How to Create a Free Contact Form (From Sign-up to Your First Test Message)

Published 2026-11-07

This guide is for anyone running a shop, a class or a one-person business who wants to take enquiries somewhere other than the phone, or to cut down on back-and-forth email. Whether or not you have a website, the steps are the same.

With FormEdge, you describe the form you want in a sentence or two and AI drafts the fields. When you publish, the form gets a URL and a QR code, and you get an email each time a message comes in. You can also set up an automatic reply to the sender, and protection against bot submissions is on from the start.

Steps

1. Sign up for FormEdge

   First, set up the place where you will build and publish the form. All you need is an email address. It is free, and no credit card is required.

   Sign up free

   After you confirm your email address, the screen Welcome! Let's start by creating your workspace appears. Press Create a workspace and get started, then enter your name or organization and choose your public URL. On the Registration complete screen, press Continue. You are then asked to Choose how you sign in: set up a passkey or a password, or press Continue with this to decide later. The form creation screen opens.

2. Describe the form you want

   On the form creation screen (later on, open it from + New form in the Forms list of the dashboard), choose Easy AI form generation and describe the form in plain words. AI drafts the fields. For a one-teacher piano studio, Sora Piano Studio (a fictional studio made up for this guide), the description might be:

   Example description

   Copy

   Contact form for a piano studio. Name, email address, the student's age group (choose one: preschool / elementary school / middle school and up / adult), preferred date for a trial lesson, and questions or requests (free text).

   Check the drafted fields and create the form. The form editor opens.

3. Tidy up the fields

   In the editor, put the drafted fields into your own words. Field names and options can be edited in place.

   The field types include:

   • Full name, email address, phone number, address (there are separate Japan and international address fields)
   • Text (single line or multiple lines)
   • Choices (dropdown, radio buttons, checkboxes)
   • Date

   Tick Required on anything people must fill in. Make the email address or phone number you reply with required, so you are never left unable to answer.

   The form also helps visitors get it right: when they leave a field, a missing answer or a wrong format is flagged on the spot.

4. Set up the confirmation email (auto-reply)

   The automatic "we got your message" email to the sender is off to begin with. Open the form's Confirmation email and turn on Send an auto-reply email. Then, under Email field to send to, choose the field that holds the sender's email address. The subject and body are written per form, so a line like "We reply within two business days" and any days you are closed will put the sender at ease.

5. Publish and share the URL or QR code

   When the form is ready, publish it from the editor. To hand out the form on its own URL, check that Standalone form URL in the editor is On (if it says Off, flip the switch next to it). Publish with it on, and the form's URL appears right there; the form takes messages straight away. Open the QR code with the QR button next to the URL and save it.

   Places to put the URL:

   • Social media profiles, such as Instagram or a messaging app's business account
   • Your email signature
   • Business cards, shop cards and in-store signs (print the QR code)

   Any fields you add or change after publishing are reflected right away.

6. Send a test and check the notification and auto-reply

   Finally, open the published form yourself and send one message. Then check three things:

   • The form's submission count in the dashboard shows 1 (you can export what you sent as a CSV file from the submissions screen)
   • The notification email reached you (check your spam folder too)
   • The auto-reply reached the sender, at the address typed into the field you chose in the confirmation email settings

Putting it on your website

If you do not have a website yet, FormEdge can take you from building the website to placing the form. An introduction and the form go together on one page, and starting from an industry template is covered in Build a One-Page Website with a Form from a Template.

If you already have a website, you do not need to rebuild it. Change where the Contact button or menu link points to the form's public URL. See Add a Contact Form to Your Existing Website for the details.

Get notified in Slack, Teams or Discord

If you rarely check email, you can receive the notification in a chat tool such as Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams or Google Chat. Chat notifications are available on the Starter plan or higher.

Each form can have several recipients. Sending to both your own Slack and the shop's shared mailbox, for example, means nothing slips through when you are busy. Set it up under the form's Submission notifications.

The notification types are listed on Notifications, and the differences between plans on Pricing.