Wufoo, an online HTML form builder that helps anyone create contact forms, online surveys and event registrations without writing a single line of code, has launched a new feature that now lets users collect money. When you design a form with Wufoo, it basically does all the heavy-lifting for you and builds the database, backend and all of the scripts needed to collect and understand data, which is hosted by Wufoo. One you build a form, you can either embed the code on your website or blog or provider access to the form via a Wufoo link. We previously wrote about Wufoo, which was funded by startup incubator Y Combinator, here.
Now, Wufoo is integrating payments into its forms, letting users create forms with payment collection options, including PayPal Payments Pro and USA ePay. After a Wufoo form is submitted, the user will not be taken to another page on the merchant or gateway’s web site. Instead, there is a seamless transition from data submission to payment collection.
Trackvia provides software as a service for transforming ordinary spreadsheets into versatile databases. The Colorado-based startup has raised its first major round of institutional funding, the amount of which (while not disclosed) is being described as a “typical Series A”.
The round’s investors include two VCs out of the Rockies – Flywheel Ventures and Access Venture Partners – plus some notable angels, including Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Prior to this Series A, Trackvia had raised less than $1 million since launching in February 2006.
Trackvia appeals to SMBs that need to organize, access, and analyze business critical data that might typically be placed into Excel or Access files. By importing these files into Trackvia, the data can be searched and queried as with traditional relational databases. It can also be used to generate statistics, print out mailing labels, run email campaigns, create custom views, and generate web forms (think Wufoo). Images and other files can be loaded and associated with entries, and the system retains a comprehensive change history for all entries. Permissions can also be set on a per-entry basis.
Trackvia competes with Blist (review) and DabbleDB (review), although its customers don’t tend to bring these companies up; they’re more likely to mention Intuit’s QuickBase and Act. Trackvia’s executives suggest that its customers are not so much interested in sharing their data broadly but are rather looking for better ways to handle information internally.
I didn’t think that a service to build your own online forms sounded very exciting, until the creators of Wufoo walked me through the system last week. Wufoo is so flexible, usable and has such good reporting that it made me want to create some forms just so I could use it. The service launched publicly just minutes ago. It crashed after initial coverage here, but is now back up. It looks like there may be a little kink in the system here or there, but it’s already very usable.
Founded by Kevin Hale, Chris and Ryan Campbell, Wufoo is funded by two angel investors and the VC firm Ycombinator. That funding added up to $118,000, for all you bubble heads out there, and the project is as solid as the funding is sane. The team’s other work includes ParticleTree.com and Treehousemagazine.com. Wufoo is made under the name Infinity Box, Inc. and is based in Tampa, Florida.
Here’s a sample survey about coverage of enterprise software on TechCrunch – hopefully the server is back up for good! I would post the form itself here, but I think that was a big part of the load. Here’s the results of the survey so far.
Wufoo makes great use of ajax to create a very nice user experience on the admin side of things. You can place your finished form in either an embedded iframe (as I have in this post) or on a dedicated web page. You can receive new responses by email or RSS, response data can be filtered and displayed in a variety of ways in the reports section and there is easy control over the look and feel of the forms your users interact with. There are more functions available than I’ll go into here, but the system is still very easy to use.
Free accounts include let you create 3 forms with 10 fields, 100 submissions and 10 reports. Premium accounts bump up these numbers, allow respondents to upload files and be redirected to a URL of your choosing after the form is completed. Four service levels are available at between $9 and $199 per month. Wufoo also supports all UTFF characters, so forms can be multilingual.
Competitors include Form Assembly and WyaCracker.
Wufoo forms are easy to integrate gracefully into other pages and the system is set up to handle large numbers of responses. (Or so it seemed before the server crash.) Form creation is an important function and the team behind Wufoo has leveraged some of the best in contemporary technology. I think this one’s a winner.
