Create a Basic Contact Form
A contact form provides visitors to your site an easy way to reach out to you. You can ask a visitor for something as simple as their name and email address, or setup a full-on survey to ask them any number of questions. Free users can include up to five fields in a form and Pro users can have an unlimited number of fields in a form. You can create as many forms as you like, either way.
Get started by dragging the Contact Form element to a page.
The form starts with three default fields and a title; the purpose of each default field (Name, Email, and Comment) is fairly self explanatory.
These fields are set as required (meaning the recipient must enter something in the field to submit the form) by default. But this is very easy to change just by clicking on a field and using the toolbar to make adjustments.
A number of settings can be altered for each field; these settings can be accessed simply by clicking on the field to open its toolbox. You can also delete a field by clicking the "x" that appears in the upper right of the field.
You can also quite easily add new fields to the form by dragging them on just like any other element.
There are preset fields for Name, Email Address, Postal Address and Phone Number.
And generic Short and Large Text Box Fields (allowing you to create a field asking for any info you want), Options Buttons, Drop Down Boxes and Checkboxes to create survey style questions, and a File Upload field that allows the person filling out the form to send you a file of any kind.
Before you complete your form and Publish your site, you'll also want to give the form a name (for your own reference) and determine to which email address (or addresses) you want form submissions to be sent. You can enter more than one address by separating them with commas.
You'll also want to decide whether you want to display confirmation text directly on the same page when the form is submitted, or if you'd rather redirect visitors to another page on your site after the form is submitted.
Note that you can find these settings by using the Form Options button at the top of the form.
Replies to your form will go to the email addresses you entered under Form Options and are also archived to a Form Entries section of your account. Form Entries can be access under the More button to the right of the site's listing on the My Sites page of your account.
If you have more than one form connected to your site, then you can flip through the different forms using the Form Entries drop-down at the top of the page.
Get started by dragging the Contact Form element to a page.
The form starts with three default fields and a title; the purpose of each default field (Name, Email, and Comment) is fairly self explanatory.
These fields are set as required (meaning the recipient must enter something in the field to submit the form) by default. But this is very easy to change just by clicking on a field and using the toolbar to make adjustments.
A number of settings can be altered for each field; these settings can be accessed simply by clicking on the field to open its toolbox. You can also delete a field by clicking the "x" that appears in the upper right of the field.
You can also quite easily add new fields to the form by dragging them on just like any other element.
There are preset fields for Name, Email Address, Postal Address and Phone Number.
And generic Short and Large Text Box Fields (allowing you to create a field asking for any info you want), Options Buttons, Drop Down Boxes and Checkboxes to create survey style questions, and a File Upload field that allows the person filling out the form to send you a file of any kind.
Before you complete your form and Publish your site, you'll also want to give the form a name (for your own reference) and determine to which email address (or addresses) you want form submissions to be sent. You can enter more than one address by separating them with commas.
You'll also want to decide whether you want to display confirmation text directly on the same page when the form is submitted, or if you'd rather redirect visitors to another page on your site after the form is submitted.
Note that you can find these settings by using the Form Options button at the top of the form.
Replies to your form will go to the email addresses you entered under Form Options and are also archived to a Form Entries section of your account. Form Entries can be access under the More button to the right of the site's listing on the My Sites page of your account.
If you have more than one form connected to your site, then you can flip through the different forms using the Form Entries drop-down at the top of the page.
Contact Form Submissions
When a contact form is submitted, the information the visitor entered in that form is sent to two places:
If you don't see the submissions in your email inbox, check your Spam or Junk Mail folders in case the messages are being routed there. If you see the messages in your spam folder, mark them as "Not Spam" using whatever option your email provider gives you. The more of these you mark as "Not Spam" the less likely they'll be to show up in your spam folder.
If you don't see them there, make sure you have the correct address assigned to your form. To do so, click on the Form Options button connected to the form in the editor (you'll need to click the form to bring this up).
Then make sure the email is entered correctly in the submissions "to:" field. If it isn't, re-enter it and Publish the change to your site.
You can even enter multiple addresses if you want. Just separate each address with a comma.
Delivering form emails to the inbox can be tricky and there are some situations where the emails may be completely blocked. If you cannot find the messages in your Inbox or your Spam folders and you believe the messages really aren't coming through, the best bet is to switch to another address completely (preferably at a provider like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail).
We're constantly fighting to keep our contact form email delivery high, but we can't guarantee the form messages will be delivered to every address. That just isn't possible.
That's why we also give you the option to view form messages directly in your account. To access any messages that have been sent to you via a form, click on the More button to the right of the site listing on the main page of your account. Then click on Form Entries.
This will bring up all the messages that have been sent to you through any of the forms on this site. You can even export all these messages to a spreadsheet using the Export Data link.
- The address (or addresses) you connected to the form during setup.
- The Form Entries section of your account.
If you don't see the submissions in your email inbox, check your Spam or Junk Mail folders in case the messages are being routed there. If you see the messages in your spam folder, mark them as "Not Spam" using whatever option your email provider gives you. The more of these you mark as "Not Spam" the less likely they'll be to show up in your spam folder.
If you don't see them there, make sure you have the correct address assigned to your form. To do so, click on the Form Options button connected to the form in the editor (you'll need to click the form to bring this up).
Then make sure the email is entered correctly in the submissions "to:" field. If it isn't, re-enter it and Publish the change to your site.
You can even enter multiple addresses if you want. Just separate each address with a comma.
Delivering form emails to the inbox can be tricky and there are some situations where the emails may be completely blocked. If you cannot find the messages in your Inbox or your Spam folders and you believe the messages really aren't coming through, the best bet is to switch to another address completely (preferably at a provider like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail).
We're constantly fighting to keep our contact form email delivery high, but we can't guarantee the form messages will be delivered to every address. That just isn't possible.
That's why we also give you the option to view form messages directly in your account. To access any messages that have been sent to you via a form, click on the More button to the right of the site listing on the main page of your account. Then click on Form Entries.
This will bring up all the messages that have been sent to you through any of the forms on this site. You can even export all these messages to a spreadsheet using the Export Data link.
How Do I Change My Contact Form Address?
Click on the form in the editor and then select the Form Options button.
This will bring up the Form Options toolbar. Just change the address shown in the "Email submissions to:" box. Be sure to Publish the site after making the change.
You can even enter multiple addresses in this box if you like. Just separate each address with a comma.
This will bring up the Form Options toolbar. Just change the address shown in the "Email submissions to:" box. Be sure to Publish the site after making the change.
You can even enter multiple addresses in this box if you like. Just separate each address with a comma.
Newsletter Sign-up and Autoresponder Forms
We don't provide email newsletter / sign-up forms or auto-responder forms as part of our service. But that doesn't mean you can't use such forms with your site. Pretty much all major bulk email providers (like MailChimp, Constant Contact, iContact, AWeber and others) provide forms you can use in our editor.
Using one of these forms is a simple matter of copying the code provided by whatever email service you're using to one of our Custom HTML Elements. Let's use MailChimp as an example of how this would work.
When you build a form with MailChimp, they generate code that you can use to add this form to a site. First select to "disable all Javascript" as seen in the image below. Then select to Create the Embed Code. If you're using another provider and they provide the option to disable the Javascript, you should do the same with their form.
Now select all this code and copy it.
Drag a Custom HTML element to a page on your site.
Then click the element to edit it.
And paste in the code you copied earlier.
When you click away from the element, the HTML code will disappear and you'll see the form itself.
After you publish your site, any sign-ups from this form will be added directly to the list you've created at your email provider.
Using one of these forms is a simple matter of copying the code provided by whatever email service you're using to one of our Custom HTML Elements. Let's use MailChimp as an example of how this would work.
When you build a form with MailChimp, they generate code that you can use to add this form to a site. First select to "disable all Javascript" as seen in the image below. Then select to Create the Embed Code. If you're using another provider and they provide the option to disable the Javascript, you should do the same with their form.
Now select all this code and copy it.
Drag a Custom HTML element to a page on your site.
Then click the element to edit it.
And paste in the code you copied earlier.
When you click away from the element, the HTML code will disappear and you'll see the form itself.
After you publish your site, any sign-ups from this form will be added directly to the list you've created at your email provider.