A form submission is what GoHighLevel stores each time someone completes a form, whether on a funnel, website or embedded on an outside site. The submission creates a new contact or updates an existing one (matched by email or phone), writes the answers into the mapped standard and custom fields, and is saved in the form's submission history with the time and the page it came from.
Forms are single-page, as opposed to surveys, which show questions across multiple slides.
In practice
You build forms under Sites, then Forms (as of October 2026). Each form element maps to a contact field or custom field, and the form's settings control what happens after submit: a thank-you message, a redirect, or conditional rules based on answers. Submissions are listed in the forms area, where you can filter and export them.
The "Form Submitted" workflow trigger is how most lead flows start: a form is submitted, the workflow tags the contact, creates an opportunity, notifies the owner and sends the first text.
File upload fields deserve a mention. When a form has a file upload custom field, the uploaded files are attached to the contact, not stored in the media library. That's convenient for intake (IDs, bank statements, photos of a job), but it means those files don't come along in a normal contact CSV export.
Where it shows up in RGS Tools
Backup & Insights's file backup backs up form uploads with the rest of each contact's files, and master search finds them by name, email, phone, filename or field value across every backed-up sub-account. Power-Ups' File Preview lets you hover a file to preview it.