Order form apps for home bakers, compared honestly.

The short answer

Which order form app should a home baker use?

It depends on what you sell and how you want to be paid. Free and simple: Google Forms. Payments, invoices and a booking calendar in one app: Bakesy. A fixed menu with card payments in Ireland or the UK: Square Online. Custom orders that start on Instagram or WhatsApp, without building a shop: an order link, which is what we make. A full online shop with shipping: Shopify, and only then.

Full disclosure: we make Rapid Cart, and it is on this list. We have tried to be fair about where other tools are better, and they are better at several things. Everything about other products was checked on their own websites on 30 September 2026. If something has changed, tell us and we will fix it.

1 · What matters

What to look for in an order form for custom cakes

• Room for a custom order. A cake is not a product with a price and a quantity. The customer needs to describe what they want, and say when they need it.
• Reference photos, without making the customer sign in to anything first.
• Telling the customer where things stand. Accepted, declined, ready. Otherwise the “did you get my order?” messages come back.
• Payments, if you want them. Some bakers want deposits taken online; many are happy with a bank transfer or Revolut.
• Works on your phone, because that is where you will read the orders.
• Fits where you are. Several tools built for the US assume US payment apps and dollars.

2 · The options

Six order form apps, and who each one suits

Google Forms

Good for: getting off DMs for nothing. Familiar to customers, flexible, and every order lands in a spreadsheet.

Watch out for: a photo upload question makes the customer sign in to a Google account first. The notification email does not contain the order, and the customer is never told whether you have accepted it. We wrote up how to set it up properly, and where it breaks.

Cost: free.

Jotform

Good for: a better-looking, more capable form than Google’s, with file uploads that do not need a sign-in, and payment fields.

Watch out for: the free plan is limited to five forms and 100 submissions a month, and shows Jotform branding. It is a general form builder: an order arrives as a submission, and keeping the customer updated is still yours to do by hand.

Cost: free plan with those limits; paid plans started at $39 a month when we checked.

Bakesy

Good for: the most complete app built specifically for home bakers. A website, custom order forms, a calendar where you block off dates, invoices filled in from the order, and payments, all in one place. If you want every part of the business in one app, it does more than anything else here, including us.

Watch out for: it is built in and for the US. Its listed payment options include Venmo, Cash App and Zelle, which are US services, so check that the currency and payment methods you use are supported before you move your business onto it.

Cost: a free trial, then a monthly membership.

Square Online

Good for: a fixed menu sold with card payments. Available in Ireland and the UK, with a free plan, and collection and local delivery built in. Cupcake boxes, cookie tins, a weekly bake: this is what it is designed for.

Watch out for: it is built around a product list. A custom cake has to be squeezed into item options and a notes box, and a request that needs a quote before it has a price does not fit a checkout.

Cost: free plan, plus card processing fees on every online sale.

Shopify

Good for: a proper online shop, with shipping, stock and a catalogue. If you post brownies across the country, it is the grown-up option.

Watch out for: it is a shop, not an order form. Custom made-to-order requests with a date usually mean adding paid apps, and the setup is measured in days, not minutes. For a baker taking a few custom orders a week it is a lot of machinery.

Cost: a short trial, then plans from around €24 a month when we checked, plus apps.

Rapid Cart

Good for: custom orders that start on Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook. One link for your bio; the customer describes the order, adds the date, collection or delivery, a budget and their details, and you get the whole order by email and in a dashboard. Accept, decline or mark it ready, and the customer is told automatically and can check the status on their own page.

Watch out for: it does not take payment, so deposits are agreed the way you do now. It has no calendar for blocking dates, and no photo upload: customers can start from your own photos, or describe what they want. If you want payments and invoices in the same tool, Bakesy or Square Online fits better.

Cost: fourteen days free with no card, then plans from €4 a month.

3 · Side by side

Order form apps for bakers compared

“Check” means we could not confirm it from the product’s own site; try it on the free trial before relying on it.

4 · Choosing

Which one fits you

• A few orders a week, and free matters most: Google Forms, set up with our order form template.
• You want deposits paid online and a calendar: Bakesy if its payment options work where you are; Square Online if you are in Ireland or the UK and sell mostly from a menu.
• Orders arrive in your DMs and you are tired of chasing details: an order link. Keep the conversation in the chat, put the order on a form.
• You post nationwide and want a real shop: Shopify.

Whichever you choose, the fields matter more than the tool. The nine details every order needs are the same in all of them.

5 · About ours

Trying Rapid Cart

This section is about our tool. Everything above is meant to be useful whichever one you pick.

Sign up and your order page exists in about a minute, at an address like rapidcart.co/o/aoifes-cakes. There is nothing to install for your customers and nothing to configure before the first order. If it is not right for you, the trial ends and nothing is charged.

Something on this page out of date, or a tool we should have included? We would genuinely like to hear it: info@rapidcart.co