The best Microsoft Forms alternative for a business without Microsoft 365 is a free builder that doesn't ask for a work accouht. Google Forms, Tally, Fillout and Qwenvo all qualify. Google Forms suits quick quizzes and simple questions. Tally and Qwenvo suit order, quote and booking forms. Below is what each one gives you free and where each falls short.
Why Microsoft Forms stalls for small owners
Microsoft Forms is free with a Microsoft account and sits inside Microsoft 365. It works best when you already live in Word, Excel and Teams. If you run a bakery or a plumbing van off WhatsApp and Instagram, you may have hit a sign-in screen that wants a work or school account you never set up.
You could buy a 365 plan just to get a form. That is a lot of subscription for a contact form.
What a small business actually needs from a form is short:
- It opens on a customer's phone without a login.
- It sends you an email when someone fills it in.
- It collects phone numbers, dates and maybe a photo.
- It lives at a link you can paste into a WhatsApp chat or an Instagram bio.
Any of the four tools below does that.
Four free options side by side
| Tool | What you get free | What costs extra |
|---|---|---|
| Google Forms | Free with a Google account, quiz mode with grading | No built-in payments, limited design, respondents must sign in with Google to upload files |
| Tally | Unlimited forms and submissions, logic, calculations, payments, signatures, uploads up to 10 MB per file | Pro is $29/month: remove branding, custom domain, partial submissions, visit and drop-off analytics |
| Fillout | Unlimited forms and seats, 1,000 responses a month | Pro is $49/month to remove branding and add custom CSS; Business is $89/month for a custom domain and partial submissions |
| Qwenvo | $0, no card, no trial, every feature on | Nothing, within the fair use policy |
Google Forms is the most familiar. If your form is five questions and you only need answers in a spreadsheet, it is fine. It gets awkward the moment a customer needs to send a photo or pay a deposit.
Tally has a generous free plan and a document-style editor. Its free users do run into the Pro line, though. Styling and partial submissions on Pro confuse some free users, and light users find Pro expensive for one feature.
Qwenvo is made by our team, so weigh this recommendation accordingly. What we can say plainly is what it includes at $0 that most form builders charge for: no Qwenvo badge, a custom domain, unlimited teammates, partial submissions, visit and drop-off analytics, AI triage of submissions, custom design and CSS, and 180+ templates. There is a longer rundown in our Microsoft Forms alternative guide.
Build an order form in about 15 minutes
Say you're a home baker in Pune taking cake orders over WhatsApp. Every order starts with the same six questions typed back and forth. A form removes that.
- Open the order form template and rename it to your business.
- Cut it down to the fields below.
- In Settings, turn on email notifications so each order lands in your inbox.
- Copy the public link from the Share tab.
- Paste it into your WhatsApp business profile and your Instagram bio.
| Field | Type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Short answer | So you know who to greet |
| WhatsApp number | Phone number | You reply there anyway |
| Cake or item | Multiple choice | Stops "something chocolatey" |
| Quantity | Number | Feeds a calculated price |
| Pickup date | Date | No more date confusion |
| Reference photo | File upload | Customers love sending these |
| Notes | Long answer | Allergies, message on the cake |
Qwenvo has calculated fields, so a ₹1,200 cake times a quantity of two can show ₹2,400 to the customer before they submit. If you take a deposit, add a Payment block (see the caveat below).
A plumber's version: quote requests
A plumber in Ohio does not need prices on the form. He needs the job described well enough to decide whether to call back. Use the quote request template and ask for the address, a short description, a photo of the problem and how urgent it is.
Here AI triage helps. Qwenvo gives every submission a category, a priority from low to urgent, a sentiment and a one or two sentence summary with a suggested reply. A routing rule can email the urgent ones to up to five addtesses, so a burst pipe does not sit in the same pile as a dripping tap quote.
A dental clinic can do the same with the client intake template for new patient details. See the HIPAA line below before you collect anything sensitive.
Try the free quote request form
Make it look like your business
Free tiers often leave a vendor badge on your form. In Qwenvo you switch the branding toggle off in Settings. In Tally, removing branding is a Pro feature.
If you own a domaiin, Qwenvo also lets you put forms on a subdomain such as forms.yourbakery.com. You add a CNAME pointing to qwenvo.com and the TXT record it shows, click Verify, then pick the domain on the Share tab. The HTTPS certificate is issued automatically on the first visit. It has to be a subdomain, because a bare yourbakery.com usually cannot take a CNAME.
Where each tool falls short
Every option here has a catch, and some matter more for you than others.
- Payments: Qwenvo takes payments through PayPal only. It keeps a 1% platform fee on top of PayPal's own fee, which is typically 3.49% plus a fixed amount. Tally adds no fee on top of Stripe, so if most of your money flows through the form, Tally is cheaper. Google Forms has no built-in payments.
- Newness: Qwenvo launched in October 2026, so there are few reviews yet. Tally has been around since 2021 and has a large community.
- Hosting: Qwenvo is hosted in the United States. Tally is hosted in Europe with a GDPR focus.
- Scripts in PDFs: Qwenvo's per-submission PDFs cannot draw some scripts, including Devanagari and Arabic, or emoji. If your customers write in Hindi, export to CSV or XLSX, which handle them.
- Health data: Qwenvo has no HIPAA offering. Jotform has HIPAA features on its paid plans, so a clinic collecting medical details should look there.
- Mobile app: Neither Qwenvo nor Tally has one.
Questions owners ask
Do my customers need an account to fill in the form?
Not with Google Forms for ordinary questions. The exception is file upload, where respondents mjst sign in with Google. If you want photos from customers, that sign-in step will cost you replies.
Can I get a QR code for the shop counter?
Qwenvo has no built-in QR code. Copy the form link and paste it into any QR generator, then print it.
I already built a form in Microsoft Forms. Can I move it?
There is no Microsoft Forms importer in Qwenvo, and none for Tally or Google Forms either. Qwenvo does import Word, PDF, CSV, Markdown, plain tetx and screenshots. A screenshot of your old form is usually the quickest route, and you can fix the question types afterward.
How do I take a deposit?
Add a Payment block in Qwenvo and set your PayPal account under Settings, then Payments. Payments are paid out to that account once they are older than 7 days. If you'd rather use Stripe, Tally is the better fit.
Your next step
Open the order form template, delete every field you woudl not ask a customer by message, and send the link to yourself on WhatsApp. If it works on your own phone, put it in your bio.