Adobe Adds PayPal Express Checkout to FormsCentral

Adobe launched FormsCentral just over a year ago. Now, Adobe is expanding the service by integrating PayPal Express Checkout so that users can accept payments or donations directly.

Adobe created FormsCentral to provide customers with a simple, online, hosted service that makes it easy to create and distribute forms. FormsCentral doesn’t stop there, though. Similar to survey or information gathering sites like Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey, FormsCentral also collects and compiles responses for tracking and analysis.

With the original capabilities, FormsCentral is already a tool businesses can use to create event invitations, customer or employee surveys, or other types of forms, and then automatically gather and correlate the responses.

With the integration of PayPal Express Checkout, you can add a payment field to new FormsCentral documents, or modify existing forms to include the payment option. PayPal Express Checkout allows you to accept payments either directly from PayPal, or from credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express.

A blog post from Adobe announcing the new PayPal Express Checkout features spells out a variety of potential uses for the new service. Since it lets you accept payments directly from the form, FormsCentral can now be used to collect payment for tickets or event fees, donations to non-profit organizations, payments for club or association dues, and more.

The simplicity looks appealing. FormsCentral lets you create an online store and process payments without requiring any special coding knowledge, or forcing you to hire an outside Web developer. Adobe and PayPal do all the work behind the scenes. Another very important aspect of FormsCentral and PayPal Express Checkout is that the sensitive credit card or PayPal account details are processed and stored securely by Adobe so you don’t have to try and manage that data or the responsibility that comes with it.

You can use FormsCentral itself for free, but the free service is very limited. In order to use the PayPal Express Checkout feature, you have to subscribe to a paid FormsCentral service. The Basic service is $14.99 per month and allows for a maximum of five active forms and no more than 500 responses per form. For less than two dollars more, the Plus service allows for unlimited active forms and up to 5,000 responses per form for only $16.58 per month. The catch is that the Plus service is billed annually so it’s actually $199 up front.

The Adobe FormsCentral site has more details.