HTML form to email — no PHP, no SMTP, no backend.
Send any HTML form submission straight to your inbox. Point your form's action at splitforms, sign up for a free access key, and submissions land in your email within seconds — with AI spam filtering, a real dashboard, and signed webhooks included.
The whole thing, in one HTML snippet
<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 name="name" placeholder="Your name" required />
<input name="email" type="email" placeholder="you@example.com" required />
<textarea name="message" placeholder="What's up?" required></textarea>
<!-- Honeypot for spam (hidden from humans) -->
<input type="checkbox" name="botcheck" style="display:none" tabindex="-1" />
<button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>That's the entire integration. Replace YOUR_ACCESS_KEY with the one in your splitforms dashboard. When a visitor submits, you get an email with every field, the dashboard updates live, and webhooks fire in parallel.
What happens when a visitor submits
Browser POSTs the form
Standard application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST to splitforms.com/api/submit. No JavaScript required.
splitforms validates and classifies
Origin check, honeypot trap, AI spam classifier. Recognized spam goes to the Spam folder; legitimate submissions proceed.
Email delivered to your inbox
Dedicated SMTP with SPF/DKIM. Reply-To is set to the submitter's email so you can respond directly.
Stored, webhooked, dashboarded
Every submission is stored permanently with search and export. Webhooks fire in parallel. Dashboard updates live.
Why not PHP mail() or Node SMTP?
PHP mail()was the indie web standard for two decades. It worked on cheap shared hosts, required no setup, and got the message through often enough. In 2026 it's a tax on your time: shared-host PHP runtimes are extinct on Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, and S3-hosted static sites. SPF and DKIM enforcement means mail() emails from shared IPs land in spam reliably. The vector for form-spam abuse is well-known and hard to defend.
Node SMTP (Nodemailer, AWS SES, Resend, Postmark) solves the deliverability problem but adds the infrastructure cost: you run a backend, manage credentials, write the email-sending logic, handle bounces, deal with rate limits, build the spam filter, and ship the dashboard yourself. Even the simplest implementation is hours of work and ongoing maintenance.
splitforms collapses all of that into one URL. The form POSTs, we send the email through our dedicated SMTP with managed reputation, we run the spam classifier, we store the submission, we fan out webhooks. Your job is the HTML.
Form-to-email FAQ
How do I send HTML form submissions to my email without a backend?
Point your form's `action` attribute at a form-backend service like splitforms. The form POSTs the submission, splitforms emails it to you, and the visitor sees a confirmation page. No PHP, no Node.js, no SMTP setup. The HTML is the same `<form action method=POST>` you already wrote — only the URL changes.
Is splitforms really free?
Yes. 1,000 submissions per month, unlimited forms, with AI spam filtering, a real dashboard, signed webhooks, file uploads, and email delivery — all on the free plan. No credit card to sign up. Pro is $5/mo for 5,000 submissions; the $59 4-Year plan covers 15,000/mo for 48 months as a one-time payment.
Will my email show me who submitted the form?
Yes. The email arrives with every field from the form — name, email, message, plus any custom fields you added. You can reply directly to the sender's email address (splitforms sets the Reply-To header to the visitor's email). The dashboard also stores the full submission permanently with search and filter.
What about spam — will I get flooded?
No. splitforms runs every submission through an AI classifier in addition to honeypot trapping. Recognized spam is routed to a separate folder in the dashboard, not your inbox. You see legitimate submissions; junk is filtered out automatically.
Does this work with Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, etc.?
Yes. splitforms delivers via dedicated SMTP with proper SPF/DKIM authentication, so emails land in the inbox across every major provider. No shared sending pool, no spam-folder placement.
What if I want to send to multiple recipients?
Set up multiple recipient emails in your splitforms dashboard, or use the `cc` and `bcc` fields in the form. Every submission can fan out to a team channel, an archive inbox, and a primary recipient — all configured per form, no code changes.
How does this compare to PHP mail() or Node.js SMTP?
PHP mail() and direct SMTP both require a server you operate, a sending reputation you have to maintain, and ongoing spam-filter maintenance. splitforms handles all three: hosted endpoint, dedicated SMTP with managed reputation, AI spam filter trained on millions of submissions. Setup is one URL change instead of a server build.
Form to email, in 60 seconds.
Free for 1,000 submissions/month. No credit card. Point your form's action at splitforms and submissions arrive in your inbox.
Get a free access key →