SheetLink Forms vs Tally
This is a comparison of two different kinds of tool. Tally is a form builder - it creates, hosts, and renders the form for you, free to a degree nobody else matches. SheetLink Forms is a form backend - it powers a form you already built in your own HTML. The right choice depends on who is making the form.
SheetLink Forms
SheetLink Forms is not a form builder. You write the form - your HTML, your CSS, your domain - and point it at a permanent endpoint at sheetlinkforms.com/f/your-token; accepted submissions append as rows under the header of a Google Sheet you pick (limited drive.file scope) or an Excel Online table. Delivery is direct to the Google Sheets API or Microsoft Graph with retries at 5, 30, and 120 minutes, a delivery log, and a formula-injection guard. Because the form lives on your page, the sl.js embed can capture UTMs and ad click IDs from your landing URLs, persist them across pages, and write them onto each row - and screening quarantines suspicious submissions for one-click review rather than dropping them. Webflow and Framer get dedicated webhook endpoints. Free during beta (invite required), no per-submission fees, ever. See how it works or the live demo.
Tally
Tally is a form builder with the most generous free plan in its class: unlimited forms and unlimited submissions at no cost within fair usage, with conditional logic, calculations, signatures, and file uploads all included free, per their pricing page. You compose forms in Tally's editor and share or embed them; Pro at $24/month removes Tally branding, adds custom domains, unlimited team collaboration, partial submission capture, custom CSS, and lifts the 10 MB per-file upload limit, while Business at $74/month adds data retention controls and email verification. Integrations cover Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Zapier, Make, and webhooks - the Sheets integration creates a new row in your spreadsheet for every submission, instantly, per their help article. As form builders go, it is superb value.
Side by side
| SheetLink Forms | Tally | |
|---|---|---|
| What kind of tool it is | A form backend: an endpoint plus delivery pipeline for forms you build yourself. SheetLink renders nothing - your markup is the form, and the product is everything after the submit button. | A form builder: Tally's editor composes the form, Tally hosts and renders it, and you share a link or embed it. Question logic, calculations, and signatures come built in - things a pipe like SheetLink does not do. |
| Whose form is it? | Yours, entirely. Any HTML form on your page, styled with your CSS, on your domain, no iframe. SheetLink is invisible to the visitor. | Built in Tally's editor and rendered by Tally, shared as a link or embedded in your page. Removing Tally branding and using a custom domain are Pro features ($24/month), per their pricing page. |
| Spreadsheet delivery | The primary destination: rows append under the header of an existing sheet you pick, or into an Excel Online table - Microsoft 365 is a first-class destination - with automatic column mapping against your existing headers, retries, and a delivery log. | A real, instant integration: every submission creates a new row in a connected Google Sheet, with sync logs to inspect, per their help article. Excel Online is not among the listed destinations. |
| Form features (logic, signatures, uploads) | None - SheetLink is a pipe, not a builder. Whatever logic your form needs, you build in your own markup and scripts. For surveys, quizzes, and multi-step logic, this row belongs to Tally. | Tally wins here, free. Conditional logic, calculations, signatures, and file uploads (10 MB per file, unmetered size on Pro) are all included on the free plan, per their pricing page. |
| Ad attribution and click IDs | Because the form is part of your page, sl.js captures utm_* plus gclid, wbraid, gbraid, fbclid, and msclkid from your landing URLs, persists them across the visitor's pages, and writes them onto the lead's row. | Automatic click-ID capture from your landing pages is not a documented feature of the hosted form flow - a structural consequence of the form living in Tally's frame rather than a flaw in Tally. |
| Pricing model | Free during beta (invite required); planned post-beta free tier ~50 submissions/month and an unmetered paid plan ~$15-19/month. No per-submission fees, ever. | Unbeatable at the entry point: unlimited forms and submissions free within fair usage, per their pricing page. You pay ($24/month Pro) for branding removal, custom domains, teams, and customization rather than for volume. |
| Spam handling | Built for raw public endpoints on the open web: honeypot, per-form/per-IP rate limits, origin allowlist, content heuristics with a strictness dial, timing signal, optional Turnstile - and a quarantine queue so nothing legitimate is silently lost. | A different model: the form runs on Tally's hosted infrastructure rather than as a raw endpoint you expose, so abuse handling is largely the platform's job. Business adds email verification for lead quality, per their pricing page. |
| Email notifications | None currently - the row landing in your sheet is the signal, and quarantined items wait in the dashboard. | Notifications are part of the platform, with sending from custom domains available on Pro, per their pricing page. |
Choose Tally when...
Use Tally when you want the form made for you: surveys, quizzes, registrations, waitlists, internal requests - anything where composing questions in a good editor beats writing markup, and where a Tally-hosted page or embed is fine. The free plan's unlimited forms and submissions, with logic, signatures, and uploads included, is the best deal in form builders, and its Google Sheets sync means "form to spreadsheet" works well entirely inside Tally. If you are not writing HTML anyway, start there.
Choose SheetLink Forms when...
Use SheetLink Forms when the form already exists - or must be indistinguishable from the rest of your site. A hand-built lead form on your domain, in your design system, with no embed or iframe, that still ends in a spreadsheet: that is the job. It brings what a hosted builder structurally cannot: ad click IDs and UTMs captured from your own landing pages onto each row, delivery into an existing sheet's columns or an Excel Online table, and quarantine-based spam review on a raw public endpoint. Marketing sites running paid traffic are the clearest case. See the live demo, then join the waitlist.
FAQ
Is Tally actually a competitor to SheetLink Forms?
Only at the edges. Tally builds and hosts forms; SheetLink powers forms you build. The overlap is the outcome - submissions in a Google Sheet - which both do well. If your starting point is "I need a form and do not want to code one", Tally is the better tool. If your starting point is "I have a form in my page and need it to go somewhere", that is us. Teams sometimes use both: Tally for internal surveys, SheetLink for the marketing site's lead forms.
Can I migrate from Tally to SheetLink Forms?
There is no import step, because the two work differently: 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 - and you can keep collecting into the same spreadsheet your Tally form synced to: connect that sheet and rows append under its existing header. Details in the developer docs.
Tally already syncs to Google Sheets - why would I need SheetLink?
If a Tally form fits your use case, you do not - their Sheets integration is instant and solid, per their help article. SheetLink earns its place when the form cannot be a Tally form: a lead form that must match your site's design exactly on your own domain, a form that needs ad click IDs (gclid, fbclid, msclkid) captured from your landing pages onto each row, an Excel Online destination, or delivery into an existing sheet's column layout rather than a synced export.
When is Tally clearly the better choice?
Whenever building the form is the hard part: multi-step surveys with conditional logic, quizzes, signature collection, file uploads (which SheetLink currently drops), and internal forms where branding does not matter - especially given unlimited free submissions. We would genuinely rather you use Tally for those than force a form builder's job onto a form backend.
Comparison facts reference Tally's public documentation and pricing pages and were checked at publish time; tell us if something is out of date.