Auto Reply

Auto Reply sends an email back to the person who filled in your form, as soon as they submit it. They get an instant confirmation, and you save yourself writing the same reply every time.

You set it up on each form, in Form Settings → Auto Reply. There is no email server to run and nothing to install.

Which plans include Auto Reply

Free. Auto Reply is not available. You can still see the setting in your dashboard, so you know what it does. It turns on when you upgrade.

Starter. Write your own subject line and a plain text reply message.

Pro. Everything in Starter, plus an HTML email template, {{fieldName}} variables that fill in each person's own answers, and no Formboost branding on the email.

Business includes everything in Pro.

Turn on Auto Reply for a form

1. Open your form in the dashboard and go to the Settings tab.
2. Find the Auto Reply section.
3. Turn on Send an automatic reply after a submission.
4. Pick the recipient field, or leave it empty. See below.
5. Set a reply-to address, or leave it empty. See below.
6. Write a reply subject and a reply message.
7. On Pro, switch on Enable HTML template if you want to design the email instead.
8. Save.

The next submission gets a reply.

Pick the recipient email field

The recipient field is the field that catches your visitor's email address.

Formboost does not guess. It will not scan a submission for anything that looks like an email address, because a form with two email fields would be a coin toss, and replying to the wrong person is worse than not replying at all.

So you have two options:

• Leave it empty. Formboost looks for a field named email, then a field named _email, and uses the first one that holds a real address.
• Type a field name. Use contactEmail, work_email, or whatever your form calls it. Only that field is read.

If that field is missing, empty, or does not hold a real email address, the reply is skipped. Your submission is still saved and still sent to all your other destinations. The skip is recorded with a reason, so you can see what happened in your settings.

Where replies land

Your auto reply is sent from Formboost, so the reply-to address decides where the message goes if your visitor hits reply.

• Leave it empty and replies go to your form's notification email, the same address that already gets told about new submissions.
• Set an address to send replies somewhere else, such as a shared support inbox.

You can change it per form, so a careers form can answer to your hiring inbox while a contact form answers to sales.

Clearing the box puts it back to your notification email.

The subject and the message

autoReplySubject is the subject line. autoReplyText is the message, sent as plain text.

The subject is always plain text, on every plan. It is sent exactly as you write it, so {{name}} in a subject arrives as the characters {{name}}. Variables belong in the message, next to the editor that offers them.

The email comes from Formboost. Replies go to your form's notification address, so if someone hits reply, the message reaches you.

Pro: custom emails

Pro is the custom email plan. Two things change.

No Formboost branding

On Free and Starter, your auto reply carries one small line under it: Powered by Formboost, with our wordmark. That is all. There is no logo at the top and no mention of us anywhere in your message.

On Pro, even that is gone. The email arrives with your words, your design, and nothing of ours around it, so it reads as an email from your business.

The one line every plan keeps is the short note saying the reader got the email because they filled in a form, and that they can reply to it. That is not branding. It tells a stranger why an email turned up, which is what keeps replies out of spam folders.

Your form's name never appears in the email. It is your own label for the form, so your visitor is never shown it.

Your notification emails, the ones that come to you, are unchanged.

Email templates

One reply goes out, so you write it one way or the other. Under Reply message there is an Enable HTML template toggle:

• Off gives you the plain text message box.
• On gives you the HTML editor.

Only the one you are using is shown, and only that one is sent. Switching keeps what you wrote in the other one, so you can move back and forth without losing anything.

Your template is the body of the email, not a full web page. Formboost wraps it in an email layout that handles the header, the footer, dark mode, and the quirks of Outlook and Gmail. So leave out <html>, <head> and <body>, along with <script>, <style> and <iframe>, which are removed.

To go back to plain text, choose Plain text again. Your template stays saved.

Preview before you save

The template box has two tabs, Code and Preview.

Preview shows the finished email, rendered by the same code that sends the real one. So you see the actual layout, your {{fieldName}} variables filled in, and, on Pro, the email without Formboost branding.

The values come from your form's most recent submission, so the preview reads like a real reply. If the form has not received anything yet, Formboost fills in example answers instead, and tells you it has.

Nothing is saved and no email is sent when you preview.

Template variables

Variables use two curly braces:

1{{fieldName}}

The name inside the braces is the name of your form field, exactly as it was submitted. Nothing else is available.

Take this form:

1<form action="https://formboost.app/f/YOUR_ENDPOINT" method="POST">
2  <input type="text" name="name" />
3  <input type="email" name="email" />
4  <input type="text" name="company" />
5  <textarea name="message"></textarea>
6
7  <button type="submit">Send</button>
8</form>

Someone fills it in, and the submission arrives like this:

1{
2  "name": "John",
3  "email": "[email protected]",
4  "company": "Acme",
5  "message": "What does Pro include?"
6}

So this template:

1Hi {{name}},
2
3Thanks for contacting {{company}}.
4
5We received your message and will get back to you shortly.

arrives as this email:

1Hi John,
2
3Thanks for contacting Acme.
4
5We received your message and will get back to you shortly.

Variables work in the message only, not in the subject line.

Your dashboard lists your form's own fields under the template, taken from the submissions that form has already received. Click one to drop it in, so you do not have to remember how you spelled it.

When a field is missing

A variable with no matching field becomes empty text. Nothing is left behind. If a submission has no nickname field, then Hi {{nickname}}, arrives as Hi , and not as Hi {{nickname}},.

This is worth planning for. If a field is optional, write the sentence so it still reads well when that answer is blank.

What variables cannot reach

Variables only read the answers people typed into your form. They cannot reach:

• userId, formId, or any other internal ID
• submission details such as IP information
• login or billing information
• any Formboost system value

Fields that start with an underscore, like _email, _subject, _replyto and your honeypot field, are instructions rather than answers. They are not available as variables, the same way they never show up in your notification emails. You can still choose _email as the recipient field. You just cannot print it into the message.

Templates support simple {{fieldName}} placeholders and nothing more. There is no logic, no loops, and nothing inside a template ever runs as code. Anything your visitor typed is escaped before it goes into an HTML template, so nobody can inject their own code into the email your customer receives.

Auto Reply never affects your submission

Auto Reply runs in the background, after your submission is safely saved:

1Form submission → saved → auto reply queued → sent

Three things follow from that:

1. Your form stays fast. Nothing about sending an email happens while your visitor waits. Your endpoint answers before the reply is even queued.
2. A failed email never fails a submission. If the email cannot be delivered, your submission is still saved, still in your dashboard, and still sent to every destination you set up.
3. The reply arrives just after the submission, not during it.

Every attempt is recorded on its own, as sent, failed, or skipped with a reason. Your form's latest result is shown in the Auto Reply settings. Email addresses are stored hidden, like j•••@example.com, and the record never keeps a copy of the submission itself.

Spam submissions do not get a reply. Neither do submissions that arrive after you pass your monthly limit.

To protect delivery for everyone, there is a limit on how many replies one form can send in an hour, and the same address is not replied to twice within a few minutes. A reply stopped by either one is recorded as skipped.

If your plan changes

Moving from Pro down to Starter does not delete your template.

• Your HTML template stays saved, exactly as you wrote it.
• It stops being used. Starter sends your plain text message instead.
• Formboost branding comes back on the email.
• You can still edit your subject and your plain text message.
• Going back to Pro brings your template back, unchanged, and takes our branding off again.

Moving to Free turns Auto Reply off and stops replies going out. Your setup is kept.

Related

• Getting Started, to set up your first form
• API Reference & Configuration, for the submission endpoint, reserved fields and notification settings
• Integrations, to send submissions to Slack, Discord, Telegram, Google Sheets and more