What do devs use for quickly setting up a feedback form?

In my opinion, a link to a Google Form is superior, not necessarily because Google Form has the best UX, but because it has the most familiar UX. Many people would probably have filled in a Google Form before, so having the de facto default form solution is the easiest on users.

Netlify forms: https://docs.netlify.com/forms/setup/

First-party support, generous free tier (and cheap enough if you go over 100 submissions in a month), simple implementation, just POST to it like any other form.

This is something that you just go with the cheapest/easiest solution. The type of signal you get from these forms is almost zero. Putting effort into it is basically like polishing a turd. Put as little effort as you can into it.

A link to a Google Form is always my default.

In the past, I’ve built a very, very simple submission form. No validation, no error handling, etc. just a post to a simple server that dumps it in a DB. This was only necessary to meat some compliance requirements.

I am running a few websites which have a simple feedback forms which POST to a simple PHP script that sends me an email.

By filtering for a few keywords, you can get of 99% of the form spam.

Deliverability has never been an issue for me since (of course) I run my own mail server. But I doubt it's a serious issue when you take the little time it takes to set up DKIM etc.

I wouldn't make it more complicated than it has to be :-)

Instead of embedding, just add a "Feedback" link somewhere that goes to a different page, like Google Forms or Airtable. Or you can put a little feedback icon in the corner that opens a small popup to ask for quick feedback (or be dismissed).

There's also a bunch of SAAS stuff in this space, like UserVoice or Hotjar or Aha.

I think it's important to distinguish the frontend from the back here. The form shouldn't be intrusive, but that need not be related to the deliverability issue. Whatever service you choose, there's usually a way to hook up the form to the backend reliably (via API and real-time confirmations).

If you really want to DIY this, you can probably put the responses into a cloud serverless KV store for very cheap or free, instead of having an always-on server. But that doesn't seem any better than just using Google Forms or Airtable to collect those responses.

Tally is great, unlimited submissions https://tally.so/

"feedback form" to me implies something pretty simple, like a text box. Why not just have an HTML form that saves to a database or file(s)?

If you actually mean a survey or a lot of questions with multiple-choice answers and nicely tabulated results, then yeah you probably want to just go with a 3rd party backend, or you will end up in a rabbit hole and ultimately reinvent one.

The third option has the ability to be customised beyond the others. I have a client who needed their prospective clients to upload photos. None of the usual suspects would handle that at the time. This also allows us to do client-side resizing, cropping.

On deliverability, you don't only have to send them on, you can store them in a database and build an interface onto that. If you already have a backend system (eg Django and its Admin), that's easy. Great if there are multiple people handling emails.

The downside isn't running it, it's spam.

But for another client, I skipped forms altogether. Raw email address on the contact page alongside a WhatsApp link and a phone number. Will some people drop through the cracks? Maybe.

Just using email is not only easier to implement, it is easier for the user to use, makes the user feel better about the process (web forms are almost always designed to prevent feedback: an email address might still connect to a ticketing system but mentally implies a human will read and triage the message), and gives them context and history for their message (as the user has a copy of what they sent in their client).

You can POST to Google forms from a custom form on your website: https://g.leftium.com/r/sample

This should solve both aesthetic and speed (SEO) problems.

I built a Google forms prettifier: https://g.leftium.com/pretty

You simply have to "mimic" the Google form own your own site: https://github.com/Leftium/cloud9dancehall.com/blob/c17c5a66...

There's no need for additional software or third party complexity. Have your webserver create a custom logfile of HTTP POST to a certain url, ie POST to "example.com/feedback". Then write a static HTML snippet form that POSTs the comment content to that URL from the user's browser when they visit your webpage(s) and hit [submit]. Read this logfile with a text editor or do whatever you want. It should be possible with any webserver but I know it's possible with nginx.

No attack surface beyond spamming the log to cause filling up of disk space. But you can limit this by setting a max POST content size in nginx and a rate limit then doing a logrotate on the host OS.

No moving parts to fail or maintain. Just pure comment form.

A link to a Google Form is fine IMO. Don't embed it.

I use Canny.io for some sites. You have to jump through a few hoops to enable their free plan, but it's decent. Honestly, the Google Form is simpler to setup and a better user experience.

I have built a tool for this. Its free to try. I didn't put enough effort to grow it, however. I don't want to spam here but if anyone is interested please let me know and I'll provide a link. The service includes a dashboard with Metrics and Insights, customization and more.

Don't think anyone has mentioned https://web3forms.com/ which normally means there's a good reason not to... Anyone advise against it?

YouForm is a good-looking (and much cheaper) alternative to Typeform.

Beautiful conversational forms.

https://youform.com/

Unlimited forms and responses for the free tier. Embeddable.

With Formester you have options for both 1 and 2.

I also like to think myself as hacker and write blogs and launch apps.

And it made me realize the current offerings are ugly and not neat.

I'll love to get your feedback too.

Also, I felt like this space is dead. But if there are still believers I'd be interested in collaboration and maybe even offer a paid gig.

> bad for SEO

How so?

Typeform hits the right spot in terms of professional looking vs easy to use and to setup.

Send feedback

I really like Feature Upvote, featureupvote.com

Have you tried https://tally.so? Load the embed after the user clicks a button and that should solve your SEO problem

Google Form.

Just put your physical mailing address on the bottom of your site, in small print, and allow 6-10 weeks for a response. That’ll stop the spam. /s