If you already know if self hosting is right for you, set up a meeting now.
Should You Self-Host?
- Who is this for?
- How is our approach different from other form builders & data management solutions?
- What technologies are compatible with Form.io?
- What is the process and next steps for self-hosting?
- A few final words
1. Who Is This For?
Self-hosting is right for you if you are one or more of the following:
- Building a business process workflow application and need a solution that’s sophisticated enough for a developer to customize and configure integrations with anything while still allowing non-developers to create forms
- You’re struggling with development processes being consumer by forms and you’re looking for a way to hand off form building to non-developer users or free up your developers to focus on other core requirements
- Facing a make vs buy dilemma with what you’re trying to accomplish
- Deal with a lot of forms in general and wish to keep everything organized as well as leverage API-driven forms so you can pass data where it needs to go
- Have strict security and/or compliance requirements that either prevents or make it difficult for you to store data with a 3rd-party
- Your form and data management needs have steep requirements that involve things like legacy integrations, revision history, PDF-based intake forms, export to PDF, accessibility, etc.
- Building a SaaS and need a multi-tenanted platform as the backbone
- Be storing and/or processing personal identifiable information (PII)
- Need a standardized way to manage all forms and form data across your group or organization, regardless if it’s a series of one-off surveys, a large application, or something in between
Who This Is NOT For:
- Small businesses who do not need a form and data management platform embedded in their environment
- Organizations that only manage a handful of forms OR who are not building a business process workflow application
2. How Is Our Approach Different From Other Solutions?
It boils down to 4 things. Form.io is a standardized technology strategy for forms and data management that is:
- Scalable and Performant
- Open-architected
- Unopinionated / Configurable
- Self-Hosted
Scalable And Performant
A lot of organizations run into trouble when they start to scale usage and end up getting hit with surprise bills.
We don’t price per form, submission, end-user, form builder, developer, API call, or any other usage-based metric so you never have to worry about ballooning costs as you scale.
Our platform is built with modern technologies, our API and PDF servers are load-balanced, and configurations are available for whatever structure you use in your software development lifecycle.
Open-Architected
Form.io’s core is open-architected and supported by a community of developers who collaborate to make it the best open source, form and data management platform on the market.
Our form builder, data management, and form rendering libraries are available publicly on Github.
Unopinionated / Configurable
Forms are directly embedded within your application or web pages and can be styled to ensure a completely white-labeled and seamless experience.
Because forms are driven by dynamic JSON, you have access to emit events not just from load or submission, but from any activity within a specific field so that your forms can talk to your app and trigger workflows outside of the forms. And since all forms are API driven, you can wire them to any on-premise, in the cloud, third-party, or legacy system so your data can flow in real time to where it needs to be.
If you self-host, you can modify or extend the platform however you want. Our engineering team is dedicated to supporting the open-source community, collaboration, developing new libraries, and integrating contributions to the platform.
Self-Hosted
Form.io is a developer-centric platform that deploys directly into your environment via a Docker container, which means:
- Your uptime and performance aren’t dependent on any third-party, not even us
- If complete ownership of your data and security is a requirement, we stay out of your way
- You can de-silo in-house data sources and eliminate time-consuming data reconciliations that increase errors
- Eases integration complexities and operational bottlenecks because it’s in-house
- It’s the closest thing to making a solution without you having to make it
3. What Technologies Are Compatible With Form.io?
Cloud Environments
Any environment where you can stand up a load balancer, container, and a database, including but not limited to the big 3:
- Azure
- AWS
- GCP
Authentication Schemas
Any authentication schema including the following:
- SAML
- OAuth / OIDC
- LDAP
- Custom JWT Tokens
- Email with 2FA
Application Frameworks
Regardless of which framework you’re using, Form.io’s platform can be a thin layer within your application, including but not limited to:
- React
- Angular
- Vue
- .NET
Orchestrations
Regardless of your devops strategy for deployment, scaling, or management of containerized solutions, Form.io can be deployed in any way including leveraging the following:
- Kubernetes
- Docker Compose
- Helm Charts
- Terraform
- GCP Cloud Run
- AWS Cloud Formation
Databases
Form.io requires MongoDB or equivalent to run (remember, data can also be sent to any 3rd-party database), including:
- MongoDB Atlas
- AWS Document DB
- Azure Cosmos DB
- Mongo Enterprise Advanced (for on premise deployments)
4. What Is The Process And Next Steps For Self-Hosting?
At a high level, the process is as follows:
- Discovery call with Form.io
- Receive a free evaluation license
- Prove out our technical capabilities
- Confirm your configuration
- Finalize your SLA and order documents
- You’re off and running
5. A Few Final Words
We understand the difficulty of making your own solution vs the compromises of leveraging a 3rd party solution.
What if you didn’t have to compromise?
We can provide you a 30-day license to evaluate Form.io in your own environment so you can see for yourself.
Contact us so we can help you make sure self-hosted Form.io is right for you.