Limiting typeform responses from the same person

@Lisastory - i don’t mean to sound contrarian here, but why does it need to be on Typeform’s side? 

Yes it would be great if they had a switch that said “so you want multiple entries by a person?ip address? email? or not?” so that we could toggle it on or off. 

But for all the stuff that i have created for my own forms and for my clients, in many cases, we require multiple entries to the same form - ie a maturity matrix self-assessment that is taken every 3 months in the same quiz. The business case there requires multiple entries

Where there are clients who want restrictions on completing the form, we look at the various possible ways that people are arriving at the form to determine how to restrict access or restrict multiple access - one method is to have an ‘entry form’ that asks for email and then using API/webhook check to see if the email entered is already in an external data source - if it is, route the user to a form that says ‘sorry’ or if allowed to proceed, takes them to the next typeform in the series. 

are your users a ‘member’ of a community or course on your site that they need to log into and then take a quiz? wouldn’t it be better to have the access TO the typeform restricted at the source?

These are all use cases that exist and Typeform’s current model, from what i can see, is to capture the data when the user hits ‘submit’ - until then it can’t tell anything as it is NOT receiving the data about the user to do any validation 

I have this ‘philosophical argument’ with my clients all the time - we are operating in an ecosystem of point functionality apps (just look at your phone) and we’ve got to figure out the appropriate tools to use at each point in the business process we are trying to instantiate. Typeform is never going to be everything to everybody so i think it is up to use as users/creators to figure out if and how to use Typeform as it is, in our own ecosystems. 

I am in agreement with you that this would be a great feature if it shows up in Typeform, don’t get me wrong… i just don’t think it is incumbent on Typeform to address all the possible technical wants that we have (and i have a long list for Typeform lol) 

des

Hi there, this question was posed 11 months ago, is there a fix to the issue? I want to prevent the same individual from responding to the typeform more than once. I am asking the user to enter both their name and email address. Can the typeform logic look up for the email address against the currently added email in the database and prevent the user from proceeding as said in the previous post.

@SocialCommittee - just a thought: while Typeform (natively) can’t stop someone from filling in the form multiple times, you could connect the form to a google sheet and have all the submissions recorded there as well as in typeform. 

once the data is in the google sheet you can set up your analytics to only take into consideration the first entry by a given email address and to delete all subsequent entries into the table. 

just a thought

des

This feature is absolutely a Typeform responsibility. They are presently making money out of bots or people giving out fake responses. Its a simple feature where they can use atleast an email check or combination with IP address to prevent the same person to submit response. A toggle button to enable or disable this functionality at a survey level will empower businesses to use this feature according to their needs. If it is left to the user to code a basic functionality like this, the user can hire any coder to build the entire survey from scratch. The logic you presented, unfortunately, defies the fundamental reason to use a saas product like Typeform, to offload survey work to apps like typeform without the need to code. 

Hi @john.desborough ,

Not  sure if the logic is a bit difficult to understand . 
 

If I embed the form in the website I can definitely build more sophisticated solution around typeform or I may build a survey solution from scratch . Typeform surveys can be distributed via emails or social media posts too . Who gets to click the link is not a responsibility of typeform just like who clicks a link is not a responsibility of social media companies .The fact that anyone can click the form  is the fundamental requirement of surveys . Social media companies have put a lot of effort to ensure links are not malicious and spammers are booted out as much as possible . Instagram even has a feature to check if your follower accounts are spam accounts and enable you to remove them . 
 

The reason typeform does not have this simple feature of stopping duplicated response from same email is to profit from bots who can automate sending hundreds of responses and finishing up the monthly quota of paid subscribers of typeform . And the customer is forced to keep paying for subscription.
 

This security feature is a must to protect the customers . It’s a simple thing to implement , it does not require AI or machine learning . When hundreds of customers are requesting this basic feature, it’s  a common sense to understand what stops Typeform from implementing it .