Create your first form

1. Sign in

Open the dashboard and enter your email address. hootform sends you a sign-in code; there's no password to remember. Or choose Continue with Google to sign in with your Google account. If this is your first time, the same step creates your account, and you'll be asked to name your organization.

2. Start a form

In a workspace, choose New form and pick how to start:

• Describe the form and choose Build it (Premium): AI writes a draft for you to review and edit.
• Start from scratch: an empty form. You pick the first question.
• Pick a template: preview and try any of 31 ready-made forms, then use one and change anything. See Templates and AI.

You can rename the form any time.

3. Add questions

The Build tab opens with three panes: the list of questions on the left, a preview of the selected screen in the middle, and its settings on the right.

1. Choose Add question and pick a type, for example Short text or Multiple choice.
2. Type the question's title straight into the preview. Add a description underneath if it needs one.
3. In the settings pane, decide whether it's Required, and set anything specific to the type, such as the choices. The pane's other sections — Logic, Scores and calculations, Dig deeper and Picture or video — open when you select them, and each says what it holds while it's closed.
4. Repeat. Drag questions, or use Move up and Move down, to reorder them.

Everything saves as you type. The top bar says All changes saved when your latest edit is stored. See The form builder for the details.

4. Make it look like yours

Switch the settings pane to Design to choose the Layout (one question at a time, or all questions on one page), set colors, the font, text size, alignment and corner style, and to add a picture or video. See Design and branding.

5. Publish

Choose Publish in the top bar. hootform checks the form first: every question needs a title, every choice a label, and so on. Anything that needs fixing is flagged in the question list and listed under Before you can publish.

Once published, the form has a public link. Respondents only ever see the published version, so you can keep editing afterwards without anyone seeing half-finished changes; choose Publish changes when you're ready. See Publishing and sharing.

6. Share it

Choose Share to copy the link, or to get a snippet that embeds the form on your website. See Embedding.

7. Read the responses

Answers arrive in the Responses tab as people give them. Open any response to read it in full, switch to Insights for completion rates and answer breakdowns, or export everything as CSV. See Responses.

8. Send responses to Google Sheets (optional)

To have every completed response added to a spreadsheet as it arrives:

1. An organization owner or admin opens Organization settings → Connected accounts and chooses Connect a Google account, once for the whole organization.
2. In the form's Settings tab, choose Google Sheets, then Create a spreadsheet.
3. Choose Open the spreadsheet to see it. Each new response is a new row, and Copy earlier responses adds the ones you already have.

It's free on every plan. See Google Sheets.