A workspace you shape freely, or a set of modules already wired together. Both stand up, for different organisations.
A free-form workspace appeals through its promise: everything can live there, and each team builds what it needs. That freedom has a price that surfaces over time — someone must design, document and maintain the structure, and the day that person moves on, half the system becomes a puzzle. Thingsform takes the opposite bet: modules arrive already wired, forms to tasks, tasks to reports, base to CRM and campaigns. You lose design freedom and gain a setup that holds on its own. The right choice mostly depends on who, in your organisation, will look after the structure two years from now.
The questions to ask any tool, ours included. The answer given here is Thingsform's.
Thingsform modules arrive configured and wired: the structure is the product's, not one a single person designed and then took with them. This weighs heaviest in organisations where nobody has time to be the internal tool's architect.
Offline capture works from the free plan, photos included, and syncs when the connection returns. For an organisation with part of its teams outdoors or underground, this point often decides faster than all the others combined.
Base is read natively by the CRM, ThingsMail and the DMS. A client record edited once is up to date everywhere, including in mailings: that is what avoids maintaining syncs between a documentation space and the tools that actually work the data.
Yes, through the Notes and Wiki modules, with folders, sharing and direct attachment to form submissions. Documentation therefore stays beside the work it describes, rather than in a separate space someone must remember to update.
On servers located in the European Union, with daily backups and a GDPR module to record consents and answer access requests. The question arises as soon as the space holds client records rather than internal organisation notes.
Often, no. Here are both cases, in the honest order.
Yes, and it is common: internal documentation and team pages stay where they are, while the processes touching the field, clients and mailings move over. The natural boundary runs between what you write and what you run.
Markdown content pastes straight into Notes and keeps its formatting, and tables import by file. Start with what is genuinely shared and consulted: a bulk import mostly reproduces pages nobody was opening any more.
Three are almost always enough: Forms, Tasks and Reports. The rest come as specific needs appear. Switching on fifty modules on day one produces exactly the problem you were trying to avoid — a structure nobody takes ownership of.
We describe neither the features nor the pricing of another vendor, which change without notice to us. This page sets out the criteria to examine and Thingsform's answers. For the other tool, its current terms are authoritative.
Notion is a trademark of its publisher, cited here for reference. This page does not describe its features or pricing, which change over time: refer to its current terms.
The right way to decide
Rebuild your hardest form on the free plan, and have it filled in the field. Half a day is enough, and the answer stops being a matter of opinion.