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Typeform is a Barcelona-based form builder that launched back in 2012 with a clear mission: “Make online forms a little more human.”
And they’ve done well – really well, with 200 employees and $52 million in funding.
But for all their experience with online forms (and boy, do they look awesome!), they’re a relative newcomer to quiz marketing. You can tell their focus from their tagline – ‘There’s a better way to ask’ and ‘You don’t want to make a boring form’.
Notice how there is no mention of quizzes?
They only offer basic quiz and poll tools – in addition to a survey. We’ll focus on these interactive formats – and leave off their form modules.
One of Typeform’s key strengths suits is their design and audience interface. You can tell that one of their founders comes from a web design background – their interactive content is beautiful, elegant, and fun to navigate.
And because they’ve been around for so long, they’ve also made it easy to connect and send data to dozens of marketing systems – they have one of the widest range of native integrations that we’ve ever seen. Seriously awesome. (Only LeadQuizzes and TryInteract come close in terms of native integrations.)
They have also put a lot of time creating a wide range of content templates (over 100!) that help new users get started with content similar to their use case.
However, their focus on form building has meant that their range of four types of quizzes, polls, and surveys is much more limited than their competitors in this space.
By comparison, Involve.me has six formats, Outgrow eight, and Riddle leads the pack with 15. It’s a good thing to keep in mind – a wider range of formats will give you more creative freedom for your quiz marketing campaigns.
Typeform has a great knowledge base and help documentation center – but only offers live chat support with their most expensive plan. That struck us as a bit unusual. Even as a new visitor, we couldn’t ask any questions.
If you think you’ll need a bit of help getting your quizzes up and running, you might want to check out some alternatives.
(The best quiz maker tools in terms of customer support we’ve seen are Riddle and Involve.me.)
Quiz Maker Review’s rating for Typeform:
- Range of quiz formats: ★★☆☆☆
- Customization options: ★★★★☆
- Lead generation: ★★★★★
- Data privacy: ★☆☆☆☆
- Pricing: ★★★★☆
- Overall: ★★★☆☆
Typeform: not GDPR-compliant
We love Typeform’s UI and lead generation approach.
But on privacy? Wow. Just… wow.
Typeform ranks up as one of the worst quiz maker tools for data privacy we’ve seen – up there with Youengage.me, Scoreapp, and Outgrow.
We were very (very!) surprised by what our data privacy analysis turned up.
Typeform was founded in Barcelona – and Typeform S.L. is a Spanish company. That’s a great start for complying with the EU’s GDPR (their data privacy regulation).
(Are you new to the GDPR? It affects any company showing content to EU visitors – no matter where your business is located. And the EU isn’t messing around – fines can reach up to 20 million euros or 4% of your business turnover.)
However, Typeform essentially then throws any potential compliance out the window with their privacy policy, where they state that they are sharing data with their U.S. entity:
“In this respect, by entering into the Service Terms and Conditions you accept that we seek the assistance of our affiliate TYPEFORM US LLC, having registered address at 370 Brannan Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 (United States of America). ”
– Typeform privacy policy
With the July, 2020 cancellation of the Privacy Shield agreement between the US and the EU, this raises a huge red flag – since they reserve the right to transfer data to the U.S., which is a violation of GDPR (at least at the moment).
Now, they do offer a link to a data processing agreement (DPA) on their site here: https://admin.typeform.com/to/dwk6gt/
But again, they let their side down because there is no DPA for customers to sign, only a link back to their privacy terms.
These two flaws might not be deal-breakers on their own, but Typeform’s embed code violates pretty much every single privacy law on the planet.
And it’s not just the GDPR. These days, there are a host of data privacy regulations – including:
- New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020
- Canada PIPEDA
- California’s CCPA
- Japan APPI
…with dozens more in the works.
Trackers – 11 loaded with quizzes
We initially found 11 scripts and trackers with our test Typeform quiz we embedded on our site:
Cookies – 72 loaded (!)
If you allow these, Typeform loads a total of 72 cookies by various scripts. (We think they are setting a record here.)
Sure, there are lots of analytics tracking going on – but check out all the advertising trackers like Google Ads and Adroll.
We’re very worried that you will open yourself up to data privacy lawsuits if you embed a Typeform quiz you create on your site.
(The only way around this? You would need to place your Typeform embedded quiz behind a strict cookie warning – and not load the Typeform code unless the user individually accepts all 72 Typeform cookies. Ouch.)
You can probably tell we’re big on data privacy at Quiz-Maker-Review. But even if you’re not worried about the GDPR or other privacy laws, bear in mind that all of these trackers and cookies enables Typeform to track and re-target your users.
By adding a Typeform embed on your website, you are giving them full access to your users. Ouch – part 2.
They claim that the cookies in their embed are not collecting personally identifiable information.
But that doesn’t seem likely.
They are loading trackers from clickbait ad network Outbrain, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
This means Typeform is most likely collecting personal data related to your Facebook or Twitter account and will be able to use that for re-targeting, especially by placing Outbrain ad pixels.
Plus, Typeform also states that they would be hosting your content on Amazon’s U.S. servers, which also makes them even more non-compliant from a GDPR perspective.
To sum it up: if you care about being GDPR-compliant, stay away from Typeform.
(It sounds harsh – and we’re BIG fans of their software, but we were very disappointed in their approach to data privacy.)
Typeform quiz types – reviewed
Okay – let’s dive in and explore the range of quiz formats included with a Typeform subscription. They currently feature just four types – quizzes, personality tests, a survey, and a poll.
Quizzes: 5/10
We’ll start with quizzes – by far the most popular format for quiz marketing and lead generations. Quizzes have right and wrong answers – and return a score based on the user’s subject knowledge.
Typeform has just two types of quizzes – and they’re both designed for advanced users. Be warned – Typeform’s quizzes are not for beginners.
- Classification
- Assessment
It’s a bit confusing but we think classification quizzes are their name for personality tests – so we’ll cover that in a separate section below.
Okay, let’s kick things off…
Typeform has a brilliant system for creating content – it’s all around question ‘blocks’. You can see how it works below – as the quiz creator, you’re given unrivalled flexibility in how your quiz is structured.
Want to add an explanation card after question 1 and before question 2? No problem.
What about collecting lead generation information throughout the quiz? Yup.
(That’s actually super powerful – you can ask for the quiz taker’s name early in the quiz, then personalize all subsequent questions. For example, let’s say ‘Bob’ is taking your quiz. For question 1, you ask ‘Hey, before we get started, what’s your name?’. You can then use that in future questions and results to boost engagement and conversions – “Nice work, Bob! You scored 8/10!”)
One other cool thing – instead of asking all the lead questions in a form at the end of the quiz, you can do it subtly through the entire quiz. That boosts overall opt-ins – because your quiz takers will have given all their data by the time they finish the quiz.
Now, let’s dive into quiz features – Typeform supports the following types of questions with right/wrong answers:
- Single choice
- Multiple choice
- Free text
We also like their explanation blocks – so you can show users why they got a question right or wrong. Combined with their logic controls, you could show people who correctly selected answer option A => explanation A, and everyone else => explanation B.
Typeform has an excellent range of customization options around quiz scoring and question formats. Check it out below – we liked how questions could be required or optional, as well as their flexible multiple-choice controls:
However, Typeform makes quiz scoring REALLY complicated.
Most quiz makers allow you to simply mark an option correct – and the quiz software adds a point to the user’s final results.
Typeform takes a different approach. They require quiz creators to use their ‘Calculator’ function to laboriously add points for each question.
That gives you a lot of flexibility (you could give different points for different answers) – but also makes the quiz creation process much, much more labor-intensive.
We estimate it would take an extra 20-30 minutes to configure and test this for a typical quiz with 8-15 questions.
We would have much preferred they use a standard ‘one point per correct answer’ scoring model as the default – and then let advanced users use their calculator for more flexible uses cases.
Typeform also supports logic jumps in all of their quizzes – so you could show a user different questions based on their quiz answers.
This is powerful – you can keep your quizzes hyper-relevant to each lead.
Let’s imagine you’re creating a quiz for cyber-security professionals to test their knowledge. You could start with some easy questions – if people get them right, you would direct them to a branch with more difficult questions. Cyber-security newbies could continue with the more basic questions.
That’s a better user experience – AND helps you better qualify and segment each quiz lead.
Check out how I modified their digital marketing quiz template – people who get question 1 correct are taken to question 4, all others go to question 2.
The last step of the quiz creation process is the results stage – where you get to show each quiz taker how they did.
Most quiz makers will let you create several different types of results – by score, you might want to segment users by 0-25%, 26-60%, and 61-100%.
This does a few things – it lets you craft result explanation text, redirects, and call to action buttons suitable for each result, instead of one size fits all.
For example, you could show someone who gets 80% in our cyber-security example: “You’re a cyber-security whiz! You’ve shown you know your http from your https – but don’t get cocky, you can always keep learning. Click <here> for our advanced cyber-security classes!”
Typeform allows this, along with a redirect button – but it’s pretty hard to find.
Only one quiz result
Typeform only creates one quiz result by default- that just shows the score and takes everyone to the same result. This lack of personalization means the end of the quiz will be anti-climatic to your users and could hurt conversions.
Basic social sharing
One last note about Typeform’s quizzes – their social sharing is pretty basic:
Social sharing is a big reason why quizzes work so well for marketing – so this was more than a bit surprising to us.
Typeform goes further, saying:
These buttons will let your respondents easily share a link to your tyepform on their social media accounts. It is not possible to edit these buttons, or change the URLs they point to.
Almost every other quiz maker we’ve reviewed supports a wider range of platforms – including WhatsApp and Messenger.
More importantly, Involve.me and Riddle.com let you customize everything about the social sharing message, with variables and custom URLs – so you can say “I just got <score> on <quiz name>! I’m a <quiz result>. How about you?”
Personality test: 2/10
Typeform is brilliant at forms – but we were seriously disappointed in their personality test.
We’re bonafide quiz geeks at Quiz Maker Review – even we found it difficult to set up their quiz like a personality test.
This is a pretty big weakness – because personality tests are some of the best converting lead generation and marketing tools around. Each personality test lets you ask each quiz taker a series of questions about their preferences. There are no right or wrong answers – instead, you show them the result that best matches their personality.
This is powerful stuff – ideal for product recommendations, recruitment, consulting, and loads more.
Every other quiz maker we reviewed uses a simple mapping structure.
Let’s say you were looking to qualify and segment visitors to our real estate site:
- You could ask “What’s the most important feature you’re looking for in a new home?”.
- If they answered ‘Lots of space’, you could give +1 point to the ‘Country living’ result. ‘Culture and lots of nightlife’ might get +1 for ‘Big city living’.
Typeform takes an entirely different approach – involving their calculator, logic jumps, and some tricky math.
They show how one client did it in their blog for their ‘What kind of beard are you?’ quiz:
It adds +1 each time an “Urban” personality type answer has been chosen
It adds +10 each time a “Traveler” answer has been chosen
It adds +100 each time an “Outdoors” answer has been chosen
It adds +1000 each time a “Badass” answer has been chosen
It adds +10000 each time a “Vintage” answer has been chosen
It doesn’t stop there – now you have to use logic jumps to show the right overall result. In this case:
- The “units” (+1) track ‘Urban’-related answers
- The “tens” (+10) track ‘Traveler’-related answers
- The “hundreds” (+100) track ‘Outdoors’-related answers
- The “thousands” (+1000) track ‘Badass’-related answers
- The “tens of thousands” (+10000) track ‘Vintage’-related answers.
Still not finished… You’d then set up logic jumps to work out which all of the 95 possible permutations result in each type.
This, frankly, is nuts.
Every other quiz maker we tested does this automatically – some better than others. But there is no reason why you should have to calculate this manually (as their client did on paper):
Typeform does so many things really well – especially their block-based quiz building system, very classy design, and excellent data integrations.
But they really should rethink their personality test approach – it adds a huge level of complexity to an otherwise straightforward process.
Survey: 9/10
Okay – after reviewing Typeform’s personality test module, we were ready for a change of pace – so we went straight into their survey format.
And let’s just get one thing clear – they crushed it.
Typeform’s survey tool is flexible to create, and fun for the audience to take – all in a much more user-friendly format than SurveyMonkey or any of the heavy hitters in this space.
Surveys are where Typeform’s block-based structure really shines.
You can create a wide range of question types – then pass all of that valuable user information to Google Sheets or any of their other wide range of integrations.
Some of the question types Typeform supports include:
- Short text
- Long text
- Image choice
- Multiple choice
- Opinion scale (e.g. “From 0 / very unlikely to 10 / very likely, how likely are you to use us?”)
- Rating (“How happy were you with our service today?”)
- Dropdown
Here are some example questions from one of Typeform’s surveys:
You can download all Typeform survey responses as a CSV or XLS file, or use their impressive range of integrations to send your survey data to Google Sheets or most common marketing and data tools.
Nice work on your survey module, Typeform!
Polls: 5/10
Like most quiz makers, Typeform offers a poll module as well. Opinion polls are useful both as gateways for lead generation campaigns – but also as quick-hit interactive content to engage your audience.
On the plus side, Typeform’s logic builder and flexible question types mean you quickly create a flexible series of questions about anything under the sun.
And we love Typeform’s question groups’ feature – you ask one overall question, then a quick series of follow-ups:
- For example, you could ask “To finish up, would you mind telling us how you think the current government doing on these issues?”.
- Then ask users to rate topics like the ‘Economy’, ‘Environment’, and the like from 1 star to five stars.
- Simple, quick, and easy.
However, Typeform has a serious flaw – they don’t ‘close the loop’ with their audience.
Surveys are designed as information collection tools – where users don’t expect anything besides a nice ‘thank you’ message at the end for participating.
Opinion polls are very different. People vote in them because they want to immediately see how their opinion ranks against the rest of the public. Think about it – if you vote in a ‘What was the best Star Wars movie?’ poll, you’ll want see how the rest of the internet voted as well.
Typeform completely ignores this element – and just shows a ‘Thank you – your data was sent perfectly’ message at the end of a poll. That’s very unsatisfying.
Contrast that with the innovative and engaging poll units from other tools we’ve reviewed – like Outgrow and Riddle. They give you lots of ways to give great feedback to your audience – such as 17% who somehow picked Phantom Menace (and were thankfully outvoted by the 43% who picked Empire Strikes Back).
Bottom line? If you’re looking to use polls as a key part of your quiz maker content strategy, we’d recommend against Typeform.
Typeform – platform features
Now let’s dive in a bit – and check out the back-end design and capabilities of Typeform’s quiz creator.
We’ll cover:
- User interface and ease of use
- Styling
- Data connections
- Sharing
- Publishing
- Statistics
User interface and ease of use
Typeform is an elegant, classy lead generation and survey tool. You can tell the founder comes from a web design background – in many areas, Typeform just feels ‘right’.
We like how they keep things nice and simple – you can create your quizzes in four easy steps: Create, Connect, Share, and Results.
And each step uses a lefthand menu to keep all the various options nice and organized.
We’ve already mentioned how it’s clear Typeform is a lead generation and survey tool first – and a quiz maker second.
It’s a bit like Bucket.io, in fact (but better) – who uses bucket quizzes and polls for the same use case.
Their intuitive design does not extend to their quizzes (especially their personality test) or polls.
But overall, it’s pretty impressive.
Styling
Typeform does a great job of giving each quiz creator a wide range of customization options for their quizzes.
Let’s start with templates – Typeform offers a robust set of templates for common use cases. They save people time – plus they give a great starting point for less graphically oriented creators.
Once you’ve picked your template, or if you start from scratch, you then get to choose from a good list of layouts and themes. Again, this helps you create a quiz that looks good – without needing to hire a designer.
And finally, once you’ve off to the races – Typeform also gives you finer levels of creative control with each option. For example, you can customize colors at the question, answer, buttons, and background level.
(Very nice job, Typeform!)
Enterprise or agency users – be cautious
Typeform focuses on the small business market and is lacking two key features – critical to any agency or higher-end publisher:
- No CSS editor
- No ability to upload your own fonts
The CSS editor is crucial for advanced customization, changing borders, buttons, hover states, and more to match perfectly in your website. Most other quiz makers offer this (like TryInteract, Riddle, and Outgrow) – we suspect Typeform chose not to, to keep laser-focused on their less tech-savvy audience.
Likewise, most companies have their own proprietary fonts. Typeform limits you to only Google Fonts – which is again good for their small business audience, but not ideal if you need that extra level of customization.
If using your own font or editing CSS is important for your needs, check out our other quiz maker reviews for other options.
Typeform: data connections
Connecting their quizzes with the most common email marketing tools out there is another Typeform strong suit.
They’ve got a big team, and they’ve been around for a while – you can see the payoff. At the time of our review, Typeform supports 66 different tools – ranging from MailChimp to Slack.
That’s the most of any tool – even beating out TryInteract.
The advantage to you? You can directly integrate and send all your quiz leads without any need for coders or developers.
One note – Typeform does limit integrations by plan. So for example, Hubspot is only available on their middle Professional plan – and Salesforce is a Premium plan feature.
Publishing and sharing
We really like how Typeform makes sharing and embedding quizzes.
You can share the link directly, convert your quiz to chat bot-style interface, or even have let people answer the first question in email (and then be redirected to your quiz).
Embedding is pretty slick too – you can choose from four options for lots of flexibility:
- Standard
- Full-page
- Pop-up
- Slider
(Their social sharing functionality is pretty basic though – you can read our review in our quiz review section.)
Statistics
We’re big fans of Typeform’s analytics module – it takes the Goldilocks approach of providing ‘just enough’ data to you as the quiz creator.
You start with the overall ‘Insights’ section, including key top-level performance stats and a question-by-question drop-off guide.
You can then move into a ‘Summary’ tab for a question-by-question breakdown, or check out individual quiz results.
(We’re a little skeptical of this last one – we love the idea, but storing individual quiz results and lead data this way means personal data will be stored on Typeform’s servers, which (as we mentioned back at the beginning) is a big GDPR and global privacy regulation risk.
Pricing
Typeform takes an interesting approach to pricing. Like most SaaS quiz maker companies, they have three pricing tiers – with different features for each.
All plans include caps on the numbers of responses and leads you can collect every month. This will be fine if you’re a small company – but larger companies or agencies should probably steer clear.
You can see Typeform’s small business and entrepreneur focus here – all three prices are within a narrow band (£28 to £55/month – or $35 to $70 USD).
That’s a good strategy – and has the benefits of being nice and clear to customers.
(By comparison, we really hate Qzzr’s pricing strategy – including a $10,000 month Enterprise plan. And don’t get us started about Bucket.io pricing.)
However, we weren’t fans of their trial plan – at all.
Sure, on the plus side, Typeform gives a very limited trial (capped at 100 responses) – but then, they prevent you from trying out any of the advanced features without paying first.
For example, we used one of their templates that already featured logic jumps and a custom thank you page. We could preview it – but not actually publish the final quiz without paying.
That’s a really poor user experience – especially as they showed us a message telling us what features we would need to turn off, but not how to do it. We found that super, super annoying as a potential customer.
Contrast that with every other quiz maker we reviewed – you sign up and get full access to the platform so you can make sure it satisfies your unique use case.
Typeform also limits customer support by plan, with no customer support for trial users, and live chat only with their top-end plan.
Quiz makers are complicated – especially helping out with data integration and connectivity issues.
Unless you’re super tech-savvy, we highly, highly recommend you consider other quiz builders that provide customer support all the way through. Riddle and Involve.me are two of our favorites for their fast, friendly customer support during our reviews.
Tyepform’s non-profit discount policy
We’re big fans of any quiz maker that makes it easier for non-profits, educators, and other worthwhile causes to use their software.
Riddle was one of the first – and now Typeform has joined the party, offering 25% off their monthly plans or 40% off of their annual options.
One nice touch? Typeform uses their own software to craft a slick ‘ask for a non-profit discount’ form complete with branching logic. Interested organizations can just apply, fill in their details, and upload their documentation (like a 503(c) form for US-based groups).
However, be warned – data privacy is as important for non-profit organizations as for other companies. We’re still very skeptical about Typeform’s claims to comply with the EU’s GDPR, California’s CCPA, and other global privacy policies.
Typeform – summary
Typeform has made a great name for itself for its highly customizable, highly connected lead generation and survey software.
However, they are let down by their lack of key features for polls and quizzes – especially their seriously confusing personality test.
Pick Typeform if:
- You want an easy to create lead form builder with templates and designs.
- You only want to focus on surveys and basic quizzes.
- You have good computer skills – you’ll be on your own unless you pick their most expensive plan.
Choose a different quiz maker if:
- You want a wide range of interactive content types – other quiz makers have 6, 8, or even 15 formats for more flexibility.
- You are concerned about data privacy and regulations like California’s CPPA and the EU’s GDPR.
- You need advanced customization – including custom fonts and CSS editing, to fully match your site and branding.
If you do decide to use Typeform, we highly, highly recommend you sign a data processing agreement (DPA) with them and get your privacy experts involved.
QMR’s overall rating for Typeform:
- Range of quiz formats: ★★☆☆☆
- Customization options: ★★★★☆
- Lead generation: ★★★★★
- Data privacy: ★☆☆☆☆
- Pricing: ★★★★☆
- Overall: ★★★☆☆
