SheetLink Forms vs Basin
Basin is a polished, notification-centric form backend with one of the deepest spam toolboxes in the category. SheetLink Forms narrows the job to one thing: getting every legitimate submission into the spreadsheet you actually work in, with ad attribution attached.
SheetLink Forms
SheetLink Forms gives every form a permanent endpoint at sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token and writes accepted submissions directly into a Google Sheet or an Excel Online table - via the Google Sheets API and Microsoft Graph, not a Zapier hop. Field names that match your column headers map automatically, delivery retries at 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and 2 hours, and a formula-injection guard escapes dangerous leading characters in cells. Screening is quarantine-first: honeypot, rate limits, origin allowlist, content heuristics with a strictness dial, and optional Cloudflare Turnstile - and anything suspicious waits for one-click review instead of vanishing. The sl.js embed adds AJAX submits and captures UTMs and ad click IDs across pages. Free during beta, invite required, no per-submission fees ever. Start with how it works.
Basin
Basin is a well-regarded form backend with a clean dashboard, email notifications, and an unusually deep spam toolbox. Per their pricing page, the free plan covers 50 submissions/month with 100 MB of file storage, and paid plans start at $12.50/month billed yearly, scaling submission caps and storage. Every tier includes file uploads, reCAPTCHA v2/v3, a custom honeypot, and a duplicate filter; higher tiers add a burner-email filter, country filtering, virus scanning, branded notification emails, auto-responses, and signed webhooks. A native Google Sheets integration, along with Slack, Discord, and Mailchimp, is available from the Growth tier up. Overage beyond your cap is billed per additional 1,000 submissions. It is a thoughtful, complete product.
Side by side
| SheetLink Forms | Basin | |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet delivery | The primary destination, not an integration: rows append under your header row in a Google Sheet you pick (limited drive.file scope) or an Excel Online table whose columns define the row shape. Header matching is automatic and case/punctuation insensitive. | A native Google Sheets integration is listed from the Growth tier ($24.17/month billed yearly) upward on their pricing page, alongside Zapier on all tiers. No Excel Online destination is listed. |
| Spam handling | Quarantine-first: honeypot, per-form and per-IP rate limits, origin allowlist and CORS, content heuristics (link stuffing, disposable email domains, empty payloads) with a loose/normal/strict dial, timing signal, optional Turnstile. Suspicious entries are held for one-click review - approve delivers the row. | One of the deepest toolboxes in the category: reCAPTCHA v2/v3, custom honeypot, and duplicate filtering on every tier, with burner-email filtering, country and location filters, browser blacklists, and virus scanning on higher tiers, per their pricing page. |
| Ad attribution and click IDs | Automatic via the embed: utm_* plus gclid, wbraid, gbraid, fbclid, msclkid, persisted in localStorage across the visitor's session so the click survives multi-page journeys before the form. | Not listed as a feature on their pricing page. The usual approach - hidden fields filled by your own script - works on Basin as it does anywhere. |
| Pricing model | Free during beta (invite required). No per-submission fees, ever - the planned paid plan (~$15-19/month) is unmetered. A traffic spike or a bot burst never turns into a bill. | Free: 50 submissions/month. Paid tiers from $12.50/month (yearly) with caps from 250 to 25,000/month; overage runs $2.00-$5.25 per additional 1,000 submissions, per their pricing page. Fair and transparent, but volume is metered. |
| File uploads | Not supported yet - multipart is accepted but file parts are dropped. Forms that collect attachments should not move to SheetLink today. | Basin wins here. File uploads are included on every tier, from 100 MB of storage on the free plan up to 50 GB on Agency. |
| Platform webhooks | Dedicated inbound endpoints for Webflow and Framer: one webhook per site covers every form, with the originating form name recorded on each row. | Basin accepts posts from any platform that can point a form action at a URL, and offers outbound webhooks with signing from the Growth tier up. |
| Email notifications | None currently - rows land in the sheet, and quarantine review happens in the dashboard. If per-submission email is your workflow, Basin takes this row. | Basin wins here. Notification emails are core, with branded emails (your logo and colors) on Growth+ and custom HTML templates plus auto-responses on higher tiers. |
| Delivery and reliability | Direct to the Google Sheets API / Microsoft Graph from an asynchronous worker, retries at 5 min / 30 min / 2 h, a per-submission delivery log, and formula-injection escaping on cell values. | Submissions are stored in Basin's dashboard and fanned out to email and integrations; the sheet is one destination among several rather than the system of record. |
Choose Basin when...
Pick Basin if your forms take file uploads - it includes them on every tier while SheetLink Forms currently drops file parts - or if you want notification emails, auto-responses, and branded messages out of the box. Its spam feature list (virus scanning, burner-email and country filters) is broader than ours, and if you want a polished dashboard as the home for submissions with the sheet as a side destination, Basin is a genuinely good choice.
Choose SheetLink Forms when...
Pick SheetLink Forms if the destination matters more than the dashboard. Rows land in the exact sheet or Excel table your team already works in, ad click IDs and UTMs arrive attached to each row without custom JavaScript, and screening never silently discards a lead - everything suspicious is one click from delivery. If metered overage pricing makes you nervous, our model is simpler: no per-submission fees, ever. See the live demo writing rows into a public sheet, or join the waitlist.
FAQ
Can I migrate from Basin to SheetLink Forms?
Yes, and it is usually a one-line change. Point your form at your SheetLink endpoint:
<form action="https://sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token" method="POST"> <input name="_slhp" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off" style="position:absolute;left:-9999px"></form>
Keep your existing inputs exactly as they are. Field names that match your sheet's column headers map automatically - the matching is case and punctuation insensitive, so "Email", "email", and "E-mail" all land in the same column - and explicit per-field mapping is available for anything that does not line up. If you submit with fetch or XHR, change the URL in your request the same way. Full request and response details are in the developer docs.
Basin has a Google Sheets integration too - what is different?
Direction and defaults. On Basin, Google Sheets is an integration available from the Growth tier, and the dashboard is where submissions live. On SheetLink Forms, the sheet (or Excel Online table) is the primary destination: delivery goes straight to the Google Sheets API or Microsoft Graph with retries and a delivery log, headers are seeded on empty sheets, and column mapping is automatic. If your process runs inside the spreadsheet, that inversion is the whole point - see how it works.
Does SheetLink Forms charge for overage like Basin does?
No. There are no per-submission or overage fees, ever. During beta the product is free (invite required). The planned post-beta paid plan (~$15-19/month) is unmetered; the planned free tier is around 50 submissions/month. Basin's model - caps plus $2.00-$5.25 per extra 1,000 submissions per their pricing page - is transparent, but it is metering, and we deliberately chose not to do that.
What about spam - Basin lists more filters than you do.
Basin's filter list is genuinely broader (virus scanning, country filters, burner-email lists on higher tiers). Our bet is on a different failure mode: with any filter, false positives are silent lost leads. SheetLink quarantines suspicious submissions for one-click review instead of dropping them - only the honeypot marks spam outright - so an aggressive filter costs you seconds of review, never a customer.
Comparison facts reference Basin's public documentation and pricing pages and were checked at publish time; tell us if something is out of date.