Show HN: I built a free forms service for static websites
formking.io
formking.io
I ended up switching to using a Google script which I've been happy with so far: https://github.com/dwyl/learn-to-send-email-via-google-scrip...
I’ll try your google solution, thanks
Free https://www.staticforms.xyz/ https://formsubmit.co/
Paid https://formbucket.com/ https://formspree.io/
You can also check out Netlify Forms
Anyway a few more I found when I had to switch last time, I went with usebasin.
https://liveformhq.com/ https://www.formbackend.com/ https://www.netlify.com/products/forms/ https://formbucket.com/ https://www.formking.io/ https://formspree.io/ https://www.staticforms.xyz/ https://formcarry.com/ https://formkeep.com/
Here's how to post to a Google Form: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18073971/http-post-to-a-...
This was just a personal project that I made available in case anyone else had a need for it :)
I had to figure out how to handle my contact form on my static blog recently, and I decided to simply write a form handler with Go and deploy it on Google's Cloud Functions. It's free for now (and probably always will be considering the fact that I'll probably never receive more than ~10 form submissions per month anyways). The function takes awhile to spin up cold, but it doesn't matter too much. I like it because the code is simple and I "own" the service.
Curious to hear what other static site admins have decided to use for their forms.
GO is super interesting, and I like that you wanted total control over your process. I've never used Google Cloud Functions but that's similar to Azure Functions or AWS Lambda, yea?
That means either the service will sell my information, or the information of my customers (if not now, eventually), or that it's going to die shortly. And I don't want to put in the effort of migrating my sites to your service in either of those cases.
So my advice to you is to start charging.
You can go to the "Visitors" list and from there you can see a summary of each visit and also view the recording.
userTrack is not free (open-source) but sold as a product for a one-time fee. As for the soure code: currently you get the original PHP backend code but only the bundled front-end code. I am also adding soon the option to download the original front-end code (TypeScript + ReactJS + MaterialUI).
I have thought about releasing userTrack as open-source, but I currently work full-time on it and I need to sustain myself, otherwise I couldn't spend the time to work on it. If I find a sustainable way to open-source it, I will.
Well, it was in my interest to share it, but I do think it's one of the best ways to improve user privacy while still being able to get valuable insights.
I'm by no means a UI or UX expert :)
One thought I had that could avoid the harvesting data aspect would be to encrypt the data with a public key and then allowing the host to decrypt it locally with a private key. I think that's how products like Lastpass work.
The thing I immediately look for as well is GDPR information.
Besides all that: it looks like a great solution! :-)
It's a personal project that I built because I didn't want to keep paying for a service to process forms for my static websites (though as mentioned by someone in one of the threads above I still have some forms to convert)
Maybe I'll record a video explaining that and put it on the front page
There exist free services that I kind of trust because it doesn't matter (irc-style technical discussions or postcard-level greetings on Telegram) or because it is freemium and they seem to have a grasp on the problem of free (free matrix accounts: they sell hosted servers, mewe: limited free storage)
Maybe if they just offered a paid support plan, but kept the actual service itself free?
That's not his problem.
Truth of the matter is, an awful lot of things that were previously commercially viable simply aren't any more because people are happy giving them away for free or releasing them with ad support. Few people will buy a web browser or CMS or programming language compiler/interpeter/envrionment, because free competition has made commercial ones obsolete.
Either way, it's just life. Things that were once expensive services only available to wealthy became commoditised and affordable for pennies, and new types of business became viable in their place.
So if you're running a company selling a form service and free competition is outcompeting you, then you'll have to adapt or die like anyone else. Or find some value proposition people are willing to pay for in that area (support, customisations, lots of new features, a glossy design, etc).
If your product isn't better than the free one why should anyone pay for it?
If it is better, why are you worrying about competition that offers an inferior product? If anything, that should drive more customers to your business.
(Realistically your best bet is to be Pinboard: not rich, but a comfortable living, built up over long years, and by picking up several waves of refugees from collapsing VC-funded competitors)
It seems that everything is either pay-with-privacy, or $100/year, with no middle ground, and that's sad for me as an indie.
(Btw, I am trying to fit into this gap with a $1/mo subscription for a commercial-quality weather forecast complication for Apple Watch: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weathergraph-weather-forecast/... )
for something like git number of accounts or private repository count can be enough of a signal to act as differentiation in plans, but for something like forms it's going to be hard, maybe authentication or sso, idk.
It’s not worth building a business for unprofitable customers in general. A forms service falls into the general case because a million customers is a highly unlikely. It’s also likely to require an undesirable business model. For example $10/site/year is going to be too dear for people with multiple hobby sites if $100/year is too dear.
> It’s not worth building a business for unprofitable customers in general.
I mean, Uber seems to be doing reasonably well.
I literally just made it because I didn't want to pay for a service anymore for my static sites that need to collect information.
Maybe solidifying some of the verbiage on the website, and giving it time to not be so new are the two biggest things I can do to solve this?
I think you are being quite the prude!
If anybody knows if .io mgmt. is professionally managed now, let me know.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/10/io_hijacking_in_tra...
- stick with .com
- avoid .tv, or any islands/small kingdoms
- .id is underfunded (lifetime domains, so no renewal fees)
- research anything else
As for user counts, one of the benefits of it being a personal project is that I don't have to share or defend that. It's a service that's there, if you want it feel free to use it. If not, that's completely okay too
I'll add that form to my list for conversion though, so at least thanks for that :)
Lots of questions surrounding this.
In the case of Form King, all transport is over TLS, with the RDS instances being encrypted at rest. When a form is submitted, the data is encrypted and uses the AES-256-CBC cipher prior to storage. I just didn't want to store other people's data in plain text. Form could include names, and emails, and addresses. It's also signed with a MAC to ensure the data isn't modified.
This is probably some information I should include on the website as well (It's a personal project that I just work on in the evenings and weekends, so I had to prioritize stuff and the marketing website was one of the lowest :) )
Now, keeping in mind that I'm no security expert beyond what's standard for production applications, this is the area of any service that worries me the most and it'll remain a top priority to continue enhancing the security of the app.
First... put a live form on the home page.
Second... include a screenshot of the a live form, not just the backend of form submissions.
Third, for extra credit... create a simple video of using the tool end to end.
Best of luck!
A live form, of course. People want to see how it works and play with it. I'll get these put together and up soon! Thanks again for taking a look :)
It's not free because I want it to be sustainable, but also because it does more than just capture form data and send you an email. You might not need more than that, but if you do then it's probably even more important that it's a sustainable business.
I've built a similar service but it also includes a website builder if anyone here is interested. Check it out at https://www.webase.com
Spelling mistake there.
Nice looking site!
Shameless plug: if you want a self-hosted AGPL-3 alternative with optional PGP support, checkout "mailer": https://github.com/rclement/mailer
How do you intend to monetize? It is important to make sure your business plan aligns with my potential use cases.
Small typo: it is misspelled as ti on the landing page.
It looks cool and I'll give it a try, but I need to know more than is obviously apparent from your site before I can use it for real.
Privacy policy, yea. I gotta get one of those up. Incredibly important things like that and terms of use should be sorted right away. This is one of the things I forget about in my personal projects (like FormKing) that I really should stop forgetting :)
As for monetization, that's not my goal. One thing I don't think I communicated well is that this isn't a business. It's a personal project that I intend to open source shortly. The cost for the service (hosting, domains, etc) is super low so for right now I'm not looking to monetize.
Form King was literally just something I built for use with my websites that I had a lot of fun working on. So I made it public
We give you unlimited forms but gate on submissions, offering more features / submissions in higher tiers etc.
Reading the blog it doesn't look like there is anything malicious about selling user data or some "you are the product"-type bait and switch, but with one dev and no financial incentive I don't see how he keeps this going (No knock to him, asking unlimited free work is a lot).
Forms seem like sort of a small thing, but you really want them to _work_. Having a whiff on even a contact form can miss a lead and looks bad. And if the service breaks, all of a sudden you have to change a bunch of source code pointing to a defunct service, and hope they have an export function.
(shameless plug for the curious, since some people are suggesting services: https://formcake.com