Point any HTML form at one endpoint. 500 free submissions — no card, no time limit — and unlimited forms.
Create free accountDisclosure: splitforms publishes this guide and is one of the options in it. There is no overall ranking: options are listed alphabetically and each pick names the use case it wins. Competitor figures come from each vendor's own pricing page, last checked September 27, 2026; plans change, so confirm before you sign up. This is general information, not legal advice.
What a dental practice form should (and shouldn't) collect
A dental website form is a front-desk assistant, not a medical chart. Its job is to turn a visitor into an appointment request that your team can act on quickly. That means collecting just enough to call them back and slot them in:
- Name + phone + email so the front desk can confirm.
- Reason for visit: checkup/cleaning, tooth pain or emergency, cosmetic consult, new-patient exam.
- New or existing patient to route the request and set expectations.
- Preferred days/times to speed scheduling and reduce phone tag.
- Short message for optional context.
What to keep off a public website form: detailed medical history, medication lists, insurance/policy numbers, and anything else that counts as protected health information. Collect those through your practice-management system or a secured, BAA-covered portal once the appointment is set. The website form starts the relationship; the secured system holds the clinical data.
Which option is best for each use case?
Competitors and non-form tools win several of these rows, especially anything involving health information or real booking. Each pick names the use case it wins.
| Your situation | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Basic appointment requests with no health details | Any form backend or builder | Name, phone, reason and preferred times are low-risk. Choose on volume and price: splitforms (500 free in total), Web3Forms, Basin or Tally all cover it. |
| New-patient intake that includes health or insurance details | Jotform (Gold or Enterprise) or your practice software's patient forms | Jotform lists HIPAA features and a BAA from Gold ($129 per month, or $99 per month billed yearly). splitforms and Basin do not offer a BAA. |
| Patients pick a real slot, with confirmations and reminders | An online scheduling tool or practice-management suite | Live availability and reminders need a scheduling engine. A form backend only captures a request for the front desk to confirm. |
| Charting, billing, insurance claims | A dental practice-management suite | These hold the clinical and billing record. The website form should feed them, not replace them. |
| A free no-code form for non-clinical requests | Tally | Free plan has unlimited forms and submissions under fair use, 10 MB uploads and webhooks. The pages we checked don't mention a HIPAA offering, so keep health details off it. |
| Biggest monthly free allowance on a plain HTML form | Web3Forms | Free plan is 250 submissions a month, resetting monthly. splitforms' free allowance is 500 in total, one time. |
| A plain HTML form with signed webhooks to Slack or Teams on a low-cost paid plan | splitforms | Pro is $5/month for 5,000 submissions a month with HMAC-signed webhooks. Basin's first plan with webhooks is Growth at $24.17/month billed yearly. Notification emails are free on all splitforms plans. |
| A host-independent endpoint that works on whatever site the practice already has | splitforms | The form is plain HTML posting to one URL, so it moves with the site. Web3Forms and Basin work the same way. |
What are the options, in alphabetical order?
- Basin: form endpoint with a free plan of 50 submissions a month. Its docs say it is not designed for health data and it publishes no BAA. See the Basin review.
- Dental practice-management suites: charting, billing and scheduling, often with their own online booking and new-patient forms. Compare features on each product's own site.
- Jotform: hosted drag-and-drop builder; free Starter plan has 5 forms and 100 submissions a month, and HIPAA features with a BAA start on Gold. See the Jotform review.
- Online scheduling tools: live availability, confirmations and reminders; a different job from a contact form.
- splitforms: a form endpoint for plain HTML forms. Free is 500 submissions in total; Pro is $5/month for 5,000 a month; Annual is $49/year for 15,000 a month. No BAA.
- Tally: hosted no-code builder with a generous free plan. See the Tally review.
- Web3Forms: form endpoint with 250 free submissions a month. See the Web3Forms review.
A plain word on HIPAA
Most general-purpose contact forms are not the right vehicle for protected health information, and many form vendors do not sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). The compliant-by-design approach is to keep the public form limited to appointment-request basics and route anything clinical into a system that is explicitly HIPAA-covered.
splitforms stores submissions in row-level-secured Postgres, hosts in the US, and does not sign a BAA, so it supports only the kind of minimal appointment-request form described here. If your workflow requires collecting PHI online, you need a vendor that will sign a BAA for that data. Confirm your specific obligations with your compliance advisor. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
When is a form backend enough, and when do you need dental software?
Practice-management suites earn their cost on charting, billing, and scheduling. The narrow task of letting a website visitor request an appointment and telling the front desk can be handled by a hosted form backend: the request reaches your front-desk inbox and a dashboard, and you move it into scheduling from there. It does not replace software when you need live booking, reminders or clinical records.
- Submission history. Accepted requests remain in the dashboard if an email notification is delayed or filtered.
- Team alerts. Push each request to a shared Slack/Teams channel with a webhook (a paid-plan feature on splitforms) so nothing waits until end of day.
- Spam filtering. A honeypot, a time trap and rule-based smart spam filtering keep bot noise out of the front-desk queue.
- Free allowance. 500 requests in total on splitforms, one time; a busy practice may outgrow it, so check volume.
Copy-paste appointment-request form
Paste into your site and swap YOUR_ACCESS_KEY for the one from your free splitforms account (or adapt the action URL for another form backend). Note the deliberate absence of clinical/insurance fields.
<form action="https://splitforms.com/api/submit" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY" />
<input type="hidden" name="subject" value="New appointment request" />
<label>Full name<input type="text" name="name" required /></label>
<label>Phone<input type="tel" name="phone" required /></label>
<label>Email<input type="email" name="email" required /></label>
<label>Patient status
<select name="patient_status" required>
<option>New patient</option>
<option>Existing patient</option>
</select>
</label>
<label>Reason for visit
<select name="reason" required>
<option>Checkup / cleaning</option>
<option>Tooth pain / emergency</option>
<option>Cosmetic consultation</option>
<option>New patient exam</option>
<option>Other</option>
</select>
</label>
<label>Preferred days / times
<input type="text" name="preferred_times" placeholder="e.g. weekday mornings" />
</label>
<label>Anything else? (optional — please don't include medical details)
<textarea name="message" rows="4"></textarea>
</label>
<!-- honeypot -->
<input type="checkbox" name="botcheck" style="display:none" tabindex="-1" autocomplete="off" />
<button type="submit">Request appointment</button>
</form>To alert the front desk quickly, a paid-plan webhook can post to chat: submissions to Microsoft Teams or to Slack. Forward to a tracking sheet with form to Google Sheets.
Mistakes that cost practices patients (and create risk)
- Collecting PHI on a public form. Medical history and insurance numbers don't belong on a general website form. Keep them in a BAA-covered system.
- Relying on a
mailto:link. It can be harvested by spammers and gives the front desk no structure. Use a form. See receive submissions by email. - No quick alert. An emergency request seen six hours later is a lost patient. Push requests to a monitored channel, and show your phone number for emergencies.
- Deliverability you never tested. Submit your own form and confirm it lands. Why form emails go to spam.
When is splitforms not the right choice?
- You need to collect health information online. splitforms does not sign a BAA. Use a vendor that does (for example Jotform on Gold) or your practice-management system's own patient forms.
- You want patients to book a real slot. splitforms is not a scheduling or booking engine. Use an online scheduling tool or the booking module of your dental software.
- You need a visual form builder. splitforms takes a plain HTML form. Tally and Jotform are builders.
- You want uploads or webhooks free. On splitforms both are paid-plan features (Pro from $5 per month). Tally includes them on its free plan, and Basin includes free uploads.
- You expect steady monthly volume on a free plan. splitforms' free allowance is 500 submissions in total, not per month. Web3Forms gives 250 a month, resetting monthly.
- You need EU data residency, SSO or a SOC 2 report. splitforms hosts in the US under standard contractual clauses (see the DPA) and does not offer SSO or SOC 2 yet.
Contact form guides for other industries
What to do next
- Decide first whether the form will ever touch health information; that choice narrows the tools more than price does.
- For basic requests on a plain HTML form you can get a free splitforms access key: 500 submissions in total, no credit card.
- Related: contact form for law firms · real estate lead forms
- Add it to your site: WordPress · Wix
- Privacy basics: GDPR-compliant form submissions
FAQ
Is this guide biased toward splitforms?
splitforms publishes this guide and is one of the options in it, so read it as a vendor-written comparison. To keep it checkable, there is no overall ranking, the options are listed alphabetically, each pick names the use case it wins, competitor figures come from each vendor's own pricing page, and a section lists when splitforms is not the right choice. For dental practices that is often: splitforms does not sign a BAA and is not a booking system.
What should a dental practice contact form ask for?
For a first-touch website form, keep it to what you need to book the call back: name, phone, email, reason for visit (checkup, cleaning, pain/emergency, cosmetic, new patient), preferred days and times, and whether they're a new or existing patient. Don't collect detailed medical history or insurance numbers on a public website form; gather those through your practice-management system or a secured portal after the appointment is set. The website form's job is to start the conversation, not to be the medical chart.
Is a website contact form HIPAA-compliant?
A plain website contact form is generally not the right place for protected health information (PHI), and many general-purpose form tools do not sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). The safe pattern: use the website form only for basic appointment-request details (name, contact, reason, timing) and move anything clinical into a HIPAA-covered system with a signed BAA. If you must collect PHI online, use a vendor that explicitly offers a BAA; for example, Jotform lists HIPAA features and a BAA from its Gold plan. splitforms does not sign a BAA. Treat this article as general guidance, not legal advice, and confirm your obligations with your compliance advisor.
Do I need dental software just to take appointment requests online?
Not for the request itself. Practice-management suites earn their cost on charting, billing, and scheduling, and many include their own online booking and new-patient forms. If you only need a website visitor to request an appointment, a hosted form backend captures the request, emails your front desk, and logs it in a dashboard, on whatever website you already have, and you move it into scheduling from there. If you want patients to pick a real slot, use the scheduling tools in your practice software or a dedicated online scheduler.
How do I make sure appointment requests don't get missed?
Two things matter: keep a searchable record and notify the team where it works. On splitforms, accepted requests appear in the dashboard and notification emails are included on every plan; paid plans add signed webhooks to route data to services you configure. Delivery time and inbox placement depend on those providers, so submit a test request and confirm it lands.
Can patients request a specific dentist or appointment time?
Yes, as a request. Add a 'preferred provider' select and a 'preferred days/times' field, and the front desk confirms the closest available slot. Keep it a request rather than a live calendar booking unless you have integrated real scheduling, because promising exact times on a static form can lead to double-booking.
Will this work on my existing practice website?
A form backend such as splitforms, Web3Forms or Basin works on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or a custom build wherever you can paste an HTML form, with no plugin or platform upgrade. Hosted builders such as Tally and Jotform are shared as a link or embedded. Paste the form, set where notifications go, and appointment requests start arriving.