A Google Forms alternative you'd put on your website
Google Forms is free, quick and completely fine for an internal poll. People look for an alternative when the form has to face a customer - because it looks like Google's, it lives on Google's domain, and it drops a respondent into Google's cookies on the way.
It looks like your form, on your terms
Your own link, your own accent colour, your own wording throughout, and a page that carries one small "Powered by ava42" line rather than another company's brand. You can embed it in your own site so it sits inside your layout, or share the link directly - and either way the page loads in one request.
The practical difference is trust. A customer asked for their address on a page that looks like your business behaves differently from one redirected to a shared document tool.
No trackers, so no cookie banner
A published form sets no cookies, loads no third-party script, and we don't log IP addresses or user agents against responses. Our own traffic counting is a per-route tally flushed once a minute - it records that a form was viewed, never which one or by whom.
That has two consequences worth having. Your respondents don't meet a consent dialog before they can answer a question, which is one fewer reason to leave. And if someone asks what you're doing with their data, the answer is short enough to say out loud.
One request, and nothing to download
Open a published ava42 form and watch the network tab: one HTML document, and that is the whole page. The CSS is inline, the SVG icon is inline, there is no JavaScript bundle, no web font, no analytics beacon and no third-party call. The form is rendered once when you publish it and stored as a complete file, so serving it doesn't touch a database or run a template.
Most hosted form builders ship an application: a script that boots, fetches your form's definition, and then draws it. That works well on a laptop on office wifi. On a phone with two bars - which is where a great many forms are actually filled in - it is the difference between a form and a spinner.
The things a customer-facing form needs
File uploads with real validation. Conditional questions that the server enforces rather than trusting the browser. Multi-step forms with a progress bar. Prefilled links, so you can email a form to someone whose details you already hold. Email notifications per response or as a digest. A REST API, webhooks, and CSV export.
And answers that come back with their own answers refilled if something's wrong with the submission, because losing what someone typed is the most expensive thing a form can do.
One price, and a free tier that isn't a trial
Pro is $10 a month for everything: unlimited forms, unlimited responses, every question type, conditional logic, file uploads, the API, webhooks, email notifications and embedding. There are no tiers, no per-response pricing, no per-seat maths and no feature held back for an enterprise conversation.
The free plan is one form with ten responses. It's small on purpose - small enough to be honest about, rather than a thirty-day countdown - and every template on this site works on it.
Side by side
Everything in the ava42 column is checkable in about ten seconds with your browser's developer tools. The other column describes how hosted form builders generally work rather than any one product's current feature list, because that changes and a stale table is worse than none.
| ava42 | Typical hosted builder | |
|---|---|---|
| Branding | Your colour, your wording, your link. One small credit line. | Google's look and domain. |
| Cookies on the form | None. | Google's, as part of Google's platform. |
| Works without JavaScript | Yes. | No. |
| Conditional logic | Per-question visibility, enforced on the server too. | Section-based branching. |
| Price | Free for one form; $10/month for everything. | Free with a Google account. |
When Google Forms is the better choice
If your form is internal, temporary, or feeding a spreadsheet your team already lives in, Google Forms is free and already open in another tab. It writes straight to Sheets, everyone in your organisation can already edit it, and quizzes with automatic marking are built in.
We're not trying to win that. Use Google Forms for the office lunch order. Use ava42 when the form is part of how customers see you, or when you need uploads, real conditional logic, notifications or an API.
Questions
Can responses go to a spreadsheet?
You can export any form's responses to CSV in one click, which opens in Sheets, Excel or Numbers. There's no live two-way sync with a spreadsheet - a webhook or the API is the route if you want responses pushed somewhere automatically.
Is it really free to start?
One form and ten responses, with every question type and no card. That's enough to publish something real and see whether it works for you.
Do respondents need an account?
Never. Only you have an account. Anyone with the link can answer, with no sign-in and no app.
Can I use my own domain?
Not yet - forms live at ava42.com/f/your-slug. You can embed the form in a page on your own domain, which is what most people actually want.
Try a real form before you decide
Every template has a live example you can fill in - no account, nothing stored. Free to start: one form, ten responses, no card.