Add a contact form and receive every customer message
By the Anselerate teamLast reviewed 7 October 2026Reading time about 6 minutes
The short answer
A contact form lets visitors write to you without opening their email. Ask for only what you need, add spam protection, test it, and tell people what happens next. Ansel Forms can receive the messages for you and keep them in one place.
A good contact form turns a visitor into a real conversation. A bad one makes people leave. This guide shows how to build a simple form that people will finish, and how to collect the messages with Ansel Forms, a tool we built and run ourselves.
Step 1: Decide what you need to know
Every extra field lowers the number of people who finish. For most sites, four fields are enough: name, email, phone (optional) and message. Ask for more only when you really need it.
Step 2: Build the form
You have two simple ways with Ansel Forms.
- Visual builder: drag and drop fields into place. There are templates such as Contact Us, Job Application, Event Registration and Customer Feedback, and 19 field types.
- Your own HTML form: make a normal form on your page and point its action to the endpoint address you get in your Ansel Forms dashboard. This works on static sites, PHP sites and website builders.
Step 3: Keep spam out
Spam bots fill forms all day. Ansel Forms uses four layers of protection: a hidden honeypot field, a Cloudflare security check for each visitor, a limit of 10 messages in 10 minutes per visitor, and detection of random letter strings. You do not need to add puzzles that annoy real people.
Step 4: Accept files if you need them
For job applications or project briefs you can allow file uploads. Ansel Forms accepts JPG, PNG, PDF, DOC, DOCX and TXT files, up to 1 MB each and up to 5 files per message.
Step 5: Tell people what happens next
Show a thank you message after sending. Say when they can expect a reply, for example "We reply by email within one working day". Only promise what you can keep. Premium plans can send an automatic reply and an email alert to you for each new message.
Step 6: Read, reply and export
Open your dashboard to read messages. You can download all submissions as a CSV file for Excel or Google Sheets. Reply fast, because people who write to you are ready to talk.
Step 7: Test it
Send a test message from a phone and from a computer. Check that it arrives, that the email field rejects a wrong address, and that the thank you message shows.
Do's and don'ts
Do
- Ask for only the details you need.
- Label every field clearly.
- Show a thank you message and say what happens next.
- Test the form on a phone and a computer.
- Reply quickly.
- Keep a clear privacy link near the form.
Don't
- Don't ask for passwords or card numbers in a form.
- Don't make people fill ten fields.
- Don't hide your email address and phone number only behind a form.
- Don't leave the form untested after changes.
- Don't ignore the messages in your dashboard.
- Don't use hard puzzles that block real people.
Questions people ask
What is Ansel Forms?
Ansel Forms is a form backend and builder made by Anselerate. It receives, stores and manages the messages sent from your website forms. You can build a form with drag and drop or use your own HTML form.
Is Ansel Forms free?
There is a free plan with 5 active forms and 10,000 submissions each month. Premium costs $5 a month or $50 a year and gives unlimited forms, 1,000,000 submissions each month, email alerts and auto replies.
Do you sell my form data?
No. We never sell data and we do not show ads. Your submissions belong to you.
Can I use it on a WordPress or static site?
Yes. It works with static sites, PHP sites and website builders, because you only point the form to your endpoint.
Can you set up the form for me?
Yes. We can add and style the form on your site and test it for you.