Top 16 Google Forms Alternatives (Free and Paid)
There are almost endless uses for forms.
You can build an email list, register new users, or solicit feedback from your customers. With the right tools, you can even analyze your form responses to learn more about your audience.
One of the simplest ways to create forms is to use Google Forms. Google Forms is an all-purpose form builder that individuals and businesses can use for free.
But is Google Forms good enough for your business? Google Forms don’t have the most polished appearance, and other form builders have features that Google Forms lacks.
This article introduces 16 Google Forms alternatives and gives you the information you need to pick the best one.
Overview of Google Forms
The first thing you should know about Google Forms is that it’s totally free.
That’s a big draw for many small businesses. While Google Forms competitors often have a free version, they make you pay more for premium features. Google doesn’t.
Google Forms is also quick and easy to use. If you need to get a form ready to go in a few minutes, it’s a great choice.
Let’s take a closer look at Google Forms’ features.
Templates and Design
Google offers 17 templates you can use to design your forms. You can also add your own picture at the top of the form or choose a color scheme.
Types of Questions and Logic
Google offers nine different question types, including:
- Short answer
- Paragraph
- Multiple choice
- File upload
- Linear scale
- Multiple choice grid
- Checkbox grid
- Date
- Time
You can also use basic conditional logic. For example, if a survey taker selects option A, they go to question two, but if they select option B, they jump straight to question six.
Analytics
As the form submissions roll in, you can view the email addresses of who filled it out (if you required that), graphs of the multiple-choice responses, and lists of the written answers.
Integrations
One advantage of Google Forms over other solutions is its simple integration with Google Sheets. With just a few clicks, you can create a Google Sheet spreadsheet of your form results. This spreadsheet will automatically update with new responses.
You can also extend the capabilities of Google Forms with add-ons from the Forms add-on store. For example, one add-on lets you add a timer to your form to give people a timed quiz, and another closes the form to new responses after a certain number of submissions.
Pricing
Like we said, it’s free!
Google Forms is also available for businesses as part of Google Workspace (which is what we use at Kinsta for our internal processes). Its price starts at $6 per user per month. The version of Google Forms included in Workspace is the same as the free version.
Why Do You Need a Google Forms Alternative?
If Google Forms is so great, why would you need an alternative?
There’s no doubt that Google Forms is one of the simplest and most affordable options for forms. But it has limitations.
Its competitors may be more expensive, but some of them also let you create forms that look better, offer more question types, or analyze your data more thoroughly.
Here are the main limitations of Google Forms.
Templates and Design
Google Forms templates all look pretty similar. You can change the colors a bit and add images and videos. But some Google Forms competitors allow for more customization.
Security and Spam Protection
Google has some features to keep spam out of your form responses, but others do more.
Analytics
Some Google Forms alternatives allow more customization of your reports and dashboards or let you export the data into more formats.
Payment Integration
If you need to collect payments with your form, Google Forms isn’t your best choice. Google does have add-ons available to collect payments through a third party, but there are other form builders that provide a better payment experience.
Storage Space
A free Google account provides 15 GB of storage, but that’s split between Forms and other products like Google Photos and Gmail. It’s a great deal to get that much storage for free, but if you need more, a premium alternative might make sense.
Customer Support
As a free product, Google doesn’t offer the level of customer support that some of its paid competitors do.
Top 16 Google Forms Alternatives
Let’s walk through 16 of the top alternatives to Google Forms.
1. WPForms
WPForms is one of the most popular form builder plugins for WordPress websites.
It’s easy to use and offers a lot of flexibility and functionality. The drag-and-drop editor lets you customize the layout of your forms. You can collect payments through the forms, and there’s spam protection.
After collecting your responses, you can switch between multiple views of your data or export it to JPG or PDF.
There’s a WPForms Lite plan that’s free, but you’ll need to upgrade to get:
- Additional templates
- Conditional logic
- Certain form fields, like star ratings and signatures
- Custom CAPTCHAs
- Geolocation (detect the location of submissions)
- Integrations with marketing tools like Mailchimp
- Priority customer support
One big disadvantage of WPForms is that it’s only for WordPress sites. But if you use WordPress and are interested in a premium forms product, WPForms is one of the best.
Paid plans start at $39.50/year for the Basic plan and go up to $299.50 for the Elite plan.
2. Microsoft Forms
When Google launches a product, it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft comes out with a competitor.
Microsoft Forms is part of Microsoft 365, so there’s no free version. But if you’re already using Microsoft 365, you can use your existing account to create online forms.
Like Google, Microsoft offers a variety of templates. It also has several question types, but its list is a bit different than Google’s:
- Multiple choice
- Text
- Rating
- Date
- Ranking
- Likert scale
- File upload
- Net Promoter Score
One area where Microsoft Forms stands out is form sharing. You have the option to share directly to social media or to create a QR code for instant sharing.
Just as Google Forms lets you send your results to Google Sheets, Microsoft connects to Microsoft Excel. But the process isn’t quite as smooth. You have to have an active Office Suite open and download the spreadsheet to your computer.
3. HubSpot Forms
HubSpot is a CRM platform and suite of marketing tools, which includes HubSpot Forms.
HubSpot Forms is unique in its integration with HubSpot’s other tools. Entries into your forms are directly routed to HubSpot’s free CRM, where you can further nurture the leads by sending emails through Hubspot or creating notifications to follow up with them.
The free version lets you create unlimited forms. There’s an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, and the forms can be easily embedded in your website.
If you upgrade to a paid version, you can use smart forms that adapt the questions to each website visitor. New questions can be shown to returning visitors. The paid plans also let you remove HubSpot branding from the forms.
To get the premium version of HubSpot Forms, you’ll need to purchase the HubSpot Marketing Hub, which starts at $45/month.
4. Cognito Forms
Cognito Forms is a straightforward form solution with all the important features, like a drag-and-drop form builder, multiple question types, and conditional logic.
All Cognito Forms plans allow you to create unlimited forms, but they do cap the entries you can collect and your storage capacity. With the free Individual plan, you can collect 500 entries per month, and you get 100 MB of storage.
Paid plans range from Pro, at $15/month, to Enterprise, at $99/month.
Cognito Forms allows you to accept payments through your forms. Your payment options vary by plan — with the Individual and Pro plans, users can only pay with Stripe. If you upgrade to Team or Enterprise, payments can also be made with PayPal or Square.
5. SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is primarily known for standalone surveys rather than embedded website forms, but like Google Forms, it can be used for both.
We’ll start with the upside to SurveyMonkey: it’s powerful and highly customizable.
SurveyMonkey offers 150+ survey templates with sample survey questions for different purposes and industries. There are 14 question types, and forms can use conditional logic.
You can generate various reports with different types of charts and graphs, making it easy to communicate your survey results to stakeholders. There are even tools for analyzing text responses and measuring your results against industry benchmarks.
SurveyMonkey also offers 24/7 email support.
But the free version of SurveyMonkey is too limited for the typical business user.
Your survey can only contain up to ten questions or elements. And while you can collect as many responses as you want, you can only view ten of them. (If you created an account earlier, you might have been grandfathered in with a higher number of viewable responses.) After 60 days, the responses are deleted.
SurveyMonkey isn’t the best free solution, but for complex surveys, it’s hard to beat. Paid plans start at $16/month.
6. Zoho Forms
Zoho is a suite of business software, including a CRM, marketing solution, email platform, and more.
Zoho Forms offers customizable templates with 30+ field types and conditional logic. It integrates with other tools like Zoho Sheet and Zoho CRM.
Zoho Forms has a strong mobile offering — the Android and iOS apps let you create forms both online and offline. If you go to live events, you can use your mobile device as a kiosk to collect form responses.
The free plan only lets you make three forms, but you can collect 500 submissions per month from those forms and generate unlimited reports. Paid plans range from $10/month to $90/month.
7. Jotform
Jotform is a feature-rich form builder with free and premium versions.
It offers over 10,000 templates and hundreds of themes (only some of which are free). The drag-and-drop builder includes elements, question types, and widgets that aren’t seen on Google Forms or most alternatives.
For example, you can insert a button that lets the user take a picture that automatically uploads to the form. Or, if you’re using your form to sell a product, you can have the form track your inventory and automatically block users from selecting the option once stock has run out.
Jotform allows a variety of payment types, including debit or credit card payments, ACH payments, e-check payments, and more.
If you’re a Google Forms user looking to switch to Jotform, good news: you can migrate your existing forms to the new platform.
Jotform’s free version is limited to 5 forms, 100 responses per month, and 100 MB of storage. The highest-tier plan, Gold, costs $79/month and gives you 100,000 responses per month and 1 TB of storage.
8. Qualtrics
Qualtrics is a form builder commonly used for academic research, but it can be used for businesses too.
The free version only has four themes, no conditional logic, and eight question types. There’s not much reason to choose this plan over Google Forms.
The Standard plan, which costs $30/month, allows for conditional logic. The logic is more advanced than Google Forms in that it can be based on multiple conditions. For example, you could say that if someone is from Santa Fe OR Las Vegas AND they have a cat, they get sent to question three. If they say they’re from Seattle AND have no pets, they get sent to question four.
All of the paid plans also offer text analysis in 14 languages.
If you pay for the Advanced or DesignXM plans, which have custom pricing, you get 22 question types, more themes, and additional analytics.
9. Paperform
Paperform offers 22 question types, advanced conditional logic, and 500+ templates.
Unfortunately, there’s no free version of Paperform.
The least expensive plan, called Essentials, costs $20/month and lets you make unlimited forms, collect 1,000 responses per month, and embed your forms in five domains.
This plan will work well for many small businesses, but the more expensive plans allow unlimited responses, more storage, custom analytics, and a few additional question types.
10. EmailMeForm
EmailMeForm focuses on compliance, helping you create forms that comply with PCI-DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA.
This means you have access to features like multi-factor authentication and audit trails.
EmailMeForm has beautifully designed templates and multiple question types with conditional logic. Forms can accept credit cards and other payment options like PayPal, Authorize.net, Chargify, and Stripe.
The least expensive plan costs $30/month and lets you collect 10,000 responses per month. To get HIPAA compliance features, you’ll have to upgrade to at least the Experienced plan for $50/month.
11. Formidable Forms
For forms that look great on your WordPress site, the Formidable Forms plugin is a strong contender.
Formidable offers 100+ templates, including some unique form types like calculators and WooCommerce forms.
While you can build your forms with a basic editor, Formidable allows you to perfect your design by customizing the HTML. You can also create custom landing pages for your WordPress site with the Landing Pages add-on.
All of this plus conditional logic, payment options, and integrations with tools like Mailchimp and Hubspot may be why Formidable has a 4.9/5 rating on review site G2 — higher than the other WordPress plugins on this list.
12. Typeform
Typeform forms show just one question at a time. According to the company, this makes the forms more engaging and people-friendly.
The free version of Typeform only allows ten questions per form and ten responses per month. But it does let you create unlimited forms and take advantage of integrations with Zapier, Automate.io, Slack, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and other solutions.
Paid plans range from $25/month to $83/month.
13. Formstack
Formstack is a workplace productivity platform offering forms as well as other solutions like documents and electronic signatures.
There are 300+ templates to choose from and integrations with tools like Salesforce and HubSpot.
The free version of Formstack is extremely limited, with no templates or storage. You can create three forms with up to ten questions each.
Paid plans start at $50/month. If you’re interested in any of Formstack’s other tools, you can subscribe to the entire platform for $360/month.
14. SoGoSurvey
SoGoSurvey offers templates, themes, and multi-channel distribution options. If your form will be seen internationally, you can create multilingual surveys with automatic translation.
SoGoSurvey has a strong analytics offering. For example, you can generate a Conditional Report that analyzes the influence of certain variables on your results or a Segmentation Report that looks at the results from different groups.
The free plan allows 15 surveys. All of the other plans, which start at $25/month, allow unlimited surveys and additional question and report types.
15. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is a plugin for creating WordPress forms.
It offers 13 templates and a flexible drag-and-drop editor that mimics the WordPress form builder.
There’s no free version, but the Basic plan, which costs $59/year, includes unlimited forms, unlimited entries, conditional logic, file uploads, and various helpful add-ons.
16. Pabbly Form Builder
Do all of these pricing options have your head swimming?
Pabbly simplifies matters by charging $10 per form per month. There are no premium themes or add-ons — all of Pabbly’s features are included in the $10 forms. They include:
- Unlimited submissions
- Unlimited embedding
- Payment forms
- Themes and customization
- Custom branding
- Multi-page forms
- 300+ integrations
What’s the Best Google Forms Alternative?
The best form solution for your business will depend on your goals — there’s an alternative to Google Forms for every need. Here are a few recommendations.
- Best overall Google Forms alternative: Jotform
- Best WordPress plugin Google Forms alternative: Formidable Forms
- Best mobile Google Forms alternative: Zoho Forms
- Best CRM/Google Forms alternative combo: HubSpot Forms
Summary
Forms are an important part of how you interact with your website visitors or email list. Google Forms might be the best form solution for you, but explore your other options before you make a decision. Factors to consider include:
- How many forms you need to make
- How many responses you want to collect
- Your budget
- Your existing tech stack
- How you want to visualize and analyze the data
- Your design needs
Rethinking your relationship with Google? Find out if it’s time to switch from Google Chrome to Microsoft Edge.
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