Typeform alternatives for building one-question-at-a-time forms

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This roundup focuses on form builders that work with Typeform’s defining characteristic: conversational (one question at a time) interfaces. There are plenty of other reasons to use Typeform, but for many people searching for an alternative, the chat-like back-and-forth is top of the list. And, if it’s not, a broader roundup like our Form builder comparison in 2023 is more helpful.

What makes a great form builder for conversational forms?

The one-question-at-a-time approach to gathering responses and feedback is a natural fit for simple registration, lead intake, employee engagement, and basic order forms, among others. When building any of those, certain features are more important than others:

Mobile optimization is priority number one for any form that emulates a back-and-forth dialog.

Progress indicators ensure responders always know how far they are from the end of the conversation.

Drag-and-drop (or type-to-insert) questions minimize time spent building and updating forms.

Logic branching skips unnecessary and irrelevant questions.

Autosave for partial submissions lets users resume where they left off when they get interrupted or distracted.

Answer piping personalizes question and answer options based on responses from earlier in the form.

And, of course, you’ll want competitive pricing, lots of field types, and possibly third-party integrations for syncing form data to or from relevant apps. Then, for certain use cases, specific embedding and sharing options can be a dealbreaker. The same goes for design and branding features.

There are dozens of form apps that meet those criteria. After logging in and testing more than 20 of them, we picked our 8 favorites based on user-friendliness and unique or interesting features.

The 8 best alternatives to Typeform

Feathery - Best for developers

Outgrow - Best for freelancers

SurveySparrow - Best for conversational-only surveys

forms.app - Best for businesses

Jotform - Best for forms with few submissions

Formstack - Best for eSigning conversational forms

Paperform - Best for conversational order forms

Fillout - Best for managing several different form types

Feathery - Best for developers

Billed as an app for building “customizable and developer-friendly forms,” Feathery is a good option for existing Typeform users looking for pixel-by-pixel control over form elements and fields.

To make a conversational form from scratch in Feathery, use the Flow panel on the left side of the screen to add a page, drop in a question, then rinse and repeat. Or, if you have existing Typeform forms, Feathery has a tool for converting a Typeform URL into a Feathery form (a couple of questions and fields didn’t make it through the migration in our tests, though).

Other highlights include drag-and-drop fields for social logins (e.g., Google auth, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and extensive hover effect settings. Beyond those beginner-friendly features, creating and editing forms is a surprisingly granular experience, for better and for worse.

Feathery includes a JavaScript editor, support for JSX components, and repeating containers. All things that are super useful for developers, but a mystery for everyone else.

Feathery Pricing

The free plan comes with 100 submissions per month across two forms that can have unlimited questions, pages, and styling. For more forms or submission allowances, the Basic plan is $49/month and gives you 1,000 submissions per month across 5 forms. Plus plans cost twice that for 10,000 submissions and up to 20 forms.c

Outgrow - Best for freelancers

Like many form builders on this list, Outgrow labels its one-question-at-a-time layout “Cards Style.” Pick that option when creating a new form, and every new question will automatically show up on a new page.

The field choices cover most of the basics (there are no toggle switches or ranking fields, unfortunately). And there are some unique features like adding a countdown timer or a tally of submitted responses alongside questions.

Outgrow’s biggest shortcoming as a Typeform competitor is its pricing. Outgrow doesn’t include certain types of forms in lower tiers, limits the total number of forms to half a dozen in its middle tier, and reserves most of its logic features for its most expensive plans. If you’re a freelancer or solopreneur, one of the bottom tiers might include enough to cover the basics but make sure to read the fine print.

Outgrow Pricing

With the free plan, you get four basic forms and 100 responses per month. There are two “Freelancer” tiers, topping out at 1,000 submissions per month, and six “content pieces” – which include calculators, polls, etc. – for $22-$45 per month. The Essentials and Business tiers are $115 and $720 per month, respectively, and include 7,500 or 50,000 responses per month. They also add in formulas and logic jumps.

SurveySparrow - Best for conversational-only surveys

Another consistent theme throughout this roundup is that most of the apps with conversational layout options focus specifically on the survey angle. But in terms of technical capabilities, there’s little difference between creating a survey and a form. For SurveySparrow, the focus on surveys means that its one-question-at-a-time interface makes it impossible to add multiple fields to a page.

With its Classic surveys, the Build screen feels mostly similar to Typeform, with all your questions listed on the left and tabs along the top for integrations, sharing, and results. SurveySparrow has half as many integrations as Typeform but covers most of the bases with Google Sheets, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and others.

If you think responders might prefer a chat interface when answering questions, SurveySparrow’s Chat surveys are a good replacement for Typeform’s recently discontinued “Turn into a chat” feature. It’s a fun idea, but beyond updating the chatbot’s avatar, design options are limited.

SurveySparrow Pricing

Paid plans fall into two categories: For Individuals and For Teams. The former ranges from $39 to $59 per month and includes up to 1,200 responses per month. Strangely, the highest individual plan does not include several worthwhile fields (matrix fields, ranking orders, or Captcha) or the option to remove SurveySparrow branding. You have to be on a Teams plan for those. Teams plans are billed quarterly or yearly and cost either $149 or $399 per quarter for 12,000 or 24,000 responses.

forms.app - Best for businesses

forms.app is a platform that makes it easy for you to create forms, surveys, and quizzes without any coding knowledge. It is a user-friendly alternative to Typeform that offers great performance at an affordable price.

One of the best things about forms.app is that it provides many advanced features for free. You can use its conditional logic, calculators, product baskets, multiple question types, payment collection, signature collection, and advanced analytics without paying a dime.

forms.app also has an AI form generator that can help you create forms and surveys even faster. You just need to describe the document you want to create, and the AI will do the rest. It automatically generates options based on your question titles, saving you time and effort.

Moreover, forms.app provides over 4000 customizable templates that you can use to create professional-looking forms and surveys. You can share these documents in various ways, such as embedding them into websites, sharing them as a QR code, or publishing them on social media.

forms.app Pricing

forms.app offers 4 plans for its users. The first one is a free forever plan which includes 5 forms and 150 responses a month. You can use almost all advanced features with the free plan. The basic plan consists of 25 forms and 1000 responses a month. The pro plan includes unlimited forms and 10.000 responses a month with the subdomain customization feature. Finally, its premium plan includes unlimited forms and 100.000 responses a month with the custom domain feature.

Jotform - Best for forms with few submissions

Although it’s buried beneath a few options, Jotform does have a Single question per page toggle. Open the Settings tab along the top of the screen, select Form Settings from the left side of the screen, click Show More Options from the bottom of the screen, then scroll all the way down and open the Form Layout dropdown.

The nice thing about switching to the Card layout is that you can easily convert one of Jotform’s templates into a conversational form. Just pick your template, select the Card layout, and everything gets reformatted for you. Keep in mind that allowing partial submissions is off by default, and there’s no auto-jump to next question feature, both of which boost conversion rates for one-question-at-a-time forms.

The biggest thing to be aware of before picking Jotform is the unique limitations it includes with paid plans. Form views, for example, are capped at 10,000 per month on the cheapest paid plan. Total submission storage also gets a 10,000 upper limit, meaning that even if you’re well under your monthly submission ceiling, you might hit your “lifetime” limit down the road. And, depending on your use case, the most restrictive curb might be on the number of signed documents per month, so make sure to keep that in mind.

Jotform Pricing

With a free plan, you get five forms and 100 submissions per month. The Bronze tier bumps that up to 25 forms and 1,000 monthly submissions for $39. Ten dollars more per month gets you 50 forms and 2,500 submissions with the Silver tier, while Gold runs $129 per month for 100 forms and 10,000 submissions per month.

Formstack - Best for eSigning conversational forms

There’s a lot that goes into creating digital forms that capture legally binding signatures. Formstack’s form builder sands off most of the rough edges with built-in eSign workflows and a One Question at a Time toggle located in the Form Extras menu.

Build out your form, drag and drop a Signature field onto the canvas, and sync new submissions to Formstack’s Documents tool or a third-party tool like FreshBooks. Or, use the export scheduler to email yourself a CSV file (with signature images) of daily, weekly, or monthly submission data.

The list of integrations isn’t as long as most of the other form apps in this list, and we had a difficult time with Formstack’s design customizations, but if electronic signatures are your primary concern and you like the conversational layout, it includes both.

Formstack Pricing

There are only two Formstack plans for forms. There’s a standalone Forms plan that includes up to 20 forms and 1,000 submissions per month per form for $59 per month. Then, there’s the $79 per month Suite plan that bundles a scaled-back Forms (10 forms, 500 submissions per form) plan with the company’s document automation and eSignature tools.

Paperform - Best for conversational order forms

As long as your product catalog is relatively slim and your checkout/shipping options are straightforward, a one-question-at-a-time order form can reduce a lot of friction during the checkout process. To break an order form into smaller chunks in Paperform, click the teardrop icon next to the preview button in the upper right corner and switch to Guided Mode.

In the payment settings window, you can create coupon codes, custom pricing rules, and tax calculations for Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, and Square payment accounts. Paperform also includes options for disabling a form after a certain number of submissions (if you’re worried about overcommitting on a specific product) and creating a custom Closed to Submissions page.

Paperform doesn’t have the option to share a form via email, which would be handy for invoicing and subscription renewals, and doesn’t have a native integration for Salesforce. Other than those omissions, the lack of a free plan is the only other drawback.

Paperform Pricing

There’s no free plan (just a 14-day trial) and only three paid tiers. The $24 per month Essentials plan gives individuals unlimited forms and 1,000 submissions. Double the price, the Pro plan includes 10,000 submissions and lets you remove Paperform’s branding from your forms. Agency plans are $159 per month for unlimited submissions and support for custom domains.

Fillout - Best for managing several different form types

Sometimes the best app is incredibly niche. One that can only create conversational forms or is built entirely around collecting electronic signatures. Most of the time, though, you want an app ready to handle anything you throw at it. Like a form builder equipped to help sales with logic-heavy lead tagging alongside multi-step HR forms and workflows. With Fillout, you can create, share, and analyze forms for any use case.

Other than price, three things stand out when considering Fillout as a Typeform alternative. First, Fillout’s form builder has over 42 drag-and-drop elements and logic settings at the question and page level – all created with optimizing form UI and UX for conversions in mind.

Second is the heavy emphasis on aesthetics for multi-page forms. You can create a theme from scratch, tweak an existing template, or upload a background image and let the AI Theme Designer generate a color palette that keeps elements uniform across all pages. Then, there are customizable progress bars, button shapes, and settings for both page and question layouts.

Lastly is Fillout’s two-way integrations for pulling data from and pushing data to business-critical apps like Airtable, HubSpot, Monday.com, MailChimp, and others. It just feels more freeform and versatile than the other apps on this list, without being overwhelming.

Arguably the biggest ding against Fillout as a Typeform alternative is that it doesn’t have an on/off toggle for one-question-at-a-time layouts. But with an intuitive page logic interface, you can easily create a flow that lets users choose a single-page or conversational form. It’s as fast as Feathery’s Flow panel, more flexible than SurveySparrow’s conversational-only approach, and without Jotform’s arbitrary plan limitations.

Fillout Pricing

Far and away the best free plan on this list, Fillout’s free plan gives you unlimited forms, with unlimited questions, and 1,000 responses per month. Up one level, the Starter plan is $19 per month for 2,000 responses. On the Pro plan, you get 5,000 responses per month and two users for $49 per month. Finally, for $89 per month, the Business plan includes unlimited responses and up to five users.

Final Verdict

Obviously, our top pick is as biased as they come. But you don’t have to decide based solely on that. Sign up for a free Fillout account today, play around with it, compare it to our other picks, and make the call for yourself. No rush either: Unlike Paperform, Formstack, and SurveySparrow – our 1,000 submissions per month free plan is free forever.

Typeform alternatives for building one-question-at-a-time forms