How to make a form that emails you (and replies to the sender)

A contact form, a sign-up for a workshop, a request for a quote: someone fills it in, and you want an email about it. Often you also want to send the person a short “got it” reply, and maybe a follow-up a few days later. This guide builds all three with a hosted form and a few steps, without a form backend or any code.

Before you start

• A Foliot account. The free plan is enough to build and test this.
• The address that should get the notifications.
• Somewhere for the form: on its own page at https://usefoliot.com/f/…, which you can share anywhere (an email signature, a social profile, a QR code), or embedded in a page of your own website.

Set it up

1. Create the workflow and build the form

Create a new workflow and choose When a form is submitted as its trigger. A new form starts with a Name and an Email field. Give it a Form title, an optional description, and the Button text you want. Use Add field for anything else. Fields can be short text, email, number, long text, a dropdown or a checkbox, and each one can be required.

Add a Message field as long text. Keep the Email field as the email type, so the form checks it's a real-looking address before it's sent.

2. Submit the form once

Open the Form link. While the workflow is off, the form shows a “Test mode” banner, and answers are saved as sample data instead of running the workflow. Fill it in once with realistic answers. Your steps can now pick each answer from the data picker, labelled by the field, like Trigger → Message. (They can pick the fields even before the first submission; the sample just lets you preview real values.)

3. Email yourself

Click + after the trigger and choose Send email. Fill in:

• To: your address. Several are fine, separated by commas (up to 10).
• Subject: “New message from Trigger → Name”.
• Message: the answers you care about, e.g. Trigger → Message.
• Under More options, set Reply-to (optional) to Trigger → Email. Pressing Reply in your inbox then answers the person directly.

The email comes from a Foliot address. You can set the Sender name, like “Acme website”, which shows as “Acme website via Foliot”; the address itself doesn't change.

4. Send the person a confirmation (optional)

Add a second Send email with To set to Trigger → Email, and a short note: what happens next and when they'll hear from you. This is the “autoresponder” that many form tools sell as an add-on.

5. Follow up a few days later (optional)

Add a Delay set to “Wait for 3 days, then continue”, then a third Send email to Trigger → Email. The run waits in the background; you can see it as “Waiting” in the run history. Delays can be anything from 1 minute to 30 days.

6. Test, then turn the workflow on

Use Test this step on each email to send it for real with the sample answers. When they look right, switch the workflow on and share the link. Each submission now runs the workflow, and the person sees “Thanks! Your response was sent.” To put the form on your own website, open the trigger, choose Put this form on your website and paste the code into your page.

Useful variations

Different inboxes for different topics

Add a Topic dropdown (Sales, Support, Other). Then use a Branch: if Trigger → Topic is Sales, the Yes path emails sales; the No path emails support.

Skip the follow-up for some people

Put a Filter before the follow-up, for example “Only continue if Trigger → Newsletter is true” for a checkbox that asks permission.

Keep a list too

Add Add row to Google Sheets to save every submission in a spreadsheet. See form responses to Google Sheets.

Use your own HTML form instead

If your site already has a form you designed, it can send its answers to Foliot without the hosted form. Start the workflow with When a webhook is received instead, and point the form at the webhook URL:

<form action="https://usefoliot.com/api/hooks/YOUR-TOKEN" method="post">
  <input name="name" required>
  <input name="email" type="email" required>
  <textarea name="message"></textarea>
  <button>Send</button>
</form>

In the trigger, set Send people to this page afterwards to your own thank-you page, so visitors land there after sending. Each answer arrives under its field name, like Trigger → email, and the steps above work the same way. The hosted form's hidden spam field isn't there in this setup; the webhook still accepts at most 60 requests a minute.

Good to know

• Spam protection is a hidden honeypot field that bots fill in and people never see, plus a limit of 10 submissions a minute from one visitor. There's no CAPTCHA.
• Every form shows a small “Powered by Foliot · Report abuse” line at the bottom, and every email sent by the Send email step ends with “Sent with Foliot”.
• Each submission is one run, however many emails it sends: 500 runs a month on the free plan, 10,000 on Pro ($12 a month).
• Emails are limited to 25 recipients a day on the free plan and 100 on Pro (UTC days). A confirmation plus a follow-up is 2 recipients per submission, plus your own notification.
• After submitting the hosted form, people see Foliot's thank-you message. To send them to a page of your own, use your own HTML form (above).
• The form has no file uploads.

Other ways to do it

Form builders such as Google Forms, Tally, Typeform or Jotform have their own email notifications, and some offer confirmation emails. If you already use one and it sends what you need, keep it. They have far more field types and design options than Foliot's form. Foliot fits when you want the form and what happens next in one place: several emails, a delay, a branch, a row in a sheet, or a call to your own API.

Form backend services let a form you designed yourself post to them and forward the answers by email. They're the better fit if the form has to match your site's own HTML and styles exactly; Foliot's form keeps its own clean look when you embed it.