[HN Gopher] Show HN: Tally Forms - A free Typeform alternative
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Show HN: Tally Forms - A free Typeform alternative
Author : 1p1e1
Score : 132 points
Date : 2022-02-08 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tally.so)
(TXT) w3m dump (tally.so)
| shafyy wrote:
| 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.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| 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.
| shafyy wrote:
| I don't debate that, and from what I can see Tally looks much
| nicer than Typeform :-) Just wanted to get some
| clarification.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words.
| anyfactor wrote:
| 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.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| 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.
| nkotov wrote:
| 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.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| 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?
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| 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. :(
| oefrha wrote:
| 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.
| satya71 wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. I'll block Tally using uBlock.
| pedalpete wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mattkevan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| mattkevan wrote:
| It's one thing to track how users are using forms and
| seeing where they drop out, for example on a checkout. It's
| another thing entirely to _save the data_ from those
| fields.
|
| Collecting personally identifying information without
| explicit consent seems like a great way to get into
| trouble. Implied consent is no consent at all.
| SamBam wrote:
| +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.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| just add, "anything you type into our forms may be captured".
| explicit consent, one and done
| flowerbreeze wrote:
| I don't think that would qualify as explicit consent.
| According to GDPR consent would have to be: "freely given,
| specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data
| subject's wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a
| clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the
| processing of personal data relating to him or her."
|
| How could "anything you type into our forms may be
| captured" be construed as a clear affirmative action by the
| person entering data into the form that has a submit button
| for submitting the data?
|
| Also, to make it unambiguous and informed, it would at
| least have to be a very-very obvious statement, which would
| make it useless for the sneaky purposes, wouldn't it?
|
| Edit: I know it's not only GDPR that is being discussed,
| but I think would follow the same definition.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Yea unfortunately I agree and stops me using it at least
| in a corporate capacity which would have been a paid for
| account.
|
| May use for personal use though, for free.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| That wasn't my point. I meant the feature is available to a
| very small subset of our users. Then even a smaller subset
| chooses to use it and I believe, it's up to the form
| creator to add a disclaimer on why this is necessary for
| their use case.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I'm not usually a big privacy person, but the way you're
| responding to this is a dealbreaker. This feature is
| fundamentally unethical. The fact that it's paywalled and
| not everyone uses it changes nothing.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The people filling the forms aren't the people paying the
| bills, so their opinions on the matter are moot. The
| _actual_ customers want the feature, so it would be silly
| to not offer it and leave money on the table.
| ylere wrote:
| 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.
| mcdonje wrote:
| 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.
| hhw3h wrote:
| Does this support:
|
| - GIF images in multiple choice question responses - Zapier
| triggers - Pre-populating form fields that can be overridden by
| the user?
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| 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
| hhw3h wrote:
| Awesome that's great.
|
| Can I redirect the form submission to 2 different pages? One
| for accepted applicants and one for rejected applicants?
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| Yes, that's possible.
|
| Redirect on completion can point to a form field (those
| include calculated fields). So you can use conditional
| logic to determine when an application is accepted/rejected
| and based on that set the redirect URL in a calculated
| field. Then you can use this calculated field in the
| Redirect on completion.
|
| You can read more about the above mentions features here:
|
| - Redirect on completion: https://tally.so/help/redirect-
| on-completion
|
| - Conditional logic: https://tally.so/help/conditional-
| form-logic
|
| - Calculated fields: https://tally.so/help/form-calculator
| poleapple wrote:
| 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?
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| You can pre-populate fields from another field as well,
| would that work for you?
| agentdrtran wrote:
| I love Tally so far, excellent product
| 58x14 wrote:
| 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!
| lf-non wrote:
| 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/
| dinkleberg wrote:
| 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.
| tortilla wrote:
| This looks great! Curious what tech stack/framework you're using?
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Type form is prohibitively expensive so this is good
| iddan wrote:
| 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
| claytongulick wrote:
| 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.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| 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?
| claytongulick wrote:
| 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.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| Thanks, this helps.
| karim wrote:
| The illustrations on this landing page are beautiful!
| airstrike wrote:
| More like a free alternative to Typeform's free tier, but it is
| not really comparable feature wise
| kevlened wrote:
| 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
| Michael_Sieb wrote:
| Love the Notion like design!
| SamBam wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I was thinking exactly the same thing. This has to be a
| notion product no? It's identical.
| wallawe wrote:
| 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.
| calderwoodra wrote:
| 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 :)
| pfist wrote:
| 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.
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Is the help center custom built?
| ilaksh wrote:
| Amazing. Did you leverage any existing libraries like form.io or
| lucaswxp/form-builder?
| 1p1e1 wrote:
| Thank you. No, the forms and the form builder are custom made.
| :)
| awinter-py wrote:
| 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'
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(page generated 2022-02-08 23:01 UTC)