HotDocs reviews

Outstanding document production, fair UI

Opmerkingen: Document automation saves time and reduces errors. I've found HotDocs to be extremely reliable, stable, and bug-free.

Pluspunten:

This product's integration with Microsoft Word is outstanding. It is a fantastic scripting tool for document generation. I've also prepared some documents in WordPerfect and it seems entirely capable with that as well.

Minpunten:

Hands down, the data entry interview is crude at best. It is probably ok for a developer who has never worked with another UI, but the "automation" it provides comes at a steep price - loss of control. If you want truly professional user interfaces, you'll have to write the front-end in some other language, write an "answer file" HotDocs can understand (which is not hard, it is very basic XML) and then let HotDocs work its magic to assemble the language in Word. When used that way, HotDocs is very powerful and flexible. When used in its native UI, it is fairly inflexible.

Great software, but beware of new owner's year-to-year subscription pricing.

Pluspunten:

I've used HotDocs in my law practice for more than 10 years. Love it. Very powerful. The more time you invest using it, the more you'll appreciate its many features and the better your templates will become.

Minpunten:

My only warning concerns the new year-to-year subscription pricing requirement. How does that make sense for this kind of software? The software becomes helpful only after you make your own serious upfront investment of time to build HotDocs "templates". Without that investment, HotDocs will do nothing for you. Don't make such an investment without considering that, in future years, you'll have no guarantee that you'll be able to renew your HotDocs substription on a basis that makes sense. And without yearly renewals, you'll forfeit your own upfront investment of time in templates. But for the pricing scheme adopted by HotDoc's new owner, AbacusNext, I'd give HotDocs an overall rating of 5 out of 5. However, as it stands now, I suggest you look at other software. Perhaps XpressDox. Or, for less ambitious automation projects, consider TheFormTool or Pathagorus.

Gets the job done, quite overpriced, and does about 80% of what it should

Opmerkingen: Gets the job done, and is ultimately worth it if your time is very valuable. Very expensive, and clearly only going to get more so. The document sets available are decent, but not amazing.

Pluspunten:

Saves time, and is very commonly used (and therefore understood) outside of our office.

Minpunten:

Very expensive, and requires re-entry of data already entered far too often. The actual coding in documents is surprisingly opaque, and converting existing document structures to a HotDocs format is exceptionally cumbersome. The existing form sets that are on top of HotDocs are useful, and the community is broad, but the quality is hit or miss.

TOO PRICEY -- In my opinion HotDocs priced themselves right out of the market

Opmerkingen: Love it, but not for the price they want you to pay. I have been using Hotdocs since around the mid-nineties and have seen the company change hands. The current "custodians" of Hotdocs have unfortunately missed the boat on pricing.

Pluspunten:

I can easily sell this program to anyone, and have in fact have turned several attorneys on to this program. It's a great way to automate your documents. It's logical. Is it complex? Sure it can be, but that gives the user a lot of options and makes it a powerful tool.

Minpunten:

Cost prohibitive. For some reason HotDocs has elected to increase the price of HotDocs well beyond what they charged. From my understanding they want to have you pay a MONTHLY FEE where they used to just charge you a one time fee for the program. The price is too high for solo attorneys and small law firms. Bottom-line: Until Hotdocs can figure things out on the pricing, do not start using Hotdocs; there are other ways to get the same job done for cheaper, A LOT CHEAPER!

Great software, but still needs to improve

Opmerkingen: It's really the best software out there for what it does. It just still seems behind the times in terms of connectivity, componentization, and still no HiDPI support.

Pluspunten:

It is extremely flexible and can help you craft just about any document that you want. I prefer the desktop version to the cloud version. It just works every time!

Minpunten:

I feel that HotDocs has been stagnating recently. Here are some things that they need to address: *Easy import/export of answer data to other formats. For example, if I use some other tool such as an online form, it should have the ability to import that data into an answer file. *It still doesn't support Hi-DPI displays. *It would be great it if could be more flexible in the storage of answer data. The ability to componentize the fields/answer data would be wonderful. As it stands, each template is limited to only one component file.

Overall, it's a helpful tool for drafting my documents.

Opmerkingen: Ease in drafting documents... biggest value for me. A lot of my practice is tailoring forms to my clients needs and wishes, and having the basic form available in HotDocs is a big help.

Pluspunten:

I enjoy being able to address both areas of my legal practice in the same program. I do not need to switch if I am creating for my client both estate planning documents and business transaction documents.

Minpunten:

Most challenging is learning how to create new Hot Doc templates. Maybe I'm too busy in my legal practice, but I do not have time to devote to learning the ins and outs, and therefore am forced to pay an admin person to create any new forms I'd like. If it were more user intuitive, I know I would have MANY more documents created under the software and get even more productivity out of the program.

One stop Document process automation

Opmerkingen: It is very good application for template management and automation compared to any other tool available in market. Excellent features and deep computation level

Pluspunten:

It is highly customisable according to needs. Have been working on esignature, qr code development, image processing and many more along with document template development and generation

Minpunten:

The features are wonderful but the application license is little too expensive compared to other application in the market. Recent author has some issues and need improvements compare to classic version

Straight through Document automation

Opmerkingen: Very good application of overall end to end document management to generate, store and integrtes for esign

Pluspunten:

Easy to deploy templates and use the same to generate legal documents in big numbers within very short time. High end computational features available for development of various business logic and requirements. Easy navigation from one part of code to other

Minpunten:

Sometimes development testing accepts coding which user encounters as errors on enterprise once deployed. Also recently developed author has many restrictions and lack features which are often used in developer

HotDocs is very easy to use and super affordable.

Opmerkingen: saving time and money

Pluspunten:

The software is very user friendly and easy to figure out. I definitely do not have a developer background, but have been able to teach myself how to architect documents in HotDocs. It was almost impossible to figure out how to architect documents in our previous software without support from our IT department.

Minpunten:

The user interface could use an update... it often feels as though we are using old technology.

A great idea and certainly something that a company could deliver a quality product.

Pluspunten:

- It is powerful and can do a lot. - It allows us to have a robust interview that generates templated documents - The software generally works, though it has some shortcomings which are not easily solved.

Minpunten:

- The company is about one thing: how much money can they get out of your firm. I received 4 sales calls in one week to get us to upgrade or change or whatever. They call other people in my firm who then refer the calls to me. If they redirected some of their sales staff to make the product better, it would be better for everyone! - It lacks a robust network of developers that work with it. We struggled to find qualified providers that could help us develop interviews and templates. - It has a dizzying array of different product editions, two different SAAS products, a desktop product which comes in different versions.

The obvious choice for professional users

Opmerkingen: While we use HotDocs ourselves, and have since 2012, our main use of HotDocs is now on behalf of our customers, who are mainly lawyers (in firms or in-house legal teams). As noted above, we find it is an extremely powerful document automation tool, which can be used on almost any forms of document. We've had good support from our key contacts at HotDocs, and after 4 years with LawHawk (and having recently upgraded to the new HotDocs Author/Advance product range) I remain very happy with the solution. The overall time savings (75%+) and quality improvements that you can expect to get every time are substantial, and one of our customers won a 2019 IACCM Asia Pacific Award for Operational Improvement as a result of their HotDocs automation project. Because it is a very established product, with a lot of written guidance and a large user community, it's very easy to work out in advance what can be done and how best to do it.

Pluspunten:

I think HotDocs is THE choice to use when you need to prepare more complex legal documents, particularly in packages. We are lawyers who specialise in automating documents for other law firms in areas like loan and security documents, share sale agreements, and complex wills and estates. We really haven't found anything we can't do with HotDocs, but we know that most (if not all) of the other document automation tools we've looked at, and sometimes use for simpler work, couldn't do the job at the high end. While a lot of focus is on the actual document creation aspect, we also really like the ability to build organisational compliance and training into the interview questionnaires.

Minpunten:

The biggest issue with HotDocs is the annual per user licensing model, which restricts the ability to use HotDocs in situations where you have a lot of POTENTIAL users, who may only need to use it occasionally. It also stops people from starting to use it when they don't know how large the benefits will be. I would love to see a more flexible licensing model that allowed people to get started using HotDocs, because they would love it, and would quickly see many more uses. With a more scalable licensing model, I think millions more people would use it. The ability to collaborate with others (e.g. via client interviews) would be a great help. I'd also like to see more easy - out of the box - integration with other systems, particularly Office 365.

HotDocs Developer 11 - Ease of Use

Opmerkingen: I have been working in HotDocs for the past 11 years, as a user and a coder. To be able to use this program to assemble our documents saves an incredible amount of time. I have had to enter in repetitive information on a set of 25 documents many times over the years, but being able to use HotDocs has been a great improvement and a fantastic time saver. Over the years, I have been able to increase the amount of client documents used through HotDocs and gained the interest of several other departments.

Pluspunten:

Our firm works on a vast amount of forms that are specific to our individual clients needs - these are not fill-in forms, but documents ranging from 1 single page to 100+ pages. We use a sometimes complicated Answer File whereby HotDocs lets us quickly assemble a single document or multiple documents - I sometimes do 20 or more documents at a time. The amount of time that is saved being able to use HotDocs for this document assembly process is phenomenal.

Minpunten:

If the answer to a variable is not readily available some end-users would like there to be a prompt on the draft document indicating what fields/questions have been left blank. For the person filling in the answer file those unanswered questions are known at the end of the answer file, but after assembly these documents are passed on for further editing and review and a reminder of what information was not available at the time of assembly would be helpful.

Practicing Family Law with HotDocs makes a world of difference.

Opmerkingen: Creating motions, petitions, orders, briefs, and so much more is easy with HotDocs. It would be difficult for us to practice Family Law without it!

Pluspunten:

We've been using HotDocs for almost 15 years. We have an enormous amount of time invested in the creation and updating of hundreds of HotDocs templates that help us create a huge variety of critical documents. The product is extremely powerful and flexible.

Minpunten:

The least likable factor about HotDocs is that it has become so expensive over the years.The basic program hasn't changed a lot since then but the cost has become exorbitant. We've been through several changes of HotDocs ownership over the years and the one thing I can count on is that the cost will go up every time. I think you could sell a lot more firms on this product if using it weren't so expensive.

Document digitalization at it's best

Opmerkingen: Satisfied with the digitalization process which hotdocs helps to achieve for drawing contracts.

Pluspunten:

Hotdocs helps save hundreds of hours of manual effort to fill in and review legal and contract documents. It's in built computations and field types make hotdocs customizable to any business needs. Can be integrated with adobe or docusign of esignature and makes contracts paperless

Minpunten:

Best in class features required for document automation makes it to go app. But it has some limitations on supported formats as well as complex computaions which needs improvement

Time to move on

Pluspunten:

The product takes substantial time to learn, but is robust and can be extremely helpful if you are willing to devote the time on the front end to save time on the back end.

Minpunten:

We have been with HotDocs forever and likely would have continued; however, since they were acquired by AccessData they have switched to a new pricing model requiring a perpetual monthly cost per user that will dramatically increase our cost for this product. We are currently exploring alternatives. I do not yet have pricing or sufficient information to know if any of these will be less expensive and work for us, but we are looking at Contract Express, XpressDox, and Exari. I am online today performing research for other viable competitors.

HotDocs is easily one of my top 10 successes in 25 years of working in legal I.T.

Opmerkingen: Great efficiency.

Pluspunten:

HotDocs saves us a lot of time drafting complex documents. The software is well-written, and reliable. It is highly cost-effective.

Minpunten:

HotDocs requires a time investment on the front end, wherein the document construction process must be formally defined and articulated. (To be sure, this task would be common to any effort or tool to automate the construction of complex documents.) HotDocs also requires a fair amount of care and feeding, but not so much because the product requires it but rather because of the base documents and the process change. I recommend that any customer find a HotDocs partner that can assist with building and maintaining the workflows, and base documents.

Very dissatisfied.

Opmerkingen: Due to the pricing changes, I am left with the decision to abandon hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of my time because the new owners have priced me out of the continued use of software I have already paid for.

Pluspunten:

I used this software for years and put a lot of time and effort into the program. There were no subscriptions. You paid for the software and it was yours. I did pay for an upgrade to HotDocs 11.

Minpunten:

Now that the company's pricing has changed, I was told that I would have to purchase a new monthly, per user subscription to re-install what I already paid for onto a new computer that replaced my old one.

HotDocs is a real time saver and very easy to use.

Opmerkingen: There is a large cost and time savings to my firm. Documents which used to take hours to produce are now done in minutes.

Pluspunten:

You just answer the questions presented on the document automation screen and your document is generated for you. Little training is required and the process of preparing pleadings greatly enhanced saving time and expense.

Minpunten:

Programming new templates and questions for presentation can be complex and time consuming. Designing the required questions in order to solicit the right responses in the correct order to produce the desired result can require multiple design refinements.

Best Product for Document Automation

Opmerkingen: The quintessential software for document automation. One of the best software (if not the best) for this purpose. It can take some time to learn all the available features to use in document creation but once start to understand the basics then you can start to unlock the true potential for this software. Very robust and the possibilities are endless. Generating documents and pleadings now take a fraction of the time they normally would using any other software. I highly recommend this product.

Pluspunten:

Huge time saver Generate documents in fractions of the time

Minpunten:

Takes time to create templates Must have extensive knowledge of word Take time to learn how to use the software

Ease of use

Opmerkingen: Works with our Cal Wills and Trusts program wonderfully!

Pluspunten:

Very reliable and compatible with our needs

Minpunten:

Cannot say, we have had no issues. The install was great

Streamlines your life, but expensive

Opmerkingen: I use HotDocs while using my Trust Funding software.

Pluspunten:

I love how HotDocs streamlines the drafting of frequently used documents, such as Health Care Directives and Powers of Attorney. You can enter info through a template, hit a button and viola, you are ready to go.

Minpunten:

It has an expensive user license fee. It can be cumbersome to get started and require additional tech assistance.

Great software for any document assembly needs

Opmerkingen: We are drafting legal documents with complex interviews in minutes, saving hours of drafting every day.

Pluspunten:

Very flexable, no matter how complex the document is you can build the template in hotdocs. The interview is also great, being able to control what the user sees depending on inputs makes the program very easy to use for the end user. Also, the help page is incredibly helpful, I hope people are using it because it is nothing like the usual help page programs have.

Minpunten:

Rather steep learning curve. Took me a couple of weeks to get the hang of it, and the built in functions are hard to find without the help feature. Once you have them memorized its great though. I imagine it will take me a few more months to master the program.

Quick Completion

Opmerkingen: Document Automation says it all. It integrates data into various documents with the click of a button.

Pluspunten:

Inputting client information one time to use with various forms. Court forms contain the same information in multiple areas and this fills the form.

Minpunten:

There are two forms where the client information is not available from what was input. It is not a major issue since I am now aware.

it meets our needs, is updated frequently and easy to use

Opmerkingen: accuracy and uniformity in preparing documents

Pluspunten:

as above - easy to use and reliable. it is always current and is specific to our needs regarding trust administration

Minpunten:

I wish the answer files could be networked so everyone could have access. I also don't like the storage on the local drive. if a user forgets to back up to the server we can lose information and have no record

Gold Standard

Opmerkingen: Overall, it is a joy once it is set up and works well with other programs.

Pluspunten:

Once everything is set up, HotDocs is the most customized, helpful document assembly program out there.

Minpunten:

Found it difficult and expensive to learn.