Where do form submissions go?

By default, straight into your contacts on this site - each signup appears as a contact with what they typed and what they agreed to, and you get an email for every submission. A form can instead deliver to your mailing provider (ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and the like) so your existing automations fire; see the wiring guide for that.

What kinds of form can I have?

Four: a waitlist ('tell me when it opens'), a lead capture ('send me the guide'), an event registration, and a general enquiry form. What a form can't do is mark someone as a buyer or a student - those come only from a real purchase, so nobody can forge a customer record through a public form.

How does consent work?

A marketing-consent checkbox always starts unticked - the visitor must tick it themselves, and the exact wording they saw is stored with their record as evidence. A form physically cannot be created with the box pre-ticked; that isn't lawful on a form, and it's deliberately impossible rather than merely discouraged.

Do form changes go live immediately?

No. Adding, rewiring or removing a form lands on a draft with a preview link, and nothing changes on your live site until you approve it.

How forms and signups work on my site

Every name and email a visitor offers you is someone asking to hear from you - the most valuable thing a website collects. This page is the map of how that works on a bernard site: what forms exist, where their submissions go, and the choices you have.

The three places a form can deliver

Every form on your site is wired to exactly one destination, and knowing which is the whole game:

Your contacts on this site (the default). Every submission becomes a contact (see Where do the people who buy, join or ask end up?). You're emailed on each one, their answers and consent are stored, and welcome emails can follow automatically. Nothing external to set up.
Your mailing provider. The form delivers straight to a form in your ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or similar account, so your existing lists, tags and automations behave exactly as they always have. See Connect a form to ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or my email provider.
Nowhere - a broken form. Common after a move from WordPress, where the form's machinery stayed behind: it looks fine and swallows every signup silently. See My signup forms stopped working after the move - and ask for a form health check any time; every form on every page gets classified in one pass.

The kinds of form

A form is one of four kinds: waitlist, lead capture, registration, or enquiry - see Capture leads with a signup form for adding one. Every form asks for an email (that's how duplicate signups merge); anything else - name, phone, a question box - is up to you. Forms can carry a label (say, glazing-guide) so signups from different funnels stay separate audiences for later emails.

Two things a form deliberately cannot do: mark someone as a buyer or student (those are earned by a purchase, never claimable through a public form), and carry a pre-ticked consent box (consent needs a real affirmative act - the box always starts unticked, and the wording shown is stored as evidence).

What happens after a submission

For forms wired to your list: the contact appears with their answers, you get a notification email, and if you've set one up, a welcome email goes out in your voice. For forms wired to a provider: whatever your provider is configured to do - its automations, its thank-you page or a redirect you set there. Either way, spam protection and rate limits guard the public endpoint: every form carries a hidden trap field that people never see but bots fill in, and anything that fills it is dropped without a word. It won't catch a human typing spam by hand, so if one gets through, delete the contact and it's gone.

The notification email arrives from your site's name "via Bernard", and hitting reply on it goes straight to the person who wrote in.

As with everything, changes to forms happen on a draft you preview and approve before they're live.

The prompt

“Show me every form on my site and tell me where each one sends its signups - my own list, my mailing provider, or nowhere. Flag anything broken.”

Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.

Questions people ask

Where do form submissions go?: By default, straight into your contacts on this site - each signup appears as a contact with what they typed and what they agreed to, and you get an email for every submission. A form can instead deliver to your mailing provider (ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and the like) so your existing automations fire; see the wiring guide for that.
What kinds of form can I have?: Four: a waitlist ('tell me when it opens'), a lead capture ('send me the guide'), an event registration, and a general enquiry form. What a form can't do is mark someone as a buyer or a student - those come only from a real purchase, so nobody can forge a customer record through a public form.
How does consent work?: A marketing-consent checkbox always starts unticked - the visitor must tick it themselves, and the exact wording they saw is stored with their record as evidence. A form physically cannot be created with the box pre-ticked; that isn't lawful on a form, and it's deliberately impossible rather than merely discouraged.
Do form changes go live immediately?: No. Adding, rewiring or removing a form lands on a draft with a preview link, and nothing changes on your live site until you approve it.