NumoForms vs Google Forms
Google Forms is free with a Google account, and Google’s own help
documentation describes question types including short answer, paragraph,
multiple choice, tick boxes, drop-down, file upload, linear scale, rating,
multiple-choice and tick-box grids, date and time, along with section
branching, response validation and quizzes with answer keys and point
values (checked July 2026). NumoForms has no price set yet and adds
16 question types including drag-to-rank and address capture with postcode
checking, scoring with percentage bands that ignore unseen questions,
save-and-continue resume links, per-survey partner logos, and storage of
survey content and responses in London (eu-west-2). For a
short internal form, Google Forms is the correct answer.
What Google Forms is genuinely good at
Free, already installed, and everyone has used one. Google’s help article on creating a form covers the essentials properly: a decent spread of question types, grid questions, section-based branching where an answer sends the respondent to a particular section, response validation, quizzes with point values and automatic marking, and responses flowing straight into Google Sheets — which is, for a lot of people, the entire analysis pipeline and none the worse for it. Signed-in respondents also get autosaved drafts. Checked July 2026. Google ships changes to Forms regularly and behaviour differs between personal accounts and Google Workspace editions — read Google’s current documentation rather than our summary of it.
We would not try to sell against it for a lunch order, a room booking or a quick pulse check. If the form is short, internal, and nobody will ask where the data lives, use Google Forms and spend the afternoon on something else.
Side by side
| Capability | NumoForms | Google Forms |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Pricing not yet set — see the pricing page | Included with a Google account at no additional charge |
| Grid / matrix questions | Matrix — rows sharing one scale, exported one CSV column per row | Multiple-choice grid and tick-box grid, per Google’s help documentation |
| Drag-to-rank | Ranking question, full order or top-N | Not listed among the question types in Google’s help article (checked July 2026) — check their current documentation |
| Branching | Show/hide individual questions on earlier answers; rules match any or all |
“Go to section based on answer” — section-level branching, per their help documentation |
| Piping answers into later questions | Yes — {{question_id}} in a title, description or heading |
Check Google’s current documentation |
| Scoring | Per-choice scores, per-question weight, percentage bands on the thank-you screen, unseen questions excluded | Quiz mode with answer keys and point values, per their help documentation |
| Save and continue | Resume link on a 24-character token, no account required of the respondent | Autosaved drafts for respondents signed in to a Google account — check current behaviour |
| Close date and response cap | Both, enforced by a database trigger, with a custom closed message | Accepting responses can be switched off, with a custom message; check for date and cap automation |
| Partner co-branding | Collaborator logos set per survey; per-survey accent colour | Theme colour, header image and font options |
| Data residency | London (eu-west-2) on every account; TLS in transit, AES-256 at rest |
Google documents data-region options for some Workspace editions; check what applies to your account |
| Analysis | Live charts per question, individual response browsing, CSV export, single response to PDF | Built-in summary charts and export to Google Sheets |
Google Forms column: taken from Google’s “Create a form” help article and the surrounding Docs Editors help centre, checked July 2026. Rows that say “check” are ones we have not verified to the standard we would want quoted back at us.
When free stops being cheap
The survey gets long
Length is the thing that breaks a free form first. Once a survey passes thirty or forty questions, two problems appear at once: people abandon it, and the ones who do not abandon it start satisficing — clicking the middle option to get to the end. Our answer is conditional logic at question level rather than section level, so an 87-question consultation can present as twelve to any individual respondent, plus save and continue, which issues a resume link keyed on a 24-character token so someone can finish on the bus tomorrow. The respondent does not need an account of any kind to use it.
The scoring has to be defensible
A quiz with point values works when everybody answers the same questions. A scored assessment with branching does not: someone who skipped ten irrelevant questions must not score lower than someone who answered them badly. Our scoring applies a score per choice and a weight per question, totals only the questions the respondent actually saw, and places the result in a percentage band shown on the thank-you screen.
Somebody asks where the data is
This is usually the moment a council, a charity trustee board or an NHS information governance team enters the conversation. Survey content and responses sit in Supabase’s London region on every account, encrypted in transit with TLS and at rest with AES-256, with row-level security throughout and organisation isolation pinned server-side. Uploaded files go to a private bucket, readable only by the owning organisation through signed URLs that expire after 300 seconds. The security page sets out the controls, the sub-processor list names everyone in the chain, and the UK GDPR page covers the legal side. We are not ISO 27001 certified and have not completed a SOC 2 audit — we describe the actual controls instead.
Two organisations share the survey
Free tools assume one owner and one brand. Grant-funded and partnership work does not look like that: a consultation runs with a council logo, a funder logo and a delivery partner’s logo, and the next one uses a different set. Ours are attached per survey rather than per account, so a single workspace can badge a different partner on every piece of work without a second subscription.
Accessibility is a legal requirement
For UK public sector bodies, an inaccessible consultation is a regulatory problem before it is a data-quality problem. Our accessibility work and the published accessibility statement set out what has been tested and what has not, including the gaps — which is what an accessibility statement is actually for.
The results need to leave in one piece
CSV export gives one column per matrix row and a separate column for the free text behind an “Other (please specify)” answer, so nobody is splitting strings in a spreadsheet later. Individual responses can be browsed one at a time and printed to PDF from the browser, which is the format a case file or an FOI response tends to want.
Reasons to stay on Google Forms
- Budget is zero and will stay zero. Our pricing is not set, so we cannot promise to match free.
- The form is short, internal, and the answers are going into a spreadsheet anyway.
- Your organisation already runs Google Workspace, and admin controls, sharing and retention are handled there.
- You need responses to land in Google Sheets automatically. There is no Google Sheets connector here — data leaves as a CSV export, or as a signed webhook to an endpoint someone has to write.
- You need SSO or offline collection, neither of which we have built — or your policy names a CAPTCHA specifically, where ours is a honeypot, a dwell-time floor and a rate limit instead.
Common questions
Why use a Google Forms alternative?
Google Forms is free with a Google account and is the right tool for a
short internal form. A dedicated survey builder becomes worth it when
the survey is long enough to need save-and-continue, branches enough
that scoring must ignore unseen questions, needs question types such as
drag-to-rank, needs a partner logo that changes per survey, or has to
store responses in a specific jurisdiction. NumoForms does those
things and stores survey content and responses in London
(eu-west-2).
Does NumoForms cost more than Google Forms?
Pricing for NumoForms has not been set yet, so no comparison of cost is possible. Google Forms is included with a Google account at no additional charge. Anyone choosing on price alone should use Google Forms.
Other comparisons
Read NumoForms vs Typeform for respondent experience, vs Jotform for integration breadth, and vs SurveyMonkey if you need to buy a sample as well as build the instrument. The set lives under compare; the question types page lists exactly what you can ask.
Rebuild your longest form.
The difference is invisible at ten questions and plain at sixty. Take the survey people currently abandon, add question-level logic and a resume link, and see what changes.
- Resume links that ask nothing of the respondent
- Scoring that ignores questions nobody was shown
- Survey content and responses stored in London
