We recommend Jotform for its wide selection of templates, ease of use, and free platform. Get 50% off for nonprofits and educational institutions.
Online forms make collecting the information you need for your business easy. You can gather responses in one place whether your goal is gathering contact information, lead generation, or conducting a survey about your business.
The best online form builders speed up the process, so you can reuse your favorite templates, customize your forms, and analyze data faster. Then, you can make changes that suit your business and keep customers choosing you.
The Top 6 Best Online Form Builders
Each of these online form builders offers something unique to help you create the best forms and collect more responses from your audience. Our favorite form builder is Jotform since it makes building forms easy with templates for every scenario. Take advantage of its 50% discount for educators and nonprofits.
- Jotform—Best for building forms with templates
- Typeform—Best for conversational forms
- Formstack—Best for collecting analytical data
- Wufoo—Best for customizing forms and reports
- Google Forms—Best for versatility and ease of use
- Paperform—Best for order forms
Match Your Scenario to the Right Online Form Building Solution
I’ve put together a few situations to show when you might need a form builder and which ones work best for those scenarios. To help you decide which one works best for you, check out these use cases based on what you need your online form to do:
- You’re conducting a survey
- You need to order items for your business
- You want to generate leads
- You’re collecting customer data
- You need a way for people to register for offers or events
You’re conducting a survey
Best Option: Google Forms
Google Forms gives you a few simple templates to conduct effective surveys. With its flexible platform, you put in your questions, choose your response type, and send it out to your customers through emails, social media posts, or your website. Google makes sharing simple with a link, and you can collect all your responses in one place to make it easy for you, too.
Another great choice: Formstack
Formstack is great for internal and customer feedback. It lets employees offer in-depth thoughts, whether it’s a self-evaluation or suggestions about how your business can help its customers. You can add and remove fields based on what you need for your survey, and its simple drag-and-drop setup is fast and easy to navigate.
If you’re conducting a survey, pay attention to:
- Available templates: A convenient template makes creating and sending your survey faster
- Answer types: Does the form allow for varied answer types, like multiple choice and open answer?
- Response collection: Your form should gather responses in one area for quick analysis.
You need to order items for your business
Best Option: Paperform
Paperform is ideal for selling physical and digital products. It looks like a landing page, and you can add extra elements with media, like images and video. That makes it easier for people to see what they’re buying, and it has capabilities to help you manage inventory to offer convenience for both you and the customer.
Another great choice: Jotform
Jotform has tons of templates, and you can search “order form” to view over 1,500 results. It has order forms specific to different industries so that you can choose one for a restaurant, clothing, screen printing, preorders, and more. Jotform offers so many niche templates that you may not even need to change them other than adding your own questions.
When you’re ordering items, remember these criteria:
- Layout: You want a simple layout with clear visibility, so you and your customers can understand it at a glance.
- Ease of use: Does the form builder have templates you can use to instantly create your order form?
- Inventory management: Having other tools to help you manage inventory creates a more efficient ordering process.
You want to generate leads
Best Option: Wufoo
Wufoo has a collection of 28 templates made for lead generation. Because Wufoo is so easy to customize, its lead generation templates are the ideal balance between giving you a base to work from and letting you recreate it for your purposes. You can also make your own from scratch. The platform has templates designed for content downloads, market research, getting quotes, quick customer feedback, and more.
Another great choice: Jotform
Jotform brings up an excellent template selection with a quick “lead generation” search. They get really specific, so you can do everything from creating an email newsletter signup form to making one for airport pickup reservations. You can also find more general styles that you can customize based on your offers.
Consider these criteria when you’re trying to generate leads using online forms:
- Number of fields: Fewer fields are easier for people to fill out, so keep it minimal.
- Form purpose: The form will look different depending on what you want people to sign up for or do, so tailor it appropriately.
- Customization: Your form builder should let you change things to make the form work for you.
You’re collecting customer data
Best Option: Formstack
Formstack specializes in data collection. You can customize your fields and specify what kind of data you want your form to show. It also has categories for how you want to use your form, like an evaluation or customer suggestions. It’s designed to save you time with an organized system that you can automate to analyze your data sooner.
Another great choice: Typeform
Typeform asks one question at a time, so customers can focus on each one. It feels more conversational and friendly, which makes customers more willing to trust your brand. Typeform also lets customers fill out the form with just their keyboard for greater efficiency. It also lets you include multimedia, which allows you to provide additional information.
Remember these points when collecting customer data with forms:
- Data type: You want a form that can collect various data types based on individual needs.
- Organization: Your form builder should organize your data so that you can easily reference it.
- Automation: This helps to reduce manual tasks, so you can use your data sooner.
You need a way for people to register for offers or events
Best Option: Jotform
Jotform has over 1,800 customizable registration forms with unique designs to suit all types of businesses. You can change them to match your brand, though with so many niche forms, you may not need to do more than that. It has templates for events, hospital sign-in, workshops, vehicle registration, webinars, and much more.
Another great choice: Wufoo
Wufoo has an entire template collection devoted to registration templates. It has forms to sign up for a gym membership, make reservations, and register for online courses. With several template setups, you can customize each one and even include maps. It works for events of all sizes, including personal events like family reunions.
Think about these criteria when creating registration forms:
- Collection and organization: Your form should store responses accurately so you can check people in without issue later.
- Confirmation and redirection: Make sure your form sends people to the next step after registration and confirms you’ve received their responses.
- Template purpose: Having templates that correspond as closely as possible to your needs cuts down on time needed to customize before going live.
Online Form Builder Company Reviews
Each online form builder has its own strengths, so it’s important to know what they do best and why before you choose one for your business. Here, I show you what makes them all stand out and why they’re on our list so that you can make the right decision, whether you hold frequent events, collect a lot of data, or want more freedom with your form builder.
Jotform – Best for Creating Forms Using Templates
Jotform has over 10,000 templates grouped by type, industry, and profession. If you need something unique to your business, chances are you’ll find it by searching a few keywords.
The drag-and-drop system makes using each template simple. You can customize them to suit your needs or start from scratch and build your own form. You don’t need any coding knowledge, and you can add your business logo, colors, and font.
Jotform lets you automate your forms, create reports, and accept payments for even better organization. It also integrates with many popular apps, including HubSpot, Slack, and Zoom.
What Makes Jotform Great
Jotform has every kind of form from ecommerce to education to order forms. It makes them all easy to find, and each one is detailed and organized. It also goes beyond form templates. For example, if you’re building an online store, you can use Jotform’s store builder, app, table, PDF, and document signing templates. Its many templates and tools help you keep track of every part of your business.
Jotform is free to use, but it has paid plans starting with its Bronze package at $34 per month all the way up to Enterprise with custom pricing and additional features. The free plan does include all of Jotform’s features, but it has more limitations in how it lets you use them.
Typeform – Best for Creating Conversational Forms
Unlike other forms, Typeform doesn’t show the customer every field at once. They can’t skip ahead, so it helps them concentrate on the question at hand. (This form is generally known as a conversational form since it alternates between one question and one answer, and mimics a conversation between you and the customer.) This setup is great for gathering detailed answers and ensuring your customers understand what you’re asking them.
Typeform is all about engaging customers. It makes its questions fun to answer, which in turn makes customers more likely to complete the form. With its capabilities for adding multimedia and other exciting elements, it offers a unique kind of form that customers enjoy.
With one question at a time, the platform makes it feel more like you’re having a conversation with your customer. The form also comes optimized for mobile, so it looks appealing on every device.
What Makes Typeform Great
Typeform is all about keeping attention, but the way it does this is with an impressive setup using visual media, bright color options, and crisp layouts. You can create your own form, but Typeform has carefully constructed several templates, so you don’t have to.
Typeform is free to use, but the free version only gives you 100 responses per month, so you may want to upgrade to the $25 per month Basic plan, $50 per month Plus plan, or $83 per month Business plan. At any level, though, Typeform is a versatile system that integrates with many popular apps, including Zapier, Google Analytics, and Slack.
Formstack – Best for Collecting Analytical Data
Formstack uses drag-and-drop, conditional logic, and automation to collect analytical data from customers and employees. It simplifies the process and allows collaboration among team members for greater efficiency. For you, that means you can review and use your data sooner, whereas other form builders require more legwork.
Formstack claims to save you 18 hours per week. Its themes library has plenty of templates to work with, or you can create your own. Simply choose the form category you want and add rules on the spot.
Formstack has security features with HIPAA, PCI, and GDPR compliance to make collecting even confidential data possible. It has over 300 templates and integrates with more than 100 apps.
What Makes Formstack Great
Formstack is especially good for internal data collection. Its basic and advanced fields let you set up performance reviews and evaluations of all kinds. You can build your form directly in Salesforce to expedite the process. Formstack has prefilling options so that your customers and employees don’t have to manually enter all their information.
You can try Formstack free for 14 days. The platform has many other capabilities, including documents, signing, and a package that includes all of these features. Its Forms-only packages start at $50 per month, however, making it one of the most expensive tools on this list.
Wufoo – Best for Customizing Forms and Reports
With over 400 templates, Wufoo is one of the best ways to create custom forms. It keeps track of responses and puts them in easy-to-read reports. There’s no learning curve with Wufoo, and it’s one of the only forms that doesn’t attach its own branding to your forms.
You can set custom rules on your reports with Wufoo and choose options that show only what you need to analyze your data. You can even export that data to spreadsheets to make it more comfortable for you to read.
What Makes Wufoo Great
Wufoo has extensive features that let you customize your data and forms. Its analytics and reporting show how your forms perform, and you can access this information on mobile. Its field validation offers more options so that your data shows up in the optimal format for your purposes. You can also create custom responses.
Wufoo has a free version that you can use to create basic forms. Its paid plans start at $14 per month, making it one of the cheapest on this list while still offering a high level of customization.
Google Forms – Best for Versatility and Ease of Use
Everyone’s heard of Google Forms, and you’ve probably at least filled one out before. Since it’s already part of Google Suite, which many businesses use, it’s a convenient, built-in tool that you can access without buying something extra.
Google forms collects and analyzes responses in real-time. It has 17 templates, but its gallery and customization are limited compared to other online form builders. Still, it has the basics, and it’s one of the easiest form builders both to use and access.
Combined with Google Sheets and Google’s other apps, you can view and use your data seamlessly. It’s easy to collaborate, and you can share your forms through email, link, or on your website for visitors to fill out.
What Makes Google Forms Great
Google Forms is unique in its ability to combine with many other tools in the same place. While its simplicity might not work for everyone, it’s fast and lets you instantly copy questions from previous forms to save time. It automatically saves your responses to a spreadsheet, too.
This form builder is free to use, but you can get Google’s Business Standard for $12 per month. If you’re only using Google Forms, you don’t need this option since it doesn’t give you any Forms-exclusive extras.
Paperform – Best for Order Forms
Paperform looks more like a landing page than a form. It’s great for marketing and for replacing actual landing pages. It also lets you add multimedia, so you can show off your products and provide descriptions that tell your customers what they’re getting.
With its payment collection and inventory management capabilities, Paperform lends itself well to order forms. It has over 650 form templates, including over 92 for order forms. It auto-fills common questions, so you don’t have to spend extra time writing them out.
Paperform’s order forms make things easy for customers to understand while simplifying processing on your end. You can see everything with a visual layout and connect your forms with other sales tools for a more efficient process.
What Makes Paperform Great
Paperform integrates with Zapier for easier sales and inventory management. It also lets you customize how you take payments, pricing rules, and summary emails, so you know who’s ordering, what they’re buying, how much, and more.
You can try Paperform free for 14 days, and paid plans start at $20 per month with its Essentials package. As you upgrade, you get more advanced features, like calculations, custom and Paperform analytics, and e-signing.
Quick Sprout Online Form Builder Related Content
Want to learn more about the best online form builders? We’ve got even more guides and reviews to help you out. Check out the posts below to get more in-depth about the form builders on this list and find others that might work even better.
Online Form Builder How Tos
- How to Write Emails Your Subscribers Can’t Wait to Open
- A/B Testing Research Tips
- Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Optimization
Online Form Builder Comparisons
Online Form Builder Related Top Lists
The Top Online Form Builders in Summary
The best online form builders should make creating your forms quick and easy while collecting the data you need. These six options offer these features plus their own strengths that make them stand out among the rest.
I recommend Jotform as the best overall online form builder. It has more templates than any other option, and you can get your form out into the world in minutes.
Source: quicksprout
Compare the Best Online Form Builders