Formgrid
API, Open Source, Form API, Form Submission API
About 8 months ago, I started building Formgrid alongside my full-time job as a frontend engineer at a German company.
I launched it 5 months ago.
Formgrid is an open-source form backend and no-code form builder. Developers can point any HTML form at a Formgrid endpoint and start receiving submissions instantly. Non-technical users can build a form with drag and drop and share it via WhatsApp or email without touching any code.
The honest numbers:
185 signups, 4 paying customers, $53 MRR, Customers in the USA, Japan, and India. Zero paid advertising for 5 months since launch
What actually worked:
Writing blog posts targeting competitor alternative searches. My first paying customer came from India. I never wrote a single piece of content targeting India. He just found Formgrid through a search.
My third paying customer, Annie, an event manager in San Diego, found Formgrid through a post I wrote about Formspree alternatives in the evening after work. But her story is the one that changed how I think about who Formgrid is really for.
Her event manager was receiving registration emails with all the data dumped in one long unformatted block. No labels. No sections. Just raw field names. For a 200-person endurance riding event, that was hours of unnecessary work every time.
I built her a custom email template that organized every registration into clean sections. She upgraded to the Business plan at $29/month the same week.
That one customer taught me more about who Formgrid is really for than the entire time I spent building it.
What is working right now:
Blog posts are bringing organic signups from countries I never targeted. Paying customers found me from the USA, Japan, and India without a single dollar spent on advertising.
185 signups in 5 months with zero paid advertising. Every single one came through organic search or content.
Google Sheets' native integration launched recently. No Zapier. No API setup. Just share a sheet with one email address, paste the URL, and every submission appears as a new row automatically.
What I am building next:
Notion integration, Product Hunt launch, and more non-technical user-focused content
The honest reflection:
5 months after launch, $53 MRR is not life-changing. But paying customers across three continents from purely organic content built during evenings and weekends from Ghana tells me the foundation is real.
Happy to answer any questions about the technical decisions, the content strategy, or what it is like building a SaaS from Ghana while working full time.
Hi Indie Hackers!
I’m thrilled to announce the launch of formgride.dev, an open-source, privacy-friendly alternative to Formspree.
As a developer, I’ve faced the repetitive task of building backend endpoints for forms — contact forms, feedback forms, surveys, or anything else. Validation, spam protection, email notifications, and CAPTCHA setup can take hours, and most existing solutions either lock you in or compromise user privacy. Formgrid solves that problem.
It’s designed for developers and businesses who want to handle website forms without writing a backend, while keeping data private and giving full control over infrastructure.
Key Features:
Email notifications for every submission
Built-in spam protection (honeypot + rate limiting)
Optional Proof-of-Work CAPTCHA protects users without harvesting data
Self-hostable with Docker for full control
Hosted version available for plug-and-play setup
Open-source under MIT License, no vendor lock-in
Getting started is simple: create a form, copy your unique endpoint, and connect it to your HTML form. Submissions appear instantly in your dashboard or can be forwarded to email, Slack, or Google Sheets.
Formgrid exists to make form handling simple, secure, and transparent. Whether you’re a solo developer, startup, or business, it’s ready to power your forms in seconds.
I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas, or suggestions as you try it out!
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