FORMS by Brace

Functional HTML forms

Just send your form to our URL and we'll forward it to your email. No PHP, Javascript or sign up required — perfect for static sites! Example:

<form action="//forms.brace.io/you@email.com">
    <input type="text" name="name">
    <input type="email" name="_replyto">
    <input type="submit" value="Send">
</form>

Setting it up is easy and free. Here's how:

You don't even have to register.

1. Setup the HTML form

Change your form's action-attribute to this and replace your@email.com with your own email.

If you don't have an HTML form, create one using Brace.io.

2. Submit the form and confirm your email address

Go to your website and submit the form once. This will send you an email asking to confirm your email address, so that no one can start sending you spam from random websites.

3. All set, receive emails

From now on, when someone submits that form, we'll forward you the data as email.

Some questions you might have:

Who are you guys?

We're the same folks who make Brace.io, the simple way to host websites. Brace Forms is a side project that solves a problem many of Brace.io users seem to face: having forms on otherwise static HTML pages. What about privacy?

We don't store contents of the form submissions. Emails are sent using Mailgun's API, so on that end their privacy policies apply.

How much does it cost?

Formspree is free for 1000 submissions per email each month. If you need more, please reach out.

Are there any limits?

Yep, for now we cap submissions to 1000 per email for each month. If you need more, please reach out to team@brace.io.

Advanced features:

Form inputs can have specially named name-attributes, which alter functionality. They are all prefixed with an underscore.

_replyto

This value is used for the email's Reply-To field. This way you can directly "Reply" to the email to respond to the person who originally submitted the form.

_next

By default, after submitting a form the user is shown the Formspree "Thank You" page. You can provide an alternative URL for that page.

_subject

This value is used for the email's subject, so that you can quickly reply to submissions without having to edit the subject line each time.

_cc

This value is used for the email's CC Field. This lets you send a copy of each submission to another email address.

_gotcha

Add this "honeypot" field to avoid spam by fooling scrapers. If a value is provided, the submission will be silently ignored. The input should be hidden with CSS.

Using AJAX

You can use Formspree via AJAX. This even works cross-origin. The trick is to set the Accept header to application/json. If you're using jQuery this can be done like so:

$.ajax({
    url: "//forms.brace.io/you@email.com", 
    method: "POST",
    data: {message: "hello!"},
    dataType: "json"
});

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Running your own copy of Brace Forms

Running on localhost

You'll need python 2.7 and should install pip, and create a virtual environment for the server.

Once your environment is setup, clone the source and cd into the root of the Brace Forms repository. Then run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

then

python manage.py runserver

Running on heroku

You will need to install the heroku toolbelt.

Once your environment is setup, clone the source and cd into the root of the Brace Forms repository. Then run:

heroku app:create [your project name]

then

git push heroku

Your new project will be running at [your project name].herokuapp.com.

Dependencies

Brace Forms requires Redis. If you're deploying to heroku you can get an addon, such as redistogo. To install redistogo into your project just run the command:

heroku addons:add redistogo

Brace Forms also requires a mailgun account to send the emails. You'll need to add the api keys to your environment variables. See the configuration settings below.

Configuring Brace Forms

Take a look at the forms/settings.py file for a list of environment variables that should be set in order for Forms to work correctly.