[HN Gopher] Show HN: Typeform was too expensive so I built my ow...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Typeform was too expensive so I built my own forms
Hey HN, I'm a solopreneur and run a web design agency. I create
open-source apps, but I also work as a freelancer and designer. I
was accepting any new freelance project via forms on my agency
website. I was using Typeform, but as time went by and more people
submitted forms, it got more and more expensive. That time, I
thought to use Google Form, but it was way too blocky and looked
very unprofessional on my agency website. So I thought to build my
own forms for my own usage, and it turns out it almost doubled form
submissions and inquiry calls. I was happy, so I thought to build
it for everyone and make it open-source. I added AI
functionalities using Vercel AISDK. I can generate forms almost
instantly using AI and also added analytics AI so that users can
talk with their forms--more like talk with their analytics data.
I've been building this publicly, sharing updates on my X account
(preetsuthar17) I hope this product will be as helpful to you as
it was for me. Would love your feedback pls Preet
Author : preetsuthar17
Score : 162 points
Date : 2025-07-10 09:02 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ikiform.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ikiform.com)
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| nice. would give it a try
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| yep! it's open source on github
|
| https://github.com/preetsuthar17/Ikiform
| chrismorgan wrote:
| _Very_ important thing missing: a demo form, to understand the
| user experience.
|
| Especially if you're comparing yourself with Typeform, which is
| rather controversial. (I _detest_ its entire approach.)
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| I see a demo form if you click on the demo, but it's not very
| obvious
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| still if you want to try the demo you can try here
|
| https://www.ikiform.com/forms/a2675039-5901-4052-88c0-b60977.
| ..
| chrismorgan wrote:
| OK, initial feedback: you need to work on your colours and
| contrasts. Disabled Previous button isn't clearly disabled,
| placeholder value looks almost the same as an actual value,
| focus indicator is too subtle. I reckon these things are
| noticeably harder to get right on dark than on light colour
| schemes.
|
| Also keyboard navigation is poor: when you shift to a new
| page, you should probably focus the first field; or at the
| very least reset focus to the start of the document so that
| when the user presses Tab after having clicked the Next
| button they get to the first field, not the footer "Powered
| by Ikiform" link. (This doesn't affect pressing Enter from
| one of the inputs--when they disappear, focus shifts back
| to the top.)
|
| But I'm pleased to say that it's nothing like Typeform. I
| strongly recommend ditching any comparison with it, you're
| doing things _sanely_ , unlike their experience.
| pbronez wrote:
| It's a nice form. On iOS when I hit next it didn't pop me
| up to the beginning of the next page. Agree with the
| sibling that it would be nice to get focus on that next
| obvious step.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| The name fields have a minimum length of two characters.
| There are people with single character names.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Mandatory reading for anyone implementing forms with
| names: Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names [0].
|
| [0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
| programmers-...
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I was actually working on the demo and adding it in the home
| page
| nikolayasdf123 wrote:
| yeah, looks like animations between pages is lacking. as well
| as just animatinos in general
| Jaxan wrote:
| I didn't notice they were lacking. Are animations really
| asked for by users?
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| They're not explicitly asked for, but everywhere I've
| worked that's tested them has found that they improve
| conversion rates.
| afandian wrote:
| Word to anyone using Google forms for public-facing functions.
| Try it without a Google account. Somtimes the forms don't work
| (e.g. if they ask for an email address). Yes, some people aren't
| Google customers.
| ale42 wrote:
| At a first glance it looks great!
|
| However, it looks like "too much" for what we're looking for. It
| seems to depend on too many external services. Does anyone know
| such a form creation system that can be self-hosted, has minimal
| dependencies, and is open source?
| helb wrote:
| Looks great! However i'm a bit concerned about these "AI-Powered
| Analytics", looks like it would leak user-submitted data to
| Groq.com?
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I'm curious why you think that?
|
| Many AI products use user data; how do they handle it?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Many AI products use user data; how do they handle it?
|
| They leak the data, at least while finding PMF.
|
| If they make enough money _maybe_ they 'll run their own
| model.
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I see, what do you think would be best for me to do?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I see, what do you think would be best for me to do?
|
| Not sure. One option that comes to mind is to put the AI
| usage behind a one-time-only popup that confirms (via a
| checkbox) that the user understand that by using the AI
| features, their information will necessarily have to be
| sent to a third-party AI processor.
|
| If they decline those terms, then the AI button/boxes go
| back to being disabled. If they accept the terms and
| conditions for AI, then record that in their profile and
| don't display the terms and conditions for AI usage
| again.
|
| So even though you are still leaking their data, at least
| it will be with their express permission.
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| alright! I understood I should just add consent in user
| settings if they want to allow AI services to use their
| data etc etc
| diggan wrote:
| Disclosure: I used to work at Typeform 2014 - 2016
|
| Taking a look at the demo (https://www.ikiform.com/forms/a2675039
| -5901-4052-88c0-b60977...), I'm not sure where the comparison to
| Typeform comes in. Probably the most unique feature of Typeform
| is the focus on user experience of the forms themselves,
| everything else is/was mostly built to support the forms, and
| making it as easy to fill out as possible. Things like the back
| button always being visible, no validation of fields as you enter
| data, no progress indication and so all makes it seem like there
| is a lot of polish left to do.
|
| I guess the form looks OK, which is alright of course, but I'm
| not sure it actually serves as an alternative to Typeform. It
| seems to me to sit somewhere in-between the traditional (ugly)
| form providers, and Typeform, which isn't a bad place to sit at,
| but maybe people expecting a Typeform-like experience would feel
| slightly bait-and-switched by the comparison.
|
| There used to be another open source project that replicated the
| form themselves and the experience (as far as I remember), but
| seem defunct by now (for the last 6 years...):
| https://github.com/tellform/tellform Besides that, seems there
| are some other open source alternatives, but I can't say I've
| tried them all (at a glance, Quill Forms seems most similar to
| Typeform):
| https://github.com/search?q=typeform+archived%3Afalse&type=r...
| earlyriser wrote:
| I think they are using Typeform as form app. With an external
| view Tally, Typeform, Hotform are all the same, apps that make
| forms. I have use all of them, but I cannot remember their
| differences.
| gully00 wrote:
| Maybe the UX of a Typeform is OK but the Typeform app to
| build forms is virtually unusable for anyone that actually
| needs forms. The most basic settings are hidden behind
| unrelated, unlabeled buttons. Because theres not enough white
| space already on the page obviously. The way they've
| architected pages and components, totally inflexible and
| leads to very unnatural flows in a lot of cases. To date I
| have never seen an integration UX worse than Typeform's.
| Using Airtable for example, a single alteration needed means
| resetting and reconfiguring the entire field mapping. You can
| have a borked integration config and have NO idea from within
| the app. Building with typeform takes easily 5x longer than
| any other form tool we've used. The call to action "Book a
| Free Strategy Call" is 25 characters. Typeform's native popup
| embed has an arbitrary 24 character limit on the button's
| text. "Book a Free Strategy Cal" is the exact kind of garbage
| I expect from a site that uses Typeform. Yes, there's
| (undocumented) workarounds.
|
| With a number of team members we paid Typeform $100+ each
| month for this experience.
|
| I found Tally and immediately got agreement to migrate every
| (~50) Typeforms to it. Canceled Typeform sub and haven't
| looked back.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| Under 'Is Ikiform open source':
|
| > Ikiform is completely open-source and available on GitHub
|
| The link on the word Github should probably link to the actual
| repo or org and not the github homepage, I would imagine?
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I fixed it thank you for pointing out!
| diggan wrote:
| Seems it's https://github.com/preetsuthar17/ikiform, linked in
| the footer.
|
| Seems to be missing a proper license though. The only thing
| mentioning anything about the licensing seems to be
| https://github.com/preetsuthar17/Ikiform/blob/e9f1fb8b68eb1c...
|
| > Permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the
| materials (information or software) on Ikiform's website for
| personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| The license added (MIT) seems to conflict with these terms
| too..
| tudorizer wrote:
| The one-time price is interesting.
|
| If the platform goes away in 1 year, it essenetially becomes
| 39$/year.
|
| Any plans on how you'd make this a longer lasting product?
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I'm still brainstorming new, unique features. As a solo
| developer and student, it's challenging to dedicate more time
| to projects
|
| with a positive response, I'm willing to work full-time on this
| project
| chrismorgan wrote:
| It's a well-explored space with oodles of competition. "New,
| unique features" are likely to be unique for a reason (to
| speak plainly: because they're bad or because no one paying
| wants them).
| vidyesh wrote:
| There is a reason why almost all ERP apps end up being almost
| the same. When you build a product with a USP that makes you
| special, at some point your client will ask for all the basic
| things that are required for that product (provided by your
| competitors) and generally for businesses this becomes the
| reason to stay with you; your USP and you providing
| everything else that is expected from the product category.
|
| The point is, you have defined your USP. Its cheaper Typeform
| alternative for SMBs, stick with it and build the product
| around it and meet all the basic requirements first. Do some
| research and find out which features a typical form builder
| wants or which Typeform features are most used. Have those
| ready and then work on the other fancy things.
|
| And have a number in mind, after X number of clients increase
| your price. And seriously increase your price now.
| sosborn wrote:
| As a heavy user of Formsite, these would be the features I
| would prioritize:
|
| - Logic branching (if question 1 answer is 'A', then hide
| question 2. etc) - Confirmation emails to the submitter -
| Widgets to insert design elements (static text, images, etc)
|
| IMO, these are bare minimum for B2B business if you are
| interested in pursuing that.
|
| Having said that, this is a great start.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| > An open-source alternative to Typeform and Google Forms
|
| Those two are the two extreme ends of the target audience
| archetypes. So, decide which is yours.
|
| > I was using Typeform, but as time went by and more people
| submitted forms, it got more and more expensive.
|
| When people say they build cheaper alternatives, I often assume
| that the original is becoming better and more successful.
| Competing on price rarely wins.
|
| I've found https://formbricks.com to be kinda the closest
| competition to Typeform, and also Open Source.
| beanclap wrote:
| formbricks is awesome, best open source surveys out there! :))
| ljm wrote:
| I used to work at Typeform and I think it's a testament to
| their product that people have been inspired to make open
| source versions of it multiple times over the past decade or
| so.
|
| I enjoy seeing posts like this.
| dangus wrote:
| A lot of comments here are saying that competing on price is a
| losing proposition, but I think they're forgetting that this is
| a solo project and not a 500 person company that's trying to be
| as profitable as possible to be attractive for acquisition like
| Typeform. The bar for success for a solo project is far lower.
|
| Typeform has to blow money on a lot of overhead that this
| author doesn't have.
|
| And let's not just ignore a whole bunch of products that ousted
| market leaders specifically because they competed on
| price/value. Examples include: Google Docs, Mailchimp, a
| gigantic list of Adobe competitors, Unity, Backblaze,
| Robinhood, and the list goes on.
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I tried my best :)
| immibis wrote:
| Didn't Google Docs win because it was online and (more)
| mobile-friendly, not because it was free? Almost everyone had
| Office on their PCs at the time, but not on their tablets.
| svdr wrote:
| Hi Preet, I think this is looking great, and a lot of features
| are present already. Two things to consider: I think your pricing
| is too low to be taken seriously by a lot of organizations; also,
| with a one-time payment support is an issue.
|
| Second, to have a selling point, you might want to focus on
| privacy. Is the data shared in any way? Where is it kept? What
| measures have you taken to keep data safe? Will it be deleted if
| I cancel my account? That sort of things.
|
| Anyway, good luck and keep on going!
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| Thank you for your feedback. I'm curious about what pricing
| would be acceptable and reasonable?
| eviks wrote:
| Demo form's phone number field accepts text, so no validation?
| preetsuthar17 wrote:
| I didn't add any validation that's why it might be accepting
| text
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I didn't add any validation that's why it might be
| accepting text
|
| See my directly reply above your reply.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Demo form's phone number field accepts text, so no
| validation?
|
| It validates email, though.
|
| How would you validate phone numbers? Surely phone numbers must
| allow spaces as well. Maybe allow '+27' too? Quite a lot of
| exceptions come to mind for phone numbers.
|
| What if someone wants to type in a phone such as `123 456 7891
| ext 21`?
|
| What if they want to use `0800 SAVE MUNNY`? That's the number
| `728 368 669`.
|
| What if they want to enter `123 456 7891 oh/123 789 4561 ah`?
| robin_reala wrote:
| The classic phone number to allow through validation is
| "PLEASE DON'T CALL ME I'M DEAF".
| eviks wrote:
| You can still read 2fa codes...
| robin_reala wrote:
| If you're sending 2fa over sms then you've got bigger
| problems.
| eviks wrote:
| No, not universally. But also, it's not the form's role
| to block on those problems.
| eviks wrote:
| > Quite a lot of exceptions come to mind for phone numbers.
|
| That's why proper form building isn't just slapping some
| style over a text field. You'll have to parse it anyway, so
| better not delay and risk accepting errors that the user
| could correct right away
| _pdp_ wrote:
| The reason Typeform free tier limits are so strict is likely
| because they have run the numbers based on real usage data. I am
| sure those limits are designed to capture just enough free users
| who are likely to convert, while minimizing the risk of churn. It
| is tricky.
|
| From my own experience, about two years ago we built an AI form
| builder tech demo on top of our platform. We open-sourced it
| (https://github.com/chatbotkit/example-nextjs-ai-forms) to see if
| there was community interest. Not much. Since it wasn't our core
| product, we pivoted and turned it into a low-cost Typeform
| alternative with unlimited forms - formshare.ai was born. And
| while we have seen some modest commercial success, I wouldn't
| claim it's anywhere near Typeform's scale.
|
| The takeaway here is that for this project, even though it wasn't
| our primary focus, leading with open source and undercutting on
| price didn't prove to be an effective strategy. If anything,
| charging too little initially will only devalue the product and
| attract the wrong kind of users - the ones less likely to convert
| or stick around for the long term.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| The other reason for free limits is limiting abuse/weirdness
| from malicious users.
| summarity wrote:
| Or even more important: pathological users.
|
| Actually malicious users are rare. Pathological users have a
| bias to be the _most_ demanding users when actually paying
| _the least_ (or nothing) _. It 's a drain on every step in
| the support funnel. But what drives the business are users
| that both have a large scale of use and still have growth
| potential.
|
| _ the worst tend to be just above the free tier, on the
| lowest paid plan available. Raising the minimum is an
| effective way to reduce this pain.
| immibis wrote:
| It is interesting how receiving the greatest benefit for
| the lowest cost is considered pathological, yet also the
| entire basis for our economic system.
| lelanthran wrote:
| There doesn't seem to be anyway to use this without a real
| verified google or github account.
|
| Not sure that a product which is pitched as an alternative to
| current big incumbents is going to benefit from forcing users to
| first be logged into current big corporate.
|
| What's the rationale here? That there are google users who are
| looking to stay with google for everything but forms? That must
| be an awfully niche market, no?
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| The Google and Microsoft Forms solutions always seem like a
| fantastic fit until you actually try to seriously use them for
| clients.
|
| I've run into this too.
|
| I had a client that needed to collect HIPAA protected data.
| Putting their marketing site into scope for HIPAA was not a sane
| choice. Their EMR vendor didn't have any options that didn't
| require migrating to a new EMR offering in order to
| create/publish/accept forms. All the other options were clunky
| and required a lot more work and niche expertise or training in
| those applications.
|
| So we went with Google Forms. They already used Google Workspace
| and had executed the HIPAA addendum to the terms.
|
| That lasted less than a year. The physicians and patients were
| both put off by the fact that it was a Google Form and it looked
| unprofessional.
|
| They're back to posting PDFs on their website.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I'm probably in the minority here but I don't find Google Forms
| unprofessional, much like I don't find Google Docs or Sheets
| unprofessional. That said, I hate TypeForm and its auto-
| scrolling behavior.
| sachahjkl wrote:
| bro your homepage lags a looot
| hsnice16 wrote:
| I had created something as well -
| https://github.com/hsnice16/forming-typeform
| nakovet wrote:
| What kind of setup did you have that Typeform was costly? We are
| on the $299/month plan coming from $99/month, and if you run a
| money making business of Typeform, this cost should be negligible
| compared to all other costs of running a business.
| zarzavat wrote:
| $299 per month for a form? Damn, I'm in the wrong business.
|
| I understand the value proposition but those margins are eye
| watering.
| jadedragon942 wrote:
| I find it baffling that people are paying $300/month for what
| amounts to a simple set of HTML and a simple backend. That's
| insane.
| MPiccinato wrote:
| Poked around the code a little bit, it doesn't seem that it is
| intended to be able to drop into another project and then use as
| a custom form builder for that project. Any plans for something
| like this? A lot of the infrastructure and framework (next/js)
| seem heavily built into the codebase. I would have to use
| supabase?
|
| If you're working towards something that developers can drop in,
| take a look at https://heyform.net/. If not, then it's still nice
| to be able to have some freedom on the deployment.
| csomar wrote:
| > Authorize Forms0 > Authorize preetsuthar17 > Authorizing will
| redirect to https://dodgmiigvrqvlsvwhlqv.supabase.co
|
| I know you are only asking for the Email address but at least,
| for my benefit, make it look like a real SME or a serious
| project.
| noreplydev wrote:
| how many time have you been working on this?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Form builders are a hard business to succeed with. Quite a lot of
| companies started off as a general "form builder" product and
| then found success by specializing into specific uses of forms.
| Examples include Qualtrics, Survey Monkey, Open Water, etc. Quite
| a lot of other companies stick with generic forms and get stuck
| and stagnate.
|
| The reason is that forms are like dates, time, addresses, names,
| to-do lists, etc. They are things that many developers need to
| work with, but are way deeper and more complicated than they seem
| at first. See the wide variety of feedback and suggestions just
| in this HN thread.
|
| So I would recommend specializing if you want to gain traction.
| And expect to do tons of marketing.
| diggan wrote:
| > And expect to do tons of marketing.
|
| Fun fact: Typeform basically did no "traditional" marketing in
| the beginning of its life, and most users came from the
| "Powered by Typeform" button in the bottom right, which was
| visible for every free form IIRC. Those users, also publishing
| their own forms, led to more users finding Typeform from that
| same button.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| When does a marketing tactic become "traditional"? Putting
| 'Powered By' tags on products goes back at least 20 years.
| dev-ns8 wrote:
| What is the value proposition for these form libraries? Is it
| scale? Is it the custom builder? How complex are people's HTML
| forms these days from a UX perspective?
|
| I was browsing the code, and noticed this forms library was using
| Supabase, presumably a paid service if this OSS library takes
| off. I just can't seem to grasp why a custom form building
| library needs a 3rd party, managed Database included. Scale
| maybe?
|
| These are genuine questions as I'm woefully unaware of the state
| of HTML forms / Frontend in 2025
| gbalduzzi wrote:
| They are not libraries, they are form builders.
|
| You create the form / survey without touching code and without
| provisioning or setup any infrastructure.
|
| They are particular useful to companies wanting to do surveys
| without involving a development team
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| There's a few reasons. The biggest one, IMO, is that it lets
| non-technical users change things quickly without having to go
| through the engineering team. Obviously there are limits to
| that, but in many cases, a product or marketing team wants to
| modify a form or test a few variations without having to put it
| into a backlog, wait for engineers to size it, wait for an
| upcoming sprint, then wait another two weeks for it to get
| completed and deployed. (Even in more nimble organizations,
| cutting out the handoff to engineering saves time, eliminates
| communication issues, and frees up the engineering team to do
| more valuable work.)
|
| On the technical side, these form builders can actually save a
| decent amount of development effort. Sure, it's easy to build a
| basic HTML form, but once you start factoring in things like
| validation, animations, transitions, conditional routing, error
| handling, localization, accessibility, and tricky UI like date
| pickers and fancy dropdowns, making a really polished form is
| actually a lot of work. You either have to cobble together a
| bunch of third-party libraries and try to make them play nicely
| together, or you end up building your own reusable, extensible,
| modular form library.
|
| It's one of those projects that sounds simple, but scope creep
| is almost inevitable. Instead of spending your time building
| things that actually make money, you're spending time on your
| form library because suddenly you have to show different
| questions on the next screen based on previous responses. Or
| you have to handle right-to-left languages like Arabic, and
| it's not working in Safari on iOS. Or your predecessor failed
| to do any due diligence before deciding to use a datepicker
| widget that was maintained by some random guy at a web agency
| in the Midwest that went out of business five years ago, and
| now you have to fork it because there's a bug that's impacting
| your company's biggest client.
|
| Or, instead of all that, you could just pay Typeform a fraction
| of the salary for one engineer and never have to think about
| those things ever again.
| DonnyV wrote:
| I can't believe that Typeform is the standard in the industry. Is
| it me or does the whole product have a constant delay to the UI?
| Also the form building part seems really bad. Nothing is
| intuitive. Not a fan of one question per page. Also why is it so
| hard to add multiple questions per page. I had to Google how to
| do that just to find the option.
| scosman wrote:
| On iOS the pricing link doesn't work and the browser back button
| also doesn't work.
| Tsarp wrote:
| I recently had to do a form and just asked claude to 1. Write up
| the form with the questions styled with tailwind, shadcn, heroui.
| 2. Wire it up and give me a cloudflare function to write to a KV
| store 3. Instructions on how to setup above with cloudflare free
| tier.
|
| It got it in the first shot, took me <3-4mins to copy paste in
| cloudflare. Been working well so far, the page is also hosted on
| cloudflare pages and hasnt cost anything so far.
| davsti4 wrote:
| Looks good - I was only able to use the demo partially. The page
| needed access to: client.crisp.chat , pbs.twimg.com ;
| assets.onedollarstats.com ; and googletagmanager.com .
|
| I'm assuming I can remove these dependencies for my own use?
| breadwinner wrote:
| Aren't Typeform, Google Forms, Microsoft Forms all basically
| similar in that they are good for surveys etc. but not for much
| else? Airtable ( https://airtable.com ) has more typical forms
| and so does Visual DB ( https://visualdb.com ).
| lr0 wrote:
| Looks like it shows a Vercel error: "This deployment is
| temporarily paused" as for now.
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250710190011/https://www.ikifo...
| js4ever wrote:
| "This deployment is temporarily paused" it seems you spent all
| your vercel quota.
|
| You would "scale" better with a $5 vps
| hoppp wrote:
| Definitely. But OP is probably on free tier, thats why this
| happens
|
| Vercel is fine for stage deployment but for production even a
| solar powered raspberry pi is better, if vercel willpause the
| instance if there is too much traffic.
| solfox wrote:
| For what it's worth, I searched for an alternative and ended up
| finding deftform.com on appsumo with an affordable lifetime
| subscription. I'm very pleased as it replaces a bunch of other
| apps I was using like Google Forms and hellosign.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| Did it crash?
| tills13 wrote:
| They hit their Vercel free-tier limit or spend limit.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-10 23:00 UTC)