Formspree on HackerShow

Web and SaaS

form backend service

SHOW HN2014

Add forms to your static site – no iFrames required

Shown by colevscode on Feb 25, 2014. Click the card to turn it over.

233points

99comments

#71of 2,272 in 2014

Top 4%of 2014 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

11 positive, 37 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 14 critical, out of 62 comments about the project. Thread score 0.00.

Idea: 8 for, 6 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 4 againstPricing: 1 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 against

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

Simple, useful service that makes forms on static sites easy.
From 3 comments
- Nicely done. This kind of stupid simple service makes the web an easier place to work.
  jcutrell on HN
- YES YES YES. That is all. Thank you.
  joshmlewis on HN
- I love it!
  vrkr on HN
No JavaScript needed and no iframes.
From 1 comment
- This is cool, no JavaScript either. Also, the contact form at the bottom of the page uses the API :)
  tehwebguy on HN

No real spam protection yet.
From 1 comment
- Thanks! :) As many have asked, at least for now there's no real spam protection. Asking you to confirm email for every email/referer pair prevents me from adding your email to…
  laurihy on HN
Email address exposed in HTML source invites spam.
From 2 comments
- Does this not invite spam by leaving email addresses in HTML source code?
  pacifika on HN
- Kind of easy to crawl and harvest verified emails on web sites that implement that API.
  korzun on HN
Referer header breaks on HTTPS to HTTP requests.
From 1 comment
- There's a problem here. browsers do not send Referrer when on an https site. And they refuse to work without the header For geeks: could not find "Referrer" header.
  crapiola on HN

Hide the email address using a token or hash instead of plain text.
From 3 comments
- great idea. I think you can give the user the option to specify the email hash (MD5 maybe) instead of clear text email. so either: <form…
  maouida on HN
- Regarding the issue of having your email address in the open. This could easily be solved by requiring registration and generating an encrypted URL for each email address that a…
  deanclatworthy on HN
- This is what I was thinking as well. An account isn't even necessary, just have a two step process on Formspree. 1. Enter your e-mail address. Click next. 2. Copy the generated…
  User8712 on HN
Spam protection and file upload support.
From 2 comments
- Would be especially cool if it supported input type=file as well :)
  hoggle on HN
- Cool idea -- what kind of spam protection can it offer though? I'm not worried about the email address being in the open, but my original contact page form was getting hundreds…
  aquark on HN
Self-hosted version.
From 1 comment
- I would love a self hosted version of this
  hayksaakian on HN

Is there a way to send submissions to multiple emails?
From 1 comment
- Is there a way to send the form submission to multiple emails using this service?
  nej on HN
Is there rate limiting against abuse?
From 2 comments
- Anything to stop someone sending 1000 submissions to someone else's form as a trolling Denial of Service (DoS) attack?
  jodrellblank on HN
- Rate limiting per IP would be pretty easy to implement.
  korzun on HN

getsimpleform.com
From 2 comments
- I've been using SimpleForm(http://getsimpleform.com/) for my static site forms, It's quite easy to set up and you can add some spam prevention with Akismet. This project looks…
  frncscgmz on HN
- There's another one (getsimpleform.com) that handles uploads and spam prevention via Akismet. It does not expose your email.
  asattarmd on HN
BitBalloon form handling
From 1 comment
- Another option is to host your static site on BitBalloon (https://www.bitballoon.com) - we make the forms on the site work without any backend programming. This doesn't leave…
  bobfunk on HN
Old FormMail CGI scripts
From 2 comments
- Is this what I think it is? A resurrection of those free hosted formmail scripts we used when I started writing web pages in the late 20th century? Edit: http://www.formmail.com/…
  Joeboy on HN
- Oh man, there are HUNDREDS of "scripts" that do this! Here's the PHP one I used to use back in 2004. http://regretless.com/scripts/scripts.php#dodosmail I'm surprised this is…
  cine on HN
Google Forms endpoint
From 1 comment
- You can make a custom form submit to a Google Forms endpoint, and it will go straight into a Google spreadsheet.
  trevordixon on HN