SheetLink Forms vs Google Forms
This is not a takedown - Google Forms is excellent at what it is for. Both tools end with rows in a spreadsheet; the fork in the road is whether visitors fill in a Google-hosted form or a form you designed, on your own site, that happens to post to a sheet.
SheetLink Forms
SheetLink Forms lets a form you build - your HTML, your CSS, your domain - deliver submissions straight into a Google Sheet or an Excel Online table. Each form gets a permanent endpoint at sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token; field names matching your column headers map automatically, and delivery goes direct to the Google Sheets API or Microsoft Graph with retries and a delivery log. Because the form is part of your page, the embed script can capture UTMs and ad click IDs and attach them to each row, and screening quarantines suspicious submissions for one-click review. It is free during beta (invite required) with no per-submission fees, ever. See how it works or watch the live demo write rows into a public sheet.
Google Forms
Google Forms is Google's free form and survey builder: a drag-and-drop editor with multiple question types, themes, templates, conditional logic, quizzes, and file upload questions, with responses charted in real time and exportable to Google Sheets for deeper analysis, per the Google Workspace product page. Responses sync to a linked spreadsheet ("View in Sheets"), and you can turn on email notifications for new responses in the Responses tab, per Google's support documentation. The form itself lives on Google's domain - you share a link or embed it in an iframe - which is exactly right for surveys, internal requests, event RSVPs, and quizzes, and less right for a branded lead form on a marketing site.
Side by side
| SheetLink Forms | Google Forms | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose form is it? | Yours. Any HTML form on your page, styled with your CSS, on your domain - SheetLink is only the invisible pipe from submit button to spreadsheet. No iframe, no third-party page. | Google's. You build in the Forms editor and share a link or embed the Google-rendered form in an iframe. Themes, colors, and fonts are configurable within Google's frame, per their product page. |
| Spreadsheet delivery | Rows append under the header of any existing sheet you pick (limited drive.file scope), or into an Excel Online table - Microsoft 365 is a first-class destination, and column mapping is automatic against your existing headers. | Native and seamless for Google Sheets: responses sync to a linked spreadsheet Forms manages, per Google's docs. Excel is not a destination; the linked sheet has its own layout rather than mapping into an existing one. |
| Question logic and survey features | None - SheetLink is a pipe, not a form builder. Whatever logic your form needs, you build in your own markup and scripts. For genuine surveys and quizzes, this row belongs to Google Forms. | Google Forms wins here. Conditional sections based on answers, quizzes with grading, response validation, templates, and real-time charts - a full survey tool, free. |
| Spam handling | Built for public endpoints on the open web: honeypot, rate limits, origin allowlist, content heuristics with a strictness dial, timing signal, optional Turnstile - and quarantine review so nothing legitimate is silently lost. | A different model: the form runs on Google's infrastructure rather than as a raw public endpoint on your site, and you can restrict responses to signed-in users. For public anonymous forms, abuse handling is Google's, not configurable per-form the way a dedicated endpoint is. |
| Ad attribution and click IDs | Because the form is on your page, sl.js captures utm_* and gclid/wbraid/gbraid/fbclid/msclkid from your landing URL, persists them across pages, and writes them onto the lead's row. | The form lives on Google's domain, so URL parameters from your ad landing page do not flow into responses automatically - a structural limit of hosted forms rather than a flaw in Google Forms. |
| Pricing model | Free during beta (invite required); planned free tier ~50 submissions/month and an unmetered paid plan ~$15-19/month. No per-submission fees, ever. | Free, full stop. Google Forms is included free with a Google account and with Google Workspace, per their product page. Nothing in this category beats that. |
| File uploads | Not supported yet - multipart posts are accepted but file parts are dropped. | Google Forms wins here. File upload questions are supported, with files collected via the respondent's Google sign-in, per their product page. |
| Email notifications | None currently - the row landing in your sheet is the signal, and quarantined items wait in the dashboard. | Google Forms wins here. "Get email notifications for new responses" is a built-in toggle in the Responses tab, per Google's docs. |
Choose Google Forms when...
Use Google Forms when the form itself is the deliverable and design is secondary: surveys, quizzes, event RSVPs, internal requests, sign-up sheets, anything where "here is a link, fill it in" is fine. It is free, the question logic and quiz grading are genuinely good, file uploads work, responses chart themselves, and the Sheets link is native. For most internal and informal data collection, reaching for anything else is over-engineering.
Choose SheetLink Forms when...
Use SheetLink Forms when the form must be part of your site: a lead form matching your design, on your domain, with no iframe - that still ends in a spreadsheet. That framing brings the things a hosted Google form structurally cannot do: ad click IDs and UTMs captured from your landing pages onto each row, delivery into an existing sheet's columns or an Excel Online table, and spam screening with a quarantine queue. Marketing sites running paid traffic are the clearest case. See the live demo, then join the waitlist.
FAQ
Can I migrate from Google Forms to SheetLink Forms?
There is no import step, because the two work differently: with Google Forms you rebuild the questions as your own HTML form and point it at your endpoint:
<form action="https://sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token" method="POST"> <input name="_slhp" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off" style="position:absolute;left:-9999px"></form>
Name each input after the column it should fill - matching is case and punctuation insensitive, so "Email" and "email" both work - and you can keep collecting into the same spreadsheet your Google Form used: connect that sheet and rows append under its header. Details in the developer docs.
Both end up in Google Sheets - so what am I actually choosing between?
The front end. Google Forms gives you a hosted form UI with logic, quizzes, and uploads, and manages its own linked response sheet. SheetLink Forms gives your hand-built form a pipe into any sheet (or Excel table) you choose, with attribution data captured from your own pages. Same destination, different front door - pick based on whether visitors should see Google's form or yours.
When is Google Forms clearly the better choice?
Surveys and quizzes (conditional logic and grading), file collection (upload questions work today; SheetLink drops file parts), internal forms where branding is irrelevant, and any time free-forever matters more than design control. We would genuinely rather you use Google Forms for those than be disappointed here.
Can SheetLink Forms handle an embedded Google Form?
No - an embedded Google Form posts to Google, inside Google's iframe, and no third-party endpoint can (or should) intercept that. SheetLink works with forms you own: plain HTML posts, JSON/fetch submissions, or the Webflow and Framer webhooks described in the docs.
Comparison facts reference Google Forms's public documentation and pricing pages and were checked at publish time; tell us if something is out of date.