Love Notion? You Might Still Prefer Tally for Surveys
A hands-on comparison of two popular survey builders and when you should use each one.
As a Data Scientist, Researcher, or Business owner, you are reliant on data to gain deeper insights into what people demand.
One of the most traditional methods for gathering data is through a survey or a short form.
So there was a lot of time for the development of many digital survey tools, moving away from pen and paper surveys into the digital space, where you can reach millions of people.
Thus, there are numerous survey tools available, such as Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, or LimeSurvey, to name a few.
However, if you are not an expert in conducting a survey, already the first step, selecting a tool that matches your needs, becomes a challenge.
The problem is that many tools promise simplicity but either lack flexibility, don’t integrate well into existing workflows, or produce results that feel underwhelming.
When this happens, you spend time designing surveys that don’t give you the insights you actually need, leaving you frustrated and questioning whether it was worth the effort at all.
That’s precisely what happened when I first tried to create a survey for my upcoming newsletter.
My first thought was “Let’s keep it simple”, according to the KISS (Keep it simple, stupid) principle and use the new Notion forms feature.
But perhaps Notion Forms is too simple?
For this reason, I also delved deeper into form creation with Tally, which feels like Notion but is solely focused on form and survey fields.
From these points, the question arises: if both tools feel and look similar, which one should I use? Does it even make a difference? And when should I use which tool, and when should I not?
If you are also interested in these questions and how I implemented the same two surveys using both tools, keep reading.
Notion Forms: The Simplest Path
To this day, I'm sure that almost everybody has heard about Notion at least once or twice in their life.
The popular all-in-one workspace that combines note-taking, task management, databases, and collaboration tools into a flexible, customizable platform.
And now it also includes forms, which can be integrated smoothly into the Notion ecosystem.
This allowed me to build the following form for my newsletter that you can inspect here:
Let’s have a look at the final result of the Notion form for AI Toolkits.
While building this form, I experienced the following strengths and limitations.
Strength of Notion forms
Simplicity: A Notion form can be built in minutes. While experience in Notion can be helpful, they are not required. Even a Notion beginner can build Notion forms with zero prior knowledge.
Notion Ecosystem: If you are already using Notion in your life, Notion Forms integrates perfectly into your workflows, keeping everything in one place.
Integrating non-Notion users: If you want to allow colleagues or friends to add suggestions, ideas, or any other data to your Notion databases without giving them a full tutorial on how to use Notion, Notion forms are perfect for quick submissions.
Limitations of Notion Forms:
Limited features: One of Notion's biggest strengths also becomes one of its weaknesses.
Notion forms are often too simple, resulting in missing features such as dividing forms into several sections or adding additional text for explanations or subheadings.
I addressed these problems by adding coloured, numbered headings that signalled the section and placing the actual question underneath to provide more structure to the form.
However, nothing more than that is possible regarding structuring the layout of Notion forms.
Price: I never expected to write this about Notion, but yes, price is a problem in Notion forms.
Even for basic changes, such as the submission button colour, text type, or confirmation title, it is necessary to upgrade to a paid account, which further limits the small set of features.
Tally: Like Notion, But Supercharged
Tally feels like Notion from the first minute, just optimised for forms and surveys. You know how to structure Notion pages, you can apply the same knowledge to structure your Tally forms.
The young no-code, web-based form and survey builder was founded in 2020 by Marie Martens and Filip Minev in Belgium.
One of the main reasons for the rapid growth might be the copying of the intuitive Notion workflow combined with their generous freemium model.
It tried out their survey builder and created exactly the same form with Tally. Convince yourself of the results of the final Tally AIToolkits Survey.
During the creation of this survey, I also noted down the strengths and weaknesses of the Tally builder.
Strengths of Tally
Rich collection of features: There is almost no single item that you cannot add to Tally forms and surveys, ranging from standard drop-down and multiple-choice menus to payment and signature fields.
The Tally builder allows you to embed additional content between questions for context (images, videos, audio, or any other web content). It also provides conditional logic, which enables you to display different follow-up questions to the user based on their previous answers. A feature that incurs a cost in Notion forms.
However, compared to even more advanced survey builders, such as Typeform, the features are still limited; however, these tools also cost significantly more every month.
Freemium: Tally's freemium service is exceptionally generous. You only need to upgrade to a higher business plan if you consistently have high volume or file uploads, and when I say high, I mean this, as shown in the following image.
Limitations of Tallys
Branding: As you may have already noticed in the image above of the Tally form, the Tally branding is compulsory on all forms by default. You will need to upgrade to the Pro plan (around €20–29/month) to remove it.
Collaboration: The free plan lacks team workspaces and collaboration capabilities. Individual users manage their own forms and surveys. Teams must upgrade to Pro.
Otherwise, it was difficult for me to identify the limitations of Tally from the perspective of private and small projects, which ultimately convinced me to become a user.
So, Which One Should You Use?
Even so, I am convinced of Tally’s features; Notion also has its benefits and use cases.
You should consider Notion if you already organise many parts of the project there and want to keep everything in one place.
Adding more tools only brings additional complexity and maintenance efforts, which nobody wants.
Notion forms turn out especially helpful if you would like to collect ideas, suggestions, or other data from people whom you don’t want to grant access to your Notion databases or who are not as familiar with Notion.
Otherwise, if you do not organise many parts of the project in Notion, I would always consider Tally due to its freemium plan and relatively large selection of features and possibilities for designing forms and surveys.
So, what are your experiences with building forms and surveys? What tools did you use in the past? Let’s make a small collection.
Curious for more?
Besides this blog on Medium, I am starting my Newsletter AI Toolkits. If you are curious about how to integrate AI more effectively into your life, allowing you to have more time for things that truly matter to you, take a look.
