MakeForms
MakeForms is a no-code form builder whose AI turns a prompt, a PDF or an existing document into working forms, quizzes and multilingual surveys, and which lets teams pick among twelve data residency regions before collecting a response.
What is MakeForms?
MakeForms is a no-code online form builder operated by Creative Tools Inc. It pairs a drag-and-drop editor with six distinct AI generators: an AI Form Builder that turns a written description into a working form, an AI Quiz Builder, an AI Multi Step Form Builder, an AI Multilingual Form Builder, and two converters that rebuild an existing PDF or document as a form. The catalogue published on the features page counts 101 entries across eight groups, including 38 field types and twelve security and compliance items. Fields go well beyond text inputs: file uploads, legally binding e-signatures, admin-only fields, geolocation through Google Maps autocomplete, picture choice, rating, NPS and Likert scales, and GDPR consent blocks. Conditional logic, calculated fields, answer piping, multi-step layouts, one-question-at-a-time display, save-and-continue and partial responses are documented. Two further applications now ship under the same brand: MakeForms Scheduling for appointment booking and MakeForms Signing for electronic signatures.
What sets the product apart is where the data lands. Twelve data residency regions are offered: the United States, the European Union, Canada, India, Singapore and Australia to every customer, and the United Arab Emirates, Israel, South Africa, Japan, the United Kingdom and Brazil to Enterprise accounts. The region is picked when the account is created. Around it, the vendor advertises SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, PIPEDA, ISO 27001:2013, CCPA, the Australian Privacy Act and UK GDPR, publishes a named subprocessor list with each provider's country, offers a Data Processing Addendum and designates Article 27 representatives for the European Union and the United Kingdom. Encryption at rest and in transit, FIPS 140-2 aligned storage, automated backups, default captcha, two-factor authentication, password-protected forms and sensitive-field controls complete the picture, with SAML single sign-on reserved for Enterprise.
Responses can be routed to twenty-four named integrations, among them Salesforce, Google Sheets, Airtable, Notion, Slack, Calendly and Mailchimp, plus Zapier, Make.com and Pabbly Connect. Payments run through Stripe, Razorpay, Square or Mollie with no MakeForms commission. The site claims a 4.9 rating on G2 and compares itself with Typeform, Jotform, Formstack, Google Forms and 123FormBuilder.
What it does
- Generate a complete form from a plain-language description with the AI form builder
- Convert an existing PDF or document into an editable online form
- Choose the country where responses are stored, among twelve data residency regions
- Verify respondents by email or phone OTP before a submission is accepted
- Collect legally binding electronic signatures under the ESIGN Act and eIDAS
- Take payments through Stripe, Razorpay, Square or Mollie with no platform commission
- Push every response into Salesforce, Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Slack or Zapier
When to use MakeForms / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if MakeForms is the right fit.
When to use MakeForms
- Healthcare and clinic teams collecting patient intake, consent or medical history data under HIPAA, with a signed BAA available on every paid plan
- Compliance, risk and KYC officers in finance who need identity documents, OTP verification and an auditable subprocessor list
- Marketing and growth teams running lead capture, email campaigns and quizzes, with phone verification to keep fake entries out
- Public-sector and regulated organisations bound by data sovereignty rules, who must store responses inside a named country
- Operations and HR teams standardising internal requests, job applications and approval workflows without involving a developer
When not to use MakeForms
- Developers looking for a public API: no API documentation exists anywhere on the site or in its 251-URL sitemap
- Teams that need a native mobile app, since MakeForms ships as a web application only
- Organisations requiring self-hosting, which the vendor rules out explicitly in its pricing FAQ
- Individuals or very small projects with an occasional form, given a 65 USD per month entry plan and a free tier that forces a MakeForms backlink
- Buyers who need custom CSS, custom SMTP, workflows or save-and-continue, none of which are included in the entry-level Launch plan
How to use MakeForms
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Open an account at app.makeforms.io; the site states that no credit card is required to start
- Choose the data residency region at account creation, since moving it later means contacting support
- Create a form by dragging fields, by describing what you need to the AI form builder, or by importing an existing PDF or document
- Pick from more than 35 field types, including uploads, e-signatures, payment, geolocation and consent blocks
- Add conditional logic, calculations, answer piping and multi-step pages to shorten the form
- Style the form with one of the 30-plus templates, Google Fonts, custom fonts or custom CSS on the higher plans
- Turn on verification where it matters: email or phone OTP, captcha, password protection or a closing date
- Publish through a share link, an embed on your site, or your own custom domain
- Wire the responses to Slack, Salesforce, Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable or any Zapier destination, and set up email, SMS or WhatsApp notifications
- Enable two-factor authentication and, on Enterprise, SAML single sign-on for the team accessing the workspace
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Choice of the storage country across twelve regions, which very few form builders offer
- Broad published compliance coverage: HIPAA with BAA on every paid plan, GDPR, PIPEDA, ISO 27001, CCPA
- Unlimited submissions on every paid plan, with no monthly response cap
- Transparent subprocessor table naming each provider, its country and its own GDPR page
- Article 27 GDPR representatives designated for both the European Union and the United Kingdom
- Payments collected with no commission taken by the platform
- Forms, scheduling and e-signatures included from the entry-level plan rather than sold separately
Cons
- No public API and no developer documentation anywhere on the site
- The free plan requires keeping a MakeForms backlink on your forms, on pain of account suspension
- Free plan quotas are never published: the pricing page has no free column at all
- The SOC 2 page contradicts itself, claiming Type 2 in the banner and Type 1 in the body and in the report it offers
- The Typeform comparison page still advertises Essentials and Pro plans that no longer exist on the pricing page
- No refund is issued for a subscription cancelled before the paid period ends, and Enterprise invoices cannot be refunded
- Phone, SMS and WhatsApp verification, and signatures beyond quota, run on credits whose price is not published
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan exists: the terms of use refer to it repeatedly and accounts are downgraded to it when a payment fails, but it does not appear on the pricing page and its quotas are not published. It requires keeping a MakeForms backlink on published forms. A free trial is offered and the site states that no credit card is needed to start. The cheapest paid entry point is the Launch plan at 65.00 USD per month, billed annually; the pricing toggle advertises a 20 percent saving for annual commitment, and the strict monthly rate is not rendered in the page source. Billing is handled by Paddle as merchant of record.
- existence confirmed by the terms of use
- quotas not published
- requires a MakeForms backlink on your forms
- 65.00 USD per month billed annually
- 3 seats
- 30 forms
- unlimited submissions
- 500 agreements per month
- 20 GB storage
- 1 custom domain
- 200 MB uploads
- 133.00 USD per month billed annually
- 10 seats
- unlimited forms
- 1
- 000 agreements per month
- 50 GB storage
- 3 custom domains
- 2 workspaces
- custom pricing on quotation
- custom seats and dedicated storage
- SAML single sign-on
- custom data residency plus the UAE
- Japan
- UK
- Brazil and South Africa regions
- dedicated account manager
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how MakeForms handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR compliance is claimed explicitly on the security page, in the pricing comparison table and on a dedicated EU-hosted page. The implementation is unusually concrete for a tool of this size: the privacy policy, updated on 18 February 2026, sets out a legal basis purpose by purpose, lists the rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection and consent withdrawal with a one-month response deadline extendable by two months, and publishes a subprocessor table naming each provider, its country and its own GDPR page. A Data Processing Addendum is offered, and Article 27 representatives are designated for the European Union (Rickert Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH, Bonn) and for the United Kingdom. No data protection officer is named, and privacy requests go to the general support address.
Who owns the data?
The privacy policy states that anything gathered through forms and surveys belongs to the end user, and that the platform holds no ownership over it. Form records stay private to the account owner and to the collaborators that owner authorises; the vendor says it never discloses submission content except when government authorities require it. Two entities sit behind the product: Creative Tools Inc., a Delaware corporation at 8 The Green STE A, Dover, and Eszmeletlen Holding Co., a partnership firm based in Thane, India, named in the privacy policy as the brand owner and the data controller. Account data may be shared with administrators, affiliates, service providers, joint marketers, authorities and any acquirer of the business.
Reuse rights
Customers keep control of what they collect: submissions can be exported, routed to Google Sheets, Excel, Salesforce, Airtable, Notion or any Zapier destination, and reused without asking the vendor for permission. On the vendor side, the declared uses are operational — creating the account, invoicing through Paddle, sending contractual notices, providing support and, with consent, marketing messages. Aggregated activity data may be used to improve the service, and no decision is taken on purely automated processing. The only explicit statement about model training covers Google Workspace API data, which MakeForms says it does not use for advertising, profiling or training generalised AI or machine-learning models, and does not sell. Nothing published says whether form submissions themselves are excluded from model training, which is why that point remains unclear.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Customers choose the storage region when the account is created. Six regions are open to everyone: the United States, the European Union, Canada, India, Singapore and Australia. Six more are reserved for Enterprise: the United Arab Emirates, Israel, South Africa, Japan, the United Kingdom and Brazil. Moving an account between regions requires a support request. The published subprocessor table names the infrastructure behind it: AWS for file storage and CDN, MongoDB Atlas on AWS for the database, and OVHcloud for the core application in Frankfurt for the European Union and in the United States for HIPAA workloads. Locations named in that table include the United States, Singapore, Frankfurt, India, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Quebec in Canada and Stockholm. Other subprocessors cover email, payments, analytics, SMS and KYC. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit, sensitive storage is described as aligned with FIPS 140-2, and backups are automated.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting MakeForms.
- The SOC 2 page states Type 2 compliance in its banner while the same page describes a Type 1 audit and offers a Type 1 report: ask for the report before relying on either claim
- Three entities appear behind the product — Creative Tools Inc. in Delaware, Eszmeletlen Holding Co. in Thane, India, named as brand owner and data controller, and the MakeForms brand itself — so check who your contract is actually with
- The terms and the privacy policy both designate Indian law and the courts of Mumbai, even though the company named is registered in Delaware
- Nothing published states whether form submissions are used to train AI models, and no opt-out is documented
- The free plan requires a MakeForms backlink on your forms; removing it leads to warnings and then account suspension
- The terms disclaim any availability guarantee and any liability for data loss, and no numeric SLA is published outside Enterprise contracts
- Forms that collect health, identity or financial data raise the stakes on every configuration choice: the region, the sensitive-field settings and the access control list are the operator's responsibility, not the vendor's
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for the common case. The editor is drag-and-drop, a form can be generated from a written description, and publishing takes a share link or an embed snippet. Two points need attention: the storage region is chosen at account creation and changing it later requires support, and reCAPTCHA on a custom domain requires supplying your own site keys, failing which hCaptcha is applied by default. Custom SMTP and SAML single sign-on, available on the higher plans, are the only steps that genuinely call for a technical administrator.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind MakeForms
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement MakeForms.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free plan, and what does it cost to move to a paid one?
Where is my form data stored?
Does MakeForms offer an API?
Is MakeForms HIPAA compliant, and can it sign a BAA?
Who owns the responses collected through a form?
How long is data kept?
Can I host the data on my own servers?
Which payment methods and refund rules apply?
Should you pick MakeForms?
MakeForms is best read as a compliance-driven data collection platform that happens to build forms, rather than as a design-led survey tool. Its genuine differentiator is control over location: twelve data residency regions, chosen at account creation, backed by a subprocessor table that names every provider and its country, a Data Processing Addendum, and Article 27 GDPR representatives for both the European Union and the United Kingdom. That level of published detail is uncommon at this price, and it explains why the customer quotes on the site come from clinics, a public transport operator and teams handling sensitive data. Around that core, the product is complete: six AI generators, more than 35 field types, conditional logic, OTP verification, scheduling, legally binding e-signatures, commission-free payments and twenty-four native integrations, with unlimited submissions on every paid plan.
The reservations are real and worth weighing. There is no public API, no mobile application and no self-hosting option. The free plan is attested only by the terms of use, is absent from the pricing page, and forces a MakeForms backlink under threat of suspension. The SOC 2 page contradicts itself, announcing Type 2 in its banner while the body of the same page describes a Type 1 audit and offers a Type 1 report — treat Type 1 as the safe reading until the report is requested. The Typeform comparison page still quotes plans that no longer exist, and nothing published says whether form submissions are excluded from model training. For a regulated team that needs data in a specific country, MakeForms is a serious candidate; for an individual buying a simple form, the 65 USD entry point is steep.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
- Opens in a new window.