[HN Gopher] Show HN: Contact Form Delivery
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Show HN: Contact Form Delivery
Most sites I work on have at least one contact form and I got tired
of building out the logic to send them and handle the spam into
every project. I built and launched Sendfly for myself 5 years ago
and it's been a rock solid service that I've relied on ever since.
Recently I've done a full re-write, simplifying the product and
making it super affordable. I wanted to share it here in case it
comes in handy for someone else. There are lots of competitors out
there but I found them too expensive for my needs. For $15/year you
get unlimited forms and 5,000 form submissions every year. Hoping
that fits the bill for developers like me!
Author : stanmancan
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-10-22 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sendfly.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (sendfly.io)
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| > $15... 5,000 form submissions a year.
|
| Do you account for spam detection and bots that would exceed that
| quota?
| stanmancan wrote:
| Yes it only counts submissions that make it past the spam
| protection
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| This must be the most pragmatic "to-the-point" landing page I
| have ever seen. Logo, CTA button, value prop, sample code that
| explains the whole thing in a simple way, pricing, contact-us _a
| la_ eat your own dog food. Amazing.
| djbusby wrote:
| Did you buy tho?
| jenny91 wrote:
| Would be nice to see the email that's delivered for that example
| code.
| stanmancan wrote:
| I'll get that added to the homepage, thanks! For the time
| being; it's a simple text based email with the field names and
| submitted values that would look something like this:
| 1. Name John Doe 2. E-mail john@doe.co
| 3. Message Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
| adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et
| dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud
| exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
| consequat.
| samwillis wrote:
| Lovely implementation.
|
| There are a few of these about, having started playing around
| with making websites in the late 90s I have fond memory's of
| "Matt's Script Archive". He had both a Perl CGI script for this
| and a separate paid hosted version. Just checked, and it's still
| running 25 years later! https://www.formmail.com/
|
| Looks like you are going for roughly the same price point as that
| old classic.
|
| http://www.scriptarchive.com/
| tbossanova wrote:
| You have a typo in your own contact form, "hestiate" should be
| "hesitate" :)
| stanmancan wrote:
| Appreciate that; fixed!
| ugh123 wrote:
| I'm not sure what specifically you're selling me here. Is it a
| form that looks like your 'Get in touch' form at the bottom? How
| do I customize it (if i'm not a coder)? How do you handle
| spam/bots? How does it send it to me? via email? fills a
| spreadsheet?
|
| > Includes every feature we offer plus unlimited forms and 5,000
| form submissions a year
|
| What are the other features?
| stanmancan wrote:
| You'd need to some some basic HTML to use it. You can add
| whatever fields you want to the form and post it to our
| endpoint like in the example.
|
| We have some built in spam protection; a secondary confirmation
| after the forms submitted.
|
| The form gets emailed to you but you can also view it on your
| account.
|
| Tons of great questions; I'll look at adding a FAQ to the
| landing page to give a bit more detail!
| karthikmurkonda wrote:
| Isn't there a possibility that someone on internet can waste my
| quota because that url is visible to him?
|
| Or its like your checking the domain of the referar in backend?
| stanmancan wrote:
| There is some spam protection build in and we only count
| delivered submissions. If you have any issue's definitely reach
| out and we'll remove any spam that gets through.
| KevinGlass wrote:
| Personally I dislike using contact forms. If the email address is
| shown I'll just use that. Some people say you'll get spammed that
| way but that hasn't been my experience. These days unless a
| client specifically requests a form I will use a simple mailto:
| link and avoid the hassle.
| stanmancan wrote:
| I find myself reaching for both depending on the situation. I
| usually prefer to list an email address instead of a generic
| "Send us a message" form but there are lots of times when I (or
| a client) wants to collect specific information; in those cases
| contact forms are great.
| binwiederhier wrote:
| Oh I remember this. I used a service like this 20 years ago when
| I started programming and didn't know how to host dynamic content
| (only static HTML). Back then they were free, called form2mail or
| similar, and worked exactly the same way.
|
| Throws me back. I'm sure people these days will need it too, with
| all those static sites out there.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| This is why I like Wordpress, stuff like this is a simple plugin
| install away. Caching, analytics, forms, membership sites etc.
| can all be set up as free plugins (you can pay for more advanced
| features though).
| dyeje wrote:
| Hey I think I'm in your target market for this, I like to test
| ideas with landing pages and provide a contact form. All I really
| want is the ability to email myself the info from the form. In
| the past I've set up free ConvertKit or MailChimp accounts, but
| it's kind of a pain and way overkill.
|
| Anyway, when I'm on your landing page I have 3 questions:
|
| 1. What happens when the user submits the form, how do I access
| the data / know about new submissions?
|
| 2. Am I able to customize the fields?
|
| 3. What happens if I go over 5000 submissions?
| stanmancan wrote:
| Awesome feedback; thanks. I'll work on updating the landing
| page to answer those questions, but for the time being.
|
| 1. What happens when the user submits the form, how do I access
| the data / know about new submissions?
|
| When you setup a form you tell us who you'd like the form
| emailed to. When the forms submitted, we'll email that address
| the contents.
|
| 2. Am I able to customize the fields?
|
| Absolutely! You're in full control of the form itself; what
| fields are there, how it's styled, where it's hosted. All you
| need to do is set the forms action to your sendfly.io url so
| that when the form is submitted it gets posted to us.
|
| 3. What happens if I go over 5000 submissions?
|
| I haven't quite figured out that path yet; right now you'll
| just keep getting the submissions. I'll work on adding
| different plans, but wanted to keep it simple at launch. If
| you're interested and know you'll need more than 5,000
| submissions let me know and we can work something out!
| alhasaniq wrote:
| I suggest the following if the user hits 5000 submissions:
|
| Define the 5000 as a soft limit. Define something like 10,000
| or "100 days after reaching the soft limit" as a hard limit.
|
| When a user hits soft limit, you keep storing their
| submissions, but you don't let them see it unless they
| upgrade the subscription/buy more resources (Mailchimp's
| Blocks pricing strategy seems sensible to me). When a
| submission is received after hitting soft limit, you send
| your user an email telling them that they received a form
| submission, but they cant view it till they upgrade. (You
| keep notifying them). You can aggregate those notifications
| daily/weekly after the first few to reduce costs.
|
| When the hard limit is reached, you stop storing those
| entries. And send the user 1 email telling him that you
| changed behaviour.
| system2 wrote:
| Why would anyone pay for this when free forms like Contact7 are
| letting people do t he same for free?
| stanmancan wrote:
| Good question! Contact7 looks like a Wordpress Plugin? Sendfly
| works anywhere you can write HTML and puts you in control. You
| get to build and style your form as you wish and Sendfly just
| delivers it for you.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Sometimes Contact7 won't work because of the restrictions
| posed by the hosting company where you run your Wordpress
| installation. For that Contact7 has a companion plugin called
| Flamingo which stores data sent from forms locally to WP's
| database, which is then accessible via the admin panel.
| Moru wrote:
| Static sites comes to mind.
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(page generated 2022-10-22 23:00 UTC)