by Cesare Rocchi

KIVS: Keep it Very Simple

by Cesare Rocchi

While I was building the landing page for Podrover I wanted a simple form to allow visitors to get in touch. I was already planning to host the page on Amazon S3, to keep the deployment as simple as possible. S3 is “just storage for files” and there’s no application server to execute php/ruby code.

I could have used the newly introduced Lambda but it didn’t fit my definition of simple. All I wanted was an html page that allowed visitors to get in touch via a form. I could have used a Google form but I had already styled the landing page and I am not a fan of iframes.

All I needed was something that would collect data from the form and forward it to my email. And I found it. Enter formspree. They provide a configurable endpoint, you POST data in JSON format and it gets forwarded to your email. That’s it. No login, no account, no nothing.

When possible keep it simple, keep it very simple. Let me know on twitter if you know an ever simpler solution. There’s no limit to simplification :)

UPDATE Sept 24th 2015: There’s also MailThis that seems interesting, although I didn’t try if the form is fully customizable.