How to Use Google Form as a Backend and Lightweight Database

When handling form submissions on the frontend, the typical approach is to integrate with a backend API that connects to a database to store collected data. But what if you don’t want to build an entire CRUD app just to collect a few email addresses — for a newsletter signup, a waitlist, or a simple contact form?

This is where Google Form can come in as a lightweight backend and simple database alternative.

All you need is:

• A Google account

• Basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript

• Some browser inspection skills

Step-by-Step Implementation

Step 1: Set Up a Google Doc

• Create a public or shareable Google Doc

• Add all necessary fields of data to be collected

• Add all fields to one page, avoid multi step on google form

Step 2: Make the Document Accessible

• Set up appropriate sharing permissions

Step 3: Setup your frontend UIr

• Create your UI code

  Here’s an example of a basic React form that collects a user's full name and email, then sends the data to your Google Form:

    const [email, setEmail] = useState("");
    const [fullName, setFullName] = useState("");
  
    <form
        onSubmit={handleSubmit}
        className="mt-[40px] flex flex-col gap-[16px]"
    >
        <h4 className="font-medium">Subscribe to newsletter</h4>
        <input
            type="text"
            placeholder="Your full name"
            value={fullName}
            onChange={(e) => setFullName(e.target.value)}
            required
            className="py-4 px-4 rounded-[10px] bg-white text-black h-[48px]"
         />
        <input
            type="email"
            placeholder="Your email address"
            value={email}
            onChange={(e) => setEmail(e.target.value)}
            required
            className="py-4 px-4 rounded-[10px] bg-whitetext-black h-[48px]"
         />
        <button
            type="submit"
            className="bg-[#FFC64D] text-[#111827] rounded-[10px] h-[48px] max-w-[122px] disabled:opacity-50"
        >
            Subscribe
        </button>
    </form>
  

Step 4: Connect to Google Form

Now, all that’s left is to send your form data to the Google Form's formResponse URL.

 const GOOGLE_FORM_ACTION_URL = "YOUR_GOOGLE_FORM_UL/formResponse";

  const NAME_ENTRY_ID = "entry.1234567890"
  const EMAIL_ENTRY_ID = "entry.1234567891";

  const handleSubmit = async (e: React.FormEvent) => {
    e.preventDefault();

    try {
      const formData = new FormData();
          formData.append(NAME_ENTRY_ID, fullName);
          formData.append(EMAIL_ENTRY_ID, email);

      await fetch(GOOGLE_FORM_ACTION_URL, {
        method: "POST",
        body: formData,
        mode: "no-cors",
      });

    } catch (error) {
      console.error("Newsletter subscription error:", error);
    }
  };

For the above example, to get the NAME_ENTRY_ID and EMAIL_ENTRY_ID, submit a test response through your Google Form (using the responder link). Then, open your browser's developer tools, go to the Network tab, and look for the request labeled formResponse. Inspect the payload to identify the entry.xxxxxx values associated with each form field (e.g., name and email). Replace the placeholder values in your code with the corresponding entry IDs.

The mode: "no-cors" setting in your fetch request allows you to submit data to Google Forms without running into CORS errors. However, it comes with a tradeoff: you won’t get access to the response (no status code or message), so there's no way to confirm if the submission was successful from the frontend, so make sure to setup the code properly and correctly — pointing to the eight entry ids and making the google form accessible.

Security Considerations

• Don’t expose sensitive data — consider adding your google form url and entry ids to your environment variables .env.

• Understand what “public sharing” means.

• Make sure form responses are only accessible to you or the admin to avoid data leakage.

• Avoid API keys and google form link exposure.

Cons

• Not scalable: Google Forms aren’t designed for high-traffic applications. If your project grows and you begin receiving a large number of submissions (hundreds or thousands per day), you may run into performance issues or limitations.

• Latency and rate limits: Google’s infrastructure introduces slight latency in processing form submissions, especially when using no-cors, where you can’t confirm success or failure. Additionally, Google may throttle requests or block IPs if it detects too many submissions in a short period (to prevent abuse).

• Limited data structure support: Google Forms captures flat, simple data (like text, numbers, and dates), but doesn't support more complex data structures like nested objects, arrays etc. This makes it hard to store structured or hierarchical data without heavy formatting workarounds. You’re essentially working with spreadsheet rows, not structured database entries.

Final Thoughts

Google Forms offers a quick and surprisingly powerful way to collect and store data without spinning up a full backend. While it’s not a substitute for a production-grade system, it’s perfect for lightweight use cases like newsletters, waitlists, or early MVPs.

If you want to take it further, consider integrating with Google Sheets or using Apps Script for additional automation.