Review: AidaForm as a Typeform alternative
What is Typeform? It’s an online form service that specializes in conversational forms with one question per page. Typeforms have colorful and bright designs and can be used for lead generation, satisfaction surveys, feedback collection, quizzes, and even interactive fiction. However, Typeform features and design choices have certain limitations and won’t integrate with every workflow. AidaForm, one of the Typeform competitors, lets you both build stylish forms and automate your workflow easily with payment and other third-party integrations. We can’t guarantee that AidaForm is the best Typeform alternative, but it’s always great to have more options to choose from.
In this article, we’ll review and compare Typeform against AidaForm using the following outline so you can make an informed decision:
Editing is where you begin your journey with form creation. A good service should make the form editor easy to learn and offer enough flexible building blocks to help you create any kind of form: contact requests, surveys, order forms, applications, donations, and what not. Let’s evaluate the ease of use, flexibility, and other form building parameters of both Typeform and AidaForm. Typeform editor has a fairly clear basic interface that you can easily get the hang of. You can start from scratch or use one of many themed Typeform templates that are built to showcase what this service is best for – conversational entertainment and feedback collection. There are templates for quizzes, surveys, lead generation, and service evaluation. These do look great as one block per page forms. Typeform-style forms with one question per screen are not perfect for every standard form, though. Contact forms, order forms, and job applications work better as classic one-page online forms. Having to confirm your name, email, and message separately in a contact form amounts to three extra actions instead of one submit button click. You may lose your potential customers if they think the form takes too long to complete and drop it halfway through. Then, consider safety: would you feel safe if you had to enter your payment information in one-question-per-screen mode in a form that doesn’t look serious or secure? We sure wouldn’t. Unfortunately, Typeform does not support classic one-page form templates. If you’re considering a paid plan, you can start with any available template: most of them are built with PRO features that are not accessible for free. You can use them to see how they work, but sharing will be disabled. In the free version, you won’t be able to add a custom thank-you screen, accept payments, use the file upload feature or Typeform logic jumps. A logic jump in Typeform is a fun feature that lets you skip to different blocks depending on the answers you choose. The editor interface is easy and has hints for editing options. However, loading times are uncomfortable: when you switch to your workspace or between tabs, open form designer, apply themes, update previews, and generate Typeform reports – you gotta wait. There is a number of standard form blocks, including file upload, payment collection, multiple choice blocks and a wide variety of cool looking rating scales. But there are no more than 30 of them: Typeform doesn’t have a digital signature block or CAPTCHA protection, for instance. If you need those in your forms, look elsewhere. What we liked What we didn’t like AidaForm has the tools you need to create any form you like in a classic one-page template. Similar to Typeform, it lets you create many standard forms with responsive blocks like name, address, file upload, ratings, drop-down lists and more. There is also a block for secure payment collection that you can add to gather donations or registration fees. AidaForm processes payments through PayPal so no sensitive information is collected through forms directly. In the PayPal payment block, respondents can specify a custom amount to give you – handy for donations. Unlike Typeform, AidaForm lets you protect the form with CAPTCHA and make sure only real people submit responses. In AidaForm, you can start with a blank template or use a ready-made basic template with common blocks included and customize it from there. AidaForm doesn’t have standard online form templates yet, but you can still build any form you like using responsive blocks: simply drag and drop them to your form and customize it to your liking. Standard blocks have text suggestions, so you don’t have to change field names and hints if you’re happy with the default wording. What we liked What we didn’t likeAidaForm vs. Typeform Review
Form Building Functions
Typeform features
AidaForm Features
After you make a sequence of questions and add all the fields you need, it’s time to make your form look good with the form builder’s design tools. The design features may include the option to add your company’s logo, customize the background image, change colors of the text and form elements. If you’re experienced in web design applying custom CSS to make the form match your website styles perfectly. So how do Typeform and AidaForm perform in terms of design tools? All other things aside, the form design is where Typeform really shines. There are lots of design templates that are emotional, cute and friendly. They’re customizable, but not overloaded with obscure options, you can easily see what you’re changing and what it is going to look like. Some designs in their design editor are neutral, others have a theme like school or office that may or may not suit your needs. If you don’t like default background images, you can always upload yours or even browse through royalty-free images from Unsplash through Typeform interface. Some design themes like Pin-up, Fractals, or School Bell clearly favor design gimmicks over usability: fonts that imitate handwriting are always a pain to read if you’re trying to perform a task, and reading white letters on a grainy dark-blue background may be a burden for one’s eyes. If you’re not a designer yourself, you won’t be able to create something as consistent as some of the Typeform quiz templates or interactive fiction, because you’ll need to create fancy lettering and backgrounds in a graphics editor instead. What we liked What we didn’t like AidaForm’s form designer is as streamlined as the one by Typeform: you have several pre-built themes with set fonts, colors, and background images. Just like Typeform, AidaForm makes sure nothing goes wrong even if it’s your first time working with form designs. Smart themes make sure your forms look good by default: the font and color changes are adjusted to the contents of your form. Edited themes can be saved for future use. While Typeform goes with more emotional and playful designs, AidaForm’s default themes are subdued and neutral and look appropriate in many contexts, including insurance applications and religious event registrations. Ease of use also means you cannot make in-depth edits to your form design in AidaForm. For instance, define separate colors and fonts for different elements of the form or add custom CSS. On the other hand, Typeform doesn’t have these advanced editing options, too, and AidaForm can be used as Typeform’s free alternative. What we liked What we didn’t likeForm Design Tools and Customization
Typeform Design Tools
AidaForm Design Features
Form creation is just the first part of the deal: the most interesting thing happens when you start gathering submissions: job applications, poll results, website feedback and everything else you’ve created your forms for. When you use a form service, it’s important to get notified quickly when submissions happen, and export results to analyze the data and make your marketing decisions or organize events. In this section, we’ll take a look at response collection and management solutions by Typeform and AidaForm. Typeform notifications are straightforward: as soon as anyone submits a response to your form, you’ll get notified through the email address you used to register. This is a basic feature every form creation service offers. You can also view all responses for each form in your member’s area when you click the number of responses in your workspace or open a form and switch to the Results tab. There, you can view a summary or review each response individually. There is also an option to export a Typeform report - it looks like a summary of the form responses with the same design theme as the form. Aside from copying it to a powerpoint presentation, we couldn’t imagine where you can use it, though. We’ve mentioned it already but you can only receive 100 responses per month in each of up to 5 forms if you’re on a free plan. So if you expect high monthly activity, switch to a paid plan or look for a free alternative. What we liked What we didn’t like Like Typeform, AidaForm notifies you via email when someone fills out your form - you won’t miss anything and will be able to respond to contact or quote requests as soon as you get them. If you need an overview for analysis or marketing research, you can view stat summary in your member’s area and export form responses as Excel documents. What we liked What we didn’t likeResponse collection and management
Typeform Response Management
AidaForm Response Management
You can use online form services to automate your business workflow. Third-party integrations let you process online payments, export response data, and create MailChimp mailing lists for your marketing campaigns. Let’s review both services in terms of third-party services they connect with. You can connect Typeform with essential apps you use in your business workflow: there’s a Typeform - MailChimp integration that lets you export email submissions to mailing lists, but it’s a pro feature, so you can’t use it unless you pay. There’s also an option to export summaries from Typeform to Google Sheets and even automatically sync data as new responses come in. Overall, there are 7 integrations that are directly supported by Typeform. Zapier integrations are available for many other services. While this number of integrations doesn’t sound too impressive, it’ll work for many workflows. What we liked What we didn’t like Even though AidaForm is relatively new compared to Typeform, it has a similar number and type of integrations: MailChimp, Google Sheets, Zoho CRM, and Zapier for everything else. AidaForm has a better payment integration service, in our opinion: PayPal is a universally acclaimed payment processing system with high-level security - there is no need to submit sensitive payment information through AidaForm. What we liked What we didn’t likeThird-Party Integrations
Typeform Integrations
AidaForm Integrations
AidaForm
Typeform
FORM EDITING
Form elements for most standard forms
Single page layout
One question per page layout
Payment processing
PayPal
Stripe
Digital signature
Captcha
Mobile-ready
Form templates
File upload
FORM DESIGN
Built-in themes
Logo upload
Custom themes
Design automation
PUBLISHING
Direct link
Embed code
Social media sharing
THIRD-PARTY INTEGRATIONS
MailChimp
Google Sheets
Zapier
CRM systems
Zoho, other CRMs can be integrated through Zapier
HubSpot Autopilot, other CRMs can be integrated through Zapier
FREE PLAN
Typeform is a friendly and well-designed online form creation service for engaging one question per screen conversational forms - and it’s good at what it does. However, this format won’t work well for every online form. If you have a complex workflow, need specific integrations, want to process donations or let users sign your forms digitally, Typeform is not flexible enough for you. You can try all Typeform features for free, but pro options are only available in the trial mode: you won’t be able to publish forms with pro features for free. Typeform plans are kind of pricey: you can get the PRO plan at $30 a month and even then you’re not getting all of the features Typeform offers. Some options - like the ability to remove Typeform branding - are only available at $59 a month. Finally, we cannot be 100% sure about Typeform security. A data breach has occurred this June and thousands of survey accounts have been compromised, so try it at your own risk. (Source: nakedsecurity.sohphos.com).Summary: Typeform Form Builder
Pros
Cons