This is a very common question, particularly from our more technical users.
A lot of people have become accustomed to smashing together a form themselves using Jot/Google/Office Forms, and can't understand why we don't just offer the same thing. There are quite a few reasons:
- The custom fee calculator we build is intrinsically tied to the accompanying registration form. The integrity of the logic for generating invoices is complex and needs to be maintained by us. If form fields can haphazardly be altered or deleted, the fee calculator will no longer work, and will instead become a support issue for us.
- We don't have a nice user interface for you to design and build forms with. The tools we use are code-based and therefore only usable by us.
- We frequently implement custom validation on your behalf (eg. conditional mandatory validation, display/hide sections) that is implemented in code and therefore not accessible to anyone else.
- We have had a lot of practice at designing an event experience for your members, which encompasses laying out the data capture in a way that doesn't confuse people. We frequently give advice on where we detect ambiguous phrasing or redundant questions, and suggest alternatives based on what we know works.
- We design the forms in such a way that leverages the back end flexibility of the system. We have a pretty fair idea what you're going to want to do with the data you capture on the form, so you'll notice that it plugs in pretty seamlessly with the admin screens behind.
There is a reason you wanted to start using Majestri and move away from trying to handroll solutions in form builders that end up in spreadsheets to join the 200 in your organisation's shared folder. It is very rare to have custom-built software for no cost, so take us up on the offer. Treat us as part of the team and just compile your requirements for us and move onto something more important. Let us handle the nuts and bolts of events.