Any Suggestions on Replacing Exported Forms of Webflow due to GDPR?

We all received an email from Webflow about phasing out support for exported websites’ forms.

Let’s make suggestions and help each other to lower results of this problem to minimum.

I for one do not know where to start and which service to use. Free or Premium.

Anyone with any ideas please share.

We need some easy way to convert Webflow design.
I like to use Webflow for hosting but its not applicable to some client so I’m stuck with exporting but we need show basic user like myself a simple way to add third party forms without damaging the design of our sites.

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For what it’s worth, I used JotForm on a previous Muse site, but WARNING they shut you down without warning if you exceed the free 100 form submissions a month.

Also, there is Google Forms:
Don’t know if this works, but if it did it would certainly be a good way to proceed:

http://nikushx.com/blog/guides/google-forms-remove-google-branding/

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I am working with a developer to build a form handler that I will be able to use for each individual client. One nice side-effect of this whole thing is that it will allow me to FULLY white-label clients and simultaneously sidestep the bug that’s still floating around where people who submit forms can unsubscribe you from your own form if you accidentally respond without stripping that link.

A couple not so nice side-effects are that it represents more work and it’s costing me money, which are problems Webflow was supposed to be solving as opposed to creating.

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:point_up_2: Some great suggestions here — wanted to add that we put together a tutorial (and video!) for MailChimp integration.

Sending form submissions to MailChimp: MailChimp form Integration | Webflow University

General article for collecting form submissions on exported sites: Collect form submissions on exported sites | Webflow University

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posted a couple here:

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In light of the recent announcement. I can see that many people are upset but to be honest the writing has been on the wall for quite a while now. Many of us have clearly dropped webflow forms on exported sites for a variety of reasons. But it looks like many others have not and are a little panicked at this time. I hope we can all share them here.

My personal use:
Netlify Forms.

Others that I have seen in the form feedback thread:

Formcarry
Formspree
Mailchimp Integration

In the past I probably would have been outraged but looking for third parties lead me to find some flexible alternatives that bypassed a few limitations with webflow forms. Please post some more that you may of had some success with and I’ll add them to the page.

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I think what would be good is a tutorial on how to use Webflow forms (including the javascript validation for fields and CSS theming options) and a PHP script on your GoDaddy CPanel (or other CPanel) to do what effectively is some rather simple form posting.

This essentially allows Webflow designers and developers to continue to create beautiful and theme integrated forms, while still keeping the peace with those who want to host those forms elsewhere.

Maybe all this can be done using FormSpree as well? A great opportunity for Webflow or someone else to create a tute. :slight_smile:

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Formspree Tutorial

Pretty simple stuff. You get 1000 free form submissions per month… If you need more, $10 a month for their “Gold” account which comes with unlimited submissions and emails along with some other bells and whistles (AJAX, etc).

Step 1:
Go through their setup process that will essentially have you punch in the email address you want you forms to be sent to, then confirm it via email, it will look something like this - https://formspree.io/your@email.com

Step 2:
Change the form action within the Webflow form settings to point to the exact same thing you entered in step one… https://formspree.io/your@email.com and make sure it is set to POST.

Step 3:
Laugh because you had yourself all worked up over how hard it was going to be to figure out your new broken web forms problem and Formspree swooped in and saved the day.

Gotchas:
All forms come with ReCaptcha, which is cool - but also takes the person who submitted the form to a separate page to click the “I’m not a robot” thing. So if you don’t like that then unfortunately you are roped into the $10 “Gold” account to disable this functionality.

Advanced Stuff:
Just drag/drop an HTML embed into your form inside the Webflow Designer and add any of the additional features, such as the “_next” functionality to point your form to a specific re-direct “thank you” page, etc…

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Except that the ‘_’ in these form fields names will be ignored by Webflow (and thus by Formspree or other services) so you’ll have to make an HTML embed form field with the right name

@callmevlad

It works. I setup a test re-direct using an embed and the “_next” option.

Thanks very much for taking the time to share this workflow!

Unfortunately, to me, it doesn’t really seem the same. Having to go to a captcha page kinda kills the whole “theme just like Webflow” thing. What if I just want to have the form stay on the same page and show the “Form Successfully Submitted” message? Will that work on the $10/mon package?

10 bucks/month is not bad, if it actually works just like Webflow. Unless I’m missing something, what you have shown is it doesn’t.

Will forms continue to function properly on projects in developent, aka [project].webflow.io?

@jonreese Yes, these will continue working as this runs exclusively on Webflow’s infrastructure and hosting. [project].webflow.io is not meant for production usage though, so there are limits to how many form submissions are supported (50/month on enhanced staging per project).

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I could only assume that you will have the option to remove that re-direct. I mean, they clearly state that as a “feature” of their $10 gold service - the ability to disable the recaptcha, so… you could always ask them.

Also, I think $10 a month for unlimited emails and submissions is pretty sweet considering I was never under the impression that if I move my site away from Webflow’s hosting that I would be entitled to free backend or server side form processing for life (I honestly had no idea Webflow forms even worked on exported sites).

I believe “unlimited emails and submissions” means you can now be the almighty gatekeeper of form entries for every site you ever build from now until the end of time with the ability to keep those all nicely tucked away & managed right inside of the Webflow Designer on a per form basis.

Yea, I just kind of followed up on a request to show some people how simple it can be to make your forms work outside of Webflow in a super simple manner for free - I wasn’t really going for exactly like Webflow but I think you can get there for the $10 a month.

I know people will probably start talking about money now, but I think $120 a year for the freedom to host your site wherever you want and never have to worry about hopping in text editors every time you export, php scripts, backend server setups, testing, etc - while also keeping everything managed under a single Formspree dashboard and form processing directly managed in the form itself in the designer, on a per form basis is a pretty sweet deal.

Personally, I would just eat those fees if were moving all my site away from Webflow. I mean most of you are up-charging for blanket “hosting, maintenance and updates” fees on a per client basis anyways. If anybody wants to complain about how $120 a year will kill their web design business then they need to get better at their craft and charge way more money.

Thanks again for taking your time to give me kindly feedback. I have to ask, I don’t understand where the $120 number comes from?

That is what I expecting. Thank you for this documentation. Simple and clean. Hope it will many others. I will start implementing in on my sites in few days.

$120 yearly - $10 a month :wink:

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My forms have stopped working. If I go to dashboard settings forms I can see the entries but the details are not being forwarded to the recipient. Anyone else had this issue…seemed to happen from 1st May approx.

Thanks

Don

Hi guys hope you don’t mind me dropping in here, i see lots of questions regarding forms and how to implement the change over from the Webflow service. If you are understanding how to be GDPR compliant (if this is applicable to you) there are many guides as to how you do this, one is here:

If you are hosting your own sites (without the Webflow database/attributes which is not exportable) you can just build your own e-mail submission form based on the above GDPR compliancy.

W3schools is probably THE most important resource for anyone learning web-design or having to tackle code. For anyone who is using Webflow, which takes away all the hard coding, eventually you will have to tackle code in some sort of way and it is important to know how to do this.

When you export your code for your own hosting you access your public_html directory on your server (cPanel) locate your contact page and edit the code, the code you create within W3schools (or inside a text editor) you just paste where the Webflow form code is, replacing the existing code.

As long as you are using the GDPR guide and collecting information correctly the form submission will send visitor contacts under new GDPR regulations.

I hope this helps or makes sense, i know there are lots of great solutions here but thought some of you may find this resource very useful, especially for anyone that is new to coding or wishes to learn. W3schools also teaches you Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and a multitude of useful coding solutions that will help you to build beautiful websites that function as they should, or to the point, how you want them to.

…and it’s free!

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Hi Folks,

Jesse here from FormToEmail. Our forms are compatible with Webflow and offer a variety of other integrations such as Mailchimp, Salesforce, and even SMS notifications.

For those of you effected by GDPR we wrote up a short guide here to help you get pointed in the right direction for compliance: https://formtoemail.com/support/gdpr_compliant_forms.php

Feel free to post here or direct message me with any questions.

-Jesse

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