3rd Party Form Handlers

On a Webflow-hosted site, when you submit a form, it can have three possible "targets";

1. Webflow's built-in form handler, which will store the result, and send you an email notification
2. Logic ( BETA ), which triggers a Webflow Logic automation flow.
3. An external URL that you specify in the action setting of the form. This is good for e.g. triggering webhooks on Zapier or Make, and can also be used to send the form content to a 3rd party form handler.

For most forms, most people use the built-in form handler, because they simply want to capture some customer information such as a lead or a contact us form.

For sites that are exported and hosted elsewhere Webflow's form handlers are not available, and the approach #3 above is often used to target a 3rd party form handler.

A very nice part of the Webflow forms UX is the customizable in-line success and failure messages that appear after the form submission. These only work natively with targets 1 and 2 above, however Sygnal Attributes includes a feature for target 3.

Forms Handler Limitations

Webflow's built in forms handler has a number of significant issues;

• SPAM & Reliability issues. In early 2023, Webflow's servers were targeted by a spam group. These attacks go directly to Webflow's form handler service so even if you delete those forms, you'll still get SPAM notification from Webflow. Webflow responded to this by adding layers of security to form submissions which have unfortunately caused valid submissions to get blocked
• Email Notifications.
• > No styling options. As beautiful as Webflow site designs are the form notification email to your clients is rough.
• > No data-formatting options. Does your form have 20 radio buttons and checkboxes? Because your client will see all of them in that email with no control over how its presented.
• > The Unsubscribe link. Webflow's email notifications contain a mandatory unsubscribe link, and anyone who clicks it will remove your client's email from the form's email notifications list. The problem is, many clients forward those emails on to their own clients as part of their email response, an other people can click it too.

3rd Party Form Handler Services

Many people still use Webflow's form handler but with the recent SPAM attacks, it has become too unreliable for many and they are switching to 3rd party form handlers.

This is also necessary for companies who are exporting and hosting their sites in hosting environments like Netlify.

Here are some of the most popular form handlers;

Basin

See more on usebasin.com

Tons of options;

• Customizable notification messages, w/ templates
• Can use your own domain to send the notifications
• Can auto-reply to the form submitter
• Very good SPAM detection, and keeps spam in a separate folder for review, for each form.
• Can easily setup multiple clients under one account
• And grant them access to their forms only- if they want to review SPAM, or get more than just the email notifications.

FormSpark

See more on formspark.io

• Very low cost
• Can use with a separate service called botpoison to reduce spam

Sygnal Attributes Form Handler

If you want to use to a 3rd party form service, but also want to keep Webflow's in-line success and failure messages after the form submits, this can be done with Sygnal Attributes.

The Form Webhook Handler in Sygnal Attributes provides this.

See Integrating the Basin Form Handler for an example on how this is done.