Contact Form Without a Backend — No Server Needed

A contact form without a backend works by pointing your HTML form's action at a hosted API instead of your own server. With splitforms, you POST to https://splitforms.com/api/submit, add your access key as a hidden field, and the submission is emailed to you and saved to a dashboard — no PHP, Node process, or database required.

Why a Contact Form Normally Needs a Backend

Every website needs a contact form. But contact forms require a server to receive the submission, a database to store it, an email service to notify you, and spam protection to filter bots.

If you're building a static site, a JAMstack app, or a simple landing page, you don't want to spin up a server just for one form.

The Fix: Point Your Form at a Hosted Backend

A hosted form backend handles the server, database, email, and spam filtering for you. You just add one URL to your HTML form.

<form action="https://splitforms.com/api/submit" method="POST">
  <input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY">
  <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="https://yoursite.com/thanks">
  <input type="hidden" name="form_loaded_at" id="form_loaded_at">
  <input type="checkbox" name="botcheck" style="display:none" tabindex="-1">

  <input name="name" type="text" placeholder="Name" required>
  <input name="email" type="email" placeholder="Email" required>
  <textarea name="message" placeholder="Message" required></textarea>
  <button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>

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

No PHP. No Node.js. No Python. No database. No SMTP. Just HTML — plus one optional script tag for the time-trap spam field.

How to Add a Contact Form Without a Backend (4 Steps)

1. Create a free access key — Sign up at splitforms (no credit card) and copy your form's access_key from the dashboard.
2. Point your form at the endpoint — Set the form's action to https://splitforms.com/api/submit with method POST, then add access_key as a hidden field.
3. Add the built-in spam fields — Include the hidden botcheck honeypot (leave it empty) and a form_loaded_at field set to the page-load timestamp — splitforms also rate-limits abuse automatically.
4. Deploy and test — Push the page live, submit a real test entry, and confirm it lands in your inbox and the submissions dashboard.

What You Get With a No-Backend Contact Form

• Email notifications — every submission sent to your inbox, included free on every plan
• Submissions dashboard — search, filter, and export (CSV/XML/PDF on Starter and above)
• Spam filtering — honeypot + time-trap fields plus server-side content heuristics, free on every plan; optional reCAPTCHA v2 for extra coverage
• Integrations — Slack, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, Mailchimp, and signed webhooks (Starter and above)
• File uploads — up to 5 files per submission, 5 MB each, via the Storage integration (paid plans)
• Row-level-secured storage — submissions live in isolated Postgres rows, see our GDPR page

The free plan covers 500 submissions/month across unlimited forms. See the full pricing breakdown.

Where a No-Backend Contact Form Works Best

• Static sites & JAMstack— GitHub Pages, Netlify, Vercel, Hugo, Eleventy, and Jekyll can serve HTML but can't run server code. See the static site contact form guide or the JAMstack form backend guide.
• Plain HTML pages — no framework, no build step. Follow the HTML contact form guide.
• WordPress without a plugin — paste the same HTML form into a Custom HTML block instead of installing a form plugin. See how to add it without a plugin.
• Anywhere you don't want to run a database — see contact form without a database for the same approach applied to dynamic apps.

FAQ: Contact Forms Without a Backend

Questions? Email hello@splitforms.com