Tally is a genuinely useful tool for getting forms up quickly, and its free tier has earned it a loyal following. But if you're running a high-growth team where lead generation and conversion optimization are core priorities, you've probably already hit the ceiling. The analytics just aren't there.
There's no field-level drop-off tracking. No native conversion rate reporting by traffic source. No lead scoring tied to submission data. If you want to understand why your form is underperforming, you're exporting CSVs manually and piecing together the story yourself. That's not a workflow built for speed.
For teams that treat their forms as a critical part of the funnel rather than a passive data collection tool, this gap matters. A lot. The good news: there are strong alternatives, and choosing the right one doesn't have to be a guessing game.
This article covers seven actionable strategies for evaluating and switching to a Tally forms alternative with analytics built for performance. You'll learn what analytics features actually matter, how to audit your current form setup, how to run a real parallel test before committing, and how to migrate without losing the conversion learnings you've already built up. By the end, you'll have a clear framework for making a smarter platform decision and getting more from your forms from day one.
1. Audit What Tally's Analytics Actually Can't Do
The Challenge It Solves
Before you can make a confident case for switching platforms, you need to clearly document what you're missing. Many teams move away from Tally because something "feels off" about their form performance, but they haven't systematically mapped the analytics gaps. Without that audit, you'll struggle to evaluate alternatives objectively or build internal alignment around a migration.
The Strategy Explained
Per Tally's own documentation, the platform is built around simplicity. That's a feature for many users, but it means analytics are intentionally limited. There's no native field-level drop-off tracking, no conversion reporting segmented by traffic source, and no lead scoring connected to submission data. Commonly reported by users in Tally's community forums, teams that want deeper insight typically resort to embedding forms on pages instrumented with Google Analytics, then manually cross-referencing page-level data with exported CSV responses. That creates reporting lag and limits real-time decision-making.
Your audit should produce a concrete list of analytics capabilities you need but currently lack. Think of this list as your decision scorecard for every alternative you evaluate.
Implementation Steps
1. List every question your team currently can't answer about form performance: Where do users drop off? Which traffic sources convert best? What's the completion rate by device type?
2. Document your current workarounds: Are you exporting CSVs weekly? Using a separate analytics tool to approximate form behavior? Note the time cost of each workaround.
3. Rank your analytics needs by business impact: Field-level drop-off data might be more valuable than device segmentation for your specific funnel. Prioritize accordingly.
4. Create a one-page requirements brief that you'll use to evaluate each alternative platform against your documented needs.
Pro Tips
Involve your sales or revenue operations team in this audit. They often have strong opinions about what submission data they wish they had, and their input helps you evaluate lead qualification analytics features you might otherwise overlook. The audit also becomes a useful artifact for getting budget approval if you need it.
2. Prioritize Form Platforms with Native Drop-Off and Completion Tracking
The Challenge It Solves
Most teams know their form isn't converting as well as it should. What they don't know is exactly where the problem lives. Is it the first field? A specific question in step three? The submit button itself? Without field-level drop-off tracking, you're guessing. And guessing is expensive when your forms are the primary entry point for leads.
The Strategy Explained
Field-level drop-off analysis is one of the most widely accepted principles in conversion rate optimization. Teams that track where users abandon can identify friction points that would otherwise go completely unnoticed. A question that seems innocuous to your team might be the exact moment a prospect decides it's not worth their time.
The key distinction when evaluating alternatives is whether this capability is native or requires a third-party workaround. Some platforms offer drop-off tracking only through integrations with tools like Hotjar or Google Tag Manager, which adds setup complexity and potential data gaps. You want a platform where completion tracking is built in, accessible without developer involvement, and reported in a format your team can act on quickly.
For a deeper look at what form analytics tools should cover, the Orbit AI guide on form analytics and tracking tools breaks down the full spectrum of what high-growth teams should expect from their platform.
Implementation Steps
1. During any platform trial, navigate directly to the analytics dashboard and look for field-level reporting without configuring any integrations first.
2. Test the platform with a multi-step form that mirrors your most important lead capture flow. Check whether the platform shows completion rates per step, not just overall.
3. Verify that drop-off data updates in real time or near real time, not just in daily or weekly batch reports.
Pro Tips
Look for platforms that visualize drop-off data, not just report it numerically. A visual funnel that shows where users fall off across a multi-step form makes it dramatically easier to prioritize which fields to test or remove first.
3. Use Lead Qualification Analytics to Filter Signal from Noise
The Challenge It Solves
For B2B and lead generation teams, raw submission volume is a vanity metric. A form that receives hundreds of responses a week might be generating almost no qualified pipeline if the wrong audience is filling it out. The problem isn't just the form design. It's the absence of analytics that connect submission data to lead quality.
The Strategy Explained
The most sophisticated form platforms don't just collect answers. They help you understand which answers indicate a strong prospect. When form analytics are connected to lead scoring, you can see the distribution of lead quality across your submissions, identify which form variants or traffic sources bring in your best leads, and build follow-up workflows that prioritize accordingly.
High-growth B2B teams often discover, once they have this visibility, that a meaningful portion of their submissions don't meet their ideal customer profile criteria. That insight shapes both form design decisions and downstream sales workflows. For example, adding a qualifying question about company size or budget range can dramatically shift the composition of your pipeline, but only if you have analytics that show you the before and after.
Orbit AI is built specifically around this use case. Its AI-powered lead qualification capabilities connect form responses to lead scoring in real time, giving teams a layer of analytics that pure form builders simply don't offer. The Orbit AI guide on qualifying leads with forms and the companion piece on improving lead quality cover the strategic approach in detail.
Implementation Steps
1. Define your ICP criteria in concrete, form-answerable terms: company size, role, use case, budget range, or any other qualifier your sales team uses to prioritize outreach.
2. Evaluate whether each platform alternative can score or tag submissions based on response values, either natively or through a straightforward integration.
3. Look for platforms that surface lead quality data in the analytics dashboard, not just in individual response records.
Pro Tips
When testing a new platform, run your qualification logic on a sample of historical Tally responses first. This gives you a baseline for what "good" looks like before you go live, so you can measure whether the new platform is actually improving lead quality or just changing the reporting format.
4. Evaluate Conversion Rate Reporting Before You Commit to a Platform
The Challenge It Solves
Not all form platforms report conversion rates the same way, and the differences matter more than most teams realize. Some platforms calculate conversion rate based on form views. Others use unique visitors. Some include partial completions. If you don't understand how a platform defines and reports conversion, you can't meaningfully compare performance across platforms or set accurate benchmarks.
The Strategy Explained
Conversion rates for lead capture forms vary widely depending on form length, design, and traffic source, which is why platform-native conversion reporting is more reliable than page-level analytics alone. What you want from a form platform is conversion reporting that gives you enough context to act on the numbers: source-level breakdowns that show which channels drive the highest-quality completions, device segmentation that reveals whether mobile users are converting at a different rate than desktop users, and time-based trends that help you spot seasonal patterns or the impact of specific campaigns.
The Orbit AI resource on form analytics and optimization outlines the specific metrics worth tracking and how to interpret them in the context of a lead generation funnel.
During any platform evaluation, ask specifically how conversion rate is calculated and where that data lives in the dashboard. If the answer requires navigating to a separate analytics tool or exporting data to find it, that's a meaningful friction point worth factoring into your decision.
Implementation Steps
1. Ask each platform's sales or support team directly: "How do you define and calculate form conversion rate, and where can I see it in the dashboard?"
2. During your trial, check whether conversion data is segmented by traffic source, device type, and time period without requiring custom configuration.
3. Verify that the platform can distinguish between unique visitors and total views when calculating conversion, so your numbers aren't inflated by repeat sessions.
Pro Tips
Set up a simple test form during your trial period and drive a small amount of known traffic to it from two different sources. Then check whether the platform accurately attributes and segments those conversions. This quick test reveals more about a platform's reporting quality than any feature checklist will.
5. Test Alternatives with a Real Campaign Before Migrating Fully
The Challenge It Solves
Feature comparisons and trial accounts only tell you so much. The most reliable way to evaluate a Tally alternative is to run your highest-traffic form on the new platform in parallel with your existing setup. Without a real test under real conditions, you're making a platform decision based on demos and documentation rather than actual performance data.
The Strategy Explained
A parallel test is straightforward in concept: you recreate your most important form on the alternative platform, drive a defined portion of your traffic to it, and measure performance against your current baseline over a set time period. The goal isn't just to confirm that the new platform works. It's to generate enough data to build a confident internal case for switching.
The test works best when you define success criteria before you start. What conversion rate improvement would justify the migration effort? What lead quality threshold would you need to see? Having those criteria documented in advance prevents the evaluation from becoming subjective or dragging on indefinitely.
Implementation Steps
1. Choose the form that represents your highest-traffic, highest-stakes lead capture scenario. This gives you the most data in the shortest time and makes the test results most meaningful.
2. Recreate the form on the alternative platform as closely as possible, including field order, copy, and any conditional logic. Differences in form design will confound your results.
3. Define a traffic split and a minimum test duration before you start. A 50/50 split over two to four weeks typically generates enough data for a meaningful comparison, depending on your traffic volume.
4. Document your success criteria upfront: conversion rate, lead quality score distribution, and any qualitative signals from your sales team about the leads generated.
5. At the end of the test period, compile results into a one-page summary that makes the case for or against migration. This becomes your internal alignment document.
Pro Tips
Don't run the parallel test during an atypical traffic period, like a major campaign launch or a seasonal spike. You want baseline conditions so the test results are generalizable. If a major campaign is coming up, either complete the test before it starts or wait until after.
6. Match Your Analytics Needs to the Right Alternative Platform
The Challenge It Solves
The approved alternatives to Tally each have different analytics strengths, and choosing the wrong one means either over-engineering your stack or ending up with the same gaps you started with. A side-by-side comparison mapped against your specific needs prevents both outcomes.
The Strategy Explained
Here's how the approved alternatives stack up across the dimensions that matter most for analytics-focused teams:
Typeform: Typeform's conversational form format is excellent for engagement, and analytics are available on paid plans. However, entry-tier plans have limited analytics depth, and field-level drop-off reporting requires higher-tier subscriptions. It's a strong choice for teams that prioritize user experience and can invest in a mid-tier or higher plan, but it's not the most analytics-forward option out of the box.
Jotform: Jotform offers a broad feature set including basic analytics and a wide library of form templates. It handles high form volume well and integrates with many downstream tools. That said, its analytics depth is more oriented toward response volume and basic completion tracking than toward conversion optimization or lead qualification. Teams that need deep funnel analytics may find it underwhelming. For a direct comparison, the Jotform alternative with AI guide covers where modern platforms pull ahead.
Paperform: Paperform has strong design flexibility and offers some analytics capabilities. It's a good fit for teams that want visually polished forms with moderate analytics needs. For teams whose primary requirement is deep conversion reporting or lead scoring, it's not the most purpose-built option.
Form Stack: Form Stack is the most enterprise-oriented option on this list, with more robust analytics, compliance features, and workflow automation. It's well-suited for larger teams with complex data requirements. The trade-off is that it can feel heavy for smaller or faster-moving teams, and the pricing reflects its enterprise positioning.
Orbit AI: Built specifically for high-growth teams focused on conversion optimization and lead qualification, Orbit AI is the most analytics-forward option on this list. Native drop-off tracking, AI-powered lead qualification, and conversion reporting are core to the platform, not add-ons. For teams whose primary use case is lead generation and funnel optimization, it closes the gaps that Tally leaves open without requiring a complex enterprise implementation.
Implementation Steps
1. Take the requirements brief you created in Strategy 1 and score each platform against your top five analytics needs.
2. Eliminate any platform that can't meet your top two non-negotiable requirements without significant workarounds.
3. For the remaining platforms, compare pricing against the analytics tier you'd actually need, not just the entry plan.
Pro Tips
Don't evaluate platforms based on their maximum feature set. Evaluate them based on what's available at the plan level you'd realistically use. A platform with impressive enterprise analytics that are locked behind a plan you can't justify is effectively the same as a platform without those features.
7. Build a Migration Plan That Preserves Historical Form Data
The Challenge It Solves
Switching platforms without a structured migration plan means losing the conversion learnings embedded in your historical data. Your Tally responses contain patterns, your current form structures reflect decisions made over time, and your existing conversion baselines are the benchmark against which you'll measure your new platform's performance. Migrating without preserving that context makes it harder to know whether you're actually improving.
The Strategy Explained
A good migration plan has three phases: data preservation, form recreation, and baseline establishment. Each phase has a distinct goal, and skipping any one of them creates gaps that are difficult to recover from later.
Data preservation means exporting your Tally response data before you shut down any forms, documenting your current form structures including field order, conditional logic, and any scoring or routing rules, and storing that information somewhere your team can reference it going forward.
Form recreation means rebuilding your top-performing forms on the new platform as accurately as possible, then validating that the logic, field behavior, and submission routing all work correctly before you go live.
Baseline establishment means defining your current conversion metrics clearly before you switch, so you have a meaningful benchmark to compare against once the new platform is live. Without this, you won't know whether changes in performance are due to the platform, the form design, or external factors. Tracking form submission data accurately from day one on the new platform is essential for making that comparison meaningful.
Implementation Steps
1. Export all Tally response data to CSV or your preferred format. Store it in a shared location your team can access, organized by form name and date range.
2. Document each form you plan to migrate: field names, field types, conditional logic rules, and any integrations connected to it. A simple spreadsheet works well for this.
3. Calculate your current baseline metrics for each form: completion rate, conversion rate, and average time to completion if available. Record these before you switch.
4. Recreate your highest-priority forms first, validate them with a small internal test, then move to lower-priority forms in a second wave.
5. After going live on the new platform, set a 30-day checkpoint to compare performance against your documented baseline and identify any unexpected gaps.
Pro Tips
Treat the migration as an opportunity to audit your form portfolio, not just replicate it. Before recreating every form from Tally, review which ones are actually generating meaningful traffic and leads. This is a good moment to retire forms that have outlived their purpose and focus your migration energy on the ones that matter most.
Putting It All Together
Switching form platforms is a real investment of time and attention, but staying on a platform that limits your analytics visibility costs you more in the long run. Every week you can't see where users drop off, which sources convert, or which submissions actually match your ICP is a week of optimization opportunity lost.
The seven strategies in this article give you a clear path forward. Start with an honest audit of what Tally can't show you. Use that audit as your evaluation scorecard. Prioritize platforms with native drop-off tracking and conversion reporting. Connect form analytics to lead qualification so you're measuring quality, not just volume. Run a real parallel test before you commit. Choose the platform that matches your actual analytics needs, not the one with the longest feature list. And migrate with a plan that preserves what you've already learned.
For high-growth teams focused on lead generation and conversion optimization, the right platform doesn't just collect responses. It helps you understand them, act on them, and continuously improve the forms that drive your pipeline.
Orbit AI is built specifically for teams that need both beautiful, conversion-optimized forms and the analytics depth to keep improving them. From native drop-off tracking to AI-powered lead qualification, it closes the gaps that Tally leaves open without requiring a complex setup or a developer to get started.
Your forms are one of the highest-leverage points in your funnel. Make sure you can actually see what's happening inside them. Start building free forms today and see how intelligent form design can elevate your conversion strategy from day one.
