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Home › Start here › Collect forms and surveys
Start here · Customers

How to create online forms and surveys for your business

To collect forms and surveys online you need a form builder that creates the questions, shares them by link or on your website, and stores the answers somewhere your team can use. Dedicated form and survey tools do this on their own, and many website builders and marketing platforms include basic forms too. The choice depends on what you collect and where the answers need to go next.

By Bill Belcamino · Page updated September 23, 2026 · Our methodologyResearched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team
How to create online forms and surveys for your business
Bill Belcamino
Bottom line up frontby Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
Editorial assessment

Bottom line up front: What's the simplest way to collect forms and surveys online?

Start with a tool you already pay for, because we don't track dedicated form and survey tools yet, and many website builders and marketing platforms include forms.

Several of those start free, with limits: Wix's free plan carries Wix branding, HubSpot's free CRM covers up to 2 users, and Mailchimp's free plan stops at 250 contacts. Before any public form feeds your CRM or email list, turn on spam protection. Bots find open forms quickly, and every fake submission becomes a junk contact you may end up paying for, plus an automatic welcome email to an address that bounces or never asked, which hurts your sender reputation. Decide where answers land before you build, ask only what you'll act on, and push one test submission all the way through to the CRM before you share the link.

My read of the verified data on this page, checked against vendor sources on September 23, 2026. Disagree or spot an error? Tell Bill

How to collect forms and surveys, step by step

The software this job takes

What to look for

Common mistakes to avoid

What to settle before you buy

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free online form builder?

Some form and survey tools offer free plans, and website builders and marketing platforms may include basic forms. Free plans often limit responses, forms or branding, so check those limits against how much you collect.

How do I create a form online?

Write down the questions first, build them in a form tool, choose where answers are stored, test it on a phone, then share the link or embed it on your site.

What are the best customer satisfaction survey tools?

Look for one that keeps surveys short to answer, shows clear summary reports and connects to where you track customers. Compare response limits and reporting on the plan you would actually use.

What should I look for in a Google Forms alternative?

Compare conditional logic, response limits, integrations, file uploads, payments and branding. Choose based on which of those your forms actually need, or start from the finder for this job.

How we built this page

We start from the job, not the product. The phrasings people search for this job (for example “online form builder free”) come from our research into how small and mid-size teams describe it. Which software categories the job takes is our editorial judgment. Every tool, entry price, billing unit and date comes from HelpCompare’s open dataset, recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page; nothing is estimated, and where a vendor publishes no price we say so. We take no affiliate commissions and publish no scores of our own. See our methodology or download the data from Open Data.

More jobs in Customers

Cite this page: HelpCompare, “How to create online forms and surveys for your business”, helpcompare.com/start/collect-forms-surveys/ (updated ).

Source links on this site are checked every month; last check . How sources are checked.

From shortlist to switched

Built for the leader who owns the selection, answers for the spend, drives the rollout, and lives with the results. HelpCompare covers the whole decision, not just the first step.

01 · CompareWhich tool fits your team, side by side.133 comparisons 02 · Price & approveSourced, dated pricing and a one-page brief for sign-off.Decision brief 03 · SwitchWhat moves, what you rebuild, what it costs.264 guides 04 · ShareDownload and cite the data. CC BY 4.0.Open data
Bill Belcamino, founder of HelpCompare
About the author

Bill Belcamino

Founder and author, HelpCompare

Engineer by training, operator by experience, marketer by choice. Bill spent eight and a half years as an engineer at HP, was COO of Auctiva (the number one third-party selling platform on eBay, past 200,000 users) and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. Then he spent 13 years building his own web properties with his own money at stake. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.

“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”

Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.

Read Bill’s story How we verify pricingSpot an error? Tell Bill