Publishing without filling the form on a phone
The most frequent and most expensive trap: most responses come from a phone, while the form was designed on a large screen. A path that feels short while seated becomes endless standing up.
Create a form with Thingsform, step by step
Six steps between the need and a link you can paste into an email. None of them requires writing a line of code.
Allow twenty minutes for a ten-field form, including the phone test.
This guide follows the whole path: open the builder, choose between the editor and the assistant, place the fields, set what appears depending on answers, publish, then process the first submission. It is for someone who has never built a form on the platform and wants something usable the same day — not a tour of the options.
The steps
- 01
Open the builder
Sign in, then go to My forms. That screen lists your existing forms and is where you start a new one. If one day you look for where to create something else — a base, a CRM, an automation — the apps catalogue is the entry point to remember rather than the sidebar.
- 02
Choose between the editor and the AI assistant
Two paths lead to the same place. The visual editor suits you when you already know which fields to place and in what order: you position them one by one and control everything. The AI assistant suits you when you start from a need rather than a list — describe it in one full sentence ("a workshop signup form with name, email and time slot") and you get a first structure to correct. The second is not a degraded version of the first: it is a starting point, which you then refine in the editor.
The AI assistant is included from the Free plan for forms: creation, improvement and response analysis.
- 03
Place the fields and name them for the respondent
Pick the type in the side panel — short text, email, select, date, checkbox — and drag it into the central area. What matters is not the placing, which takes three seconds, but the wording: write the question the way you would ask it aloud. "Full name" rather than "field 1", "Your request" rather than "comment". Add validation as you go, while the field is in front of you.
- 04
Set the conditional logic
Select the field or section to condition, then set the rule: if the respondent picks "Quote request", show "Estimated budget". That is what separates a hundred-field form nobody finishes from one showing fifteen at a time. Set rules only on what genuinely depends on a previous answer — conditioning by reflex produces an unpredictable path, harder to fix than a linear form.
- 05
Publish, then take the link or the embed code
Publishing gives you two outputs: a public link, to paste into an email or behind a QR code, and an embed code to display the form inside a page of your own site. Before sending anything out, mail yourself the link and fill the form on a phone, standing up, the way the person concerned will. That is where lists too long to scroll and an off-screen submit button show up. Ten minutes here save you discovering a missing field after two hundred responses.
- 06
Process the first response
Submissions land in the form results, with the volume received, the completion rate and response times. A collection that stops there stays a table nobody rereads: create a task from the first response, or wire an automation "new submission → task and notification". That step, not publishing, is what turns a form into tracked work.
What most often goes wrong
Three costly mistakes, rarely visible before the first review.
Making every field required
A form where nothing is optional is not filled better: it is filled carelessly. Respondents invent a value to reach the next screen, and you collect false data rather than empty cells — which at least are visible.
Leaving a vague confirmation message
"Thanks" leaves the respondent unsure what happens next, and generates the follow-ups you wanted to avoid. Say what comes next: "We will get back to you within 48 hours."
The modules involved
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to code to create a form?
No. Fields are placed by drag-and-drop and conditional logic is set in the same interface, through rules of the form "if this answer, then this field". Code only comes in if you choose to embed the form in your own site, and then it is a matter of pasting a provided snippet, not writing one.
How long does a first form take?
About twenty minutes for ten fields, including the phone test. The AI assistant shortens the setup but not the review, which remains the part that decides how good the result is.
Can the form be displayed on my own site?
Yes. Publishing generates an embed code alongside the public link: the form then appears inside your page, under your domain, and responses keep landing in your results.
Which plan is needed to create forms?
From the Free plan, which covers six forms and a hundred responses per month, AI assistant included for creation and analysis. Higher plans lift those volumes and open the assistant to the other apps.
To go further
Building a form with AIBuilding a form with AIDescribe what you need to collect in a sentence, get a first structure, then correct it — faster than a blank page, provided you know what to review.Digitising a quality auditThe gain is not swapping paper for a screen. It is ending the visit with the report sent and the actions assigned — instead of a stack to re-key.