Templates allow you to achieve powerful work in an extraordinarily short amount of time.

With Cognito Forms, businesses create unique solutions to meet their data collection and workflow needs. While we love building from scratch, templates boost creativity and innovation by providing a starting point users can customize to make their process feel like their own.

Our team creates templates for users based on actual requests and real conversations. These templates are reviewed by industry specialists and backed by thorough research.

In this wrap-up of the past year, we analyzed data to understand what templates users used and asked our team of experts (hi, support@cognitoforms.com) to determine the most popular recommendations for 2026.

We narrowed it down to the most-visited templates, team favorites, the best workflow-driven builds, and the top new additions from 2025, so you can find a great starting point fast.

Most Visited By Cognito Forms Users

While you enjoyed a variety of templates throughout the year, they had a magnetic quality that drew thousands of people in. These are the ones users returned to repeatedly.

Basic Contact Form

The basic contact form is a classic in form-building. Can you imagine where we’d be without the Contact Form Template? It’s simple and easy to use, helping companies connect warmly with their clients. As client experience becomes increasingly important each year, first impressions matter even more. Deliver a smooth, intelligent experience whenever someone fills out your intake form, so they leave feeling valued and understood.

Employment Application with a connected job openings list

Simplify your hiring process with our employment application, which includes a connected job openings list that makes lookup fields and workflows so simple. Lookup fields connect one form to another, allowing live data to flow and prefill fields in another form with existing values. Experience the power of workflows and prefill fields with this template.

Application Forms: Advanced Admissions Application

What makes the application process easier for the applicants and admissions teams? A Cognito Form with fully built-out features like multi-page forms, save and resume, and email workflows and approvals. This form stands out as one of the most visited, thanks to its functionality and ease of use for both teams and potential students.

Incident Report

The incident report form template is a key tool for employers, available for quick download to your account. It helps gather detailed incident information, including times, dates, locations, and more. You can also set up automatic email alerts to promptly stay informed about any incidents.

Tax Intake Form

For accountants or any business to do well, they must receive accurate, clean, and timely data. The tax intake form provides a guideline for tax accountants to streamline form creation.

From these top five, we see that users loved templates that simplify intake and connect data across forms, and our team’s favorites reflect the same trend.

Cognito Forms Team’s Favorites

These are the templates our team—who talk with users every day—can’t recommend enough because they’re quick wins for any business. Here are their top picks:

Yoga class with Connected Class Schedule

This template simplifies scheduling and booking, reducing the time spent managing sign-ups. Instead of manually creating forms that involve complex features (like lookup fields and calculations), this one gets you up and running quickly—just download it to your account. Customize it to your business needs by tailoring the inventory and forms, adding branding, and your scheduling system is ready.

Template

Yoga Class Registration with Connected Class Schedule

• Live availability
• Easy scheduling
• Connected fields

Use this Template

Ticket Sales with Connected Ticket Inventory

Our Ticket Sales template highlights the powerful capabilities you can achieve with our no-code software. It combines automated workflows, a smart form that connects to an inventory sheet, and quantity limits. The customer support team highly recommends this template because it includes key features for creating an end-to-end inventory and sales processing system. Easily embed it on your website, or upgrade for custom branding.

Template

Ticket Sales Form with Connected Ticket Inventory

• Seamless ordering
• Up-to-date inventory
• Quantity limits

Use this Template

Favorite Workflow Templates

If you want to see Cognito Forms automation at full strength, start here. Cognito Forms thrives on automation and workflows. Here are two workflow-driven templates that trigger actions to complete a business process.

Timesheet with connected employee list

The calculations, workflows, roles, and statuses in our timesheet template make managing timesheets straightforward. Whether you’re a business owner, HR professional, manager, or employee, each plays a role in payroll and time tracking. This template uses all roles, ensuring the correct person approves or denies the right when needed before moving forward.  As one of our top ten most visited templates (and a team favorite), we highly recommend starting here for workflows and connected forms.

Patient Portal Bundle Template

The Patient Portal Bundle consolidates key forms, including patient registration and HIPAA agreements. Find them all in one place for patients to complete. With the patient portal, users enable Guest Access so guests can securely log in to their own portal. Once a patient logs in, they can review pending forms, submit schedule requests, and view any other content they’ve been granted access to.

Top New Template

And finally, the newest templates we introduced this year—industry-specific construction templates.

Construction Templates

Making their debut in 2025, the new construction templates stood out for their detailed, industry-specific forms. They reduce physical paperwork, organize projects digitally, and streamline workflows.

That’s a Wrap

Want to build faster this year? Start with one of the templates above, customize it to your process, and elevate it with workflows. If there’s a template you wish existed, message us on social—we’re always listening.