How to Create an Online Order Form for PayPal with FormBuilder

FormBuilder allows you to create online order forms and embed them on your website within minutes. Card payments are handled by the native Stripe payment field, and PayPal orders are routed through a PayPal payment link or the FormBuilder PayPal integration on Zapier.

You don’t need to build forms from scratch or learn to code as our pre-built templates are a convenient starting point. Once published, every order lands in your FormBuilder responses and the money goes straight to your own PayPal or Stripe account.

Every form is served over HTTPS and stored responses are encrypted, so you can collect orders without worrying about security issues.

If you want to create a PayPal online order form without much fuss, then this guide is for you. We'll show you how you can create an online order form in a few minutes:

1. Log into FormBuilder
2. Create a form or select an existing one
3. Customize your form
4. Add the order and payment fields
5. Create an automatic thank you notification
6. Publish your form

Step 1: Log into FormBuilder

To get started, log into your FormBuilder account. If you don't have an account, you can sign up for free; there's no need to enter your credit card details. The free plan includes 5 active forms and 100 responses per month.

Step 2: Create a form or select an existing one

Once you're logged in, FormBuilder will take you to your dashboard, where you'll find all your existing forms. If you just signed up, then this dashboard will be blank, so you'll have to create a new form with the Create Form button.

From there you can start from a blank form, pick one of the order form templates, import an existing form from a PDF or URL, or describe the order form you need and let the AI form generator draft it. The templates already ask for the customer's name, email, shipping address and product choices, so you don't have to create a form from scratch.

However, if you prefer creating a form from scratch, choose the blank form option.

Step 3: Customize your form

When you select a template or create a form from scratch, the builder shows the list of field types on the left-hand side. It includes short and long text, email, phone, address, dropdowns, checkboxes, file uploads, signatures and a calculation field.

This panel allows you to customize your form by adding, removing, and moving fields around depending on the information you want to collect and how you want your form to look.

You can also customize your form's background and theme to match your website's look by opening the Theme settings. Here, you’ll be able to change the colors, typography, borders and button styling. See customize form design for the details.

Step 4: Add the order and payment fields

First, add the fields that describe the order: a dropdown or radio field for the product, a number field for the quantity, and a calculation field that multiplies the two so the customer sees the total before they pay. Conditional logic lets you show extra options (size, color, gift wrapping) only when they apply.

Then decide how you want to get paid. There are two ways to connect the order form to PayPal:

Option A: PayPal payment link (no automation needed). Create a payment link or Buy Button in your PayPal business dashboard (PayPal’s guide). Then open your form's settings and set the redirect URL after submission to that link, or paste the link into the custom thank-you message. The customer fills in the order, submits, and lands on PayPal checkout to pay. PayPal payment links accept PayPal, Venmo, Pay Later and major cards in more than 23 currencies.

Option B: Zapier (automatic PayPal invoices). Go to FormBuilder + PayPal on Zapier, create an API key in Settings, then make a Zap with the FormBuilder "New Form Response" trigger and PayPal's "Create Invoice" and "Send Invoice" actions. Map the form's name, email, product and total fields to the invoice, and every order will automatically email the customer a PayPal invoice for the right amount, in the currency you set.

If you would rather take the card payment inside the form itself, drag the Payment field onto the form. It runs on Stripe: connect your Stripe account in Settings, then enter the amount, the currency and a short description in the field settings. Payment goes directly to your Stripe account when the customer submits.

Step 5: Create an automatic thank you notification

From here, you can preview your form and publish it, but we recommend first setting up the emails that go out once someone has placed an order. Don't worry; this only takes a couple of seconds to set up.

Open Notifications in the builder and turn on Email notifications. Add yourself (or your fulfilment team) as a recipient so you know the moment an order arrives, and turn on the respondent copy so the customer gets a confirmation of what they ordered. You can set a custom subject line such as “Thank you for your order” and send a test email before you go live. See email notifications for the options.

You can also edit the thank-you page that customers see after submitting, which is where the PayPal link from Option A goes.

Step 6: Publish your form

The last step involves publishing your form. You can do this in three ways:

1. Embed it on your website
2. Share it on social media
3. Attach it to your email newsletter

Click Publish, then open Share from the dashboard. To embed the form on your website, copy the embed code and paste it into an HTML block on the page where you'd like the form to appear. This works on WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Squarespace, Webflow and any plain HTML page. Refresh the page and you'll find your form on the front-end of your website.

Alternatively, if you'd like to share your form on social media, the same Share modal has the public link, a QR code and social share options.

The last option is linking to your form from an email that you send to your newsletter subscribers. Copy the public link and paste it into your email newsletter tool of choice, whether it's Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign, and subscribers can open the form in one click. The full flow is described in publish, share and embed forms.

Why build your order form with FormBuilder

Being able to take orders and get paid without writing code is just one of the factors that sets FormBuilder apart from traditional form builders like Google Forms and Microsoft Forms. These are some other reasons why we think it is a good fit for online order forms:

Stripe payments built in

In addition to routing orders to PayPal, FormBuilder has a native Stripe payment field on every plan, with no platform fee on top of Stripe’s own fees, so you can collect card payments inside the form and have the money go directly to your Stripe account.

The process is simple. Drag the Payment field onto your form, connect your Stripe account in Settings, set the amount and currency, and you're good to go.

Conditional logic and calculations

An order form rarely looks the same for every customer. Conditional logic shows or hides fields based on earlier answers, so a customer who picks "Pickup" never sees the shipping address block, and the calculation field adds up quantities and prices so the total is visible before checkout.

For example, if you’re a tiler and prospects request quotes through your website, you could charge $20 per square foot. If someone enters a 100 square foot room, the calculation field multiplies $20 by 100 and shows a quote of $2,000.

Orders where you need them

Every order is stored in FormBuilder, where you can view and export responses. Turn on the native Google Sheets integration to append each order to a spreadsheet, use webhooks to post it to your own system, or use Zapier to send it to your CRM, accounting tool or shipping app.

Form analytics

FormBuilder tracks views and submissions for each form so you can see how many visitors start and finish your order form. If you see a big drop-off, shorten the form, split it into a multi-page form, or move the payment step to the end.

Next steps

If you’re looking for an online form builder that’ll allow you to take orders, collect Stripe payments in the form, route PayPal orders automatically and keep everything in sync with your other tools, then consider signing up for a 14-day FormBuilder Pro trial, or start on the free plan.