Form submissions aren't arriving

Someone filled in your contact form and nothing arrived. Before assuming enquiries have been lost, check the submissions inbox. In most cases the data is there and only the email is missing.

The form isn't published

Like every other piece of content, a form has to be published before it works on the live site. An unpublished form, or one with unpublished changes, does not do what you expect for visitors.

This also catches people who edited a working form (adding a field, changing where notifications go) and did not publish afterwards. The old published version stays in effect until you do.

Fix: open the form and confirm it is published with no pending changes. Publish if not, then submit a test yourself.

Email notifications aren't set up

The second most common cause, and the one people find most surprising.

Submissions are always recorded in BrightSite. Emailing them to you is a separate thing you configure, in the form's Actions tab. If nobody set that up, the form works perfectly and quietly collects responses that nobody is told about.

Fix: open the form, go to Actions, and add an email notification with the address you want submissions sent to. Publish the form. Send a test submission and confirm the email arrives.

While you are there, check the address is right. A typo in a notification address sends every enquiry into nothing.

The notification is going to spam

Automated emails triggered by a website are a category spam filters watch closely. Yours may be arriving and being filed away.

Fix: check your spam or junk folder. Search your whole mailbox rather than browsing one folder, because some mail systems file automated mail into other folders too.

If you find them there, mark one as not spam and add the sender address to your contacts. That usually trains the filter.

If your form emails go to a shared inbox, check whether a rule or filter someone set up is moving or archiving them.

The submissions are there, you just weren't emailed

Worth stating plainly, because it changes how urgent this is: every submission is stored in BrightSite whether or not an email was sent.

Open your form's submissions and look. If the enquiries you thought were lost are all listed, nothing was lost. The notification was simply never configured, or is being filtered.

Fix: read through the submissions and follow up with anyone waiting on a reply. Then set up email notifications so it does not happen again.

Even with notifications working, check the inbox occasionally. It is the record of what was actually received.

A required field is blocking submission

If visitors report that the form will not send, a required field may be stopping them, such as one they cannot see, cannot understand, or cannot answer.

Common versions:

• A field marked required that the visitor has no way to fill in.
• A field expecting a particular format, rejecting valid input in another format.
• A required field far enough down the form that the error is off-screen when they press send.

Fix: fill in your own form on your phone, as a visitor would, and watch where it stops you. Then reduce the required fields to what you genuinely need. Every required field costs you some enquiries, so require a name and a way to reply, and make the rest optional.

Testing a form properly

1. Open the live page in a private window, not the editor preview.
2. Fill the form in as a visitor would, on a phone if you can.
3. Submit and note what you see afterwards.
4. Check the submission appears in the inbox.
5. Check the notification email arrives, including spam.

Do this after any change to the form, and once every few months regardless.