HeyForm is an open-source form builder designed for small businesses, marketers, and product teams who need to collect data through interactive forms without relying on expensive SaaS platforms. It solves the problem of vendor lock-in and high costs by offering a self-hostable, customizable alternative to tools like Typeform and SurveyMonkey. Built with React and Node.js, HeyForm provides a full-stack solution with a visual form editor, real-time analytics, and extensible integrations.
The platform is structured as a monorepo with separate packages for the web app, server, form renderer, and utilities, enabling modular development. It supports deployment via one-click options on Railway, Zeabur, Sealos, and Alibaba Cloud, or self-hosting with Docker and PostgreSQL. The ecosystem includes native integrations with Zapier, Make.com, Google Sheets, Airtable, Stripe, Slack, and more, ensuring seamless data flow into existing workflows.
What You Get
- AI-Powered Form Generation - Generate complete forms in seconds using AI prompts, reducing manual setup time for surveys, lead capture, or feedback forms.
- Conditional Logic & Multiple Endings - Dynamically show or hide questions based on user responses and redirect users to different URLs or display custom outcomes after submission.
- Customizable Visual Themes - Fully brand your forms with custom fonts, colors, backgrounds, and layout controls, including support for custom CSS for advanced styling.
- Multi-Device Responsive Forms - Forms automatically adapt to mobile, tablet, and desktop screens, ensuring high completion rates across all devices.
- Built-in Analytics Dashboard - Track completion rates, drop-off points, and response trends with real-time visual analytics to optimize form performance.
- CSV Data Export & Webhook Support - Export all form submissions to CSV for offline analysis and trigger automated actions via webhooks to tools like Zapier, Make.com, or Slack.
- 30+ Native Integrations - Connect directly to Google Sheets, Airtable, Stripe, Mailchimp, Notion, Slack, HubSpot, Google Analytics, WordPress, and more without third-party middleware.
- One-Click Deployments - Instantly deploy HeyForm to Railway, Zeabur, Sealos, or Alibaba Cloud with pre-configured environments and automatic database setup.
- Open Source & Self-Hostable - Run HeyForm on your own server using Docker or local development; no data leaves your infrastructure, ensuring GDPR and HIPAA compliance readiness.
Common Use Cases
- Running a paid membership newsletter - A content creator uses HeyForm to build a gated sign-up form that integrates with Stripe and Mailchimp, collecting payments and subscriber data while keeping full control over the database.
- Collecting product feedback from beta users - A SaaS founder embeds a HeyForm survey on their product dashboard to gather user insights, using conditional logic to ask follow-up questions based on satisfaction scores.
- Managing job applications for a small HR team - An HR manager creates a multi-page job application form with file uploads, automated email confirmations, and integration to Google Sheets for candidate tracking.
- Gathering customer testimonials for a Shopify store - An e-commerce business uses HeyForm to build a post-purchase feedback form that triggers a PDF generation via PDFMonkey and auto-saves responses to Airtable.
Under The Hood
Architecture
- Monorepo structure with cleanly separated packages for server, web application, and form rendering engine, enabling independent development and deployment cycles
- Domain-driven design implemented through dedicated models that encapsulate form and submission logic, decoupled from HTTP and persistence concerns
- Event-driven background processing via BULL, with a message broker pattern that decouples HTTP requests from async workflows like email delivery and spam verification
- Modular rendering system that abstracts form schema interpretation from UI rendering, ensuring consistent behavior across web and embedded contexts
Tech Stack
- NestJS backend with Express and TypeScript, leveraging dependency injection and modular service layers
- React 19 frontend with i18n support, Tailwind CSS, and icon libraries for a cohesive UI experience
- MongoDB with Percona Server and KeyDB for caching and pub/sub, orchestrated via Docker Compose
- Monorepo managed by pnpm with shared types and utilities across packages, supported by multi-stage Docker builds and automated linting
- CI/CD-ready infrastructure with environment-aware configuration and health checks
Code Quality
- Extensive test coverage with snapshot and error assertions for core business logic and utilities
- Strong TypeScript enforcement across all layers, with shared interfaces ensuring type consistency between client and server
- Clear separation of concerns with well-defined boundaries between data processing, permissions, and infrastructure
- Robust error handling with user-friendly messages during validation and access control
- Comprehensive linting and formatting pipelines integrated into the build process, promoting maintainability
What Makes It Unique
- Real-time visual form builder that synchronizes frontend editing with backend schema generation without manual JSON mapping
- Unified component library that eliminates UI/UX drift between form design and submission interfaces
- Dynamic form field engine that treats block configurations as executable React components with built-in validation and localization
- Redis-backed session persistence enabling multi-device form completion without authentication
- Embedded analytics that capture user interaction patterns directly within the rendering layer
- Adaptive rendering primitives that enable seamless deployment across web, email, and mobile channels from a single source