Although I pay each year to maintain updates and support, I’ve never updated! I’m running V14, when the latest is v19!
I’m normally happy enough updating stuff, but this one makes me nervous, as I have a lot of client forms in the one install, so if it goes tits up, it’s a nightmare.
How reliable are the one-click upgrades? Plenty of apps claim it’s faultless, but experience tells me otherwise.
Is it really needed to update? Machforms is great and ticks along fine. On the face of it I don’t need new features, so unless it’s a security risk, I can just stay at 14, right?
Finally, does anyone know if the dev offers an upgrade service? I’ll happily pay them to do it (within reason of cost), if I know that they are going to sort any issues.
@TemplateRepo I’ve been fine doing upgrades myself and have never experienced a problem. But I understand your concern.
They definitely used to do upgrade installs for you for a relatively low price, but it seems your license needs to be active. I’d contact them here: https://www.machform.com/contact/
and choose the “other” option on that page.
As someone who manages numerous clients using MachForm, I always strive to ensure that they are using the most up-to-date version of the software. However, I recently discovered that one of my clients was still operating on version 14. To address this, I promptly submitted a support ticket to MachForm. The team at MachForm responded with reassurance that upgrading to the latest version should be seamless using the one-click upgrade feature. They did, however, recommend creating a backup as a precautionary measure. I followed their advice, and I’m pleased to report that the upgrade process, as predicted by Yuniar from MachForm, was executed flawlessly.
@TemplateRepo If you are paying every year for support (as I am also), then you can make a backup of your MachForm folder and then send in a support ticket to MachForm and ask them to do the update for you. They will need your login and pw but will do it for you quickly. I have never had a problem doing the updates this way as I don’t trust myself to do it.
I’ve worked with various form builders and after much experimentation, I’ve found that MachForm is my preferred choice over stacks-solutions. Here’s why:
Ease of Setup: MachForm is simple to use and set up. It’s designed to be user-friendly, making it easy for me to create different types of forms like order forms, booking forms, survey forms, and more, without needing to write any complex code.
Field Modification: MachForm provides the flexibility to add, delete or modify fields. What’s more, it automatically handles all the MySQL modifications, saving me from the tedious and error-prone task of manually managing the database. I don’t know of any stacks-solutions that can do this (I could be wrong, though).
Client Admin Rights: With MachForm, I can give admin rights to my clients, allowing them to update the form as needed. This empowers my clients and reduces my maintenance workload.
Attractive Email Notifications: MachForm enables me to design beautiful emails that auto-reply to visitors. This not only provides immediate feedback to the user but also ensures that I’m promptly notified about new entries.
Profitable Features: MachForm offers an easy way to accept payments online directly from the forms, making it a potential source of instant profit. This is especially useful for forms that involve transactions, such as order forms or event registrations.
Integrated Reporting: With MachForm, I get powerful reporting features that help me analyze the performance of my forms, leading to better insights and improved outcomes. I have one client who has over 200,000 entries in their database. It’s a treasure-trove of information that they use for data mining.
Approval Workflow: MachForm allows me to easily create an online approval process with multiple approvers, which is a great feature for forms that require authorization before proceeding.
Google Integration: It also provides the ability to automatically store form entries to Google Sheets and add Google Calendar events from your forms. This enhances the overall functionality and integration capabilities of my forms. As an example, I have an HOA that integrates their Google calendar into one of their forms; they use it for reserving time on their tennis courts. Another form integrates to reserve time for birthday parties at their neighborhood pool & cabana. A totally free and easy solution.
Support: As with virtually all Stacks developers, email support from MachForm is quick and efficient. MachForm is based in the far-east somewhere, so roughly 12 hours difference from me. But, that’s never been an issue; on the rare occasions that I’ve needed assistance, I’ve sent a help desk ticket in and the response has always been waiting for me when I arrive at my desk the following morning.
Pricing: Although the prices have gone up since I bought my unlimited license, it is a bargain, especially if you have enough sites. At $200 for 10 sites, that is just $20 per site for an incredible number of features. I have it installed in dozens and dozens of sites, making the unlimited license a no-brainer. New features are rolled out continuously, which makes an annual subscription more or less necessary (@ $120 per year), but is not required for your installed forms to continue to work. You could easily skip a year (or two) if you wanted to; then purchase the upgrade; upgrade all of your clients to the latest version, and keep rolling right along. Even if I had just one site to install forms into, I would take a good hard look at all the benefits MachForm offers and then make the decision if the extra money is worth the investment. In many cases, though certainly not all, I suspect the answer is yes.
In conclusion, the combination of MachForm’s ease of use, flexibility, powerful features, and attractive design make it my go-to choice for form building. I recommend it to all web developers looking for an efficient and effective form building tool.
@Domino : @dave summed it excellently! I also use MachForm a lot, though not as much as him. It’s an excellent product period. I may be remembering things incorrectly, but most of the forms that come as a stack are really relatively simple. And that’s fine … they probably meet the needs of their clients fine. The combination of power + flexibility make MachForm the clear choice for me. But … I am mainly constructing course websites and these are cases where I absolutely need something reliable and powerful to use with groups of students.
MachForm may not be a product you need. I have no idea of your needs, or those of your clients. But it’s a great product.
@Domino I agree with both Dave and Mitchell. I’ve been using MachForm for several websites- all with different form needs and have loved the ease of using it. What is so nice is that if I have the forms linked in my website, and then need to make any changes on the form, it automatically updates on the website.
As Dave delineated, there are so many excellent features of the product that I couldn’t do my websites without it.
@Domino While this may not be a major concern for you, during these “ambiguous times” in terms of web-design software to use, MachForm is independent of your design software and will fit in with either one.
I realize this may not be a key issue for many, but for others it would be comforting to know MachForm will work equally fine with the new RW Elements, the new Stacks Pro, Blocs, and on and on.