One common question is when you should upgrade your Formwork subscription, and whether you lose data if you change your mind and downgrade. Let’s take a look!
Formwork has three pricing tiers. Here’s a quick summary of the Formwork pricing page:
- Formwork Community Edition (free): Gives you access to all Formwork features (new in 2025!), but with usage limitations. This means you can immediately get started creating your medical device documentation, but once you hit one of the usage limitations, you’d have to upgrade. Examples for usage limitations are that you can create up to 10 documents, 10 records and 5 software requirements. Also, 5 user seats.
- Formwork Starter (99€): Gives you access to all Formwork features, with no usage limitations except 5 user seats and that you can’t release your product. More on that below.
- Formwork QMS + Techdoc (499€): Same as Starter in that it gives you access to all Formwork features with no usage limitations. In contrast to Starter, this tier enables you to release your product. And most importantly, it has unlimited user seats! 499€ / month.
So the TLDR here is that, feature-wise, every tier is more or less the same, but there are differences in usage limitations (the free tier is limited), releasing your product (only in QMS + Techdoc) and user seat count (unlimited in QMS + Techdoc, otherwise limited to 5 users).
Cool! So the first obvious question is: Which one should you choose? It’s pretty simple and depends on your company’s situation:
- Scenario 1: Your startup is just getting off the ground, i.e. it’s three dudes / dudesses sitting in a garage:
Just go with the free Community Edition! You won’t bump into any of the usage limitations anyway – you’ve got 5 user seats which are more than enough, and it’s be a while until you’ve e.g. created 10 documents. So you’re all good to go! - Scenario 2: Your startup is getting more “serious” about medical device certification:
Once your company starts getting more serious about its compliance efforts, you’ll likely bump into one of the usage limits of the free Community Edition, e.g. you might want to create more than 10 documents. In this case, Formwork Starter has you covered, and it’s only 99€ / month! It removes all usage limitations, so you can go ahead and e.g. create unlimited documents. However, there are still two noteworthy limitations: You still only have 5 user seats (we assume your company is still small) and you can’t release your product documentation. More on that below! - Scenario 3: Your startup is close to handing in your documentation to your auditors:
Once your documentation is pretty much done, you’re ready to hand it in to your auditors. Among other things, there are two things you need to do now: Finalize (“release”) your product documentation in Formwork, and show that you’ve “trained” all your employees on your internal procedures. Those are only possible by upgrading to Formwork QMS + Techdoc for 499€ / month. That’s because only this tier allows you to release your product documentation, and it has unlimited user seats. As your company now has likely grown to more than 5 people, you need those unlimited user seats to onboard everyone to Formwork and show proof that you’ve trained them to your auditors.
So now the (next) elephant in the room is “what does this releasing your product thing” mean, as that’s the main difference between Formwork Starter and Formwork QMS + Techdoc. Glad you asked! Let’s get into it:
What Does “Releasing Your Product” Mean?
Formwork enables you to manage your product-specific technical documentation in a structured way. Among other things, you e.g. store a list of your software features (“software requirements”) and software tests in Formwork.
Now, the tricky part is that this stuff has to be versioned. That means that an auditor might roll up and tell you “hey, pull up the list of your software features for v0.0.1 of your software!”.
The good news is that Formwork has you covered, as we’ve built a rather intricate git-like versioning on top of our SQL database (cool). However, you only get this versioning when upgrading to QMS + Techdoc. So, in other words, with Formwork Starter, you can create the entire documentation of your product(s), software features and all, but you can’t create more than one version of it.
We think that’s fair – because Formwork Starter essentially allows you to prepare 100% of your documentation before an audit, and at 99€ / month, it’s very affordable. Now, if you actually go for an audit, it’s likely your company has gained more funding or revenue in the meantime, and then it’s totally fine to pay 499€ / month which is still an extremely competitive (if not the cheapest) price for an eQMS software out there.
So there you have it. Any questions? Reach out in our support chat in in the bottom right corner.
Next, let’s talk about a few more frequently asked questions.
Up- and Downgrading, Cancellations
First off, cancellations are supremely easy in Formwork: Just hit the “Cancel” button in the billing section. No need to send us an email, no need to schedule a call. In contrast to our competitors, we’re not evil. Just cancel. Your subscription will end in one month or less, depending on your last billing date. The minimum commitment is only one month anyway. You can export your data at any time, too!
How to upgrade? Simply navigate to Settings (top right corner) –> Billing, select the package you’d like to upgrade to, and purchase.
How to downgrade? Usually, people downgrade to the free version. In that case, just cancel your subscription as described above.
Will you lose data? Our guiding theme is “don’t be evil” (similar to a search engine company two decades ago.. hm.. what was its name). So, no, you don’t lose any data! If you’ve started creating your technical documentation already, you will (obviously) lose access to those features when you downgrade. So you won’t be able to access your technical documentation any more. But the data still persists there, so if you upgrade again in the future, you can continue where you left off.
You can, of course, also export all your data before you downgrade. So, regardless how you spin it, you don’t lose any data. I think that’s pretty cool.
How Long Do You Need Formwork?
Another common question: Could you just purchase Formwork for a while, document your medical device, hand it in, get it certified, then downgrade to the Community Edition?
Technically, yes, this would work, but in a very broken way. As you essentially get full read-only access to your documentation when downgrading to the free Community Edition, you could do this.
However, the big problem is that you actually have to prove to auditors that you’re actively maintaining your QMS, and that’s kinda hard to prove if you can’t make any edits to your documentation (😂). You’d e.g. have to show that you’re still updating your list of software features (software requirements), software tests, etc.
So.. no, unfortunately this won’t work in practice.
Unsure Whether To Upgrade?
Here’s an interesting thought experiment: As Formwork only has a minimum commitment of one month, you could simply upgrade, try it out, and if you don’t like it, cancel your subscription and go to one of our competitors. There’s not much to lose.
The opposite is not true: If you go to our competitors first, they’ll lock you in with a two- or three-year contract, and if you don’t like their software, you’re screwed.
Better try out Formwork first.
Any other questions? Write them in the comments below 🙂
