Contact Forms

When someone fills in a contact form on your website, their message lands in the Email area of your dashboard, ready for you to read and reply to.

Helm-hosted sites

If Helm hosts your website, your contact form is already connected. Submissions appear in your Email area as soon as someone sends one — there's nothing to set up.

Sites built by a developer

If your website was built for you by a developer and lives on your own domain (not a Helm-hosted address), they'll need to add a small piece of code to the contact form so submissions reach your dashboard. This is the code to give them:

<form action="https://api.usehelm.host/api/public/YOUR_PROJECT_ID/form" method="post">
  <input type="text" name="bot-field" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off" aria-hidden="true" style="position:absolute;left:-9999px;" />
  <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>

Replace YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your project's ID. We can give your developer this snippet with the ID already filled in, along with a small script that shows a thank-you message and handles errors.

Your developer also needs your site's address added to the list of addresses allowed to submit messages — send us your site's address (for example https://yourbusiness.com) and we'll add it. Until that's done, submissions from that address won't go through.

Choosing your form's fields

On the Standard and Business plans you can decide exactly what your contact form asks for. Open Email, then Fields, and choose Choose its fields. Add fields — short or long text, email, phone, a choice, a tick box, a date or a number — mark the ones that need an answer, and drag them into the order you want. You can also move a field with the keyboard: focus its grip, press Space, then use the arrow keys. The preview shows the form as a visitor will see it.

When you save, Put it on your site gives you the code for that form. Paste it where the form should appear, or send it to your developer. Messages sent through that code are checked against your fields, so a visitor can't leave out one you marked as needing an answer. Your site's current form keeps working as it is until you swap it for the new one.

On the Lite plan your form keeps working as it always has; choosing its fields is part of Standard.

Several forms

On the Standard and Business plans your site can have more than one form: a contact form, a catering quote, a sign-up for news, a job application, up to 20 in all. Open Email, then Forms, to see every form with how many messages it has had, what's new, and the last two weeks at a glance.

Choose New form, give it a name and say whether it's for people writing to you or for people leaving their email. It starts with a few fields you can change straight away, and its own code to put on your site. Each form has its own fields, its own notifications and its own auto-reply. A new form's notifications go where your main form's already go, and its auto-reply stays off until you write one, so nobody gets a reply meant for another form.

To work on a form, open its card, or pick it from the list above Fields, Auto-reply and Settings. In Submissions you can see every form's messages together, or narrow them to one form; each message shows which form it came from.

On the Lite plan your site keeps its one form, and the Email area shows what Standard adds.

Spam protection

Every contact form includes a hidden field that only automated bots fill in. Real visitors never see it, but if it's filled in, the message is quietly dropped instead of landing in your Email area.