How to Receive HTML Form Submissions Online

Building the form is the easy part. The question that matters is: when someone presses Submit, where does the information go, and how do you see it?

This guide covers the practical ways to receive HTML form submissions online and how to set up a reliable flow in a few minutes, with no server of your own.

The three places submissions can live

1. Your inbox — instant, familiar, and you can reply straight away.
2. A submissions dashboard — a searchable record that doesn't depend on email delivery.
3. The tools you already use — spreadsheets, CRMs, chat apps, databases.

The most reliable setup uses all three: email for speed, a dashboard as the source of truth, and integrations for workflow.

Step 1: Point your form at a receiving endpoint

Your form needs an action URL that accepts submissions. With Formclick:

<form action="https://api.formclick.io/submit" method="POST">
  <input type="hidden" name="access_key" value="YOUR_ACCESS_KEY">
  <input type="hidden" name="subject" value="New website enquiry">
  <input type="hidden" name="from_name" value="Website">
  <input type="checkbox" name="botcheck" style="display: none;">

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

Any field with a name is captured automatically — add, remove or rename fields as you like.

Step 2: Receive submissions by email

Each submission is emailed to the address set for that form. A few details make email much more useful:

• Reply-to: include a field named email and the notification's reply-to is set to the submitter, so you can just press Reply.
• Subject line: the hidden subject field sets it, so you can filter by form in your inbox.
• Sender name: from_name controls how the email appears in your inbox list.
• Different recipients per form: sales enquiries to sales, support to support.

More in How to Send HTML Form Data to Email.

Step 3: View and manage submissions in a dashboard

Email isn't a database. Messages get filtered, deleted or lost when someone leaves the company. A dashboard keeps every submission in one place where you can:

• Search and filter by date or field.
• Review anything flagged as spam in a separate tab instead of losing it.
• Download submissions as CSV for reporting or backups.
• Give teammates access without forwarding emails.

Step 4: Send submissions to your other tools

Goal	Integration
Simple reporting and sharing	Google Sheets (Pro)
Team workspace or content pipeline	Notion, Airtable, monday.com
Instant team alerts	Discord; Slack via n8n or a webhook
Mailing lists	Brevo, MailerLite, ActiveCampaign
Your own app or database	PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, Supabase, Neon
Anything else	Webhooks, n8n, Zapier or Make

Browse them all on the integrations page.

Step 5: Confirm receipt to the person who submitted

People want to know their message arrived. You can:

• Redirect to your own thank-you page with a hidden redirect field.
• Show a message in place using formclick.min.js or your own fetch() code.
• Send an automatic confirmation email with the autoresponder (Pro), using your own subject, intro text and logo.

Receiving submissions from apps and JavaScript

Not every submission comes from a classic HTML form. Single-page apps, mobile apps and scripts can post JSON to the same endpoint:

await fetch('https://api.formclick.io/submit', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', Accept: 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    access_key: 'YOUR_ACCESS_KEY',
    name: 'Jane Smith',
    email: 'jane@example.com',
    message: 'Hello!',
  }),
});

They show up in the same inbox, dashboard and integrations as everything else.

Checklist for a reliable setup

• Send a test submission from the live page, not just locally.
• Add your notification address to your contacts so emails don't land in spam.
• Check the spam tab occasionally during the first week.
• Connect at least one integration so submissions exist somewhere other than email.
• Use a separate form (and access key) for each website or purpose.

Ready to start? Create a free Formclick account — 250 submissions a month, unlimited forms, no credit card.