Show HN: A free tool so you can stop wasting time with contact us forms | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A free tool so you can stop wasting time with contact us forms

contactformify.com

24 pointsdieselz23 comments

What I really want is the reverse of this tool. I want a service that lets me contact the companies I do business with via email, bypassing all of the annoying forms that they set up and require that I have to fill out.

With a limit of ten emails a month and paid plans I'm not sure you can call this "a free tool".

* Free tier has changed to 50 contacts / mo [http://contactformify.com/plans] *

Hi corin_, I got the same feedback from someone else - I've updated the free tier to 50 contacts / month [http://contactformify.com/plans]. I was trying to figure out what a typical startup or personal site gets per month. I guess I underestimated.

Personally I think that it's not a "free tool" if you charge for it, even at 50 or 500 emails a month, to me it's a paid service with a "free tier".

For example I would never generalise Amazon AWS as "free hosting".

touché

Hey HN, I built this because practically every project involves spending a day dealing with a contact form. That development time is a total waste. Let Contact Formify handle that work for you, and for free if its for personal or low-volume business use.

I like the idea and might give it a try. I know it is unlimited in beta but the 10 limit/mo for the future free is offputting. If it was 100-250 and I knew what happened when I reach the limit, I might not think twice.

I have a non-tech product and am struggling for months on end trying to get ecommerce stuff working, so relative to that contact forms are nothing. For now, I need to mooch off free tools as much as I can.. =)

Great point, thanks for the feedback. I'm going to increase the free tier right now.

Are there really many people spending a day to build a contact form? Where does that time go and how much of it can your service realistically expect to reduce this by?

Have you seen contactme.com?

Hi m_ke - I have, but what I'm hoping to offer is a much simpler implementation of contact form handling. contactme.com seems to be a CRM system that also handles contact forms.

Businesses see software this way, the contactme way.

They want to turn those contacts into buyers (whatever you're selling: products, contents, services).

I like this because it lets me add a contact form to any static S3/Cloudfront hosted sites, without needing a server to handle the contact form.

I'd want to use my own sendgrid account mind.

exactly my thought when building contact formify :)

exactly my thought when I saw this on the front page :)

+1 from me. Looks like my site would not have to have any server-side handling for this, which is a big PLUS for me. There's still plenty of "dumb" sites out there where we would have to add server-side components only to handle contact forms: this sounds like a great way past that problem. You won't see me create an account today, but as soon as I have one of those projects back on my desk!

I'd be hesitant to start using any tool that has a very small limit for the number of free contacts (10 per month), considering you give absolutely no insight onto what a paid plan might cost (you simply list the price as "???"). If it is going to cost $50/month for 100 contacts, I'm not even going to bother with testing the free version.

I'd also be hesitant without an explanation of what happens to e-mails once the limit is reached. If I wind up unexpectedly on Hacker News and 200 people try to contact me, do I lose 150 of them?

Hi ceejayoz, no - that would definitely not happen. I would never throttle the emails - I'd just get in touch with you if you were over the limit.

That's not believable. If you'll never throttle the e-mails, why would anyone ever sign up for a paid plan?

* Free tier has changed to 50 contacts / mo [http://contactformify.com/plans] *

Hi kapkapkap, the paid plans would be a few dollars a month for greater volumes. I'm not sure what the cost will be yet because I don't know my costs before I get more usage, but it won't be expensive.

I'd be hesitant to let any other business grab up the emails I collect unless they are well known.

I see a need here, and if contactformify is dead simple to use, then I think you have a big market because not many companies seem to get it right (Wufoo notwithstanding).

Best of luck, and I will use your service!

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