Does pricing upgrade result in higher speed?

Dear JotForm staff,

We are a high school exchange program, and we currently have students applying to our program for the 2016-2017 academic year. They are complaining that our form is way too slow. Here is the form:

https://form.jotform.com/52794887570978?

It sounds like our form may be too big according to your response to someone else's complaint about this issue. Here is that complaint and your response:

https://www.jotform.com/answers/804241-My-form-is-extremely-slow

If we subscribed to a higher plan, would that increase speed?

Our international partners that recruit students are very frustrated and are considering sending their students to an organization with a more functional student application process. Since this is crucial to our operations, we are also looking at another service that we could switch over to instead of Jotform. Is there a way we can speak to someone at JotForm on the phone?

Sincerely,

Vanessa Chang

Upgrading to higher package will not increase the speed of your form.  The problem with forms that are rather long is they are very heavy on the web browser itself.  It is not the connection speed that causes the lag, it is loading the necessary resources into the browser.  There are nearly 400 total fields in your form, including spacers and such.  Each time a page is changed, every field that is filled needs to its validation checked, this is very resource intensive on the browser.

To cut down on the number for fields in the form, any sections where you have repeating sets of fields, you could use a configurable list widget instead:

http://widgets.jotform.com/widget/configurable_list

You could also use form collapses, rather than pages:

Since the the validation would no longer be required for all fields when a page is changed, this would greatly reduce the lag when changing between sections. 

Though we do not currently offer phone based support, we will be happy to answer any other questions you may have right here.

Thank you for your quick response, David! 

The configurable list widget looks very useful; if we end up continuing with JotForm, we will definitely try to incorporate it into our forms. However, since there are only a few places in this very large application form where it can be applied, I don't think it will decrease the number of fields enough to significantly increase speed.

As for the possibility of using form collapse functionality, let me explain why we use page breaks, and you can tell me if form collapses would also meet our needs:

Because we have to require so much information in our student application, we want our applicants to be able to stop working on the application and continue later, i.e. not have to complete the application in one sitting. Per advice from JotForm's support team, we set up an intro form in which the applicant provides his/her name and email address, and, upon submitting that intro form, a page appears with a link to the actual application. Simultaneously, an email automatically gets sent to the applicant containing a link to the application. The applicant can begin completing the application, but if he/she doesn't have time to finish it, he/she can just use the link in the email to return to the application later. However, as I understood, information would only be saved once the applicant completed one page and clicked to go to the next page, so, without page breaks, the applicant could not complete only part of the application and have that information be saved. Is this not the case? Once a student completed all of the information in a form collapse section, would that information be saved?

We know we could require our applicants to complete multiple smaller forms, but we require quite a few items in addition to the application form itself, so we worry that requiring even more pieces would make it confusing 1) for the student to keep straight where he/she left off if he/she didn't complete it all at once and 2) for our international partner organizations and for us to track so many documents.

Please let me know if you have any additional thoughts on how to resolve this issue.

Sincerely,

Vanessa Chang

The save and continue function would no longer work if you used form collapses.  It only works with page breaks.  However, you could give them an edit link that would allow them to permanently return to their submission to update it:

http://www.jotform.com/help/40-How-to-Let-Users-Update-Their-Form-Submissions-at-a-Later-Date

This would allow them to submit the form at any time and return to their specific submission at any time.

Hi, David!

I don't know yet if these fixes will be enough to solve our problem completely, but they certainly are relevant and have the potential to be helpful. Thank you. And again, thank you for responding so quickly.

If I understand correctly, if I create an autoresponder email with this {edit_link} tag, then, once the applicant submits his or her application, he or she will receive a link to the application that enables him/her to make edits to the application.

- What if he or she finished the application and submitted it? Once we begin evaluating it, could he or she still go back to it and edit the application? 

- Right now our applicants are prevented from submitting until certain fields set as "required" are completed. I guess we'll need to change the setting of fields so that they're not required if we want applicants to be able to complete those fields at a later time, correct?

What if he or she finished the application and submitted it? Once we begin evaluating it, could he or she still go back to it and edit the application?

Yes, that is the purpose of the Edit link

- Right now our applicants are prevented from submitting until certain fields set as "required" are completed. I guess we'll need to change the setting of fields so that they're not required if we want applicants to be able to complete those fields at a later time, correct? CORRECT

Let us know should you have more questions, but please open a new thread for each different topic.

Cheers!