Form Making Made Easy: 10 Best Software Solutions for 2023
Introduction
Creating online forms is an essential need for businesses, marketers, developers, and even personal users. However, building forms from scratch can be time consuming and require coding skills. That's why dedicated form making software has become so valuable. This post will review the top 10 form builders of 2023 based on key capabilities like drag-and-drop editors, mobile optimization, integrations, templates, and more. We'll look at which tools are best suited for different use cases to help you choose the right form maker for your needs. Whether you're a developer looking to quickly add forms to your apps and websites or a business seeking an easy way to create lead generation forms, surveys, and contact forms, there's a form software solution for you. Let's dive in and find the best form making software options to streamline workflows and boost productivity.
The Rise of No-Code Form Builders
Creating forms through traditional coding can be tedious, requiring significant development time and technical skills. This has driven demand for no-code form building software that allows anyone to easily create forms through intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces and pre-made templates.
Forms are used across countless industries - marketing teams use them for lead generation, HR for applications and surveys, healthcare for patient intake, finance for collecting customer information, and more. Forms are everywhere because they are a critical tool for data collection.
However, building forms from scratch using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and web frameworks requires coding expertise and extensive effort. This is where dedicated form software comes in, providing powerful drag-and-drop form editors that speed up the process and remove the need for technical skills. The best form making software solutions deliver huge productivity benefits and time savings.
Reduced Development Time
Coding forms is very time intensive compared to using a visual form builder. It often requires creating the HTML structure, styling everything with CSS, adding validation and logic with JavaScript, and then connecting the submission process to handle the collected data. This can take days or weeks for more advanced forms.
Form software solves this through pre-built templates, drag-and-drop placement of fields, and built-in validation and logic. Forms can be created in just minutes without writing any code. Changes are made with a few clicks, allowing for rapid iterations. The ability to quickly build, preview and publish forms results in huge time savings.
No Technical Skills Needed
Even simpler forms require HTML, CSS, and JavaScript knowledge. But a visual drag-and-drop form editor empowers anyone to build forms without coding. The intuitive interfaces and pre-made templates make it easy for non-developers to build sophisticated forms.
While most form builders don't require development skills, they provide options to write JavaScript for advanced customization. This caters to both technical and non-technical users. Anyone can now quickly create a form while developers can focus on complex integrations and customizations instead of building from scratch.
Key Form Builder Capabilities
So what should you look for when evaluating form software? Here are the key features and capabilities that the top form making tools offer:
- Drag-and-drop form designers - Building forms visually without code
- Mobile responsiveness - Forms optimized for any device
- Template libraries - Professionally designed ready-made templates
- Built-in validation - Error checking and guidance for users
- Logic and branching - Smart field interactions and conditional logic
- App integrations - Connecting to third-party apps and workflows
- Data collection and analytics - Recording and reporting on submissions
- Security and compliance - Encryption, data privacy, and access controls
The best form makers provide a balance of an easy-to-use builder and advanced functionality for complex forms. Let's look at two especially important capabilities in more detail.
Responsive Form Design
With widespread mobile usage, forms must work seamlessly on smartphones and tablets. Form software should automatically optimize forms for any screen size through adaptive layouts and touch enhancements.
Key mobile form capabilities include field sizing/stacking, swipe navigation, and tap highlighting. A mobile preview mode allows testing across different devices. No one wants to pinch and zoom while squinting at tiny text, so excellent mobile responsiveness is a must-have.
Integrations and Workflows
Forms rarely operate in isolation. The best form builders integrate with other apps and services to extend what you can do with collected data.
Examples include connecting a form to CRM software like Salesforce to update records, triggering emails and notifications based on submissions using Mailchimp, and storing uploaded files from forms to cloud storage services like Dropbox.
Integrations empower complex workflows while webhooks provide a developer-friendly way to pass data between apps.
The Top 10 Form Building Software Picks
Now let's dive into the top form software options for quickly building forms without coding. We evaluated over 25 leading form tools on factors like the builder interface, mobile optimization, templates, logic and validation, integrations, pricing, and customer reviews.
Here are the 10 best form making software solutions:
#1: DevHunt Forms
DevHunt Forms is our choice as the best form builder of 2023 due to its excellent balance of usability and functionality.
Key strengths:
- User-friendly drag-and-drop designer
- Mobile responsive on any device
- Library of beautifully designed templates
- Built-in validation rules and branching logic
- Zapier integration and webhooks for custom workflows
- Generous free plan and affordable paid plans
- Used by over 100,000 developers and makers
- Ideal for SaaS, web apps, and developer tools
For example, DevHunt Forms integrates with Zapier to connect with apps like Mailchimp for notifications and Google Sheets to save submission data. The conditional logic makes it easy to create smart multi-page forms with branching. DevHunt Forms is a great choice for developers to add forms to their products.
#2: Typeform
Typeform specializes in highly engaging, mobile-optimized forms with slick interactions.
Key features:
- Extremely intuitive drag-and-drop builder
- Mobile-first designs look fantastic on any device
- Animations and interactions optimize user experience
- Advanced logic and conditional branching
- Integration with 1000+ apps via Zapier
- Free plan limited, paid plans start at $30/month
#3: JotForm
JotForm is the most fully-featured enterprise-level form builder.
Key capabilities:
- Comprehensive selection of field and design options
- Rules builder for validation and branching
- HIPAA compliant with robust security controls
- Integrates with popular CRM, marketing, and storage apps
- 30 day free trial, paid plans start at $15/month
- Scales to handle high submission volumes
#4: Wufoo
Wufoo makes it fast and easy to create basic forms.
Notable features:
- Very quick and simple form building
- Basic branching logic supported
- Decent mobile optimization
- Integrates with many business apps like Slack and Zapier
- Good templates for common business use cases like contact forms
- Free for up to 3 forms, paid plans start at $15/month
#5: Formstack
Formstack is a well-rounded form builder with great enterprise support.
Key aspects:
- Intuitive drag-and-drop form builder
- Rules for branching and calculations
- Robust security and compliance certifications
- Developer friendly API and webhooks
- 14 day free trial, paid plans start at $19/month
#6: Formspree
Formspree offers a developer-focused API based form handling service.
Notable features:
- Simple form submission via API
- Minimal styling and logic capabilities
- Free tier for up to 50 submissions/month
- Easy to embed forms into any web project
- Great for developers needing basic form handling
#7: FormKeep
FormKeep provides a straightforward way to collect data with simple forms.
Key features:
- Quickly embed forms via code snippet
- View and export submissions
- 100 free submissions per month
- Ideal for basic contact and lead forms
#8: Paperform
Paperform makes it easy to create stylish forms with beautiful templates.
Key capabilities:
- Gorgeous form templates and themes
- Decent selection of field types
- Embed forms via link or iframe
- View submissions and run reports
- 14 day free trial, paid plans start at $10/month
#9: FormGet
FormGet offers a basic drag-and-drop form builder with data collection.
Notable aspects:
- Simple drag-and-drop form builder
- Embed forms via HTML
- Collect data with CSV export
- Spam blocking and encryption
- 500 free submissions per month
- Paid plans start at $8/month
#10: 123FormBuilder
123FormBuilder provides lots of templates and decent logic capabilities.
Key features:
- Large library of form templates
- Logic for branching and calculations
- Decent mobile optimization
- View and export submissions
- Free plan allows unlimited forms
- Paid plans start at $9.95/month
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Creating and managing online forms is critical for many industries and use cases. The top form builders make it easy for anyone to build feature-rich forms without coding.
Key capabilities to evaluate include the drag-and-drop editor, mobile responsiveness, template libraries, built-in logic and validation, app integrations, and analytics. Different tools are better suited for specific needs - from simple contact forms to enterprise grade data collection.
For developers and tech projects, DevHunt Forms is an excellent choice with a generous free plan, great templates and workflows, and powerful functionality to integrate forms into apps.
No matter your specific needs, there is a form making software solution to fit. Using a dedicated form builder can save huge amounts of development time and remove the need for coding expertise. The right tool makes it fast and easy to create exactly the forms you need and streamline data collection.