Search for intake form software and the results split down the middle without saying so. Half of them are clinical products where the form is one screen inside a practice management system that also holds appointments, insurance details and clinical notes. The other half are general form builders with an intake template attached. Both answer the phrase honestly. They are not substitutes for each other, and the price difference between them is roughly an order of magnitude.
Working out which half applies is the first decision, and it is usually settled by one question: does the intake record have to end up inside a system that already holds the client's file. If it does, the choice is constrained by what that system connects to. If it does not, the field is wide open, and the decision turns on a small number of checks that vendor comparison pages rarely lead with.
What intake actually has to do
Intake is not a survey. The difference matters because most form tools are built for surveys, and survey tools optimise for the shape of the aggregate rather than the fate of the individual.
A survey wants five hundred responses so somebody can read a chart. Nobody replies to a respondent. An intake form produces records that each need a decision, a reply, and often a document in return. One response matters. Losing one is a problem, and answering one late is a problem. The aggregate is close to irrelevant.
That difference drives everything that follows. It means the useful questions are about what happens to a single submission after it arrives, not about question types, logic branching or theming. A tool that builds a beautiful form and then hands the team a spreadsheet of rows has solved the visible tenth of the work.
Intake also tends to arrive with attachments, to contain information the organisation has a legal duty to protect, and to be handled by more than one person. Each of those three facts eliminates a different set of otherwise capable tools, which is why the checks below are ordered the way they are.
Attachments, and the conditions attached to them
This is the check that most often ends a shortlist, and it is easy to run in ten minutes.
Almost every intake process needs a file: identity documents, a portfolio, an insurance card, a signed consent, a previous report. What varies wildly is the conditions under which a tool will accept one. Microsoft Forms is the clearest illustration, because the restriction is stated plainly in the documentation rather than buried in a plan table. File upload questions are only available when the form is set to allow responses from people inside the organisation, either everyone in it or named individuals. A form open to the public, which is what external intake means, cannot carry a file upload question. Uploaded files land in the form author's OneDrive for individual forms, or in the SharePoint site's document library for group forms.
That is not a defect. It is a design decision that fits internal processes and rules the product out of external intake with attachments. Knowing it on day one is worth more than any feature comparison.
Three things to check on any candidate tool.
Whether the respondent needs an account. Requiring a sign in is the single largest cause of abandoned intake, because the person filling in the form is usually doing it once and under mild duress. Where the tool requires an account only for the file upload step, the effect is the same.
The per file and per submission ceiling. A photograph taken on a current phone is larger than most free tiers expect, and a person asked to attach three of them will hit a limit that was set for scanned text.
Where the file goes and who can reach it. A link that expires, a folder only the form owner can open, or a storage location inside one person's personal drive all create the same problem later, when somebody else has to handle the case.
How the tools charge, and what the number counts
Pricing pages for form tools count different things, which makes the headline figures hard to compare. Below are the figures shown on each vendor's own pricing page, checked on 23 September 2026. Treat them as a snapshot, because these pages change.
| Tool | Entry paid plan shown | What the plan counts | Users included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jotform | Bronze, 34 USD per month billed annually | 25 forms, 1,000 monthly submissions | 1, described as an individual plan |
| Jotform | Gold, 99 USD per month billed annually | 100 forms, 10,000 monthly submissions | 1, described as an individual plan |
| Typeform | Basic, 28 USD per month billed annually | 100 responses per month | 1 |
| Typeform | Business, 91 USD per month billed annually | 10,000 responses per month | 5 |
| Microsoft Forms | Included with Microsoft 365 business and education plans | Up to 400 forms, up to 5,000,000 responses per form | Per Microsoft 365 licence |
| Google Forms | Included with a personal Google account and with Google Workspace | Response limits are not published | Per Workspace licence |
The column that decides most team purchases is the last one. On Jotform's published pricing, the Starter, Bronze, Silver and Gold plans are each labelled as a one user individual plan, with multiuser access appearing at the Enterprise tier, which is quoted rather than listed. Typeform lists one user on Basic, three on Plus and five on Business, with six or more directed to Enterprise. Where a form is built by one person and handled by four, seat counting rather than submission counting is the constraint that bites, and it is invisible if the comparison only looks at the monthly figure.
Microsoft Forms is worth reading against its own published limits rather than against a price. Organisational accounts can create up to 400 forms and a form can receive up to 5,000,000 responses, while a form created under a Microsoft personal account is capped at 200 responses on a free account and 1,000 on a paid one. Above 50,000 responses, Microsoft states that all responses can still be exported as a .csv but that summary charts, viewing individual responses from the Forms site, printing and summary sharing links are not supported.
Confidentiality, and who can read a submission
Intake records are personal records, and the question a comparison table almost never asks is which colleague can read them.
Most form tools answer at the level of the form. A person is either an editor of the form, in which case they see every response to it, or they are not, in which case they see none. That works for a survey and fails for intake, because intake teams routinely need one person to handle their own cases without reading everybody else's. Where that requirement exists, it eliminates a large part of the market before price is discussed.
Sector rules narrow it further. In the United States, handling protected health information means the tool has to be willing to sign a business associate agreement and has to be configured accordingly. On Jotform's published pricing, HIPAA enabled features are shown as available on the Gold and Enterprise plans and unavailable on Starter, Bronze and Silver, which means a clinical intake requirement sets the entry price rather than the feature list. Comparable rules exist elsewhere for legal, financial and education records, and they are the reason clinical intake products bundle the form with the rest of the practice system instead of selling it separately.
Two smaller checks belong here. Whether the tool can avoid emailing the submission content to a distribution list, since a notification containing the full answers defeats every access control that follows it. And whether there is any record of who opened a submission, which matters the first time somebody asks what happened to their information.
The last check in this group is the one nobody runs until they need it: how the data leaves. Every tool exports answers as a spreadsheet. Far fewer export the attachments with the rows still pointing at them, and fewer still export the correspondence. An intake archive that arrives as a table of answers, a folder of files named by a random identifier, and no record of what was said to whom is not an archive of the process. Ask for a full export during the trial, open what comes back, and see whether a single case can be reconstructed from it. That answer also tells the team what will be available two years later if a case is disputed, which is exactly when intake records are asked for.
The part that decides the workload
Everything above is about getting the submission safely into the building. The work is what happens next, and this is where general purpose form tools and intake specific products separate most sharply.
An intake submission needs four things that a row in a table does not provide. One named person responsible for it at any moment, so that two colleagues do not reply and nobody assumes somebody else did. A state, so that waiting on documents is distinguishable from waiting on a decision. The correspondence attached to the record, so the reply is readable by the team rather than sitting in one person's sent folder. And a way to see what has gone quiet, which is the failure nobody notices because nothing appears on screen.
Clinical intake products supply all four because they sit on top of a patient record. General form builders usually supply none, and teams bridge the gap with a spreadsheet, a shared mailbox, or a connector that copies rows into a project tool. Those bridges work, and each one adds a place where the same fact is stored twice.
A third option sits between the two: a form tool that keeps ownership, state and replies on the response itself, so nothing is copied anywhere. It does not carry a clinical record and is not a substitute for one. For intake that is not clinical, which covers most legal, agency, nonprofit, education and support intake, it removes the bridge rather than automating it. What a tool does after the submission arrives is the part worth testing, and it is quicker to judge by working through a real submission end to end than by reading a comparison grid.
What to check first
Run three tests on the shortlist before looking at price. Submit the form as an outside member of the public with a file attached and see whether it is accepted without an account. Ask whether one colleague can be given their own cases without being given everyone else's. Then find where the reply to a submission is stored, and whether a second person can read it. A tool that passes all three is worth pricing, and the real cost shows up in what each plan includes per person rather than per response, whether that is Halict or anything else left on the shortlist.
Q1. What is intake form software?
The phrase covers two different products. One is clinical patient intake, where the form is a screen inside a practice management system that also holds appointments and clinical records. The other is a general form tool used to collect new client, applicant or case information. They are priced very differently and are not substitutes, so the first question is whether the record has to land inside an existing client system.
Q2. Is an intake form different from a survey form?
Yes, and the difference drives the choice. A survey is judged on the aggregate and nobody replies to an individual respondent. An intake submission is a record that needs an owner, a decision and usually a reply, so losing or delaying one is a real failure. Survey tools optimise for charts, which is the wrong half of the problem.
Q3. Can Microsoft Forms be used for external intake with file uploads?
Microsoft's documentation states that file upload questions are only available when the form is set to allow responses from people inside the organisation, either everyone or named individuals. A form open to the public therefore cannot include a file upload question. Uploaded files are stored in the form author's OneDrive for individual forms and in the SharePoint site's document library for group forms.
Q4. What does intake form software cost?
It depends on what the plan counts. As shown on the vendors' own pricing pages on 23 September 2026, Jotform's Bronze plan is 34 USD per month billed annually for 25 forms and 1,000 monthly submissions, and Typeform's Basic plan is 28 USD per month billed annually for 100 responses per month. Microsoft Forms is included with Microsoft 365 plans, and Google Forms is included with a personal Google account and with Google Workspace.
Q5. Why do seat counts matter more than submission limits?
Because intake is usually built by one person and handled by several. Jotform's published pricing labels Starter, Bronze, Silver and Gold as one user individual plans, with multiuser access at the quoted Enterprise tier. Typeform lists one user on Basic, three on Plus and five on Business. A plan that allows thousands of submissions but one login does not fit a team of four.
Q6. Does intake form software need to be HIPAA compliant?
Only where protected health information is involved, and then the tool must be willing to sign a business associate agreement and be configured for it. Jotform's pricing page shows HIPAA enabled features as available on Gold and Enterprise and unavailable on the lower plans, so a clinical requirement effectively sets the entry price rather than the feature list.
Q7. What should be tested before choosing?
Three things, all before price. Submit the form from outside the organisation with a file attached and see whether it goes through without an account. Ask whether a colleague can be given their own cases without seeing everybody else's. Then find where the reply to a submission is kept, and check whether a second person can read it when the sender is away.