Genuine advice needed all assistance gratefully received.
I run a policy production and personalisation business with very old systems. In an attempt to modernise and improve I have reached out via freelance portals looking for a solution for my business. My problem is I am asking for a solution not a quote for a very specific product.
The issue is that there are lots of ways to solve the problem including existing apps like docupanda, also VBA and WordPress plugins with integrations like Zapier. The WordPress options look great , but so do the others! What do I know ?
Would anyone comment on the pros and cons of different solutions for my needs?
Project
Currently my customers buy from my website, I use manual processes and macros to personalise documents and manually send to customers.
My needs- a purchase triggers a data gathering form which is used to personalise the documents and the customer receives a log in to the web portal where they can view and download their personalised documents. I also need a way to automate updates across all customers, do renewals etc.
Is WordPress my solutions ?
Many thanks
one can surely do that logic in wordpress. Tools you mentioned can do what you need, it depends on the freelancer. So really the pros and cons are not around what tool but which is the right person to do and solve your business ‘problem’, imho.
Payment trigger can be a link you sent to interested customer. I am not sure are you operating like an ecommerce selling shoes that you dont know your customer before purchase or like a lawyer that you know your customer before transaction. Sending link, you need to know your customer. As alternative, wordpress with woocommerce can be your trigger. Or other ecommerce platform might be able to, shopify, wix, etc. with plugin that suit your need, if exist.
Sure thing is, you need it as an online system and a ‘self-service’ kind for your customer. Am I getting it right? If yes, then it is a matter of getting your macro online. The rest (payment, product, delivery, etc) are business-as-usual of a typical ecommerce. Cmiiw
Gravity Forms + Gravity PDF
I’m sure there’s more detail that would help answer better but… I would look at a form-based solution. WSForm, Bitform, Fluent Forms or Gravity (in that order of preference for me) – each will allow you to create a registration form, and a PDF generated from form inputs. They each also allow you to take one-off payments and take a signature and add it to the document. That handles most of your requirements.
The difficult bit is building the PDF if it needs to be ‘clever’ (have tables, charts, images or similar) as you need to build them as html. If it’s just text then it can be done easily.
A simple membership plugin would handle your ‘document portal’. Perhaps as simple as [https://simple-membership-plugin.com/](https://simple-membership-plugin.com/) – or maybe ultimate member. Simple has the advantage of also being able to take payments, and with a free plugin, take subscriptions (renewals).
You could look at Pably or BitIntegration for the automation of some processes (like email after sign-up, or sending customer data to a spreadsheet – it’s Zapier but 100x cheaper). Although many of these tasks might be done by the forms already. So this may not be needed.
As to whether WP is right for you – it depends. It’s normally a question of skills, time and cost. If you can afford to use a SASS (e.g. docupanda) then it’s much easier to let them do the technical stuff – could save you time and needs fewer skills. If you have some skills in WP then it’s cheaper to build it and run it yourself. If you have the time to learn and manage the project, again it saves money and allows you to tailor it to your specific need.
100% you can build what you want – I’ve actually done a very similar project a few years back. So it’s a case of what works for you time, skills and budget wise.