Formsite profileFormstack
Formstack is not competing for the buyer who wants a nice form, and it prices accordingly. What it sells is the whole chain from capture to approval to generated document to signature, with the strongest Salesforce integration in the category and a per-form submission model that fits an operations portfolio far better than the account-wide meters everyone else uses. If you are a Salesforce shop, or you are currently paying separately for a form tool, a merge tool, and a per-envelope signature vendor, the Suite at $3,000 a year is a rational consolidation. If you just need forms with logic and payments, you are looking at one of the most expensive entry prices in this market for something Jotform or Cognito Forms does for a third of the money, and you should also weigh the 2023 layoffs and the Intellistack rebrand before you commit a core process to it.
Read the full Formstack profileFormsite profile last reviewed 2026-08-22; Formstack last reviewed 2026-08-22. Pricing is compiled from public sources and can change without notice. See our methodology.