How to collect form answers without a backend

Steps

1. Write the form with names on every field

   A service saves only what has a name. Mark what is required, and use the right type so phones show the right keyboard.

   <form method="POST" action="...">
     <input name="name" required>
     <input name="email" type="email" required>
     <textarea name="message"></textarea>
     <button>Send</button>
   </form>

2. Pick a service

   All three take the same form. Only the action and the setup differ.

   	Formspree	Netlify Forms	Uno
   Action	https://formspree.io/f/{form_id}	the page's own address, with an attribute	/__forms
   Works on	Any site	It works for sites hosted on Netlify; Netlify reads the form when you deploy	Sites published on Uno
   Free	$0 a month, 50 submissions a month	See Netlify's pricing	Free; up to 120 entries an hour per site
   Entries go to	Your email, the dashboard	Shown in the Netlify UI	your email, Telegram, or a webhook
   Paid next	Personal: $15 a month, or $10 a month billed yearly	See Netlify's pricing	Nothing to buy

3. Formspree: create the form, paste the address

   Sign up, press New form, name it, set the email that gets the entries, press Create Form, and copy the form's endpoint. Put that address into action. Formspree saves every field that has a name attribute. After a send, the visitor lands on a thank-you page and the entry goes to your Formspree account.

   <form method="POST" action="https://formspree.io/f/your-form-id">
     ...
   </form>

   The free plan is for testing: unlimited forms, 30 days of submission archive, no file uploads. The next plan, Personal, costs $15 a month, or $10 a month billed yearly, and takes 200 submissions a month, with 1 GB of file uploads.

4. Netlify: add an attribute, deploy

   If the site is on Netlify, add data-netlify="true" and a name attribute to the form tag. Netlify reads the form when you deploy.

   <form name="contact" method="POST" data-netlify="true">
     ...
   </form>

5. Send the visitor somewhere after the send

   By default the service shows its own thank-you page. A hidden field changes where the visitor lands, and a hidden trap field keeps most bots out: people never see it, bots fill it.

   <input type="hidden" name="_redirect" value="/thanks.html">
   <input type="text" name="_gotcha" style="display:none" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off">

   The field names are not the same in every service. Those two are the ones Uno uses; look up the names in your service's docs.

Check that it works

Send a test entry from the real page, then open your inbox. Then post to the form from a terminal to see the service answer a script too.

$ curl -s -X POST https://my-cafe.uno4.me/__forms \
    -H "Accept: application/json" \
    -d "name=Test" -d "[email protected]" -d "message=hello"
{"ok":true}

In Uno: no service to sign up for

A site published on Uno already has the endpoint: the same address, path /__forms. Use a plain form, with nothing to register:

<form action="/__forms" method="POST">
  <input name="name" required>
  <input name="email" type="email" required>
  <button>Send</button>
</form>

1. Entries are kept

   Every entry is stored, and you see them all on the site's Forms tab in the console. The account's own email works at once; another address gets a confirmation letter first.

2. Entries are delivered

   Out of the box, a new site with a form sends every entry to your account's email. The Forms tab has a switch for each channel: email, Telegram or a webhook, each with its own switch. You connect Telegram yourself: a message from the Uno bot, or from your own bot with its token and a chat ID.

3. The visitor sees a result

   A hidden field named _redirect with a path on the same site sends the visitor there after the send. Without _redirect the visitor sees a short thank-you page. A fetch call that asks for JSON gets {"ok":true} instead of a page.

A webhook gets a POST with JSON to your URL: a CRM, Zapier, n8n. For bots: A hidden field named _gotcha: a bot that fills it gets a success answer, and the entry is dropped. A spam filter is on. In Uno Work you can also ask: "add a contact form that sends to my email". The agent writes the form and publishes it.

What a form service does not do

• It collects entries. It does not run logic: no accounts, no payments, no reply that depends on the answer. For that you need server code on a computer.
• On Uno an entry is up to 32 KB, so it is a request form, not a place to upload files. Put big files in cloud storage.
• Free tiers have a count. Formspree's free plan takes 50 submissions a month: enough for a test, tight for a launch.
• Entries are text in an email. Do not collect passwords or card numbers in a form.

Common problems