The best contact form backends for static sites

Decide these four things first

Who should own the submissions? A vendor’s database, your host’s dashboard, or storage in your own account. This is the decision that’s expensive to reverse.

Does it need to work without JavaScript? If yes, you need a service that accepts a plain HTML form post with a redirect, which rules several options out immediately.

Will the site move hosts? Host-native forms are excellent until the migration, at which point they’re the thing that quietly breaks.

What does it cost at 10× volume? Most pricing is per submission per month. Model the year it works, not the week you launch.

The options

Every one of these is a reasonable choice. Features and pricing move around — check each provider’s site before you commit.

How to pick, in one paragraph each

Pick a hosted platform (Formspree, Formspark) if you want someone else accountable for uptime, spam filtering and support, and you’re happy for submissions to live in their system. This is the default answer for most commercial projects and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Pick FormSubmit if the site is small, personal, and an email in your inbox is genuinely all you need. It’s the least ceremony of anything here.

Pick your host’s built-in forms if you’re confident you’re staying put. Netlify Forms in particular is a very good feature and needs almost no code.

Pick RG Forms if data ownership matters — a client’s leads in the client’s own Drive — or if you want a permanent record in a spreadsheet at zero cost, with an endpoint that doesn’t depend on any vendor continuing to exist.

Write your own function if the form does something beyond “tell me about it”. If there’s a charge to take, an account to create, or inventory to check, own the code.

Whatever you pick, do these

• Send a real submission from the deployed site — not localhost, not a preview. The number of live contact forms that go nowhere is genuinely alarming.

• Add a honeypot field — it costs nothing and removes most low-effort bot traffic before anything else has to think about it.

• Show a real error state with a fallback email — a failed submission should never be a dead end for the visitor.

• Check where the notification actually lands — and whether it survives a spam filter. Test with a non-Gmail address too.

• Write down what happens if you stop paying — and where the archive would come from. Future you will want to know.

The RG Forms version, for reference

<form id="contact-form">
  <label>Name <input name="name" required /></label>
  <label>Email <input type="email" name="email" required /></label>
  <label>Message <textarea name="message" required></textarea></label>

  <!-- Honeypot: humans never see it, bots fill it in -->
  <input type="text" name="_hp" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off"
         style="position:absolute;left:-9999px" aria-hidden="true" />

  <button type="submit">Send</button>
  <p id="form-status" role="status"></p>
</form>

<script>
  const ENDPOINT = "https://script.google.com/macros/s/AKfycb.../exec";
  const form = document.getElementById("contact-form");
  const status = document.getElementById("form-status");

  form.addEventListener("submit", async (event) => {
    event.preventDefault();
    status.textContent = "Sending…";

    const res = await fetch(ENDPOINT, {
      method: "POST",
      // text/plain avoids the CORS preflight Apps Script can't answer
      headers: { "Content-Type": "text/plain" },
      body: JSON.stringify({
        tab: "contact",
        fields: Object.fromEntries(new FormData(form)),
      }),
    });

    const data = await res.json();
    status.textContent =
      data.result === "success" ? "Thanks — we'll be in touch." : "Something went wrong.";
    if (data.result === "success") form.reset();
  });
</script>

Common questions

More answers in the full FAQ.