How to create an online form

Go to the form editor and write your first question. There is no account, no card and no trial clock — Pulseware asks for an email address at the moment you publish, because that is where the responses go.

Starting from something is faster than starting from nothing. Every entry in the form template library is a working form: open it, change the words, publish it. If you are not sure what to ask at all, describe the form in a sentence and let the AI drafting tool write a first pass for you to edit.

Each question is a block, and the block type decides how the answer is collected and checked. Short answer, long answer, choice, checkboxes, dropdown, email, phone, number, date, time, link, address, file upload, signature, rating, NPS, slider, matrix, ranking and picture choice are all on the Free plan.

Two choices save the most trouble later. Use a dropdown or choice question instead of a text box wherever the answers are known — the results are then countable rather than something you have to read. And use the typed blocks (email, phone, number, date) rather than short text, because they check the answer as it is typed and stop obvious mistakes getting through.

The address block is worth knowing about if you are in Australia: it defaults to Australia and asks for a state and a postcode, not a ZIP code. More on every block in the editor basics, and the full list with its plan in the form builder overview.

A long form loses people. Conditional logic keeps it short for each individual: a question appears only when an earlier answer calls for it, so nobody scrolls past five questions that are not about them.

The registration form template is the clearest example — answer that the person attending is under 18 and the parent or guardian questions appear, and become required. Answer no and they never exist. Logic and scoring covers the rest: calculations, score bands and sending people to different endings.

Preview the form as a respondent before anyone else sees it, on a phone as well as a laptop — most people answer on a phone. Then press publish and confirm your email with the code we send.

Publishing gives you a link and a QR code. It also unlocks the settings that matter for a live form: an opening and closing date, a cap on the number of responses, a password, and duplicate prevention so the same person cannot answer twice.

Send the link, print the QR code, or paste an embed snippet into your own site — there are 8 embed styles, covered in embedding a form on your website. If the form is a contact form for a website, the contact form walkthrough is the shorter path.

Answers arrive in your dashboard with a summary and a chart per question, and download as CSV or Excel any time. You can also have every response emailed to you or posted into Slack — see results and insights and integrations.

There is no cap on how many people can answer: unlimited responses on every plan, subject to the published fair use thresholds.