No-Code vs. Low-Code vs. Custom-Code: Which Form Builder is Right for Your Business?

Online forms are everywhere these days. You can think of a simple contact form, but without really noticing you’re filling out forms more often than you think. For example a checkout form to enter your address, or if a company asks for your feedback after your purchase. Or more advanced forms in the health and finance sector.

As a business that uses forms, you want the highest completion rates, so you get valuable data from your forms. Form builders can help you with that so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to online forms.

Choosing the right form builder for your business can greatly impact your workflow efficiency and scalability. It depends on your needs, technical expertise, and customization requirements. To help you with this we will dive into three major options for your form builder choice: no-code, low-code, and custom-code form solutions.

---

No-Code vs. Low-Code vs. Custom-Code

First, let’s get an understanding of the different form alternatives. In this article we’ll look at this from the technical expertise perspective. We can differentiate 3 main options:

• No-code form tool: a form tool that lets you build and share forms without any coding required;
• Low-code form tool: a form tool with the basics of a no-code form tool, but enables you to extend that with low-code integrations for data connections;
• Custom-code form tool: a form tool that offers all modern form features, which gets integrated into your own application using modern programming languages.

Let’s dive a little deeper into each type of form solution.

No-Code Form Builder

No-code form builders are ideal for non-technical users, as they are often offered as SaaS (Software as a Service). That means they require minimal setup and you can easily start building forms, without coding anything. Therefore, it’s perfect for small businesses or teams that need a quick solution without diving into complex configurations.

The downsides of such no-code form platforms can be the lack of customization and flexibility. Also an important aspect is that data gets stored on the infrastructure of the form tool. Therefore, you don’t have full control over your collected form data.

Examples of no-code form tools are Typeform, Google Forms and SurveyMonkey. Pricing depends on the required form features and the amount of forms, questions and/or results. Therefore, when you are a heavy user, a no-code form builder can become very expensive.

Low-Code Form Builder

As a low-code form builder in this article, we mean a form tool that you can customize and extend. Primarily in terms of data usage these low-code form tools help you to connect your data to other services. This gives you much more flexibility in using your data.

Nowadays such connections can be set up relatively easy with webhooks. The downside of that is that you often need a so-called “automation tool” to be the glue between your form data and your actual connected services. These automation tools, like Make and Zapier, take care of receiving the data and sending it to the right places where you need it. This still doesn’t require heavy coding, but you do need some technical knowledge to configure this all correctly.

No-code form tools, like Typeform and JotForm, often can help you with such automations as well, but this is always a higher-tiered (and thus higher-priced) feature.

Custom-Code Form Builder

A really different approach for a form builder is a custom-code form builder. Custom-code form tools offer the basics for form building, but on top of that complete customization, flexibility and data control. This makes it ideal for more advanced and tailored purposes. You can think of custom question types, custom designs and direct storage of data in your own database. Also, when your form tool needs to be integrated into an existing code base, like an application, the custom-code form solution is the way to go.

This does require heavy code development, possibly resulting in longer development time and thus higher costs during the implementation.

There aren’t many custom-code form builders. If you’re looking for a custom-code form builder, you can probably choose between SurveyJS, Form.io and Tripetto FormBuilder SDK.

---

Which Form Builder is Right for Your Business?

Now that we know the different form builder alternatives, we can have a look what’s best for your business. On a top-level you’ll have to look at these 3 aspects when investigating the best form solution:

1. Feature requirements: do the no-code or low-code form builders offer you all features that you need? You can think of question types, design, user interaction, etc.
2. Data control: is data control an important issue for your case? Do you collect sensitive data that you don’t want to store at a third party?
3. Technical expertise level: do you have the knowledge and/or the developers to do custom coding and development?

If you are looking for a simple and straightforward solution without the need for data control, then go for a no-code form builder.

If you are looking for good forms with automations to use the collected data in your other online services, then choose a low-code form solution, possibly in combination with an automation tool.

Or, if you are looking for total customization, self-hosting data and/or deep integration in your application, then a custom-code form tool is the right fit for you.

---

Tripetto: An All-In-One Form Solution

Tripetto is a form builder that can help you on all 3 code levels. It shares the same technical core to offer solutions from no-code to custom-code. Let’s first have a look at the shared features of the Tripetto form tool:

• Drag-and-drop form builder: build forms like flowcharts with a drag-and-drop storyboard, giving you active insights in the form’s flows;
• Conditional logic: the storyboard helps you to add conditional logic, using respondent’s answers;
• Question types: use different question types to interact with your respondents. From a simple input field to a multi-select dropdown and drag-and-drop ranking;
• Calculator: instantly perform calculations inside your forms, even using the respondent’s answers in real time;
• Form layouts: show your forms in 3 different layouts:
  • The autoscroll form layout presents your questions in a one-by-one layout, giving it a modern feeling and optimal focus for inputs;
  • The chat form layout presents your questions and collected answers in a typical chat layout, with customizable speech balloons;
  • The classic form layout presents your questions in a more traditional layout, with multiple largely typical input fields at a time.
• Customization: customize your form’s design with fonts, colors and more settings.

These features are available in all versions that Tripetto offers.

Tripetto as No-Code Form Builder

As no-code form builder, Tripetto comes in 2 versions. You can use one or the other depending on if you’re going to use your forms in WordPress. WordPress is the world’s leading website builder and Tripetto comes with a dedicated plugin for that.

If you’re indeed using WordPress, the Tripetto WordPress plugin is your choice! You can simply install it in your WordPress site and from there on out build unlimited forms, without any coding. You can use your forms as standalone forms, or embed them in your site with various WordPress embed options.

If you’re not using WordPress, the Tripetto studio is for you! You build your forms on Tripetto’s infrastructure at tripetto.app and you can share your forms with your audience with a simple direct link.

Tripetto as Low-Code Form Builder

As we’ve discussed earlier in this article, a no-code form builder can often be used as a low-code form builder as well. That also applies to Tripetto.

Both the Tripetto WordPress plugin and Tripetto studio can be extended with automations using webhooks. Just connect it to your favorite automation tool and you have all power to use your collected form data in your other online services. Think of Google Sheets, Notion, Mailchimp and Zendesk.

Tripetto as Custom-Code Form Builder

Tripetto’s custom-code form builder is quite unique: it offers all mentioned features in 3 SDK components, enabling you to integrate a full form solution in your own application and even extend it with your own custom requirements.

Tripetto’s FormBuilder SDK contains these 3 components:

• Form Builder: integrate the drag-and-drop form builder right into your own application, enabling your users to build forms;
• Form Runners: integrate a form runner to execute your forms. Stock runners include the autoscroll, chat and classic layout. It’s even possible to develop your own custom runner if you need a different look and feel.
• Form Blocks: all stock question types from Tripetto are included. On top of that you can develop your own custom blocks, extending the SDK to your own needs.

All data in the FormBuilder SDK is in your own hands. This makes it ideal for collecting privacy sensitive data.

All components of the FormBuilder SDK are available in popular frameworks such as JavaScript, React and Angular.

---

Conclusion

In this article we have touched on 3 different types of form builders from a coders’ persepctive. No-code form builders are ideal for quick form building when data control is not a priority. Next step are low-code form builders, where you can automate your collected data to make your data much more valuable. Custom-code form builders are the way to go when you need maximum control over the implementation and data.

Tripetto is a unique form tool that can help you with all 3. It provides all essential features that you search for in a form solution. For no-code and low-code you can use the Tripetto studio and Tripetto WordPress plugin. As custom-code solution you can use the Tripetto FormBuilder SDK.

You can start for free with the Tripetto studio and Tripetto WordPress plugin. To get a feeling with the FormBuilder SDK, check out the SDK demo with coding examples and the SDK documentation.