Tap Forms Organizer and Secure Database App Reviews

This is a fantastic and powerful CRM application that I use on my MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone. Very easy to customize and use, extremely powerful, easy to learn and outstanding support that you won’t find anywhere else! Easy to sync. Very inexpensive. Keeps track of all your records, can set appointments and reminders and has many different features! Absolutely FANTASTIC!

I’ve been a desktop database developer on and off for almost 20 years. Tap Forms still shows some signs of being a new product but I can tell that the developer has made good choices about which features to implement first and the developer continues to roll out new features and fixes. Overall, I’m extremely pleased with this product and I will use it for all my Mac desktop database needs.

I am a physician who thru the course of 25+ years of practice had built up a database of 1500 notes on various conditions and procedures. This started on an HP LX200, moved to a Palm, and eventually ended up in Bento on my iPhone. Every time technology upgraded significantly I would have to export all my data and find something to transfer it to. Bento was perfect for this. Easy set up, sync and use. When Filemaker stopped selling and supporting Bento (a stupid decision IMHO) I struggled to find a replacement, but now I have. Tap Forms is simple to use, fairly intuitive, and easily syncs with your iPhone. The perfect replacement. In fact so simple that I am moving several Filemaker databases to Tap Forms.

After using MS Access for years, we looked for something more manageable, but with enough “muscle” to handle business contacts, scheduling, note keeping, and organizing relevant information. Tap Form meets all these needs. As a “bonus”, Tap Form’s technical support is very responsive. Great app!

Where did the option for adding a pick list to a field go? For some reason I can’t assign pick lists anymore. I can’t see it. The form just ends at “default value” even though I have the field type set to “text.” Please fix!

It is a good system to design a database with many fields and field options. But, it is inconsistent in terms of maintaining the database, especially if you use photographs or images. The database stores it in the cloud (iCloud or DropBox, for example). The program is that if you have 275 autographed baseballs as I do, the file becomes over 2 Gigabytes, which is way too large to manage. And, although you are able to sync the database on several devices, the sync constantly crashes and you find yourself restarting the system and resyncing it almost every other day. Worse, is that the database frequently disconnects from the image files. They are stored on your Cloud with miscallenaous names created by the database, but once they are disconnected, it’s almost impossible to try and go back and reconnect images with database entries. It’s not very friendly in terms of sharing. If you want to share the database, whoever you share with must have purchased the App in order to view your database, so it is very limiting. It would be great if the developrs could: 1 — allow the sharing of databases with anyone, whether they have the App or not. (Just not allow anyone to create databases without owning the app) 2 — allow images to be saved using a user-created indexing system (date and name, for example) 3 — fix the problem with images disconnecting from the system. 4 — Have the system automatically reduce the image file to something manageable — if you use youriPhone to update the database and add photos, the photos will be high resolutiona nd too large to manage. You need to individually reduce the image sizes and it is very awkward and not user friendly

I’ve never used a database program before, and I’m glad I started with this one. If you’ve never used one before, try out Tapforms first. Give it some time, read the manual. One reason for Tapforms is that the tech support is fabulous. The developer responds like now. I’ve never experienced such a helpful, passionate commitment to user understanding.

Tap Forms is a fantastic app that keeps improving dramatically with every update. The developers have been incredibly responsive whenever I’ve had any kind of question/issue/suggestion. Overall, Tap Forms is an ideal Bento replacement database app for situations where FileMaker would be overkill. It actually feels more Mac-like than Bento or FileMaker in many ways. No need to go into all the features, but here are a few highlights for me: • Many-to-many (and one-to-many) relationships are quite easy to set up. • Date calculation fields: If a project always has a due date of x days from the start date, you can set the due date field to be filled automatically as soon as you enter the start date; plus the start date can be set automatically to be the date that the project record is created. So basically both date fields can fill themselves as soon as you create the record. • Customizing the view of forms on the Mac is basically a matter of dragging things around and resizing them, so it’s easy to make your forms look how you like or just split up information for forms that have many fields. • On the Mac, files can be linked from the hard drive (like aliases) or actually copied into the database. With the files copied in, you can view them on other synced copies of Tap Forms without previously having those files stored. This is especially handy to be able to view those files on the iPad/iPhone, which dont really have their own file management. • Syncing via iCloud or Dropbox (right now you need to push changes up to the cloud, but this seems likely to improve into an invisible syncing process) • iPad and iPhone apps (latter comes with Watch app!) I can’t imagine working without Tap Forms!

I would counsel against buying this app until the iCloud sync function becomes reliable. I have spent literally hours today trying to sync iMac data to iPhone and iPad, to no avail. Each time I try to sync, the app asks me to choose a sync service. After clicking on iCloud a dozen times without a response I gave up. There is no progress bar to indicate that anything is happening. I tried this app as an alternative to Bento and am sorry I spent the money.

All my images have disappeared from the layouts. Their thumbnails still show up in column view, but I can’t view them or enlarge them by clicking on the thumbnail. This is an unexpected bug that just developed. So I don’t know if the cause is the new version or not.

As a very long time Mac user I’ve always utilized some version of a free form data base to store miscellaneous information and have simple access to it. With iPhones and iPads part of our lives, keeping all your data available on mulitiple devices and current is a unique challenge. I’ve been using Tap Forms for a few years now. There were challenges keeping data synched as iCloud itself had challenges. But the Tap Forms developer has been very diligent in continuing to improve both the form and function of this great program. And tech support is outstanding and very responsive, guiding you through any difficulties. For quite awhile now the program and synching have been working extremely well, once you have an understanding of how it simply functions. Highly recommended!!

I’m sure glad that FileMaker stopped supporting Bento such that it no longer works reliably with Mac OS X Yosemite, because it forced to to look for an alternative desktop database App. I found and deployed Tap Forms and, through initial use, learned that it is a better solution than Bento ever thought to be. I am now using Tap Forms on two Max OS X computers, my iPhone and iPad. My database data is now everywhere that I am. This never happened with Bento I highly recommend the Tap Forms software product for managing your desktop database with excellent UX with well written and readable user documentation. I had a problem with Tap Forms, my problem (confused by Reset Sync vs. Enable Cloud Sync because I did not first read the manual), and not the Tap Forms App so got a chance to test the Tap Zapp Software support. Support was quick and to point via one short email. I performed two Bento export to Tap Forms import databases. Both database transfers worked perfectively without any issues.

I’m a user of both Filemaker and Bento and I often want to give this a serious shot at replacing both since it’s feature-set is squarly in the middle, a sweetspot I, and many others, crave in a personal database. I regret to say that this software is both inept and dangerous. In using Tap Forms, even for a short while, I encounter numerous problems such as missing records, deleted records from syncing, syncing which doesnt’ work. I have also encountered data encyption errors involving field based encryption where changing the password resulted in lost data. After contacting the developer about this particular bug the response was ‘don’t use that feature if it doesn’t work for you, encrypting at the database level is better anyway”. Unbelievable. Also, if I set the database to lock after a few minutes it may work, or may not, depending on the mood of the program at that moment. The bottom line is that Tap Forms is a nice program with good features. It fills a void in Mac database software left by the demise of Bento but Tap Forms is not a suitable replacement for Bento due to it’s vast amount of bugs, inconsistent behavior and spotty syncing. If this changes I will be the first to retract this review but until then this software is not suitable for important data.

First, once I got used to the nomenclature and flow of Tap Forms, it works nearly as good as Bento. That “nearly” is because of a couple of things. 1) It does not sync seamlessly. Be careful to make certain you sync any changes on your iPhone/ipad back to the cloud prior to opening it on your Mac. Same thing going the other direction (Mac->iphone.) 2) It “hangs” up every now and then, particularly on the computer, such that modifying or working in the forms is interrupted. Close it down; open it back up and everything is back to normal. 3) The view on the handheld device does not look nearly as good, or flow quite as well, as Bento did. Maybe they’ll come along on that. Otherwise, I use it every day, multiple times a day. Just hope they continue with upgrades to get it where it should ultimately be.

I’ve used FileMaker since version 2.0 and used Bento during its lifetime for lighter weight situations. Been retired for a few years and FM Pro usage is way down (and updates are expensive). Found TAP when looking for a Bento replacement and I am very happy with it. It is so much faster than Bento and synchs very speedily. In most respects, it is what Bento could have been if Apple had enthusiasm to really develop it. That being said, I would like to see two features added. One would be to add an Edit choice in the popup for a Pick List field so that one could, with one click, enter the Edit mode for adding a value to that particular pick list. (as opposed to the “where was that again?” routine that wastes lots of time….). The other is, since iCloud is being used, to make syncing automatic so that I would be confident that my iOS devices are up to date when I walk out the door.

I had used Bento for many years, and was disappointed to learn when they were getting rid of it. I downloaded a number of alternate database apps that I hoped would be similar to Bento. After reviewing four of them, I hit upon Tap Forms and knew it was the one. Powerful, easy to use, ability to import all Bento lists, have all the Import/Export features that I need. Syncs well with IOS devices which is a necessity for me. Cusomter service is the best I’ve ever experienced with a third party app developer. My emails are answered very quickly, and my questions have always been answered. The PDF User’s Manual, for both Mac and IOS, is very well done…but now and then there’s a detail that I can’t find. The deeloper listens…many customer ideas end up in the next update of the app! Extremely professional, personal and knowledgeable staff. Try to filter out the single, one-star, rating criticism. I’m sure they have a point at their specific level of use. However, concentrate on mountain of very favorable ratings…including the 160 under “All Versions.” You can see this is a top notch program for the great majority of users!

I was a serious Bento user. After the announcement that Bento was being discontinued, I panicked, then started looking for a replacement. But try as I might nothing came close to the ease of use or the features of bento. I tried HanDBase, iDatabase, and Filemaker Pro. HanDBase, was pretty good but difficult to set up and use, and the user manual was worthless. iDatabase was not fully functional from a reporting or searching standpoint, and difficult to use, not intuitive at all. And Filemaker Pro, while very capable of doing anything and everything, was very expensive and way to difficult to learn, ( Imean a serious learning curve). Enter Tap Forms… in the beginning I had my issues with it as well, there were some things it wouldn’t do, and it was very different than Bento in ease of use, but the one thing that sold me on Tap Forms is the developer. He’s always available, I mean this guy doesn’t sleep, he’s always been available whenever I have a question, and he has continued to develop the product to the point that it is outstanding. Several times I’ve requested a feature and he comes back with I’m working on that or that is scheduled for a future update. Tap forms works for me, and it sync’s with my iPhone and iPad in the cloud, all you have to do is hit sync and your other devices are immediately updated, (well almost immediately, really fast). There are a few things that were easier to do with Bento, but with the current development of Tap Forms, I’m confident that in a very short time, Tap Forms will be far superior to Bento, and the support is unmatched. It really is the only choice if you’re looking for a portable database that you can work with on your mobile device away from the office and return and sync every thing up to your desktop. Update 10/2/2015: This morning was another example of outstanding customer support. I upgrade to OS X 10.11 El Capitan over night and when I came in this morning Tap Forms wouldn’t work, I sent an email to the developer and in less than 5 minutes, I had my answer, and it was working just like that, put a check in a box. Thank you Tap Forms, you just keep getting better, and your customer service remains awesome. Sure beats trying to get a hold of somebody from Filemaker.

Easy to grasp and easy to use. Combines simplicity and common sense operation. Sync between devices was twitchy in early versions, but has been improving steadily. Well supported by dedicated developer. iOS and OS X versions on par with each other. I’d like to see a more distinctve dock icon. It can be difficult to locate in the dock.

Moved to TapForms when Bento was discontinued. Great app. The El Capitan update crashes as soon as I input my passcode. I’m sure there will be a fix soon.

I checked out a number of possible replacements for Bento and Tap Forms was clearly the best one. I imported my Bento form and database quickly and easily. Tech support from the app developer is fast and personal. What more can you ask for? So far, it’s working very well. Highly recommended.