A payment form builder that charges the right amount and keeps your fees visible

It is a form builder with a payment question: a card field (or PayPal button) that sits inside the form and must succeed before the response is accepted. The alternative, a form followed by a separate payment link, works, but it splits one transaction into two records you then match by hand, and some people never click through to pay.

Under the hood, the form builder is not the one moving money. A payment processor such as Stripe or PayPal takes the card, charges its own fee and settles the money into an account. The form builder's jobs are to work out the amount, show the processor's secure card field, and tie the successful payment to the answers. When you compare tools, you are really comparing how well they do those three jobs and what they charge for doing them.

Fewer than you might expect. Of the tools above, only Cognito Forms publishes its own percentage, and only on its two lower plans. Jotform, Tally, Fillout and Paperform each state on their own pages that they add nothing on top of the processor. Typeform's pricing and help pages list no Typeform fee on payments.

So the fee column is rarely where the money goes. The real costs are the plan price and its caps. Jotform's free plan stops at 10 payment submissions a month and disables forms when you hit it. Typeform's Basic plan includes payments but only 100 responses a month. Paperform's free plan is 30 submissions. If you expect 300 orders a month, work out which plan you actually need, not which one first mentions Stripe.

Stripe gives you an embedded card field (plus wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, where Stripe enables them for your account) and a dashboard for refunds and disputes. PayPal adds the option to pay from a PayPal balance, which some buyers prefer, at a higher US rate for PayPal Checkout. Many builders support only Stripe: Tally's help page, for example, describes Stripe only.

Currency is the other check. Zunoform's payment field charges in USD, EUR, GBP or INR. Typeform's help centre says its Stripe payment question does not support Indian rupees, because Indian regulations require a customer address on export payments. Zunoform's Stripe field can collect a billing name and address through Stripe's Address Element for exactly that case.

Four patterns cover nearly every form with payment. A fixed price suits a single product or a flat fee. Price by answer suits ticket types, sizes and service tiers, where each option carries its own price. Pay what you want suits donations. A deposit plus booking suits consultations and classes, where someone picks a time and pays part of the fee in the same submission.

Whatever the pattern, ask where the total is computed. If the browser adds up the price and sends a number to the server, that number can be edited by anyone who opens developer tools. On Zunoform, option prices, logic-driven add-ons, a percentage or fixed discount and a tax rate are all recomputed on the server from the published form at checkout, and the response is accepted only after the payment it references is confirmed with Stripe or PayPal.

Illustration: a workshop form asks for a ticket type. Standard is $120, Student is $60, and a Recording add-on adds $25. A respondent picks Student plus Recording, so the form shows $85. Apply a 10% discount set on the form and the total becomes $76.50. Stripe's fee on that payment is 2.9% of $76.50 plus 30¢, or $2.52, and $73.98 reaches your account. If the respondent edits the page to claim the price is $1, the server still charges $76.50 because it recalculates from your form, not from the browser.

PCI DSS is the card industry's security standard, and the PCI Security Standards Council says it applies to every entity that stores, processes or transmits cardholder data. Stripe describes compliance as shared: Stripe is certified as a Level 1 service provider, and you, as the business accepting payments, must accept cards in a compliant way and attest to it each year.

The simplest route is never to let card numbers touch your systems. Stripe's guide says Checkout and Elements collect card data in an iframe served from Stripe's domain, which lets merchants use the shortest self-assessment questionnaire, SAQ A. Zunoform's Stripe field uses Stripe's Payment Element, and PayPal approval happens in PayPal's own buttons, so card details are never stored with your form responses. What you should never do is ask for a card number in a text field, on any form builder.

Refunds happen in the processor, not in the form builder. In Stripe you open the payment, choose Refund payment, and can refund all or part of it. Stripe's documentation says the original processing fee is not returned, and the customer usually sees the credit 5 to 10 business days later. Build that into your refund policy and state the policy on the form.

Receipts need a little planning. Stripe can only email a receipt to an address it has for the payment. In Zunoform, put an email question (or a contact question with the email line on) anywhere before the payment question: the payer's address is then passed to Stripe with the payment, and Stripe emails its receipt for live payments. Without an earlier email question, Stripe has no address to send to. For a copy of the answers as well, turn on the respondent autoresponder; paid plans can also attach a PDF copy. You can always send a receipt manually from the Stripe dashboard.