WebMerge vs Docmosis
A Definitive Comparison in 2024

Creating Templates

Docmosis lets you quickly iterate the development of a template, while WebMerge’s process is slow and tedious.

WebMerge has 40 pre-made templates to help you get started.

These include employee contracts, W4 and W9 forms, event tickets, and invoices. However, most of these templates only include simple merge fields for basic text input like dates [1], names [2], emails, and descriptions. If you need advanced formatting with conditional logic, you’ll have to customize the default templates or build your own from scratch.

WebMerge provides three different approaches to create templates from scratch:

• Builder mode: A regular, text-based builder with text-based merge fields.
• Drag-and-drop mode: A text-based builder with drag-and-drop merge fields.
• Advanced mode: An HTML mode for more granular control if you’re comfortable reading/writing code.

While the builder lets you create all kinds of documents, finding features and designing high-quality templates comes with a learning curve because of all the options and builder variations — even with the mini tour and demo videos.

Alternatively, you can upload templates to WebMerge from any of the Microsoft Office Apps: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

With so many options for creating templates, it’s difficult to know which one to use. The question of which one is best for any particular document can only really be answered through trial and error, which can be very time-consuming.

Additionally, WebMerge can generate a simple web form for testing the template with mock data (image below). However, it doesn’t include automatically generated sample data, so there can be a significant amount of manual work if your template has many fields and if you need to test multiple data sets.

Similar to WebMerge, Docmosis has 43 document templates that include:

• invoices,
• proposals, 
• certificates,
• and business letters. 

Many of these are made by Docmosis and come with sample data for testing. Docmosis also provides the ability to generate sample data based on the fields in the template either via the user interface or via the API. 

You can create templates from scratch using LibreOffice Writer or Microsoft Word by adding plain-text placeholders to create the merge fields. When uploaded to Docmosis they can be easily tested with the sample data to see what the final document will look like once generated. Also, creating conditional statements for content and injecting data into table rows requires only a few lines of code.

And, unlike WebMerge, the final document retains the formatting applied to merge fields in your template (which we cover in-depth in the next section).

Winner: Docmosis makes it easy to design templates from scratch using plain-text placeholders. It lets you kick-start your work with a library of 43 practical templates. Additionally, you can quickly test the templates with auto-generated data samples.

Quality of Export

WebMerge supports multiple output formats with lower template-to-document conversion accuracy, while Docmosis supports fewer output formats but offers a higher conversion accuracy.

WebMerge can output documents in DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF, JPG, and HTML formats. In addition to that, it also exports to email.

When it comes to the quality of document exports, WebMerge is acceptable for simple documents with basic formatting and simple tables. However, when working with complex documents, the final output can look quite different from the original template. For example, images can get resized or moved, font types changed, and table column widths expanded.

This means that, after spending lots of time designing templates, they might end up looking different in the output, which defeats the purpose of a template-based process.

Meanwhile, Docmosis focuses on the following document-based outputs: PDF, DOCX, ODT, and TXT. Unlike WebMerge, the generated documents look like the initial template for simple and multi-page documents.

This gives you the flexibility and control expected of a template-based approach knowing that your hard work will be reflected in the final document.

Winner: Docmosis wins for specializing in document-based formats and ensuring high-quality outputs; a top priority for businesses that need professional-looking documents that comply with company brand guidelines.

Data Sources

For input data, WebMerge connects with forms and web apps, while Docmosis primarily supports JSON and XML data.

Docmosis accepts data in XML and JSON formats, making it compatible with most modern custom-built software applications. It also has an easy-to-use API that lets you connect with other apps and third-party software. However, it doesn’t offer as many direct integrations as WebMerge.

**Update: From November 2023, Docmosis now provides a Zapier integration, enabling numerous custom integrations!

WebMerge’s documents can be populated with data from its native integration with Formstack forms and other integrations like Salesforce. WebMerge also integrates with Zapier enabling document generation from apps like Google Forms, Eventbrite, and Constant Contact, and has a public API for even more data source integrations.

It also lets you set rules for when data should be populated in documents.

Winner: The number of integrations WebMerge provides and the data routing feature means it wins this category.

Resources & Support

WebMerge has scattered resources and inconsistent support and Docmosis offers organized resources and excellent support.

Having a well-organized help section means seamless troubleshooting, done by end-users themself. This helps take the load off higher-level decision makers and removes bottlenecks since the person encountering issues can also resolve them.

WebMerge’s resources are scattered throughout its website and buried under lots of pages, making it challenging to navigate and find precisely what you’re looking for. While their customer support is adequate, users have reported the quality dropped since the Formstack acquisition, and many of the help articles have broken links and missing images.

Unlike WebMerge, Docmosis’ resource section is neatly structured and organized, with filters that make it easy to find resources according to products (Cloud, Tornado, and Java)  and their different versions.

Plus, Docmosis has comprehensive, easy-to-follow, and frequently updated documentation for quickly resolving issues. Their customer support team is also prompt, providing detailed responses with specific examples and templates.

Winner: Docmosis wins for simplifying learning and troubleshooting sessions with well-organized, detailed, and updated resources as well as a helpful customer support team.

Price & Free Trial

Docmosis has a longer and full-featured free trial and offers the best value paid plans. In comparison, the WebMerge trial includes watermarking and pricing is expensive.

Docmosis offers a 30-day trial, while WebMerge has a 14-day trial.

WebMerge offers a 14-day free trial of their cloud solution. However, the trial documents have heavy watermarks, which make the test documents difficult to view and don’t provide an accurate representation of the product. 

Docmosis offers a free 30-day trial. Docmosis gives full access to its features, without any form of branding or watermark during the trial period.

WebMerge’s paid plans are based on the use case, while Docmosis’ are based on pages.

WebMerge is now part of Formstack, re-branded as Formstack Documents, but you can still get it separately for $99/month on the Documents plan. It gives you access to a single document builder and unlimited document senders, 50 monthly merges, and 10 document templates. Alongside the standard documents feature, Formstack offers a specialized version for Salesforce and a Suite version, where the documents feature is just one of many.

Docmosis Cloud unlocks all features on each plan, the only difference between them is in the number of users and work environments. Each plans price is based on the monthly page generation (with unlimited input templates):

This simply means if you produced two documents with Docmosis, one document with 4 pages and the other with 6 pages, a total of 10 pages will count towards your quota.

Tornado and Docmosis Java only require a one-time license payment — starting at $3,695. For support and updates, Docmosis offers an optional package, starting at $1,478 annually. And, if you don’t take the optional renewal, the Docmosis software will continue to run indefinitely.

Winner: Docmosis wins for having transparent, affordable, and easily scalable pricing plans for both cloud and self-hosted solutions. This makes it ideal for businesses of all sizes with various document generation needs.