Govforms vs. GOV.UK Forms
| Area | Govforms | GOV.UK Forms |
|---|---|---|
| Who it's for | Public-sector and regulated teams across central government, agencies and local authorities who need production-grade online services on or off GOV.UK. | Central government teams creating online forms that are linked from the GOV.UK website, using a GOV.UK account and publishing workflow. |
| Design & UX | Full GOV.UK and MOJ Design System support, including start pages, task lists, complex branching journeys, check-your-answers, review flows and rich components. | Uses accessible GOV.UK templates and question types to create simple, consistent GOV.UK-style forms without needing coding or design skills. |
| Security & hosting | UK-hosted, UK-only data residency with ISO-aligned controls, production SLAs and cookie-free, server-side analytics for sensitive public-sector services. | Run by GDS on government infrastructure, designed to meet government cyber-security standards and protect user data while complying with data-protection regulations. |
| Environments & change | Separate Prototype, QA and Production environments with one-click deploy, full change history and roll-back for every service, aligned with Alpha/Beta/Live ways of working. | Draft and live versions for each form, so teams can prepare and review changes before updating a live GOV.UK form, with organisation admins controlling who can publish. |
| Integrations & outputs | Deep Microsoft 365 integration (SharePoint libraries and lists, Dataverse, Power Automate), REST/HTTPS APIs, GOV.UK Notify email and SMS, Ordnance Survey data, PDFs and carts for complex workflows. | Sends submissions to a chosen email inbox and allows CSV download of responses, with optional GOV.UK Pay integration to take payments at the end of a form. |
| Analytics & audit | Rich, cookie-free analytics for every service with journey-level, page-level and field-level metrics, plus full submission and action audit trails for operational and assurance needs. | Simple built-in metrics to see how many forms were submitted and the completion rate over recent days, supporting basic monitoring of form performance. |
| Pricing mindset | Free while you design and test; once live, simple per-transaction pricing plus a predictable UK support fee per service, designed for transparent public-sector cost control. | Free to use for central government organisations, with access managed by departmental GOV.UK Forms admins and a memorandum of understanding with GDS. |
| Support & expertise | UK-based live-service support with SLAs, proactive monitoring and optional help from specialists in GDS-aligned service design, content and integration for complex multi-channel services. | Supported and maintained by the GOV.UK Forms team at GDS, with guidance, documentation and best-practice content on creating accessible, good-quality GOV.UK forms. |
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