Forms and surveys decision
Web3Forms
A competent developer can build and run a dependable, single-tenant replacement in about a week; Web3Forms' main value is convenience and integrations rather than proprietary moat, so self-hosting is realistic for technical users.
Visit website↗Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off32 h to build
$30/mo3 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Web3Forms alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Receive HTML form POSTs, validate/spam-check, send submission to an email recipient, and store recent submissions for export.
What it still won’t have
- Hosted, managed infrastructure with SLA and uptime guarantees
- Built-in account/access_key management, signup and email verification flows
- Out-of-the-box spam protections (reCaptcha, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile) and honeypot conveniences
- Third-party one-click integrations (Google Sheets, Notion, Slack, etc.)
- File upload handling and hosted file storage add-ons (paid tiers)
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
No published price
Web3Forms does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal hosted form-backend using Node.js (Express) + PostgreSQL, deployed to AWS Fargate. Scope: a POST /submit endpoint that accepts standard form fields and an access_key, validates required fields and a honeypot, enforces per-access_key monthly submission quotas, looks up recipient email by access_key, forwards submissions via Amazon SES (or SMTP fallback), stores submissions in Postgres, implements a scheduled job to delete records older than the configured retention (30 days default), and provides a protected admin UI to list recent submissions and export CSV. Out of scope: file upload storage, multi-tenant billing, advanced integrations (Notion/Sheets), and built-in CAPTCHA provider keys. Include error handling, input validation, unit tests for the API handlers, basic integration tests for delivery, and a Dockerfile + Terraform (or CloudFormation) to provision RDS, ECS/Fargate service, and SES access; add runtime logging and health check endpoints.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Build verdict base78
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score90
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productWeb3Forms - Free Contact Form to Email Service API
- official docsWeb3Forms Features
- official pricingWeb3Forms Pricing
- open sourceLimeSurvey/LimeSurvey
- open sourceTDuckCloud/tduck-survey-form
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
