Wufoo Forums → Forums

Status of "updates"? Open letter from a long-time customer

• bchalker October 2011 Permalink

  Wufoo has my love and loyalty for now, but it's getting a bit frustrating when I find other sites and competition who have developed ways to do what is asked on these forums. I understand core code needs "protecting", but when the others start surpassing, they then become the leader. Adobe has it's own form creator it just launched. Some of the longtime requests...
  
  - save and return to form (Formspring and FormThis both do it)
  - more than 200 fields allowed (Formspring and FormThis both do it)
  - actual calculations based on quantity (again...Formspring and FormThis both do it). The order processing calcs, in particular...when launched as a feature, it was actually catching up to another. It gave some reason to stay and recommend. The most basic upgrade to that though (qty based calcs), is still lacking...and hasn't been addressed for a while now.
  
  The discussions on this forum have these items requested and often mentioned as being planned, but nothing else is said.
  
  Can you please post a roadmap of some of these plans or enhancements? I never know something is new, until I log in and see the notification (which I do love seeing :), but with the other options out there, SEEING a map would help stave off potential jumpers. I know your primary focus is form management, and while you do it VERY well, it isn't the primary focus for some of your customers. Those customer will be lost if another strengthens the "order form" and payment processing areas. Just stating a fact.
  
  You have always been the king with UX, and the others haven't caught up yet, but Formspring and the Adobe FormCentral have learned a lot in that regard...
  
  Note - this post is not meant to just rail against you. Like I said, I love using Wufoo, and have recommended it MANY times, and even post on it's use on my new-ish blog. I wanted to give a customer perspective that others here might be having, but not expressing.
• Andrew Gosnell October 2011 Permalink

  Hi there,
  
  We definitely appreciate your perspective and your comments. However, our policy is to not give out any sort of roadmap, timetable, or development schedule. There's just too much room for disappointment if the feature isn't added in that time -- not to mention if people make business plans expecting a certain timeframe. Also, we've been pretty bad at time estimates in the past when we did that sort of thing.
  
  Yes, there are other solid products out there with features that we don't have. Does that potentially cost us some users and customers? Quite possibly.
  
  That being said, we feel that a lot of our success so far has been due to our style of handcrafted care in each feature we release: polish, attention to detail, and ease of use. That's not something we plan to sacrifice just to make sure that we have the biggest feature list.
  
  Sorry if our no-roadmaps policy is frustrating. I can certainly see how that could be so. But that is not something that we're likely to change anytime soon.
  
  I do want to thank you for taking the time to let us know what your thoughts are and what features are important to you. We really do appreciate that. If you have any more thoughts, comments, questions, or concerns, please let us know. And of course if you want to contact us directly, you can use the contact link at the bottom of the page.
  
• bchalker January 10 Permalink

  Very belated "thank you" - sorry :)
  
  I appreciate your response (not the content, but the action ;P). I know. Completely understand the need to hold-off on roadmaps - and you're correct about the "room for disappointment". Just needed to vent a bit about some things.
  
  Overall, though, Wufoo is a great product, with great support and staff - genuinely mean that. It COULD become THE pinnacle for form-choices, though. I guess we need to be more patient about some of this.
• NPSC February 14 Permalink

  I'm not on this forum very frequently - probably because I'm too busy creating, editing, and posting forms for my clients. Wufoo revolutionized this part of my business when I started using it. But I have been frustrated by the lack of response to a lot of requests for upgrades that seem like no-brainers: archiving, quantity calculation, etc.
  
  Calculating a price based on quantity is something I'd really like to see. It's not enough to recommend that I switch to a "shopping cart" system. My non-proft clients aren't selling merchandise. We'd just like to have a membership form that calculates dues based on the number of members at a company in different categories, or on the number of locations.
  
  And archiving - sorting through all of the inactive forms is becoming a problem. The solution of increasing the number of categories, or creating some custom categories, would work & doesn't seem as if it would be that hard.
• DMUAdmin February 15 Permalink

  I agree with a lot of what bchalker is saying. It's nice to be able to know at least some of the major features planned. I actively follow other form services blogs and forums (like Gravity Forms) and am constantly impressed by their responses to feature requests and stating what is on their roadmap. Meanwhile I have no idea the direction that Wufoo is going. How or if things are going to be improved or even if they are listening to feature requests.
  
  On a related note. Five days ago I submitted three separate posts with feature requests, and have yet to receive a single response. Even a response of "sorry we won't be able to do that anytime soon" would be better than no response.
  
  I also agree that Wufoo is starting to fall behind in terms of features. At one point I could say without a doubt that Wufoo was the best online form service, but many others are catching up and in some ways surpassing Wufoo.