A Google Forms alternative for your own website, without leaving Google

Replace the form, keep the Google file

The Google Forms alternative that keeps what Google Forms does well is to put the form on your own website as ordinary HTML and send each submission to the Google output you already use: a Sheet row, a Doc, a PDF, or a file in your own Drive. You give up Google's hosted form page. You keep Google.

That is a narrower answer than most pages on this query give, and it is deliberate. The usual list of alternatives swaps Google Forms for another form builder, which fixes the page and quietly moves the data somewhere new. If the spreadsheet was the part you liked, that is the wrong trade.

What you are actually replacing

Google Forms bundles two products that are easy to treat as one.

The form page

The page lives at a docs.google.com address, in Google's layout. Its styling is what the Customize theme panel offers, which Google's own help describes as a theme colour, a background colour, a header image, and a font and size for headers, questions and text, chosen from Google's list. There is no stylesheet to write. A form made with a personal account carries Google's footer, including the line "This content is neither created nor endorsed by Google." and a warning never to submit passwords through Google Forms.

Embedding does not change any of that. The embed code Google gives you is an iframe of the same page, at a fixed height you set, so a long form scrolls inside its own box inside your page.

The destination

The other half is where responses go: the form's Responses tab and, if you link one, a Google Sheet in your Drive. File upload questions save into a folder in your Drive. That half is genuinely good. It is free, it is yours, it can be shared with whoever you choose, and every tool your team already uses can read a Sheet.

When someone searches for an alternative for their own website, it is almost always the page they want gone. The styling does not match the site, the footer does not belong to them, the embed scrolls oddly on a phone, and file uploads make every visitor sign in to a Google account first. Very few of them are unhappy with ending up in a spreadsheet.

Why most alternatives replace the wrong half

The alternatives that rank for this query fall into three groups, and each fixes the page by moving the destination.

• Hosted form builders such as Tally, Jotform and Typeform. The form is better designed and more capable, and the responses live in the builder's dashboard. Getting them into a Sheet is usually an integration you switch on and then depend on.

• Website plugins such as WPForms or Fluent Forms. The form finally matches your site, and the entries are stored in your site's own database. That is a reasonable place for them, but it is not your Google Drive.

• Form backends that email you. You keep your own HTML, and each submission arrives as a message. An inbox is a fine place to read one enquiry and a poor place to keep a list.

None of these is wrong. They are answers to a different question, which is "what should I use instead of Google?" If your question is "how do I keep Google and lose the Google page?", they each add a second system to check or a sync to keep alive.

Keep your form, keep the Google file

The shape that answers the narrower question is simple. Your form is HTML on your own page, styled by your own stylesheet. It posts to Webtzm. Webtzm checks the submission and writes it into the Google output you picked, in your own Google account, using a narrow Drive permission that reaches the files it creates for you rather than everything in your Drive. The visitor never sees Google, and you never stop seeing it.

A workflow delivers to one output, and you choose which: a row in a Sheet, a populated Google Doc, a PDF, a JSON file, or a full-record email. File fields upload into your Drive without asking the visitor to sign in, which is the one thing Google Forms cannot do for a stranger. Which outputs and file fields a workspace has depends on its plan, and the plans page carries the current split.

The form

A Google Form you already have translates into HTML almost one question at a time. This is a typical small one, pointed at the address your setup panel shows:

<form action="https://webtzm.com/submit/YOUR_FORM_ID" method="post">
  <label for="name">Your name</label>
  <input id="name" name="name" type="text" required>

  <label for="email">Email</label>
  <input id="email" name="email" type="email" required>

  <fieldset>
    <legend>Which sessions will you attend?</legend>
    <label><input type="checkbox" name="sessions" value="Morning"> Morning</label>
    <label><input type="checkbox" name="sessions" value="Afternoon"> Afternoon</label>
  </fieldset>

  <label for="notes">Anything we should know?</label>
  <textarea id="notes" name="notes" rows="4"></textarea>

  <button type="submit">Register</button>
</form>

Every field needs a name, because the name is what the browser sends and what becomes the column header. A field without one is not submitted at all, and nothing on the page will tell you.

Question by question

• Short answer becomes <input type="text">, or email, tel or number where that is what you want. A regular-expression rule from Google's response validation becomes a pattern attribute.

• Paragraph becomes a <textarea>.

• Multiple choice becomes a group of radio buttons sharing one name. Dropdown becomes a <select>.

• Checkboxes become checkboxes sharing one name, as above. Ticking both arrives as one answer holding both values, written into a single Sheet cell.

• Date becomes <input type="date">, and Required becomes the required attribute.

The Sheet ends up with one column per field name, plus a protected record ID in column A and two timestamps: when the submission was accepted and when it reached Google. The managed Sheet explains which of those you can move and which you should leave alone.

What changes for the people filling it in

They stay on your site, in your design, on a page that scrolls like the rest of it. There is no Google footer, no Google address in the bar, and no sign-in prompt when the form asks for a file.

One honest detail: with a plain HTML post like the one above, the browser moves to a Webtzm confirmation page when the form is sent, because that is what a plain post does. To keep the visitor on your own page, add the small handler your setup panel offers. It sends the form in the background and shows the result inside the form, in your own styles.

What changes for you

You now own the markup. Google Forms maintains its form page for you; your own form is a file on your site, and adding a question means editing it. For most sites that is a few lines, but it is real work that did not exist before.

You also name where the form is allowed to live. Each workflow lists the exact hostnames that may submit to it, and a submission from anywhere else is refused before anything is stored. Allowed domains covers which hostname to add on each common platform, and it is the first thing to check when a form works on your laptop and not once published.

What you do not take on is a server. There is no backend to run and no database to keep, and the record you end up with is still a Google file you can share, filter and chart like any other.

Stick with Google Forms if…

• Your website is a Google Site. Google Sites runs pasted code in a sandboxed frame at an address that cannot be listed as an allowed domain, so this route does not work there. Insert a Google Form instead; that is what Sites is built for.

• You have no website at all. A Google Forms link needs no page to live on. If you would be building a site only to hold a form, do not.

• You are running a quiz. Point values, answer keys and automatic grading are built into Google Forms, and a plain HTML form has none of them.

• Everyone answering is already signed in to your Google Workspace. The sign-in requirement costs them nothing, the identity on each response is useful, and file uploads just work.

• You need branching without writing code. Google Forms can send people to a different section based on a multiple-choice or dropdown answer. On your own form, that is JavaScript you write.

• It has to be live in five minutes and nobody minds how it looks. Google Forms is the fastest way to get a form online, and it costs nothing.

Move to your own form when the form is part of your website: it should look like the site, sit on the site's own address, accept files from strangers, and still end in the spreadsheet your team already works from.