Introduction to Formium
Even though forms power the modern web, they haven't really changed since the mid-2000s (and neither has the software used to make them). The drag-and-drop tools still can't handle complex business logic or even basic dynamic data. Hand-coded forms are still tedious and time-consuming, even with the latest JavaScript frameworks and libraries (believe us, we wrote them).
The result is wildly inefficient. You have a bunch of "in-app" forms coded by the engineering team that require JIRA tickets to change and then whatever the heck the marketing, support, and research teams use these days. SurveyMonkey? Airtable? TypeForm? Google Forms? You're not really sure at this point. Data is littered EVERYWHERE. The URLs are mess. The UI and UX are wildly inconsistent. Accessibility is an afterthought.
We need something else.
A fresh take on the internet's most dreaded feature. Architected for no-code and low-code, for modern JavaScript, for the Jamstack, for serverless, for the way we build apps today.
What is Formium?
Formium is an API-first, headless online form builder and automation tool for high performance teams. In addition to hosting forms and surveys on formium.io, developers can use the Formium to natively render their forms and surveys within their applications and websites using their existing React components.
How is it different than TypeForm?
Formium is purpose-built with the needs of developers in mind. We decoupled the traditional form builder into a few independent services:
- An online form building interface
- Best practices SDK's for developers to natively render forms inside their apps and websites
- A submission storage system, email service, and workflow automation tool
This allows for limitless customization and control, native performance, air-tight security, and better end-user experience while saving countless hours of manual, error-prone, hand coding forms and surveys.
Who uses Formium?
The whole squad. Formium can be used by anyone. However, we expect our early users to be developers and designers familiar with modern JavaScript frameworks as well as their technically savy coworkers. That being said, there is no actual reason why your grandma can't use Formium for her birthday invitations.
How does Formium work?
When you build a form on Formium.io with the drag-and-drop editor, you're not really building a form per-se. You're actually generating an abstract data structure (a.k.a "schema") that represents your form. This big blob of data contains all the choices, all the text, all the conditional logic, all the itty-bitty details of your form. Unlike other form builders, Formium enables you to use your schemas in your application or website to natively render your forms as if they were hand-coded, using whatever programming language or framework you want to.
If this sounds like a lot, it totally is. However, fear not! Unlike other "headless" CMS tools or services you may have used, we actually know exactly what you're going to do: You're going to render a form! It's going to have some inputs! It's probably going to have a submit button! So knowing all this and some more, we saved you a boat load of time and energy and built a helper library called @formium/react that takes care of the heavy lifting of interpreting your schemas. In fact, we actually use this package on forms.formium.io exactly as is to host a public version of every form on the platform.
Getting started
Developer Quickstarts
Quickstarts let you get started with Formium and React quickly. The following quickstarts are paired up with guides to help you start your project as fast as possible. Each one is based on the example found in the Formium repository.
