Adobe recently announced their planned shutdown of FormsCentral to the outcry of its users, many of whom rely on the service for all of their forms. Payment forms, contact forms, surveys, data collection forms – forms are an integral component of successfully running businesses and websites.
“Despite enthusiastic use of Adobe FormsCentral by many of you over the past three years, we’ve found there hasn’t been as much demand for this type of service as we anticipated,” Adobe explains in their official statement. Because form building isn’t their specialty, Adobe was unable to keep pace with their competitors and couldn’t get enough of the market share to justify their efforts keeping FormsCentral afloat.
Adobe’s decision to shut down the service on July 28, 2015, was petitioned by its customers to reconsider.
“Organizations like ours who have used FormsCentral for years have come to rely on this service and it is a show of poor customer service to terminate in the middle of the year,” a FormsCentral user asserted on Adobe’s forum. “We plan for the entire year in advance and FormsCentral is a huge piece what our programs do. With this decision, I am going to have forms across multiple platforms which is going to be a disaster and something will slip through the cracks.”
Many users voiced their concerns and didn’t know how to proceed now that there is a looming deadline to make a suitable switch. Aytekin Tank, CEO of JotForm (a popular online form builder) and thought leader of the form industry, has expressed approval of the way Adobe has handled their communication with users.
“When users are shocked with bad news, it is important to tell them what they can do next. Their announcement included links to other form building solutions like JotForm, and provided instructions on how to export their data,” Tank said. JotForm found out about the FormsCentral shutdown when their support team was inundated with requests from FormsCentral users asking how they can keep their forms and data and make the switch to JotForm.
JotForm immediately sprang into action to solve this problem. The software engineering team went to task without delay, and created a beautiful solution: a seamless import tool. It allows FormsCentral users to import their forms to JotForm easily, needing only their FormsCentral login information. The marketing team then publicized the solution, and within days hundreds of FormsCentral users had already imported their forms. They could rest easy knowing the often-tedious, but essential, components of running their business were taken care of.
Cognizant of the competitive landscape that is online form-building, JotForm strives to be a first-responder to the needs of the form building community and to stay ahead of the curve. When FormsCentral users wrote to JotForm asking them to offer fillable PDFs, the company sprang into action.
“Our users’ happiness is our utmost concern,” Tank explains, “so if they wanted to continue creating and using fillable PDFs like they did with FormsCentral, then they will be able to with JotForm.” JotForm released a Fillable PDF Form Creator, so that JotForm users can have another workflow: online and offline.
The positive feedback from new JotForm users has been overwhelming.
“I wish Adobe had kicked me to the curb a long time ago. I would have been using JotForm a lot sooner and my job would have been so much simpler and happier,” says Daryl, who recently migrated from FormsCentral. Another user raves “I’m very pleased and glad I came across your product. The migration tool has literally saved me many, many hours of re-creation work.”
Check out and enjoy the many top of the line features of JotForm, the easiest form builder. The most advanced form design tool available, JotForm’s Form Designer offers ready to use styles, beautiful fonts, stunning color schemes, and spectacular backgrounds. You can even browse ready-made form themes at the Theme Store, and look through a comprehensive collection of 360 widgets that can integrate right into your form. If you have any questions, concerns, or just want to say hi, feel free to contact JotForm’s 24 hour support team.
Collecting your information from a Fillable PDF Form Creator is helpful for offline users. Thanks!