Quickstart

Formward is a form-backend service. Point your HTML <form> at your Formward endpoint and submissions land in your dashboard: no backend code, no server, no SDK.

1. Create a form

Log in to the dashboard and click New form. Give it a name and set the notification email address where you want to receive alerts when someone submits. Your verified account email is ready to receive notifications. If you choose a different address, open its confirmation email first; submissions are held until it is verified. Copy the endpoint URL shown on your form page for the next step.

No website? Choose Create a shareable form during setup. Open the published link and submit it to check that it works. See the hosted form guide for customization.

2. Set the endpoint as your form's action

Replace your existing action attribute with your Formward endpoint URL. The production endpoint is:

CopyPOST https://forms.formward.eu/f/<formId>

During local development against a local ingestion server the endpoint is http://localhost:8080/f/<formId>.

3. Add the honeypot field

Include a hidden _gotcha field. Real users never see or fill it; spam bots typically do. Any submission where _gotcha is non-empty is silently marked as spam and never sent to your email.

Example

A minimal contact form: copy, paste, and swap the endpoint URL:

Copy<form
  action="https://forms.formward.eu/f/<formId>"
  method="POST"
>
  <!-- Honeypot - keep hidden and leave empty -->
  <input
    type="text"
    name="_gotcha"
    style="display:none"
    tabindex="-1"
    autocomplete="off"
  />

  <label>
    Name
    <input type="text" name="name" required />
  </label>

  <label>
    Email
    <input type="email" name="email" required />
  </label>

  <label>
    Message
    <textarea name="message" required></textarea>
  </label>

  <button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>

4. Submit and verify

Submit the form. Within a few seconds the submission appears in the dashboard under the form's Submissions section. With instant notifications enabled, we send an email to your verified recipient. Check the spam folder too. Open a submission's delivery details if the email is missing. The dashboard's Test notification delivery button checks the notification pipeline without using your quota; submit your actual form as well to check the website connection and finish setup.

What happens next

• After a classic HTML form POST the browser is redirected to a thank-you page. By default this is /thanks on the ingestion server. Set a _redirect hidden field to send visitors to your own thank-you page instead.
• For single-page apps, send Accept: application/json and handle the JSON response yourself. See AJAX submissions.
• All special hidden fields (_redirect, _subject, _replyto) are documented in Special fields.