If not Wufoo, then what?

I worked for Wufoo when it was acquired by SurveyMonkey in April 2011. Twelve years ago. I think it’s fair to say it was largely abandoned. The Wufoo of today isn’t really any different than it was twelve years ago. It’s still pretty useful though. I still have quite a few active Wufoo forms and they still look fine and work fine. That’s admirable, really. I think Wufoo is still a decent choice to quickly put a form together and plop it anywhere.

I don’t have to tell you: twelve years is a long time in tech. So what has happened with the web forms market since then? Aren’t there obvious bigger/better alternatives? Uhmmmm, not really?

• TypeForm seems awfully popular. But these are the forms that ask you one question at a time on a full-screen UI and then quickly slide away to the next question as you fill it out. It’s kinda neat, but I often find it a bit much. I think it works better for “Apply for the beta” style forms with 5 questions than it does for basic things like contact forms or wedding RSVPs, or anything complex.
• Jotform was a competitor to Wufoo way back when, but seems to have been keeping at it the whole time and feels a bit more modern in terms of design and the fact they have mobile apps and such. This is probably the most straightforward alternative, but not clearly miles ahead.
• Google Forms was disruptive to the space because it’s free. It’s totally unclear to me even what the usage limits are, aside from file storage limits (not the most common need on forms) which are linked to your overall Google plan. The fact that it dumps the data out into a Google Sheet automatically is probably appealing to some.
• SurveyMonkey itself is an option. They certainly did keep up with that product, going public off of it and all. I see the new default UX is a bit TypeForm-esque in how it auto-scrolls you to the next question.

The Thing You Use To Build Your Website often has opinions and offerings on building forms. Like if you’re on WordPress, there is Gravity Forms and such. I kind of like how the independent options (like above) work on any kind of site though, making them more generically useful.

Or you could build the form yourself! You can do it! But then you need the form data to go somewhere. Even if you’re into React and use some big tool like Formik, the data still has to get sent somewhere. You can also do that yourself, but that ramps up the technical requirements a lot. Fortunately, there are a zillion services that will take your form submissions and process them, sending email notifications, filtering spam, and whatnot.