How to add a contact form to a static site without a backend

Static sites are fast, secure, and cheap to host—but they come with a catch: there's no server to process form submissions. If you're running a JAMstack blog, a marketing landing page, or a personal portfolio, you probably don't want to spin up a backend just to collect a few contact messages. Yet, every modern site needs a way for visitors to get in touch. So what do you do?

You basically have two options. The first is to build your own backend—set up a server, write an API endpoint, handle validation, store submissions in a database, and deal with spam protection yourself. That works, but it's overkill for most small projects and adds ongoing maintenance you probably don't need. The second option is to use a form backend service that handles everything for you. This is where FormsList comes in.

With FormsList, adding a contact form to any static site is literally a five-line HTML form. No JavaScript frameworks, no build steps, no configuration files. Just point your form's action attribute to your unique FormsList endpoint, and you're done. Here's what it looks like:

<form action="https://formslist.com/f/YOUR_ENDPOINT" method="POST">

  <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your name" required />

  <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Your email" required />

  <textarea name="message" placeholder="Your message" required></textarea>

  <button type="submit">Send</button>

</form>

Spam is the silent killer of contact forms, but FormsList makes protection trivial. In about 30 seconds, you can enable a honeypot field and Akismet filtering from your dashboard. The honeypot hides a field from real users but traps bots that fill it out. Akismet adds machine-learning-powered spam detection on top. Both are optional, but turning them on takes one click each—and you'll thank yourself later.

If you're building static sites and need a lightweight way to collect form submissions, give FormsList a try. It's free to get started and scales with you as your project grows.

Get started for free on FormsList