Add a Contact Form to Ghost (No Plugin, 2026)

Why Ghost doesn't have a native contact form

Ghost is built for publishing and paid memberships, not lead capture. The closest thing to a "form" in stock Ghost is the members/subscription Portal — the widget that lets visitors sign up as free or paid members and get your posts by email. It has no field for a one-off message, no way to route an advertising inquiry, and no submit button that just says "send."

Unlike WordPress, Ghost also has no plugin marketplace. There's nothing to install called "Contact Form 7 for Ghost." Ghost's extensibility model is theme code and integrations, not plugins — which is exactly why an embedded HTML form is the standard fix, on both Ghost(Pro) and self-hosted Ghost. Because the form is just markup living inside a page or post, it works the same way regardless of how your Ghost instance is hosted.

Step 1: Get a free splitforms access key (1 minute)

Open splitforms.com/login, enter your email, and paste the 6-digit code you receive. The dashboard generates your access key automatically on first load — copy it.

The Free plan covers 500 submissions/month, unlimited forms, spam filtering, the dashboard, and email notifications to your inbox — free on every plan, no credit card. If your Ghost blog grows past that, Pro is $5/month for 5,000 submissions plus signed webhooks and integrations, Pro is $5/month for 5,000, and a 3-Year plan locks in the price for $59 one time. Full breakdown at /pricing.

Step 2: Create or open your Contact page in Ghost Admin

Log in to Ghost Admin (usually yoursite.com/ghost) and go to Pages in the left sidebar. If you already have a Contact page, open it. If not:

1. Click New page.
2. Give it a title — "Contact" is fine.
3. Leave the page unpublished for now; you'll publish once the form is in and tested.

Nothing here differs between Ghost(Pro) and a self-hosted install — the Admin editor is identical either way.

Step 3: Add an HTML card

In the page editor, click on an empty line to bring up the + button (or type / to search cards directly).

1. Click the + icon, or type /html.
2. Select HTML from the card picker.
3. An empty code box appears — this is where the form snippet goes.

The HTML card renders whatever you paste into it exactly as written, inside your theme's content column. No Ghost theme file needs editing.

Step 4: Paste the complete form snippet

Paste this into the HTML card and replace YOUR_ACCESS_KEY with the key you copied in Step 1. It includes minimal inline CSS so it looks intentional immediately, plus a hidden honeypot field for spam protection.

<form action="https://splitforms.com/api/submit" method="POST" class="sf-ghost-form">
  <input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" />
  <input type="hidden" name="subject" value="New message from your Ghost site" />
  <input type="hidden" name="form_loaded_at" id="form_loaded_at" />

  <label for="sf-name">Name</label>
  <input type="text" id="sf-name" name="name" required autocomplete="name" />

  <label for="sf-email">Email</label>
  <input type="email" id="sf-email" name="email" required autocomplete="email" />

  <label for="sf-message">Message</label>
  <textarea id="sf-message" name="message" rows="5" required></textarea>

  <!-- Honeypot: bots fill this, real readers never see it -->
  <input type="checkbox" name="botcheck" style="display:none" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off" />

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

<script>
  document.getElementById('form_loaded_at').value = Date.now();
</script>

<style>
  /* Minimal styling — everything else inherits your Ghost theme's fonts and colors */
  .sf-ghost-form { max-width: 520px; margin: 0 auto; }
  .sf-ghost-form label { display: block; margin: 14px 0 6px; font-weight: 600; }
  .sf-ghost-form input[type="text"],
  .sf-ghost-form input[type="email"],
  .sf-ghost-form textarea {
    width: 100%;
    padding: 10px 12px;
    border: 1px solid #ddd;
    border-radius: 8px;
    font: inherit; /* inherits Ghost's theme body font */
    box-sizing: border-box;
  }
  .sf-ghost-form button {
    margin-top: 16px;
    padding: 12px 24px;
    background: #15171a; /* swap for your theme's accent color */
    color: #fff;
    border: 0;
    border-radius: 8px;
    font-weight: 700;
    cursor: pointer;
  }
</style>

Three things to notice: the action URL is always https://splitforms.com/api/submit regardless of plan; the hidden access_key field tells splitforms which dashboard to deliver to; and the botcheck honeypot plus form_loaded_at timestamp are the two spam traps — keep both in place even though they're invisible to readers. More on how they work in honeypot vs reCAPTCHA.

Want the same building blocks without the Ghost-specific card steps? See the plain HTML contact form reference or grab a ready-made free contact form template.

Step 5: Publish, then test the live form

1. Click Preview in the top-right of the editor to check the form renders and inherits your theme correctly.
2. Click Publish → Publish, update, or send → confirm.
3. Open the live page in an incognito window (avoids the Ghost Admin toolbar interfering).
4. Fill out the form with a real-looking test message using a real email address you control.
5. Click submit. You should see a success response, or land on a redirect URL if you added a hidden redirect field.

If the form renders as plain text instead of an actual form, double-check the card type is HTML, not Markdown — Ghost's Markdown card escapes angle brackets instead of rendering them.

Step 6: Where submissions land

Two places, immediately:

• Your splitforms dashboard. Every submission appears in the submissions view the moment it arrives, with the visitor's IP, timestamp, and a spam-likelihood score.
• Your inbox. Email notifications are free on every plan, including Free — you don't need to upgrade just to get emailed. You'll get the message content within seconds of the visitor clicking submit.

Nothing about the delivery path changes based on whether your Ghost site is on Ghost(Pro) or self-hosted — the form posted directly from the browser to splitforms, bypassing Ghost entirely.

Step 7 (optional): Autoresponders and webhooks on Starter

The Free plan is a complete, working contact form. If you want more automation, Pro ($5/month) adds:

• Autoresponders. Automatically email the person who submitted the form a confirmation — "Thanks, I'll get back to you soon" — with no extra code.
• Signed webhooks. Forward every submission to Slack, Discord, or your own endpoint. Webhooks fire once with an 8-second timeout and an HMAC-SHA256 signature (a sha256= prefix on the header) — there's no automatic retry, so make sure the receiving endpoint responds fast.
• 13 native integrations. Notion, Airtable, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and more — connect once in the dashboard and every submission becomes a row or a message automatically.

None of this is required to get a working Ghost contact form — it's there if you outgrow plain email notifications.

Matching your Ghost theme's styling

Because the form sits inside an HTML card, it inherits your theme's body font, base text color, and line-height by default — that's why the snippet above avoids setting font-family anywhere. The inline <style> block only touches spacing, borders, and the button color, which keeps the form visually consistent without fighting your theme's CSS.

To match your theme's accent color exactly, open your Ghost theme's design settings (or check your theme's --ghost-accent-color custom property if it uses one) and swap the hex value in the .sf-ghost-form button background rule. If your theme sets a max content width narrower than 520px, the form will simply respect it since it's rendered inline with the rest of the page content.

Contact form vs. members/newsletter — different jobs

It's worth being precise about this, because the two get confused often. Ghost's built-in Portal handles subscriptions: a visitor becomes a free or paid member and starts receiving your posts by email. It's a newsletter and paywall system, not a messaging system — there's no field for a visitor to type "I'd like to advertise on your blog" or "Found a broken link on page 3."

A contact form is a separate need entirely: it lets a reader, advertiser, or collaborator send you a one-off message without becoming a member of anything. You can run both side by side on the same Ghost site with zero conflict — Portal keeps handling subscribers, and your HTML-card form keeps handling everyone who just wants to say something to you directly.

Alternatives, briefly

A few other approaches show up in Ghost forums. Here's how they compare:

• Formspree or Getform embeds. These work the same way — paste an HTML form into an HTML card, point the action URL at their endpoint. Watch the free-tier limits closely: Formspree's free plan caps out much lower per month than splitforms' 500, so a moderately busy Contact page can hit the wall fast.
• Google Form iframe. Technically works — paste an <iframe> pointed at a published Google Form. But it renders Google's own styling inside a box that clashes with Ghost's clean, typography-first theme design, and it can't inherit your theme's fonts or colors at all.
• Mailto links. The simplest option and the worst one. A mailto: link opens the visitor's local email client (if they have one configured), exposes your raw email address to every spam scraper crawling your site, and gives you zero delivery tracking or spam filtering.

An HTML card with a hosted form backend gets you theme-matched styling, spam filtering, and a dashboard — without any of those trade-offs.

Troubleshooting Ghost-specific gotchas

• Form HTML renders as visible text instead of a form. The card is set to Markdown, not HTML. Delete the card, type /html to insert a fresh HTML card, and re-paste the snippet.
• splitforms returns 401 Unauthorized. Usually a typo or trailing space in YOUR_ACCESS_KEY. Re-copy the key from your dashboard and paste it exactly, or remove any domain restriction on the key while testing.
• Email never arrives but the dashboard shows the submission. Check spam/junk first. If it's still missing, open the dashboard's deliverability page and send a test email — full diagnostic in contact form not working.
• The form looks unstyled or oversized. Some Ghost themes apply strong default spacing to raw <input> and <button> elements inside content. The inline .sf-ghost-form styles in the snippet above should override that, but if not, add !important to the conflicting rule or scope your theme's override with a more specific selector.
• The honeypot is blocking real visitors. A password manager auto-filled the hidden botcheck field. The snippet already includes autocomplete="off" and tabindex="-1", which stops most managers from touching it — if it still happens, rename the field and update the honeypot config in your dashboard.

Still stuck? /docs has the full request contract, and /faq covers plan and security questions.

Next steps

• Read the full Ghost contact form landing page for a quick-reference version of this setup.
• Grab a plain, framework-agnostic snippet from /contact-form-html or a ready template from /free-contact-form.
• Compare plans at /pricing before deciding whether Free is enough.
• Publishing elsewhere too? See the guides for Squarespace and static site generators.
• Ready to go? Sign up and grab your free access key.

FAQ