Show HN: Tally Forms – A free Typeform alternative

https://tally.so/?ref=hn

by 1p1e1 • 4 years ago

168 72 4 years ago

tally.so

claytongulick2• 4 years ago

I've seen this and I really like it.

I think the UI is great, and love the overall direction of the product.

I know this will be hard to hear, but I want to provide my best feedback.

As a CTO, I will rarely, if ever, use a product like this that's not (at a minimum) open core.

I just can't risk building technical and business momentum around a startup that I don't know the longevity of.

I have no problem paying for software, it's business continuity that I'm concerned with.

For a great example of how to do this, I recommend checking out Mattermost. Also cal.com.

Those are two products I've selected for use in our tech stack.

1p1e114• 4 years ago

Thank you for the feedback!

We are in it for the long haul and I would love to learn how we can make this more clear/explicit - what's the page/message/resource from cal.com, for example, which convinced you of this?

claytongulick2• 4 years ago

Sure, happy to help.

Right on cal.com homepage they call out that they are open source, and they have several places where they link off to their github account.

foxbee• 4 years ago

Check out budibase - it's open source, and more flexible than tallyform

budibase.com

karim• 4 years ago

The illustrations on this landing page are beautiful!

shafyy2• 4 years ago

Looks great, but the title is a bit misleading, no? It makes it sound like Typeform doesn't haver a free tier, and like you only have a free tier. In reality, Tally and Typeform both have free and paid tiers.

1p1e114• 4 years ago

While it's true that Typeform has a free plan it allows you to collect 10 submissions per month, which I would say is not sufficient for any size of business, or even personal use.

shafyy2• 4 years ago

I don't debate that, and from what I can see Tally looks much nicer than Typeform :-) Just wanted to get some clarification.

Michael_Sieb• 4 years ago

Love the Notion like design!

SamBam3• 4 years ago

Indeed, it looks identical to Notion, and with the .so url, I assumed that it was related to Notion, but I don't see anything obviously saying that on the front page. (I didn't look deeply, however.)

ibdf• 4 years ago

I was thinking exactly the same thing. This has to be a notion product no? It's identical.

ilaksh• 4 years ago

Amazing. Did you leverage any existing libraries like form.io or lucaswxp/form-builder?

1p1e114• 4 years ago

Thank you. No, the forms and the form builder are custom made. :)

robinjhuang• 4 years ago

Looks really great! I like the document style form builder too. Question: I’ve researched many form builders, but none seem to provide a Google Maps place autocomplete input. This is really useful tho, for things like verifying delivery address.

Is there a reason this is hard to add?

1p1e114• 4 years ago

Thank you! Address autocomplete is on our roadmap.

It's not particularly difficult to add, but we might have to put the feature behind a paywall as Google Maps' API charges per request. :(

58x14• 4 years ago

Well done - I've used Typeform at scale as COO of a digital marketing company, and just at a glance, it seems you've done a better job with the workspace hierarchy. While I'm no longer in that position, you'll be my first stop next time.

Keep it up!

nkotov• 4 years ago

This is really well done! I previously used Typeform + Zapier to setup various registration forms for medium sized events (300+ people) and was always annoyed having to pay Typeform an arm and a leg to get more features.

hhw3h2• 4 years ago

Does this support:

- GIF images in multiple choice question responses - Zapier triggers - Pre-populating form fields that can be overridden by the user?

1p1e114• 4 years ago

Yes, yes and yes! :) You can read a bit more below:

- Images (+GIFs) in multiple choice questions: https://tally.so/help/customize-your-form#c20941c50a8149abba...

- Zapier integration: https://tally.so/help/zapier-integration

- Pre-populating form fields: https://tally.so/help/pre-populate-form-fields

poleapple• 4 years ago

Is there a more convenient way to pre-populate form fields, not via URL? What if I have a form with 50 questions and long answers, and I want the user to be able to go back the form and update their responses?

hhw3h2• 4 years ago

Awesome that's great.

Can I redirect the form submission to 2 different pages? One for accepted applicants and one for rejected applicants?

calderwoodra• 4 years ago

This is really awesome! I've used typeform a bunch for testing ideas and collecting submissions and was always put off by their pricing structure - it's not friendly to boot strappers.

Will definitely try this for my next form :)

oefrha• 4 years ago

Very nice product!

That said,

Partial submissions
Collect answers from people who filled in a part of your form, but didn’t click the submit button. Capture data from lost leads, find drop off points and improve your conversion rates.

From a user point of view, I really hate this. I’d say collecting data about drop off points is fine, but secretly collecting answers not intended for submission is a dark pattern that violates an implicit social contract and users’ privacy. Hell, people often accidentally paste in private stuff, including passwords.

I can understand that as a form builder product you probably need to offer this feature or lose customers. Add this to the long list of depressing “features” of the modern web.

SamBam3• 4 years ago

+1. Collecting personal information such as real names, payments, phone numbers, etc. on users without their explicit consent (hitting a submit button) is absolutely unethical.

stronglikedan2• 4 years ago

just add, "anything you type into our forms may be captured". explicit consent, one and done

1p1e114• 4 years ago

I do agree with your point. It was a highly requested feature, indeed. It's available only with our Pro plan, so it's not widely available to everyone.

cldellow• 4 years ago

Maybe I misread the OP, but I took their point to be that the feature "violates [...] user's privacy."

To say you agree, but it's OK because people pay you for it suggests that you don't really agree.

ylere• 4 years ago

Sorry but that makes it even worse. You can't just push ethical decisions to your customers. You are the one building the product and you are the one defining the ethical boundaries within which it can be used by your customers. As technology builders we are at forefront of pushing all kind of societal boundaries and often end up redefining them in the process. As technology moves so fast it can take years for society to catch up and decide that something definitely was a bad idea but by that time it's often too late. No one wants to be the engineer realising years later that what their build was harmful to society, so try be more conscious of the decisions you take. One good framework to reason about the impact of what we build is to simply ask ourselves if there would be any negative long term effects to society of a billion people would use the feature. Right now from your perspective that seems far away and unlikely but in our field this happens all the time, either through scaling or others copying you.

So either put a big disclaimer yourself at which point no one will probably want to enable it anymore except for edge use cases (which hopefully are ethical even though I can't really think of one right now) or just remove it fully. It's a huge breach of privacy and most customers who have issues with drop rates probably should redesign their form and CTA. Unless the reason for people dropping of is that they're doing something sketchy and/or asking for way too much personal information of course, which is exactly the case where I absolutely do not want to have that data nor would I consent to them collecting it before I click submit.

satya71• 4 years ago

Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll block Tally using uBlock.

mattkevan2• 4 years ago

This is a terrible idea - the data isn’t yours until it’s been explicitly given.

A few years ago I was the UX lead at a big uk website. At the time, the commercial team were wanting to steal unsubmitted personal data from forms and just couldn’t grasp why it was so wrong.

I’d been fighting them on it for ages, but thankfully a few other large sites got into trouble for doing it and I was able to convince the business that the reputational damage wasn’t worth whatever value we might glean from it. Our users were savvy, privacy conscious and extremely vocal and would have gone mental if it came out we were doing it too.

Couldn’t believe it was even a conversation I needed to have.

jklinger410• 4 years ago

This is a terrible idea - the data isn’t yours until it’s been explicitly given.

I couldn't disagree more. I think the owner of a website should be able to track whatever information they please about your session.

pedalpete• 4 years ago

I'm not sure I understand here this issue. When I'm using typeform, and I click "next" or scroll to the next question, I've always assumed that has meant "submit this answer".

I don't consider the entire thing a form, and at some point I may go "ok, I'm done answering your questions, I don't want to do this anymore", and I leave. I don't assume at that point that nothing has happened. I answered a bunch of questions and gave you the data.

Do other people really look at this UI as if it was a single form, rather than a submit per entry?

jono_wilson• 4 years ago

I agree with you, that's how I viewed it. I've distributed typeform in the past and thought it would have been nice and acceptable to record partial answers given that each step feels like a submission; kind of like if I enter my shipping address in step 1 of a checkout process, it is stored once I move to the billing address in step 2.

SamBam3• 4 years ago

Do other people really look at this UI as if it was a single form, rather than a submit per entry?

I don't understand why you would necessarily think that. The forms can be styled to look like regular forms, with multiple fields per page.

E.g. this registration form: https://tally.so/create?templateId=ywaZnM

I took the above warning as saying that if I type my first name in the first field, then change my mind and go away without submitting anything, then they record my first name.

My actions (leaving after I typed in something, without hitting submit) would in no way look like I intended to submit an entry.

While I think your expectation that there are other forms that do this is possibly valid, I don't think that many other forms I encounter every day do do this, and I would be grossed out if they did.

pfist• 4 years ago

I've been using Tally for a few months now, and my experience has been very positive so far. Coming from Google Forms, I really appreciate the modern UX, intuitive form builder, and built-in integrations.

I used Tally to conduct a survey of my Discord community with 68K members (48K MAU). The creation experience was smooth and the results were easy to parse. The free plan doesn't let me invite my team, but it was easy enough to hook up a Google Sheet they have access to, just like Google Forms.

More recently, I used Tally to create a landing page promoting the upcoming launch of my new website. I added an option to put your name and email to get notified when we launch. I also wanted these people to become the first subscribers to our newsletter, but the site isn't live yet. So, I hooked the form up to a Notion database[1] so I could just export a CSV when the newsletter is ready to go. It was easy, too! In Google Forms this would require writing my own integration with App Script.

I think it's cool that Tally is built by two people who are partners in both work and life. Their story resonated with me, so in addition to (so far) preferring Tally over Google Forms, I would love to support these people. It's not in the budget right now, but I plan to upgrade to Tally Pro and migrate my team very soon.

A note to the creators: I noticed you separated your blog from your help center, and I just wanted to say I really appreciate this change. It's much easier to read now! I love that you picked the Journal theme, too. One of my favorite Ghost themes. Good luck with the business, and keep up the great work!

1: I would have just hooked it up to a Google Sheet again, but since I'm evaluating the product I wanted to test other integrations.

1p1e114• 4 years ago

Thank you for using Tally and all the kind words!

We just finished our help center migration, so happy to hear you like it. :)

boundlessdreamz• 4 years ago

Is the help center custom built?

wallawe• 4 years ago

This is perfect timing! I just launched a bootstrapped company and thought Typeform's 10 free submissions per month was kind of crazy. Look forward to trying y'all out.

mcdonje• 4 years ago

Reading through the 'tally vs typeform' page, you came to play. More features, more free features, cheaper paid tier. This could cause typeform to change their offerings in order to compete.

awinter-py• 4 years ago

this is a really interesting strategy for entering a crowded space

'usable rich docs interface like notion', 'kitchen sink features in wysiwyg UX', 'solid integrations'

lloydatkinson• 4 years ago

Type form is prohibitively expensive so this is good

anyfactor• 4 years ago

Is this built by Notion labs? This has to be atleast the 3rd thing I saw on the internet that made me think this was made by Notion. At this point Notion ought to just release a CSS framework.

dinkleberg2• 4 years ago

They say good artists copy, great artists steal.

If you don't have a dedicated designer or are just lacking a unique aesthetic vision then mimicking those who are succeeding isn't a bad move.

tortilla• 4 years ago

This looks great! Curious what tech stack/framework you're using?

1p1e114• 4 years ago

Frontend: Next.js, React, Typescript

Backend: Node, Express, Typescript, Sequelize (MySQL)

Hosting: Google Cloud

kevlened• 4 years ago

At Hotswap, we're working on a migration from Typeform to Tally. If you're interested, let us know here: https://www.hotswap.app/migrations/typeform/tally

lf-non• 4 years ago

Lovely product, but the choice of name may result in some legal trouble down the line. Tally is a well known accounting software

https://tallysolutions.com/

dinkleberg2• 4 years ago

The two solutions don't seem to overlap at all. I'm not a lawyer, but it doesn't seem like they'd have a strong case.

airstrike• 4 years ago

More like a free alternative to Typeform's free tier, but it is not really comparable feature wise

mydjtl• 4 years ago

yup

agentdrtran• 4 years ago

I love Tally so far, excellent product

iddan• 4 years ago

A feature I miss in Typeform: being able to redirect to localhost. Another one: being able to redirect according to a URL query param to a different origin. No clue why is it blocked in Typeform

somishere• 4 years ago

I've literally just been wading through the mess of form solutions out there .. this is a breath of fresh air. Thank you. A̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶s̶i̶d̶e̶,̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶c̶u̶s̶t̶o̶m̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶b̶i̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶p̶l̶o̶a̶d̶ ̶/̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶w̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶i̶g̶n̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶(̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶v̶a̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶m̶e̶n̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶)̶.̶ ̶H̶a̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶q̶u̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶.̶

Edit: Found it

dmje• 4 years ago

Really great, have signed up and embedded on my site. Beautifully simple, very flexible, considering an upgrade to pro already. This is how to do a business!

Show HN: Tally Forms – A free Typeform alternative

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