The Jotform alternative where the server owns the truth
Jotform’s breadth is real — templates, widgets, approvals, PDFs, payments; few tools cover as much surface, and this page will not pretend otherwise. The comparison worth making is not a longer feature list, because side by side the lists look alike. It is about where the truth lives when a number, a document or an approval is disputed.
Underneath the feature list
Six differences in where the truth lives
Each one is a property of the architecture rather than a feature on a list — and each is checkable in behaviour before you commit anything.
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A calculated total
In Faldaro, every calculated value is recomputed on the server on every save and every read. A browser cannot fabricate a total, because nothing it sends is trusted as one — the number in the record is the engine’s, not the page’s.
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A payment
The server prices the submitted answers itself; the payment request has no field an amount could even ride in. Anything sold — a file, a ticket — is released only once the processor confirms settlement, never on the browser’s say-so.
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A published form
Publishing creates an immutable version, and every submission keeps the exact definition it was filled against, forever. Editing a live form can never reinterpret the answers already collected under it.
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The audit trail
Append-only because the database refuses updates and deletes on it — not because the application promises to behave. That distinction is what a dispute, an auditor or a regulator actually turns on.
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A change you are afraid of
Named regression cases re-run through the real engine before you publish: if a change would move a value someone pinned down, you find out before your submitters do.
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A partner organisation
Not a shared login — an organisation tree with isolation enforced by row-level security in PostgreSQL. Share a form with a partner and their submissions stay theirs, yours stay yours, and the database itself is what says so.
Every mechanism above is spelled out in full on the security page, and the category-wide comparison lives on why Faldaro.
Switching
Rebuild from the PDF you already print
Many forms began life as a paper or PDF form. That document is the fastest way back out: the agent rebuilds it as a draft, and your history follows as records.
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1 Recreate the form
Upload the PDF the form was built to replace and the agent turns it into a working, editable draft — or describe the form and it builds one. Logic, calculations and the workflow are wired in the same conversation, and nothing publishes until you say so.
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2 Import the history
A CSV export of your submissions imports directly: columns map to your fields by header, and every imported record is marked as imported in the audit log. Notifications, integrations and reference numbers stay quiet — history arrives as records, not as events.
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3 Point the world at the new link
Public links are tokenised and rotatable, payment collection works from day one, and the workflow starts carrying new submissions immediately — the imported ones sit in whatever state you gave them.
Fair questions
Jotform has approvals, PDFs and payments too. What is actually different?
On a feature list, less than either vendor would like to admit — which is why this page does not argue the list. The difference is where the truth lives: totals recomputed server-side rather than trusted from the page, payment amounts priced from the answers rather than sent by the browser, published versions that are immutable, and an audit log the database itself refuses to rewrite. Those are properties of the architecture, and they are what matters the day a number or an approval is disputed.
How does the pricing shape differ?
Form-builder tiers usually meter the artifacts — how many forms you may keep, how many submissions arrive in a month. Faldaro meters neither: unlimited forms on every plan including the free one, and submissions never throttled or billed by count. You pay for your team’s seats and for capabilities, never for your audience. Compare the two pricing pages directly; ours states every number the deployment actually enforces.
Does Faldaro do e-signatures?
Yes, on the Team plan and above. A workflow move requests signatures: each signer gets their own tokenised link, the document is frozen and fingerprinted before anyone signs, the evidence — what was shown, what happened, when, from where — is recorded in rows the application role cannot delete, and the signed PDF carries a certificate page.
Can I bring my existing submissions across?
Yes. Export them as CSV and import the file: columns map to your fields by header, workflow states come across where you have mapped them, and every imported record is marked as imported in the audit log. The import replays nothing — no notifications, no integrations, no freshly minted reference numbers.
Put the truth on the server
The free plan includes unlimited forms, ten thousand submissions a month and the same engine as every paid plan.
No card required.