Email notifications keep you and your team informed the moment someone submits a form. Fillin Forge supports two types of notifications: admin alerts that go to you or your team, and auto-reply messages that go to the person who submitted the form. Setting up both types ensures no submission goes unnoticed and every submitter feels acknowledged.
Email is still a common way for teams to learn about new submissions. Even if you also use Slack or Discord notifications, email serves as a reliable fallback that works across all devices and does not require checking a specific app.
Admin Notification Setup
This sends an email to you (or your team) every time the form is submitted. It contains all the submitted field values so you can review the response without logging into WordPress.
- Open your form in the builder.
- Find the Email Notifications card in the builder.
- Toggle on Notify admin on submission.
- Enter the recipient email address in Notification email. To notify multiple people, separate addresses with commas (for example, “[email protected], [email protected]”).
- The subject line of the admin email is fixed and cannot be edited. It reads “[Site name] New submission: Form title (#id)”, and it takes no field values. The site name is the Email sender name from the Email Notifications card of Fillin Forge > Settings or, if that is empty, your site title.
- Save the form.
The notification email includes a formatted list of every submitted field, skips internal/system fields, and adds readable payment summary rows when a Stripe payment is present: Payment status, Payment amount, Payment date, and Payment ID (and, beside the status, a Payment note when the payment is not confirmed, not paid, or paid for another amount). It also includes a View submission button that opens the submissions list of that form in your WordPress dashboard.
Complex values are formatted for people before they reach email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, CSV, PDF, or the submission popup: checkboxes show readable choices or “Yes”, repeater rows are grouped by row, calendar/date values use your site date format, map coordinates are not duplicated as an address, password values are masked, and empty hidden fields are omitted.
Auto-Reply (Confirmation Email) Setup
This sends an automatic reply to the person who submitted the form, confirming their submission was received. It sets expectations and makes your business look professional.
- In the same Email Notifications card, find the auto-reply options.
- Toggle on Send auto-reply to submitter.
- Under Email field (for auto-reply address), select the field that contains the submitter’s email address (usually the “Email” field).
- Write a subject line (for example, “Thanks for contacting us!” or “Your reservation is confirmed”).
- Write the message in Message. Keep it friendly and informative. It is sent as you write it, so it takes no placeholders such as {name}. For example: “Hello, thank you for reaching out. We have received your message and will respond within one business day. If your matter is urgent, please call us at (555) 123-4567.”
- Save the form.
Notification Best Practices
| Best practice | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Always set up an admin notification | Ensures submissions do not go unnoticed |
| Use auto-reply to set expectations | “We will respond within 24 hours” builds trust |
| Send to a shared inbox, not a personal email | Prevents one person from being a bottleneck |
| Name the form clearly | The admin subject contains the form title, so a clear title makes emails easier to scan in your inbox |
| Test notifications after setup | Submit the form yourself to verify delivery |
> Tip: If notifications are not arriving, the problem is almost always your server’s email configuration, not Fillin Forge. Install WP Mail SMTP and configure it with a real email service.
> Good to know: Fillin Forge does not set a “From” address of its own, so the emails go out with the address that WordPress (or your SMTP plugin) uses. Make sure this is a real, professional address (like [email protected]) rather than the default WordPress address ([email protected]), which can look unprofessional and trigger spam filters.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Forgetting to set up notifications entirely. You build a beautiful form, embed it, and then wonder why you never hear from anyone — the submissions are saved in the dashboard, but no one checked.
- Sending auto-replies that do not set expectations. A bare “Thank you for your submission” is better than nothing, but “We will respond within 24 hours” is far more reassuring.
- Using a no-reply email address for the auto-reply. If a visitor replies to your confirmation email and it bounces, that is a terrible experience.
[Screenshot: The Email Notifications card of the form builder showing the notification email and the auto-reply options]
—