Best way to create fantastic forms
November 30, 2012 7:21 AM

I need to create a web form to gather information. In an ideal world, the service would create a hosted URL, people would fill out the form, when submitted, the form would automatically be emailed to 3 selected addresses, and there would be an option for the submitter to either save to pdf or print. Oh, and it should be free. Does this exist?

Essentially, the forms are work orders. There will be a max of 10 per month.

I know and love Woofu, but it doesn't email the form, which isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, but the free version only gives 3 reports per month, and that is a major problem.

I suppose I can set up something that needs to be embedded in a wordpress site. Plug-in suggestions?

How would you do this if you were me?
posted by cessair to Computers & Internet (5 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
I suppose I can set up something that needs to be embedded in a wordpress site. Plug-in suggestions?

I would 100% do this with Gravity Forms which can gracefully manage all different kinds if forms including "if persona answers Yes to this question, show them this other question" branching logic stuff. It isn't free but it's the best $39 you can spend on a WP site IMHO. Optionally, you could try it with Contact Form 7.
posted by DarlingBri at 7:40 AM on November 30, 2012


This is probably 5 lines of rails or php, but first you (or I for that matter) would have to learn rails or (shudder) php.

Oh, you wanted a useful answer? Um...here's a useful looking mashable link: http://mashable.com/2012/02/16/web-form-builders/

FormAssembly will set you back 5c / result (and they promise not to charge you for any spam) so that'll cost you a whole 50c / month. Sometimes it's worth paying for a service...
posted by pharm at 7:41 AM on November 30, 2012


I use Formsite.com a lot for this exact type of thing. It's great. 10 submissions per month is their cutoff from free to paid, so hooray.
posted by iamkimiam at 8:10 AM on November 30, 2012


Totally not what you want, but just in case it somehow fits, Google Docs can make forms, with branching logic etc. The catch is that the answers aren't emailed to you, but collected into a spreadsheet. It being Google Docs, you could easily share that with multiple people, but I don't know of any way to notify someone that an extra line's been added.

Failing that, I second Gravity Forms. It's fantastic, and there's even a PDF generator plugin for it.
posted by Magnakai at 8:56 AM on November 30, 2012


QuestionPro (there is a free version - max of 10 questions) will email people after a form is submitted.
posted by acridrabbit at 11:29 AM on November 30, 2012


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