FormBold review: free plan, pricing, limits and who runs it

What FormBold is and how setup works

FormBold is a hosted form backend. Its official site is formbold.com, and it describes itself as a free form backend that receives website form submissions and delivers them to email, Slack, Telegram, Notion, Google Sheets, Discord and more, with no server or backend code. This review is written by splitforms, which sells a competing product, and is based on FormBold's public pages rather than hands-on testing.

The getting-started docs describe five steps. Log in to the dashboard and click New Form, name it, open its Setup tab to copy the endpoint URL (https://formbold.com/s/ followed by a form ID), set that URL as the form's action with method="POST", then submit a test entry and check the dashboard. Every input needs a name attribute, which becomes the field key. A test sandbox inside the dashboard lets you try validation, autoresponder emails and webhooks before going live.

Plain HTML posts work, and the code examples also show JavaScript fetch calls with an Accept: application/json header for AJAX forms. The homepage lists HTML, React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, Astro, Svelte, Nuxt, WordPress, Webflow and Framer among supported stacks, and FormBold publishes a gallery of free form templates.

• Endpoint: POST https://formbold.com/s/YOUR_FORM_ID
• Required: a name attribute on every field; enctype="multipart/form-data" for files
• Dashboard sign-up: formbold.com/auth/register

FormBold free plan, paid plans and what happens at the limit

The Free plan is free forever with no credit card: 100 submissions a month, 5 forms, one workspace and one member. Its pricing card ticks the spam filter and reCAPTCHA but marks file attachments, webhook and API access, custom redirects, allowed domains, a custom email subject, multiple recipients, app integrations and priority support as not included. CSV export, autoresponders and branding removal carry an upgrade note. In practice Free gives you the dashboard and email notifications.

Paid plans are Starter (3,000 submissions a month, 100 forms, 2 members), Premium (5,000, 300 forms, 5 workspaces, 5 members) and Business (15,000, 500 forms, unlimited workspaces, 20 members). Monthly prices are $6, $15 and $24. Yearly billing is $48, $108 and $192 a year, which the page shows as $4, $9 and $16 a month. Starter adds uploads, webhooks, the API, redirects and integrations; Premium adds CSV export, autoresponders, allowed domains and multiple recipients; only Business removes FormBold branding.

At the limit, the pricing FAQ says submissions on the Free plan stop once you hit the monthly allowance, and upgrading lifts the limit straight away. FormBold does not say what happens on a paid plan that runs over. The billing docs say you get an email alert at 80% and 100% of your monthly allowance.

One caution: a plan table in FormBold's billing docs lists Free, Starter, Pro and Business with 100, 1,000, 15,000 and unlimited submissions, 3 and 10 forms on the lower tiers, and different upload and retention limits. It does not match the pricing page, so check your plan's real limits in the dashboard before relying on them.

• Free: 100/month, 5 forms, email and dashboard only
• Starter: 3,000/month, $6/month or $48/year
• Premium: 5,000/month, $15/month or $108/year
• Business: 15,000/month, $24/month or $192/year

Spam protection

FormBold's spam docs describe four layers. A basic server-side filter looks at submission velocity, known spam IPs, disposable email domains and content patterns such as phishing text and malicious links. Flagged entries are tagged Spam in the submissions table and do not trigger notification emails. A honeypot field named _gotcha discards any submission where a bot filled it in.

On top of that you can switch on an automatic cloud reCAPTCHA that needs no keys and is aimed at standard HTML form posts, or add your own Google reCAPTCHA v2 or v3 keys, which also works with fetch-based forms. The homepage mentions hCaptcha as well, though the docs only document reCAPTCHA. The pricing page ticks the spam filter and reCAPTCHA on every plan, including Free. Restricting a form to your own domains, which rejects other origins with a 403, starts on Premium.

File uploads

File attachments are not on the Free plan; the pricing page includes them from Starter up. You add enctype="multipart/form-data" to the form tag and a normal file input. Files can be downloaded from the submissions table and arrive as links or attachments in notification emails, and the FAQ says each upload comes with a secure CDN link.

The size limit is unclear, because FormBold publishes two different numbers. The pricing FAQ says it supports file attachments up to 100 MB. The form settings docs say the maximum is 5 MB per upload, available on Pro and Business plans, which are plan names the pricing page no longer uses. Both the docs and the Terms say uploaded files are kept for 30 days after upload and then deleted automatically, so download anything you need to keep.

Integrations, webhooks and API

FormBold's integrations page lists eleven connectors: Discord, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Make, Notion, Slack, Telegram, webhooks, Zapier and Zendesk. Telegram messages come through the FormBold bot, Notion rows map each field to a database property, and Zendesk turns each submission into a ticket. The pricing page puts app integrations and webhook/API access on Starter and above, not on Free.

Webhooks send each submission as a JSON POST to an https:// URL, with the event, form ID, submission ID, timestamp, field data, files and a spam flag. The webhook page says you can set an optional signing secret so your server can confirm a request came from FormBold, and that a delivery is retried automatically if your endpoint does not return a 2xx status. How many retries, over what period, and which header carries the signature are not published. Spam does not trigger webhooks.

A REST API at api.formbold.com lists a form's submissions, paginated up to 100 per page, using a Personal Access Token as a bearer token. HTTP API access has to be switched on per form. The docs say integration credentials are encrypted at rest with AES-256.

Dashboard, data retention and email delivery

Submissions land in a dashboard with Inbox, Unread, Starred and Spam tabs, keyword and date search, and a detail view showing IP address, location, browser and device. Form analytics show views, submissions and conversion rate. Export to CSV or JSON is described in the docs, but the pricing page puts CSV export on Premium and Business.

The pricing page and privacy policy do not state how long submissions are kept. The settings docs give you two controls: a Submission Archive switch that, when off, sends submissions to email and integrations without storing them on FormBold's servers, and a GDPR auto-delete schedule such as 30, 60 or 90 days. The billing docs list 7 days of retention on Free, but that table conflicts with the pricing page, so treat it as unconfirmed.

Notification emails go to addresses you have verified in Linked Email Addresses, with CC available. Custom subjects with variables such as {{name}}, multiple recipients and autoresponders are Premium features on the pricing page; autoresponders need a field named email. FormBold does not name the service that sends its email, and it does not publish deliverability guidance beyond recommending spam filtering when an autoresponder is on.

Who runs FormBold, and support

The formbold.com footer carries the line "A Product by pimjo", linking to pimjo.com, which lists FormBold among its products and gives an office in Dhaka, Bangladesh. FormBold's privacy policy gives a registered office in Bashundhara R/A, Dhaka, but leaves the company name blank. formbold.com/about returns a not-found page, and no founding year or legal entity name is published. Payments go through Paddle, which the Terms name as merchant of record.

Support runs through a ticket form on formbold.com/support, which says the team replies within 24 hours, plus a Discord community and [email protected] for privacy requests. The pricing page lists priority email support on paid plans only. FormBold also keeps a public roadmap and a GitHub organization with code examples and form templates.

FormBold compared with splitforms

splitforms publishes this review and competes with FormBold, so here are the plain differences. FormBold Free refills at 100 submissions every month; splitforms Free is 500 submissions in total, one-time. For a small form that runs steadily for years, FormBold's monthly refill lasts longer. On paid plans, splitforms Pro is $5/month for 5,000 submissions a month and Annual is $49/year for 15,000 a month, against FormBold Starter at $6 a month or $48 a year for 3,000 a month.

Beyond price, splitforms includes unlimited forms and notification emails on every plan and keeps submissions in a searchable dashboard with no automatic expiry, even on Free. File uploads (5 files of 5 MB each per submission) and HMAC-signed webhooks come with any paid plan. FormBold has more native connectors, including Telegram, Discord, HubSpot and Zendesk, plus multi-workspace team roles and an option to stop storing submissions at all.