INTEGRATION · MESSAGING

Send Form Submissions to Telegram — splitforms

Get form submissions as Telegram bot messages.

Create a Telegram bot, point splitforms' webhook at it, and every form submission arrives as a formatted Telegram message in your chat or group. Works on the free plan.

Delivery mode: Outbound webhook

Connect Telegram in 60 seconds See setup steps

Free for 1,000 submissions/month. No credit card required.

How to set up Telegram with splitforms

5 steps. The whole flow typically takes a couple of minutes.

Talk to @BotFather in Telegram, run /newbot, and grab the bot token. Add the bot to the chat or group where you want submissions to land.
Send a message to the bot or group, then call https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getUpdates to find the chat ID.
In splitforms, configure a webhook pointing at https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/sendMessage with chat_id and text fields populated from the form payload (a small relay URL or Cloudflare Worker is the simplest approach).
Test by submitting the form. The Telegram bot should deliver the message within ~1-2 seconds.
Optional: format the message as Markdown for nicer field labels by setting parse_mode=MarkdownV2 in the relay payload.

example: form markup

<form action="https://splitforms.com/api/submit" method="POST">
  <input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_SPLITFORMS_KEY" />
  <input type="hidden" name="_route" value="telegram" />
  <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="you@example.com" required />
  <textarea name="message" placeholder="Your message" required></textarea>
  <button type="submit">Send to Telegram</button>
</form>

The form posts to https://splitforms.com/api/submit. The Telegramrouting is configured in the splitforms dashboard against the form's access key — there's no client-side Telegram-specific code in your HTML.

Want the long-form walkthrough? Read the deep-dive Telegram guide on the blog →

Who uses splitforms + Telegram

A handful of patterns we've seen in the wild.

USE CASE 01Solo indie devs running a side-project and getting contact form pings on their phone via Telegram instead of email.
USE CASE 02Small remote teams who use Telegram as their primary group chat tool.
USE CASE 03Sales reps in markets where Telegram is the dominant business chat channel (e.g. Eastern Europe, parts of MENA).
USE CASE 04Critical alert pipelines — a contact form on a status page firing into a Telegram group of on-call engineers.
USE CASE 05Two-way customer support flows where a Telegram group handles inbound questions submitted via a website form.

Frequently asked questions

Does splitforms talk directly to Telegram?

Telegram delivery uses the standard splitforms outbound webhook plus a tiny relay (a Cloudflare Worker, Vercel function, or any small HTTP endpoint) that translates the splitforms payload into a Telegram sendMessage call. We document the relay shape in our deep-dive guide; it's typically 20 lines of code.

Why a relay? Why not call api.telegram.org directly?

Telegram's sendMessage endpoint expects chat_id and text fields, while splitforms' webhook payload is a generic submission object. A 10-line relay translates between the two and lets you also format fields, choose the chat at runtime, or split a long submission across multiple messages.

Is Telegram delivery available on the free plan?

Yes. The free plan includes outbound webhooks, which is the only splitforms-side feature you need to wire up Telegram. The relay (if you build one) runs on your own infrastructure.

Can I deliver to a Telegram group rather than a single user?

Yes — add the bot to the group, then use the group's chat ID (which is a negative number) as the chat_id in the relay's sendMessage call. The bot needs permission to send messages in the group.

Will the bot token leak if I put it in a webhook URL?

splitforms encrypts webhook URLs at rest, but treating bot tokens as secrets matters anyway. If a token leaks, run /revoke on @BotFather to rotate it, then update the URL in splitforms. The leaked token is invalidated immediately.

Can I get attachments (e.g. resume uploads) into Telegram?

Yes — extend the relay to call sendDocument with the file URL splitforms includes in the webhook payload. Telegram caches the file once uploaded so subsequent forwards are fast.