WebMerge vs Windward vs Docmosis
A Definitive Comparison in 2024

Creating Template

Docmosis lets you quickly iterate the development of a template, WebMerge offers many different template builders and it’s difficult to know which one to use, and Windward’s approach to templates can be quite complex.

Windward comes with 11 pre-made templates and requires a template designer plugin.

The plugin supports template creation with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. While these interfaces might feel familiar, the plugin’s features require a high level of technical competence — you need to familiarize yourself with Windward’s auto-tag and wizard features, learn to configure and connect with databases, and have a good grasp of data structures.

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 builder: 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 39 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.

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

Quality of Export

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

WebMerge and Windward can output documents in DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF, and HTML formats. In addition to that, WebMerge also exports to email while Windward does RTF and direct to printer.

When it comes to the quality of document exports, both tools are 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 investing time designing templates, they’ll end up looking different in the output, which defeats the purpose of a template-based process.

Meanwhile, Docmosis only focuses on the following document-based outputs: PDF, DOCX, ODT, and TXT. Unlike WebMerge and Windward, 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.

Data Sources

For input data, Windward connects with multiple databases, WebMerge connects with forms and CRMs, 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 and Windward.

**Update: From November 2023, Docmosis now provides a Zapier integration!

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.

Windward is very flexible when it comes to data sources. In addition to its API, it connects directly with JSON, XML, SQL, Oracle, and DB2 databases to inject data into templates in real time. Unlike Docmosis and WebMerge, Windward can combine data from multiple sources into a single template, which makes it more flexible.

Resources & Support

WebMerge has scattered resources and inconsistent support, Windward’s resources are outdated, but their support is reliable, 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 like IT 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 was good, users have reported the quality dropped since the Formstack acquisition, and many of the help articles have broken links and missing images.

Now that Windward is part of the larger Apryse group, finding specific resources is challenging due to poor organization and searchability. The knowledge base also isn’t frequently updated, which leads to confusion and lengthy troubleshooting sessions. But on the other hand, users praise the customer support team; they say it’s helpful and responsive.

Unlike WebMerge and Windward, 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.

Price & Free Trial

Docmosis has the longest and full-featured free-trial and offers the best value paid plans. By comparison WebMerge is quite expensive, and Windward’s pricing plans are hidden.

Docmosis and Windward offer 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 watermarks and “Test Document” headers, which make the test documents difficult to view and don’t provide an accurate representation of the product.

Windward’s free trial lasts for 30 days. During this period, generated documents have the Windward branding at the bottom.

Similar to Windward, Docmosis also offers a free 30-day trial. However, Docmosis gives full access to its features, without any form of branding in the headers and footers, and no watermarks.

As for the paid plans, WebMerge’s plans are based on document merges, Docmosis’ are based on pages, and Windward isn’t transparent with their pricing.

Currently, Windward’s (or Apryse’s) paid plans are hidden. However, as at April 2023 (the last time they were public) the starting price for the Windward engine was $6,790 per year. It begs the question, what happens at the end of the year? Editing templates requires an MS Word Add-in, that is called the Windward Designer, which has an additional cost of $730 per user per year. This means that the number of template authors needs to be known and licensed in advance.

Windward’s Restful Engine and Java Library are similar to the Docmosis Tornado and Docmosis-Java products, which 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. Unlike Windward, where the license fees need to be paid every year, if you don’t take the optional renewal, the Docmosis software will continue to run indefinitely.

WebMerge, which is similar to Docmosis Cloud, is now part of Formstack but you can still get it separately for $110/month on the Starter plan (It’s re-branded as Formstack Documents). It gives you access to a specific number of users, document merges, and document templates — all of which are summarized in the table below:

Note: The higher plans aren’t visible on Formstack’s pricing page, you have to upgrade in the app.

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.

Note: The graph below compares the pricing of WebMerge and Docmosis Cloud, assuming 1 document merge (document output or exported document) contains an average of 10 pages.

Tornado and Docmosis Java (which are similar to Windward’s Restful Engine and Java Library) 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. Unlike Windward where the license fees need to be paid every year, if you don’t take the optional renewal, the Docmosis software will continue to run indefinitely.