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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

HotDocs Developer 11 - Ease of Use

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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!

Outstanding document production, fair UI

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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 still needs to improve

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.

Pros

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!

Cons

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.

Practicing Family Law with HotDocs makes a world of difference.

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!

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

Great efficiency.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Best Product for Document Automation

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.

Pros

Huge time saver
Generate documents in fractions of the time

Cons

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

Very dissatisfied.

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

accuracy and uniformity in preparing documents

Pros

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

Cons

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

HotDocs is very easy to use and super affordable.

saving time and money

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Great software for automation.

Pros

It makes very complex form automation possible. The price of a developer license is very reasonable compared to the hours saved by using automated forms.

Cons

It needs an update for hi-res screen use. Better (or at least easier) interaction with MS OneDrive would be useful.

Love it!

Pros

It's so amazing to use. The assembling of documents is so smooth there is hardly no chance to make a mistake when filling it out. It can be customized to each company's need. Data entry is very easy.

Cons

No issues until now. Very reliable and it reduces so many weeks. Feel comfortable using it. Very nice software.

Ease of use

Works with our Cal Wills and Trusts program wonderfully!

Pros

Very reliable and compatible with our needs

Cons

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

Good functionality, and once implemented, easy to use

Pros

Allows a certain amount of flexibility with master documents while having a fairly low learning curve on the user side.

Cons

Software coding functionality within the word documents can be cumbersome to implement. It can be hard to go down certain logic paths without a lot of workaround.

Easy to intergrate with other programs

Pros

Ease of use with other programs, customer service is very responsive, and documents look professional and clean.

Have been a long time HUGE fan of HotDocs.

Pros

It does everything for you; doesn't change with updates - stays nice and remains consistently productive.

A very positive experience. Excellent documents

Convenience and ease of producing documents

Pros

It if very comprehensive-regarding surrogates courts and real estate documents. The tax forms are wonderful and helpful . The tax forms are up to date. The tech support is best of any software I have ever used.

Cons

Especially in the real estate have to enter the same information too many times. The forms must have been developed over time and to make them backward compatible the software makes you re enter data.