About splitforms — the honest, developer-first form backend
Founded in 2012 by Raman Makkar, splitforms is an independent, bootstrapped form backend. We build the product we'd use ourselves: honest pricing, real engineering, no dark patterns, and a free tier that doesn't quietly expire after fourteen days.
Mission
splitforms exists to make collecting form submissions on a website the boring, solved part of shipping a product — not a decision-tree of self-hosted SMTP, leaky free tiers, and pricing pages designed to confuse you. Our mission is to be the form backend you'd build for yourself if you had a free weekend, kept improving for a decade, and let everyone use.
Why splitforms
The founder story is unglamorous. A side project hit the front page of a community site, traffic spiked, and the free form service it was wired up to silently dropped real customer emails for three hours. By the time the dashboard came back, the leads were gone and the launch window was closed. That was the moment that made it obvious: form backends matter, and the existing market wasn't taking them seriously enough.
The mature alternatives mostly fall into three buckets. The expensive ones charge enterprise money for what is, fundamentally, an HTTP endpoint and a queue. The cheap ones run on a shoestring and disappear at the worst times. The free ones have free tiers so small they're really demos, and the upgrade path is priced as a punishment for growing. None of them feel like they were built by someone who actually ships software.
splitforms is the answer to that: a form backend built by exactly that kind of engineer, priced like the focused HTTP endpoint it really is, and reliable enough that a traffic spike becomes a good day instead of a lost launch.
That reliability is architectural. splitforms runs its own database layer for form submissions instead of reselling a fragile chain of third-party tools, so there are fewer moving parts between a visitor's click and your inbox — and fewer things that can silently break at the worst possible moment.
How we're different
- Honest pricing.Free for 500/month — no expiring trial. Pro is $5/month for 5,000. The 3-year deal is $59 for the first 3 years, then $59/year, for 15,000/month. No surprise upgrades, no metered overage charges, no "contact sales" tier.
- Cheap signed webhooks.Slack, Discord, Zapier, your own server — all signed with HMAC-SHA256, unlocked on Pro at $5/month. We don't make you jump to a $10+ integration tier.
- Modern spam handling.Honeypot + IP reputation + an opt-in AI classifier, layered. Visitors never see a CAPTCHA, conversions don't take a hit, and false positives are reviewable in the dashboard rather than silently deleted.
- MCP support out of the box. AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) can read your forms, list submissions, and generate template HTML directly without copy-pasting credentials. Most form backends still ship a JavaScript SDK from 2018; we ship a protocol from 2026.
- No SDK rot.The integration is a standard HTML form POST or a fetch() call. There's nothing to npm-install, version-pin, or migrate when frameworks shift.
- Public source. The full codebase is public on GitHub, so you can read it, audit it, and self-host it if you ever need an exit — no lock-in.
Who's behind it
Tech stack & infrastructure
The form endpoint runs on Vercel's edge network so latency stays low wherever your visitors are. Submissions land in splitforms-owned Postgres databases hosted on Supabase, with row-level security so only your account can read your rows — even our staff can't read submission contents through the application API.
Notification email is sent through a high-reputation transactional provider (Resend / Postmark-class) with proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment on the splitforms.com sending domain — so emails actually land in inboxes rather than getting quarantined as suspicious. Webhooks are queued, signed with HMAC-SHA256, and retried with exponential backoff for up to seven attempts.
The codebase is TypeScript end-to-end (Next.js + Supabase) and the entire surface area — endpoint, dashboard, webhooks, MCP server — lives in one repository. That's deliberate: small surface, easy audits, fast fixes.
Privacy & data handling
We treat customer data the way we'd want our own treated. splitforms is the data processor; you're the controller. Our data processing agreement (DPA) includes SCCs for international transfers, and data-subject access and erasure requests are honored within 30 days.
- We never sell submission data, ever.
- We never train models on submission contents — the optional AI spam classifier processes metadata only and does not retain it.
- CSV and JSON export is available on every plan. You can leave with all your data at any time.
- Account deletion hard-deletes within 30 days and we send a confirmation.
For the long version, see our privacy policy and terms.
Pricing philosophy
Software pricing is mostly storytelling, and the story most form backends tell is "your business is worth ten times what ours is, so pay accordingly." We don't buy that. The real cost-of-service for a focused form backend is genuinely low when you own the database path, operate lean infrastructure, and keep the product surface disciplined. Our pricing reflects that.
The 3-year plan is the most-asked-about one. It's not a lifetime offer — those tend to bankrupt indie SaaS quietly, which is bad for everyone including the customers who bought in. A 3-year window is long enough to be a real deal for a real project, and short enough that we can keep our promises about uptime, features, and existing as a company over its lifetime. When it ends, you renew at the rate at the time, or move on.
Compare every tier on the splitforms pricing page.
Roadmap
We ship in public. The high-level direction:
- File uploads on Pro and 3-year tiers, with per-file caps and per-month storage budgets.
- EU data residency (Frankfurt region) for customers whose compliance posture requires it.
- Native Google Sheets, Notion, and HubSpot integrationsso the common downstream destinations don't require Zapier-as-glue.
- Multi-seat teams for agencies and organizations that want shared dashboards instead of shared logins.
- Formal SLA with credits alongside the next Pro tier expansion, plus continued public uptime reporting at splitforms.com/status.
- Visual form builder— optional, opt-in. The core product stays API-first; the builder is for people who don't want to write HTML.
Roadmap is directional, not a calendar. If a specific item is blocking you, email us — that's usually enough to move it up.
Frequently asked about the company
Who builds splitforms?
splitforms is built by Raman Makkar, an engineer who got tired of paying enterprise prices for a form backend that is fundamentally an HTTP endpoint and a queue — and tired of the free options going down at the worst possible moments. The product stays deliberately opinionated, and the support email is answered by the person who wrote the code.
When was splitforms founded?
splitforms was founded in 2012 by Raman Makkar and remains independent and bootstrapped.
Where is splitforms based?
splitforms is a remote-first operation. Infrastructure runs on Vercel and Supabase across multiple regions. EU data residency for customers who require it is on the roadmap.
Is splitforms a venture-backed company?
No. splitforms is bootstrapped and funded entirely by paying customers. That means our incentives line up with yours — sustainable pricing and a long-lived product, not growth-at-all-costs.
Is splitforms open source?
The codebase is public on GitHub at Ramanmakkar1/leadform. You can read it, audit it, and self-host if you ever need to. We'd rather earn your trust than lock you in.
How do you make money?
The Pro plan ($5/month for 5,000 submissions) and the 3-year plan ($59 for the first 3 years, then $59/year, at 15,000 submissions/month) fund the company. We don't sell data, we don't run ads, and we don't have an upsell ladder — what you see on the pricing page is what you get.
How do I contact the team?
Email [email protected] — it goes to a real human and we read every message. For bugs and feature requests, GitHub issues at Ramanmakkar1/leadform are the fastest path. For privacy and security topics, write to [email protected] or [email protected].
Is splitforms hiring?
Not actively. If you'd be a great fit (Postgres, Next.js, distributed systems, deliverability, or developer-experience writing) introduce yourself anyway — we'd rather meet good people early than rush a search later.
Get in touch
General questions, support, partnerships: [email protected]. Privacy and data requests: [email protected]. Security disclosures: [email protected]. Bugs and feature requests are fastest as GitHub issues at Ramanmakkar1/leadform.