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Top 12 Cognito Forms Alternatives (Free & Paid)

Kate Williams

6 May 2022

10 min read

Want to know the best alternatives for Cognito forms?

You’ve come to the right place.

Cognito Forms can be tricky to use and don’t offer integrations people look for in a form builder.

But worry not, our list 0f Cognito alternatives will help you find the perfect WordPress forms.

And this post will walk you through 12 top Cognito Forms alternatives for 2022. Grap your cuppa and let’s jump right into it.

12 Excellent Cognito Forms Alternatives

Here are the Cognito forms alternatives that we think will fit you just right.

  1. SurveySparrow
  2. WPForms
  3. Ninja Forms
  4. 123Form Builder
  5. Gravity Forms
  6. Formstack
  7. Jotform
  8. Wufoo
  9. Typeform
  10. Formsite
  11. Formidable Forms
  12. Contact Forms 7

#1 SurveySparrow

cognito forms alternative

When looking at Cognito forms alternatives, especially to run polls or create NPS surveys, SurveySparrow is the best choice.

Customers love the exciting and fluid experience that they provide. Couple that with the loads of options and question library to choose from, and you’ll break no sweat and find real fun in conducting surveys.

When it comes to analytics, something where Cognito form massively lacks, SurveySparrow helps you gain a ton of insights very quickly and at very affordable prices. There interface is user-friendly and conversational, which keeps your audience engaged as they fill the surveys.

It nearly has a 40% higher conversion rate than almost all survey software (including Cognito Forms), making it one of the best Cognito forms alternatives around.

Features:

  • Conversational Interface: It keeps the survey-takers engaged while boosting the results.
  • NPS Surveys: SurveySparrow’s NPS software is simply one of the best in the market you’ll find. Very easy to make, and powered with powerful analytics to find relevant patterns. In short, their NPS software is the OG in its segment!
  • Online & Offline Surveys: SurveySparrow lets you roll out online, NPS, white-label, and recurring surveys. And on top of that, you can conduct these surveys offline, too. How? Check here.
  • Performance Management Tool: SurveySparrow has an excellent performance management tool with surveys for employee engagement like employee pulse, and 360 feedback surveys, along with apt customer feedback surveys to fulfill all your survey needs.
  • Mobile-Friendly Surveys: The surveys are mobile-friendly when you’re using SurveySparrow, making them easy for your audience to fill out surveys whenever they want using any device.
  • Multiple data collection channels: Yes, with SurveySparrow, you don’t just conduct surveys to collect data. Chatbots, automated workflows, and more options are right there for you to make the most of.

Signup for FREE here…

Cost: They have a free plan for you to start with, and their paid plans start from $19 per month when billed annually. For getting features anywhere near this plan in Cognito forms, you’ll have to scoff up $99 per month! You’re pretty smart to figure out which is a better deal. 🙂

#2 WPForms

WPForms is a conversational form builder and a 1-click tool that gives a conversational style to your forms. On top of that, their survey and polls addon makes the survey creating process a lot easier, compared to that in Cognito forms.

Features:

  • WordPress Compatibility – It’s a WordPress plugin. So naturally, it has a seamless connection with the platform.
  • Ease of Use – This is because of its drag-and-drop visual builder that lets you create forms in real-time.
  • Tools – Their completely customizable poll data display lets you create beautiful graphs for better data visualization.
  • Data Security – WPForms fights spam with hCaptcha, reCAPTCHA, & custom Captcha, and keeps the data well secured.
  • Form Templates  — WPForms comes with over 300 pre-designed templates that include NPS surveys, Likert surveys, basic survey forms, and more.

Cost: It has a completely free plan for life. The pricing for the pro plan starts at $199.50/year. Compared to Cognito forms pricing, it’s dead cheap.

#3 Ninja Forms

Another Cognito forms alternative is Ninja Forms. It’s very much similar to any typical form builder that comes with a drag and drop feature. But its clean and quick-function interface is what really sets it apart. As a WordPress-based form builder, Ninja Forms is worth considering.

Features:

  • Easy Import: Importing existing forms and installing them on multiple sites is easy with Ninja Forms.
  • Flexible pricing: The prices here are set based depending on your requirements.
  • Amazing templates: With Ninja forms, you get 16 form templates just in the basic package.
  • Real-time working: You get a real-time preview of the form you’re building to see if it’s coming out correctly
  • Security: This form builder is equipped with the Google reCaptcha option for enhanced security.

Cost: It comes with a free trial and the paid plan starts from $49.50 per year.

#4 123Form Builder

123FormBuilder is a fantastic option for creating bespoke and branded forms. It’s a great alternative if you wish to build some simple forms and don’t wanna pay for them. They do come with a paid plan, but a chunk of their good features are present in the free version, too.

It’s not the most user-friendly platform, to be honest. The interface requires time for better understanding, and that sometimes puts people off.

Features:

  • Simple steps: Form building is easy here with the drag and drop feature.
  • Multiple-use: 123 form builder doesn’t just build forms, but surveys, questionnaires, and a lot more of that good stuff.
  • Easy export: Here, the data collected is exported with a click of a button.
  • Templates: Over 1900 templates are available for use in 123 form builder. That’s huge. That’s impressive.
  • Analytics: Powerful analytics (even in the free plan) to track how your forms are doing.

Cost: They offer a forever-free plan and the paid one starts from $20.64 per month for annual billing.

#5 Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is one of the most advanced Cognito forms alternatives for WordPress. It’s a plugin allowing you to go beyond the basics of form building, and create quizzes, surveys, payment forms, and even landing pages for your business.

It comes with a range of configuration settings to help you control the look and feel of forms. And this can make a difference if you’re creating forms for your business, and that too at scale.

However, they don’t offer simplicity, if that’s what you’re looking for. But it’s definitely worth trying.

Features:

  • Full control: Configure and develop forms the way you like them, from the date formal to the number of fields, everything is there for you to decide.
  • Conditional logic: They offer powerful conditional logic to make your respondents’ life easier.
  • Multi-form forms: Yes, with Gravity forms, you can easily create You can create multi-page forms
  • Spam control: They come with the Captcha feature to reduce the number of spam submissions.
  • Powerful integrations: You name it, Gravity forms will have that integration for you, even for an accounting software!

Cost: The starting price for Gravity forms is $59 per year. What do you say about that?

#6 Formstack

Formstack doesn’t just build forms, but a lot of invaluable work for its users. It allows you to get things done faster, turning all text and images you input into beautifully designed forms and digital documents that are easy to read. It can even customer signatures through its online forms and documents.

The best part is that you’ll never write a single line of code for all this, making Formstack a great Cognito forms alternative. But their pricing is higher than the majority of alternatives on this list. So think it well before going for it. Other than that, we can’t think of any reason to not support Formstack as one of the best Cognito forms alternatives.

Features:

  • Conditional logic: Personalize each form in Formstack using conditional logic.
  • High Security: Formstack employs security measures like encryption and 256-bit SSL to completely safeguard the collected data.
  • Compliance: Comes with HIPAA compliance.
  • A suite of apps: This simplifies your team’s workflows multi-folds. A big advantage for large organizations.
  • Advanced analytics: Advanced form analytics to find relevant patterns in the collected data.

Cost: Formstack doesn’t offer any free plan and starts at $50 per month when billed annually.

#7 Jotform

Jotform is one of those WordPress forms that you can use to embed forms by copying and pasting a code snippet. Apart from that, there are lots of customization and integration options available in this alternative to Cognito Forms.

Features:

  • Form Builder – Easy form creation using the drag-and-drop builder.
  • Templates – Ready to use form templates based on specific goals.
  • 3rd Party Integrations – Connect your site to email marketing tools using Jotform. Even integrations to CRMs, project management apps, and payment processors are available here.
  • Advanced Features – This alternative form builder lets users add signatures, make calculations, and even take pictures to upload in forms.
  • Share – Send these forms to users via email or social media and get a unique sharable link for it every time.

Cost: 5 forms and 100 submissions/month are free in Jotform. Post that, the paid plans start at $24/month.

#8 Wufoo

Another great Cognito forms alternative is Wufoo. Created in 2006, it’s a simple and minimalistic form builder that allows you to do things quickly. You can filter through Wufoo’s massive template library to find the right one for your business. Plus, set up this form on your first page in just a few clicks. Now that’s fast!

With Wufoo, you can create surveys, and quizzes, build contact, registration or payment forms, and more for all of your business needs.

Features:

  • A multitude of options: Just the variety of things you can do in Wufoo makes it one of the best WordPress forms.
  • Easy process: A handy drag and drop builder lets you start from scratch here.
  • Payment interactions: Wufoo connects to PayPal, Stripe, and other payment platforms.
  • Data sharing: With Wufoo, sharing data to platforms like Salesforce becomes super easy.
  • Analytics: They’re equipped with powerful analytics with a one-click report feature.

Cost: There’s a free plan for Wufoo and the paid one starts at $14 per month when billed annually.

#9 Typeform

Typeform is a popular form builder because of its user-friendly interface, clean design, and visually appealing templates. It’s a fantastic choice if you wish to create a good impression on your consumers with a well-designed survey.

The flowchart feature in Typeform is a standout, as it updates automatically as people proceed through your survey. This function also shows if people are leaving the survey in between, which is a piece of useful information.

Features:

  • Simplicity: With Typeform, making forms are fun. The reason? It’s simplicity.
  • Analytics: You’ll get state-of-the-art analytics options here which catch your attention.
  • Customer support: A fantastic customer support team that strives to give an unforgettable customer experience
  • Customization – Embed chat boxes, or create personalized, logical trajectories for your users. Basically, customize your forms the way you wish to. No restrictions.

Cost: Typeform has a free version and comes with a free trial for all their paid plans that start from $25 per month for annual billing.

#10 Formsite

Formsite is actually a software package that distinguishes well as a form builder. It’s a great tool for an enterprise or a small business that lets you create customized forms in quick and simple steps.

Expert features are in abundance on Formsite, and even though its UI is a little complex, it still is one of the best Cognito forms alternatives around.

Features:

  • Assistance: Their email support is top of the brass in all sense.
  • Customizable features: With Formsite, you get features for all your different needs, from business to casual. Ain’t that fantastic?
  • Smart drag and drop: You get to create a form by just dragging and dropping different items and features. No unnecessary buttons to press or steps to take.

Cost: Their paid plan starts from $25.24 per month on annual billing.

#11 Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a wonderful option if you’re trying to build technical forms on your website. It’s one of those Cognito forms alternatives that let you do advanced things like advanced calculations with your forms.

Features:

  • Calculations – It gives instant online estimates and calculates advanced product options which are unique for a form builder.
  • Quiz Maker – One of the few tools to create forms with quizzes that display scores.
  • Integrations – Easily connect all forms with popular third-party services.
  • Notifications – Send prompt email notifications to yourself or others.
  • Free Plan — There’s a free version of Formidable forms WordPress.org. So try that out before you go for the paid version.

Cost: The pricing starts at $199.43/year.

#12 Contact Form 7

It’s one of those WordPress forms that’s an ideal WordPress plugin for basic and flexible forms. It’s used for creating as well as managing multiple contact forms. With over 23 million downloads, the popularity of this form builder plug-in is pretty clear.

Features:

  • Multiple options: it has a range of free and premium options to choose from.
  • Field types: This effective plugin offers a great selection of field types for your forms.
  • It gets the job done: It might look basic, but Contact form 7 pretty much offers most features you’ll need in a form builder.

Cost: Free plugin with internal premium options.

Forms/Survey Best Practices

Forms are tricky. Why? It either charms people so much that they end up giving the details you need, or frustrates them so much that they end up leaving the form in between.

So, it’s crucial to design forms that people can relate to and acknowledge. For that, we’ve got 5 best practices delivered in an extremely crisp manner. Here we go:

Follow the brand image

If you and your team have put great effort and time into creating a strong brand image, it should reflect in your forms, too. Basically, that brand image should remain the same, whether it’s your website, emails, or forms. Otherwise, people get confused and don’t connect well.

So, when you get involved with choosing the pictures, colors, and fonts for a form, think about whether it goes in line with your brand image. If not, keep searching for a better option. No need to rush here.

Use different fields

No matter what your business is, visitors, come to your website for different things. A simple “Your comment” field on your forms won’t work in knowing what they’re up to. Design forms to generate fields based on the response to an initial question. This way, you keep the visitor’s attention and let them know their interests matter.

This practice works best especially when the questions people ask are falling into distinct categories. It’s a time-consuming process, no doubt. But one that yields handsome rewards!

Remove repetitions

Experience.

This word should hold importance to you while designing a form. Because streamlining the form-filling experience goes a long way in getting quality data collected. So, if you think you can remove a step or a field from your form, do it. It’ll make the entire process faster and much more engaging.

For something in return, many respondents will happily fill out forms, but everyone will appreciate it if the effort required to interact with such forms is kept to a minimum. It’s all about the experience, remember that.

The right tone

Just like the brand imagery, it’s always best to match your form’s tone with that in your website and social accounts. This uniformity allows respondents to connect with you better and on a deeper level. And that translates into better responses!

Specify the “hook”

Initially, the better the hook in your forms, the better the responses are, both in terms of quality and volume. This hook can be a reward, a one-on-one conversation, or a relevant piece of information. But whatever it is, it’s crucial to specify it right at the start. Don’t let the audience play a guessing game on this one.

When Are You Starting?

Yup, that’s what we’re asking before wrapping up. You were looking for Cognito forms alternatives, and we gave you 12 of them, plus the form designing best practices.

Now, the reading part is over. It’s time to choose one out of these options and start collecting quality data. So, go ahead, and do it.

One last thing though, if you never want to worry about anything related to surveys, go with SurveySparrow. We have a history of always satisfying our customers, big or small. You’ll be valued the same way. Talk to us, and let’s make your survey campaigns ridiculously successful!

Kate Williams

Content Marketer at SurveySparrow

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