Build a multipage Airtable form with flexible layout
I've seen so many posts here about the challenges of building forms in Airtable, especially when you need multiple pages or a more custom layout. Let me bring you the tool that will solve all your design headaches: Plumsail Forms.
In minutes, you’ll have a professional, integrated form that creates and updates records in Airtable. You simply connect Plumsail to your Airtable base, then drag and drop fields onto your form. From there, you can customize the layout exactly the way you want it.
Here's a look at what you can do with Plumsail Forms:
📖 Multipage Forms: Create a smooth user experience by breaking up long forms into multiple, manageable pages.
🧱 Flexible Layouts: Build complex designs using Grids with multiple columns. You can precisely control the field layout, stack fields together, and make your forms look exactly how you want them to.
📁Organize content: Use Tabs or Accordions to organize your form and keep it neat.
🎨Custom Styling: Fully brand your forms with a theme designer and custom CSS. Add logos and images for a professional look, and even include HTML to show a file preview or embed a map.
Beyond just design, Plumsail Forms helps you build dynamic forms for your Airtable base. You can show and hide fields depending on what users enter, add conditional validation, create cascading dropdowns, and much more.
If you have any questions or need help with the form setup, feel free to comment below!
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Hey @MargeM thanks for sharing!! This is clearly a must for every Airtable power user.
I usually use Fillout to achieve this. I think it would be great if you could share some of the differences Plusmail vs. Fillout to understand more!
Also, I’d like to see the user experience of creating records for multiple tables. In Fillout that is handled through parent and child (popup) forms. Sometimes this experience can get too clunky. Does Plusmail work differently? I might just need to play around with it on my side.
Yes, Fillout is a great tool! And Plumsail has features that Fillout lacks, and vice versa.
I would say Plumsail is more suitable for projects with complex workflows that require a high level of customization and logic, as it supports JavaScript. It will also be a good tool for designing simple forms but structured with a multi-column form layout.
It took me some time to compile the key difference list and keep it short.
I would appreciate it if you could correct me if I’ve missed something in regards to Fillout or essential feature for Airtable users.
Feature
Plumsail
Fillout
Form Layouts
Multi-step forms, tabs, accordions, and complex grids
Multi-page forms and collapsible sections
Styling
Pre-built themes, custom themes and custom CSS. Customizable sharing pages. All available on all plans.
Pre-built themes are available on the free plan. Custom themes and custom CSS are available on paid plans.
Supported fields
Supports advanced Airtable field types like linked records, attachments, and barcodes with scanner option.
All fields are supported
Advanced Conditional Logic
Supports any level of advanced logic and behavior. with JavaScript
Offers a dynamic, no-code approach to conditional logic
Linked records
Allows for dynamic filtering of linked records using custom JavaScript.
Dynamic filtering and search with no code.
Payments
Can be connected to payment processors like Stripe via automation platforms/JavaScript
Integration with Stripe
Advanced fields and control
Signature, Captcha, Likert Scale, Barcode scanner, Data table, HTML(image, files, maps, video embedding)
Signature, Captcha, Images, sub forms, native scheduling integrations
Regarding creating records for multiple tables, we are currently working on a control similar to the one we have for SharePoint forms: List or Library control. No due dates so far, but this control will allow users to work with data from other tables on the same form in a table view. What do you think? Will it be more convenient?
Thanks, @MargeM, for listing all of those differences in a comprehensive chart!
Are you saying that your “dynamic filtering of linked records” and your “conditional logic” can ONLY be controlled through JavaScript? You don’t offer a no-code way of doing those things?
If this is correct, then unfortunately, your product would not work for my clients because 100% of my clients are non-coders, and have no interest in learning JavaScript to create a form.
So I will continue to use & promote Fillout on my end (which has proven to be an essentially flawless product), but it’s excellent to know that you have created a robust Airtable form product for JavaScript coders & developers!
I do agree with Scott on the fact that Fillout seems simple. However, a feature that no 3rd party form provider that I know of is working on (I build workarounds for this using n8n forms) is the ability to treat questions as records rather than fields. Yes, I think very very very clucky workarounds could be thought of using Fillout, but that hasn’t been fully solved yet.
i.e. each answer should be a new record rather than populate a specific field.
Just in case you might want to look into it. Ideally this would require no coding :D
Yes, not everyone wants to use JavaScript, but some do 🤓 I'll keep you posted if we decide to make some logic available in the user interface.
And, @Mike_AutomaticN , thank you for the feedback regarding the questions per record. If you could share your use case as well, that would be amazing.
@MargeM Thanks for the detailed comparison of Plumsail Forms and Fillout! Here’s a nice example of Plumsail Forms with Airtable (https://plumsail.com/blog/business-cases-yearbook-software-order-forms/) that shows how some people like using JS to get things working just the way they want
@MargeM and @cherry_1 ,
I think that you guys are also going to have a difficult time competing with Fillout on price, since they offer so much more than PlumSail Forms — and it’s for 100% free. No storage limits, 1000 form submissions per month, and so much more for free. But it’s always great to have competition in the marketplace!
Best, Scott
@ScottWorld 100% agree, it’s always good to have different tools around. It pushes products to improve and gives people options depending on their goals.
On pricing, it really depends on what you need. Fillout’s free plan is nice, but it comes with feature limits. Plumsail’s free plan doesn’t limit features, and submissions per month don’t help much if the features you need aren’t available.
Plumsail also has a document generation extension that works directly with Airtable and Plumsail Forms, so you can cover a few different needs in one place. It’s just great to have a choice :)
Ah, good to know that ALL of your features are included on your free plan! That’s very cool!
Note that Fillout lets you create custom PDF files for free, but it sounds like your document generation extension might be more powerful?
On that line, did you ever try setting up a PDF generation “integration” on fillout and submitting forms via API? I guess PDFs get still created? If so, that is a very nice solution for autoamtically generating PDFs with only one click from Airtable. Right? E.g. have a dynamic formula that will do the webhook call which in turns runs the automation (e.g. Make) that does the API call? @ScottWorld
There might be better solutions, but this also solves the issue where Page Designer does not allow for automatic download.
