html.contact Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

html.contact is a form backend that gives every plan the identical feature set and charges only for submission volume. That single decision makes it the best free tier in the category. It is not, however, the cheapest per submission. Best for: developers shipping static and AI-built sites. Price: from $0 (free plan: yes). Rating: 7/10.

What is html.contact?

html.contact is an endpoint you paste into the action attribute of an ordinary HTML form. It receives the POST, checks the request came from a domain you allowed, screens it for spam, stores the submission, and emails it to the addresses you have verified. No server, no plugin, no JavaScript embed. The markup stays a normal form, which is the entire pitch.

We picked it up from the 3 July Product Hunt board, where it launched as “a full form backend you can test before paying.” That phrasing is doing real work. The form-backend category has settled into a pattern where the free tier exists to prove the endpoint works and nothing else, and the features you actually need in production, file uploads, an API, exports, are the upgrade triggers. html.contact is built by StarterBuild, and it has taken the opposite position deliberately enough to build a whole comparison section around it.

What Are html.contact’s Key Features?

Every plan ships the same backend

This is the product decision everything else follows from. The plan comparison table lists nine capabilities and marks all nine “Included” on Free, Starter and Pro alike: the HTML endpoint, attachments, To/CC/BCC recipients, verified linked emails, domain allowlists, server-side spam screening, submission logs, CSV and JSON exports, and API access. The pricing page states it in one line: “Paid plans only increase accepted submission volume.”

Spam does not bill you

Only accepted submissions count against your allowance. Blocked spam, failed domain checks, honeypot hits and rejected requests all consume nothing. The FAQ also clarifies that a submission emailing To, CC and BCC counts once rather than three times, which is the sort of thing you would otherwise discover from an invoice. On a public contact form where the majority of traffic is bots, this is the difference between a 1,000-submission plan meaning 1,000 real enquiries and meaning 300.

Attachments on the free tier

Every plan supports one file attachment per valid submission, up to 4 MB, including the free one. That is the specific gate most competitors use, so being able to test a real upload before entering a card is the clearest expression of the company’s whole argument. The 4 MB ceiling and the single-file limit are modest, and if you need multiple attachments or larger files this is not your tool.

API access and an agent guide

API submissions and private API access are on every tier, and the docs include an OpenAPI specification plus a dedicated agent guide. The agent guide is aimed at AI-built sites, where a coding assistant needs to wire up a working contact form without a human reading documentation. Given how many sites are now scaffolded that way, publishing a machine-readable spec and a guide written for an agent is a sensible bet.

Logs, exports and verified routing

Submissions stay inspectable in a dashboard, exportable as CSV or JSON, and routable to up to 10 verified email addresses with domain allowlists controlling which sites may post. None of this is exotic, but having all of it available before you pay means you can confirm your routing rules actually work in production conditions rather than after committing.

How Much Does html.contact Cost?

Free is $0 and gives you 250 submissions total across the account, with no expiry. Starter is $8 a month for 1,000 submissions per billing period. Pro is $19 a month for 5,000. Those are the only three plans, there is no annual discount published, and no credit card is required to start.

Per submission that works out at $0.008 on Starter and $0.0038 on Pro, so the step up more than halves your unit cost while more than doubling the price. The descent is clean with no inversion, which is worth saying because credit and volume ladders invert more often than you would expect.

The competitive picture is where it gets interesting, and we checked it rather than taking the company’s word. Formspree, the best-known name in the category, publishes a free tier at 50 submissions a month with file uploads set to zero and 30-day retention, then Personal at $15 a month for 200 submissions with one upload, Professional at $30 for 2,000 with API access, and Business at $90 for 20,000. So html.contact’s Pro gives you 5,000 submissions for $19 where Formspree’s Professional gives 2,000 for $30. On volume alone that is around four times the value.

Does html.contact’s Comparison Page Hold Up?

The site runs a comparison section covering five rivals, and any vendor publishing competitor prices is inviting a check. We ran one on the two rows we could verify against the competitors’ own pages.

The Formspree row is exactly right. html.contact claims Formspree “unlocks uploads at $15/month for 200 submissions and API access at $30/month for 2,000.” Formspree’s own plan data confirms every part of that: Personal is $15 monthly for 200 submissions with one file upload, Professional is $30 monthly for 2,000 with API access, and the free plan really does carry zero uploads. Getting a competitor’s ladder right to the submission count is not the norm.

The FormKeep row is where the framing slips. html.contact says attachments start on FormKeep’s Essential at $4.99 a month and integrations move to Professional at $19.50. Both figures are correct on FormKeep’s page. What the comparison does not mention is what those tiers carry: FormKeep’s Essential is 1,000 submissions for $4.99 against html.contact’s Starter at 1,000 for $8, and FormKeep’s Professional is 10,000 for $19.50 against html.contact’s Pro at 5,000 for $19. At both rungs the page cites, FormKeep is cheaper per submission. The figures are honest and the conclusion drawn from them is not the whole story.

Then there is who is missing. The comparison covers Formspree, Forminit, Formtorch, FormKeep and form.taxi. Basin, one of the better-known form backends, publishes $15, $29 and $49 monthly tiers and does not appear at all. Neither does Netlify Forms, which ships free with a platform a lot of this product’s target audience already deploys to. A five-row comparison that omits both is presenting a narrower field than exists.

What Does the Free Plan Actually Prove?

More than any rival’s, and less than the marketing implies. Because every capability is present, you can validate real production behaviour before paying: send a real 4 MB attachment, check it lands, pull a CSV export, hit the API, confirm your domain allowlist rejects a post from somewhere else, and watch the spam screening work. No competitor in the comparison lets you do that without a card.

The limit is the number. 250 submissions is a total for the life of the account, not a monthly allowance. For evaluation that is plenty. For a live site it is a trial with no clock on it rather than a free plan you could sit on, and once you hit the ceiling new submissions are blocked until you upgrade, though your existing logs stay readable. Compare that to Formspree’s 50 a month, which renews forever but never lets you test an upload at all. Which is better depends entirely on whether you want to evaluate or to run a low-traffic site for free, and html.contact is clearly built for the first.

Who is html.contact Best For?

Use html.contact if you build static sites, ship from Astro, Next.js, Hugo, Webflow, Framer or GitHub Pages, and want a contact form working in five minutes without standing up a backend. It is a particularly good fit if you hand sites to clients, because you can prove the full setup works during the build and only start paying when their traffic justifies it. It is also the right pick if uploads or API access are non-negotiable and you refuse to pay a feature tax for them.

Skip html.contact if raw price per submission is what you are optimising for, because FormKeep is cheaper at both the 1,000 and 10,000 marks. Skip it if you need multiple attachments per submission or files over 4 MB. And skip it if you already deploy to Netlify, where forms are included at no extra cost and the integration is one attribute.

Best html.contact Alternatives

Formspree is the incumbent, from $15 a month for 200 submissions, $30 for 2,000 with API access, and $90 for 20,000. More mature, wider integration list, and considerably more expensive per submission with uploads and API access behind paid tiers.

FormKeep is the value pick on pure volume: $4.99 for 1,000 submissions, $19.50 for 10,000, $59 for 100,000. It gates attachments and integrations the way html.contact refuses to, so you are trading feature access for a materially better unit price.

Basin sits between them at $15, $29 and $49 a month, with annual pricing bringing the entry tier to $12.50 effective. It is the name html.contact’s own comparison page leaves out, and it is worth a look precisely because of that.

Final Verdict: Is html.contact Worth It?

html.contact has made one clear decision and executed it consistently. Charging for volume and nothing else is the right answer for this category, the free tier is the only one in the comparison set that lets you validate a real production setup before paying, and not billing you for spam is the kind of detail that only comes from someone who has run a public contact form and seen the traffic. Publishing an OpenAPI spec and an agent guide alongside it suggests the team understands who is actually wiring up forms in 2026.

The honesty runs out at the comparison page. The Formspree row checks out to the submission count, which earns credit, but the FormKeep row quotes accurate prices while leaving out that FormKeep carries more volume for less money at both tiers cited, and Basin and Netlify Forms are absent entirely. So the fair summary is this: html.contact is the best free tier and the cleanest feature policy in the category, and it is not the cheapest place to send 5,000 submissions a month. Buy it for the policy, not the unit price, and it is a solid 7.