Forms and surveys decision
Tally
A small team can build a useful self-hosted form service covering core workflows (forms, submissions, file uploads, webhooks), but matching Tally’s polish, integrations catalogue and enterprise-grade compliance at scale is expensive—keep paying for full product features unless you only need a narrow workflow.
Visit website↗Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need — the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship.
What a replacement has to do
- Users create forms (rich blocks), visitors submit responses, server validates & stores submissions, optional file uploads and webhooks/integrations forward responses
What it still won’t have
- Polished, battle-tested editor UX and templates
- Large integrations catalogue and pre-built connectors
- Advanced analytics and drop-off analytics
- Enterprise features (data-retention controls, email verification, SLAs)
- Brand trust and scale (500k+ customers backing reliability)
What remains hard
- Compliance and regulation
As a Belgium-based (EU) company, we fully comply with GDPR requirements and store all form data in Europe.
- Brand trust
Powering 500,000+ teams at the world’s best companies
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a self-hosted form service using Next.js + React for the editor and renderer, Node.js API with Prisma/Postgres for storage, S3-compatible storage for file uploads, and Stripe for payments. Implement: block-based form editor (create/save JSON schema), public form renderer, submission API with server-side validation, conditional-logic and calculation engine, file upload handling to S3 with size/type checks, webhook/connector endpoint to forward submissions, and an admin UI to view/export submissions. Out of scope: WYSIWYG advanced theme marketplace, large-scale user migration tools. Include error handling, authentication for admin pages, input validation, automated tests (unit + integration), and deployment scripts (Docker + Terraform or Vercel + managed Postgres).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- Evidence score64
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time — so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productTally - Create Beautiful Forms for Free | Unlimited Forms & Submissions
- official pricingTally Pricing | Free Form Builder with Unlimited Responses
- official docsExplore all Tally features for free online forms and surveys
- open sourceLimeSurvey/LimeSurvey
- open sourceheyform/heyform
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
