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Show HN: I made a form builder that saves data in Google Sheets
- sheepy 5y agoGreat project! The artwork makes it look very friendly. Did you have any issues with Google API quotas?
- a_band 5y agoThanks! In regards to API quotas, the rate limiting happens on a per-user basis so we manage to stay away from the limits for most users. That being said, I did build the system with a retry mechanism with delays so in case something does hit a limit, it shouldn't be lost.
- eatonphil 5y agoThat is what Google Forms does, but it looks like you've added the benefit of more custom styling which Google Forms is not very flexible about. I run my blog's subscription system off of Google Forms -> Google Sheets. It's free and very simple but I definitely don't like how ugly Google Forms is.
- a_band 5y agoYou got it 100%. Google Forms is great until you have to integrate it with a website. This is meant to work just like Google Forms but with the ability to be embedded right into any layout.
- eatonphil 5y agoNice, I liked the blog post you've got too [0]. I forgot my other gripe with Google Forms is that there's probably lost conversions to subscribers because it leaves my own site. I keep meaning to follow one of these guides to embedding a form and posting to Google Sheets but the Google Sheets API is confusing and everyone's guide for doing this has a different method. I just need to spend the time on it... [0] https://sheetmonkey.io/articles/how-to-submit-a-html-form-to-google-sheets.html https://sheetmonkey.io/articles/how-to-submit-a-html-form-to...
- a_band 5y agoThanks! Glad you found that post helpful. Yeah, the Google APIs are very powerful but not user-friendly at all for developers looking for a quick way to save data into a sheet.
- livatlantis 5y agoAlthough I'm not in the target audience (because Google), I think some of my less nerdy friends would find this extremely useful. I've had quite a few ask me for an easy way to create a quick form to gather responses when organising an event or to run a little survey. Thanks for creating it, bookmarked. Will recommend.
- a_band 5y agoThank you! Hope they find it useful. :-)
- usaphp 5y agoVideos on your homepage don’t work on iPhone, show black screen
- a_band 5y agoAh dang. Thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look. EDIT: I was missing the `playsinline` attribute. Fixed now.
- teitoklien 5y agoFix working indeed
- Biologist123 5y agoThis is great. Two questions: 1. Could I have “code” in subsequent sheets to manipulate data coming in through the form and output results. 2. Could you embed questions in an android app? If you could I would immediately have a lot of use for this. Thanks and well done!
- a_band 5y agoThanks! 1. I'm not sure I 100% understand what you're asking here but it seems that what you're looking for is very possible by triggering workflows off of sheets. https://solutions.appsheet.com/workspace https://solutions.appsheet.com/workspace or https://zapier.com https://zapier.com are a couple of great ways to do this. 2. If you can embed HTML in an Android then you should be able to embed one of the forms. I haven't done it before. Let me know if you try it and how it goes.
- advisedwang 5y agoNeat project. Are you worried that SurveyMonkey will attack you for having a similar name to their trademark?
- a_band 5y agoYikes. Hadn't considered that. Hopefully not.
- globalise83 5y agoChange it to Sheetdonkey. Donkeys are cool and you only have to change one letter everywhere.
- dmje 5y agoYeh but then the brilliant "infinite monkeys" doesn't work on the pricing page [https://sheetmonkey.io/pricing.html https://sheetmonkey.io/pricing.html]. I mean, maybe infinite donkeys would do excellent Shakespeare too...
- NonEUCitizen 5y agoI'd change the name now while it's still early, so people won't have to go hunting for the new name later.
- I_complete_me 5y agoIf it's any consolation I did not have this thought.
- petepete 5y agoReally unfortunate, love the artwork!
- mritchie712 5y agoThis is the last thing you should be worried about
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- hardtke 5y agoI've been asked to maintain the contact info for a non profit club. Something like this is almost what I need, but I would also need to be able to edit existing entries as well as to run some simple queries (who has not paid their dues?). Does any such cloud based open source software exist? CRM systems are overkill, and there are some downloadable tools, but nothing cloud based AFAIK.
- mgbmtl 5y agoCiviCRM is made for nonprofits. It can be overkill for simple requirements, but you can turn off most of the clutter. There is a low-cost SaaS hosting for $10/month (https://civicrm.org/spark https://civicrm.org/spark). Full disclosure: I am a dev & hosting provider.
- RedShift1 5y agoPerhaps appsmith.com or budibase.com is what you're looking for
- irskep 5y agoYou could probably construct a decent Asana workflow around this using forms, custom fields, and automation rules, but it's not free.
- kroltan 5y agoWith enough courage and either a lot of formulas or a bit of scripting, you can do simple queries just fine in Google Sheets.
- a_band 5y agoYeah, I actually do something similar with some of my projects. I'm able to get good results directly querying sheets: https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-query-sql/ https://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/google-sheets-query... Pivot tables have a bit of a learning curve but you can also use them to dynamically pull data out of sheets: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/1272900?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop https://support.google.com/docs/answer/1272900?hl=en&co=GENI...
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- raju 5y agoNeat! Quick question—your pricing says "3 forms • 100 submissions" — Is that 100 submissions a month, or once you cross a 100 you have to sign up for the subscription? I have a use for this, so I think I will sign up regardless.
- a_band 5y agoThat's 100 submissions a month. Thanks for giving it a shot!
- programmarchy 5y agoIt'd be cool if this could work with Airtable, too.
- a_band 5y agoGood suggestion. Thanks!
- midrus 5y agoIt looks great, and very professional. I'm impressed. Did you build it yourself? Because it honestly looks like a full blown company had built it by how good it looks from the outside. If so, you're a f**g machine!! Congrats.
- a_band 5y agoThanks so much, midrus! I did build it myself. Super kind to hear.
- sirius87 5y agoEach year for my nephew's birthday, I set up a web page with a guestbook for people we know to leave messages for him. I'm "tripod.com guestbook CGI scripts" years old. Each year I intend to write a tiny script that accepts form data and stores it in a Google Sheet, and deploy it to AWS Lambda. Maybe I'll finally do it this year? Or maybe I'll use your service ;)
- a_band 5y agoThat's awesome. What a cool idea. :-)
- WaffleIronMaker 5y agoConsider using Google Forms? https://www.google.com/forms/about https://www.google.com/forms/about
- sillycube 5y agoWhy not just use Google form or other form builder? What is the benefit to use 2 tools instead of 1 to do the same thing?
- FailMore 5y agoLove how you load the page with the logo first
- a_band 5y agoThanks! :-)
- mro_name 5y agoI wonder what this enthusiasm to throw data at google should be good for. I made a commandline binary https://mro.name/form2xhtml https://mro.name/form2xhtml that turns server side form dumps back into html for ease of processing. Put that into your tool pipeline (offline processing is fine) and be good. No 3rd parties involved.
- jasonleowsg 5y agoThis is great. I use Google Forms a lot and love the tight seamless integration with Google Sheets, but hate the styling when embedded. This solves that problem well. But the way you described it in the HN post header almost threw me off, made me think - "Isn't that Google Forms already? Why reinvent the wheel?" I wonder if targeting the painpoint of styling the embedded form would be a better proposition. So instead of "A form builder that saves data in Google Sheets", what if it was something along the lines of "Custom styling for your ugly Google Forms."