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Subscribe forms

A subscribe form is a public page where anyone can sign themselves up to one of your lists, plus a snippet you can paste into your own site to show the same form there. Under Forms you create and publish them. Under Consent wording you write the sentence people see above the subscribe button.

What a form is

The Forms card for Northwind Coffee: a published form, Website newsletter, with its Unpublish button, its public page address and a Paste this into your site box holding the snippet, and below it an unpublished form, Wholesale inquiries, marked Not public with Publish and Delete buttons
  1. The public page. Link to this address from anywhere.
  2. The snippet for your own site. It only appears once your account can send.
  3. Publish makes a draft form public.

Every form sends its signups to one list. Double opt-in is always on, and there is no setting to turn it off: when someone submits the form, Wakio emails them a confirmation link, and nobody joins your list until they click it.

Consent wording is the sentence shown above the subscribe button, and it is saved with every signup as evidence of what the person agreed to. Under Consent wording, Wakio prefills a suggested draft until your first version exists. After that the box starts with the wording now in force. Nothing is ever published for you: read it, change what you like, and choose Publish. The suggested draft promises "email from us", and the subscribe page does not print your account's name, so put your name in place of "us". It also says the unsubscribe link is in any message you send, which is true of campaigns and flows but not of the confirmation email or the email your app sends.

The Consent wording page for Northwind Coffee: a line reading Version 1 is in force, above a Wording box holding the current sentence and a Publish button
  1. The wording. Publishing it creates a new version.

You need published wording before a form can go public. Until you have it, Forms shows a prompt to write it, and Publish refuses with a note saying so.

Publishing again never changes the old wording. It adds a new version and keeps every earlier one. The public page always shows the newest version, and each signup records the version that person was shown, so an old record still reads exactly as it did when it was made.

Create a form

An owner or admin fills in the New form card. It only appears once the account has a list to send signups to.

The New form card: fields for Name, Address and List on the first row, then Headline, Intro and a Create form button
  1. The address, which becomes the last part of the public page's URL.
  2. The list that signups join once they confirm.
  • Name is for your own list of forms.
  • Address uses lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, and must start and end with a letter or number. Capitals you type are lowercased for you. Each address can be used once per account.
  • List is where confirmed signups are added.
  • Headline and Intro are optional. The headline is the title of the public page, and the intro is a line under it. A headline is cut at 120 characters and an intro at 300, without a warning. With no headline, the page is simply titled "Subscribe".

A form cannot be edited after you create it. To change its name, headline, intro or list, unpublish it, delete it, and create it again. The address is free to use again once the old form is gone. A published form must be unpublished before it can be deleted, so Delete only appears on drafts.

Publish and share

A new form starts as a draft marked Not public. Choose Publish and its page goes live at the address shown under Public page. Choose Unpublish to take it down again.

Next to the public page, a published form shows a snippet under Paste this into your site. Paste it where the form should appear and it shows the same form in place. The embedded form does not rely on cookies. The snippet only appears when your account can send: it is not suspended, its plan includes sending, and it has a verified sending domain. A brand-new account sees the public page address but no snippet.

If your site sets a Content-Security-Policy, which is a rule that limits where a page may load scripts and frames from, it has to allow the Wakio address the snippet shows, both for scripts and for frames. The note under the snippet spells out the two entries.

The public page says This page is not available in every one of these cases, and does not say which:

  • The address does not match an account or a form.
  • The form is unpublished.
  • The account has no published consent wording.
  • The account is suspended.
  • The account's plan does not include sending.
  • The account has no verified sending domain.

The page also needs JavaScript, which it uses to check that the visitor is a person. Without it, the visitor is asked to reply to one of your emails so you can add them by hand. The dashboard has no button for that: add them in a one-row import, or have your developer add them through the API, saying they agreed. Either way they skip the confirmation email, and their consent record shows your word rather than their click.

What happens after someone signs up

  1. The visitor submits the form and sees Check your email.
  2. Wakio sends a confirmation email. It is the same for every account, and you cannot edit it. It asks them to confirm their subscription and holds one link. Because it is a one-off confirmation rather than marketing, it has no unsubscribe link.
  3. They click the link, within 30 days. After that the link stops working and they have to sign up again.
  4. They join the form's list. Wakio marks them active, adds them to that list, and enrolls them in any active flow that starts when someone joins it.

Someone who earlier unsubscribed can sign up again. When they confirm, their unsubscribe is cleared, and they are taken off every other list, so they rejoin only the list this form feeds. An address that hard bounced or reported a message as spam is different. Their click is recorded, but they stay suppressed and are not made active. See Suppressed under Deliveries and suppressions.

The same address submitting the same form again within the hour gets no second confirmation email.

The sign-up limit

The Signups in the last 24 hours card: a large figure for the signups so far, above the words of 5,000 allowed, a bar showing how full the limit is, and a note that anyone signing up after the limit is turned away without a confirmation email
  1. Signups so far in the last 24 hours, against the limit.

Each account can take 5,000 form signups in any rolling 24 hours, counted across all of its forms together. It is a rolling window rather than a calendar day, so the count falls as older requests age out.

The figure counts confirmation requests, not confirmed subscribers. Someone who submits the form and never clicks still uses one.

Past the limit, anyone who signs up gets no confirmation email until the window clears. Get in touch if you need the limit raised. The visitor is not told: they still see Check your email. They see the same page when the form quietly turns away a bot, an address that is suppressed because it hard bounced, reported spam or is invalid, or an address Wakio's checks find undeliverable.

A visitor is told about these problems, because each is one they can act on:

  • That does not look like an email address. The address they typed is not valid.
  • We could not check that you are a person. The bot check failed, and they can try again.
  • Too many attempts. They submitted too often and are asked to wait a few minutes.
  • We could not sign you up. Their browser did not send back the cookie the page set, so they are asked to open the page again in a browser that accepts cookies.
  • This form needs JavaScript. Shown when JavaScript is off, with a request to reply to one of your emails so you can add them by hand, as described above.

Who can do what

Every role can open Forms and Consent wording and read them. Creating, publishing, unpublishing and deleting a form, and publishing consent wording, are for owners and admins. A member sees both pages with no buttons to change anything.

Good to know

  • A list with a form pointing at it cannot be deleted. Delete the form first.