I built a Typeform alternative because I was tired of paying $99 a month for ugly forms

I was about to renew our Typeform plan. $99 a month. For a single user. To collect 1,500 responses on a form that looked, frankly, like every other form on the internet in 2018.

I closed the tab.

There was a time when Typeform was the answer. Conversational forms, big serif type, smooth transitions — everyone copied it because it deserved to be copied. But somewhere between then and now, the product got expensive and the design stopped moving. Meanwhile every other form tool either looks like a 2008 wedding invitation (Google Forms) or a SaaS dashboard with the soul scraped out (the rest).

So I built coolform.

The brief I gave myself

Three rules:

1. Free. Not free-trial. Not "free if you don't actually use it." Free.
2. It has to look good without effort. No theme builders. No 14 sliders for border radius. The default has to be the right answer.
3. AI does the boring parts. Writing twelve survey questions is not creative work. The model can do that in ten seconds.

That's it. Everything else flows from those three.

What "looks good" actually means

Most form builders have a "themes" tab full of Bootstrap-era gradients and stock images of people pointing at laptops. I deleted that whole concept.

coolform ships with one set of typography (Instrument Serif for the display, Geist for the body, Geist Mono for the eyebrows). One color (cream on ink, a single lime accent). One layout (one question per screen, generous space, no logo watermark).

You don't pick a theme. You pick a form. The theme is already correct.

This is not a humblebrag — it's a constraint. I cannot draw. I cannot choose 16 colors that go together. So I picked one I trust and I removed the option to change it. The fewer choices the user has, the better the form looks. That's the whole trick.

The AI part

Here's the thing nobody admits about form builders: writing the questions is the hard part. The drag-and-drop is fine. The conditional logic is fine. The thing that takes you forty-five minutes is staring at an empty canvas trying to remember whether you should ask for company size before or after job title.

So: you type a sentence. "A 6-question feedback form for a B2B SaaS that just shipped a major redesign." Ten seconds later you have a form. Twelve questions. Right types. Right order. Welcome screen. Thank-you screen. You change two of them and ship it.

The model isn't doing magic. It's just removing the worst part of the job — the part where you sit there and pretend writing survey questions is some kind of art.

What I shipped in the first weekend

• AI form generation
• A clean editor with live preview
• Conditional logic (show this if they picked that)
• Public publishing with shareable links and embed snippets
• An analytics dashboard — views, starts, drop-off per question, daily timeline
• Email magic-link auth so people don't have to make another password

What I didn't ship: integrations, custom domains, branded subdomains, white-labeling, theme builders, paid plans, a marketing site full of testimonials.

That stuff comes when there's evidence anyone wants it. Until then, it's a distraction.

What I think about Typeform now

Typeform is still good. If you have $99 a month and you don't care about owning your design, use it. They've earned the moat.

But there's a whole class of people — indie builders, small teams, designers who'd rather die than ship a gradient — who've been quietly underserved for years. I built coolform for them. For us, I guess.

If that's you: it's free forever, there's no credit card, and the AI is already paid for. Make a form. See if it's the one you actually want to send.

— Nikhil