Form backends such as Formspree, Getform and Basin
Point your existing form at Formspring
Your form markup and field names stay. You change the action URL, set up notifications again and check the first submissions. Past submissions are not imported.
Forms are included from Free.
What carries over
- Your form markup and field names
- A redirect after submit, through the _next field
- Your hidden spam-trap field, once you set its name on the Formspring form
- Webhook receivers, once you update the signing secret (HMAC-SHA256 over the raw body)
What does not carry over
- Past submissions and uploaded files: there is no submission importer, so export them from the old tool
- Notification rules, spam settings and integrations: set them up again on the new form
- Anything the old tool served from its own domain
What you need
- Access to the HTML of the page, or to the tool that publishes it.
- A Formspring account. Forms are included from Free.
- Access to the old tool, to export past submissions if you want to keep them.
How it maps
| In your file or old tool | In Formspring | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Old form action URL | The endpoint URL Formspring shows for your form | The only change to the page |
| Hidden spam-trap field | The form's honeypot field setting | Set it to the name your page already uses |
| Redirect after submit | _next | Add the field, or keep the one you have |
| Webhook secret | The webhook signing secret | Update the secret and verify the signature header Formspring sends |
Addresses and domains
- The URL of your own page does not change. Only the form action does.
- If you want the endpoint on your own domain, verify the domain first (custom domains, included from Pro).
- Keep the old endpoint active until you have seen real submissions arrive in Formspring.
Check before you commit
Create the form and send a test submission from a copy of your page before you change the live one. The test appears in the inbox like any other submission.
Steps
- Create a form in Formspring and copy its endpoint URL.
- Set the honeypot field name and the notification address on the form.
- On a copy of your page, replace the form action with the new URL and send a test submission.
- Update your webhook receiver's signing secret, then switch the live page.
Reconcile the result
- Send one real submission through the live page and confirm every field arrives.
- Compare the webhook payload your receiver gets with what it expected.
- Export the old tool's submissions to a file you keep. Formspring does not import them.
A worked example
The only change to the page is the action attribute.
Sample data
Before
<form action="https://forms.old-tool.example/f/abc123" method="POST">After
<form action="https://formspring.io/f/YOUR_FORM_ID" method="POST">Fields, the _next redirect and the honeypot field behave as before. Past submissions stay in the old tool.
Switching over
Switch one form at a time. Keep the old account read-only for a billing cycle in case you need to look something up.
Other guides
- Canny - Import a file, with a dry run
- Another link shortener - Import a CSV, row by row