Publish and share a form

A form only accepts submissions once it’s published. This page covers the checks a form must pass first, sharing the link, and what you can do with a form afterwards.

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Readiness checks

Brudcast checks a form before it can go live. You see the checks in Before you publish: beside the form while you create it, and on the Share tab afterwards. Each failing check has a button that takes you to the fix. Every check except Contact allowance blocks publishing. The Publish button stays unavailable until they pass; hover over it to see the first thing to fix.

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Publish

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Share the form

The Share tab has everything you need to send people to the form.

• Public link: the form’s address, in the form https://forms.brudcast.com/f/…. Select Copy. You can also copy it with Copy link at the top of a live form, or from the row menu on the Forms page.
• QR code: opens the same link. Select Download PNG for a print-ready image with the form’s name under the code, for a flyer, a slide or a poster.

The link stays the same when you pause and publish again, so you can print it safely.

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Pause a form

Select Unpublish at the top of a live form. The form changes to Paused and its link stops accepting submissions. Select Publish to reopen it at the same link. Brudcast also pauses forms for you. If your organization’s sending is restricted, for example during a sending review, every live form that adds to a list is paused, because the contacts it would add couldn’t be emailed. The forms are republished when sending is active again. A form you paused yourself during that time is republished too. Full page forms with no list aren’t paused: they send no email and add no one to a list.

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Duplicate a form

On the Forms page, open a form’s row menu and select Duplicate. You get a new draft named “name (copy)”, with the same questions, design, copy and settings, and a new link. Submissions and statistics stay with the original. A form’s kind is fixed once it’s published. To turn a signup form into a full page form, duplicate it and switch the type on the copy before you publish it.

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Delete a form

On the Forms page, open the row menu and select Delete. The form’s link stops working immediately. The signups it collected, and their consent records, are kept.

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Design and branding

Put your brand on the hosted page from the Design tab (the Design section while you’re still creating the form). Under Brand, select Cover image to add a wide image across the top of the page, and Logo to add one above the form title. Both come from your image library: JPEG, PNG, GIF or WEBP, up to 5 MB. Select Replace to change an image, or the bin icon to remove it, then Save design. Every hosted form uses the same accessible design, so it works on phones and screen readers without extra effort from you. The Copy tab holds every piece of text apart from the questions: the Subtitle, the Button label (Subscribe on a signup form, Submit on a full page form), the message shown after submitting when confirmation is on, the message shown after confirming, and the Confirmation email subject and Welcome email subject. Leave a box empty to use the default, and select Save copy when you’re done. Select Preview at the top of the form to see the page inside the dashboard, or Open in new tab. A preview link stops working after 15 minutes; open a new one from Preview.

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Submissions and spam protection

Every submission is recorded, including the ones the spam checks refused. Open a signup form’s Submissions tab, or a full page form’s Responses tab. A signup row shows the Email (partly hidden until you click it), Status, Bot check, Submitted and Confirmed times and the IP. A response row shows the first four answers; select View to read every answer and open uploaded files. Select Export page to download the responses on the current page as a CSV. Answers are stored encrypted, so they can be read but not searched. Filter by status instead. A row’s menu offers Resend confirmation for a submission Awaiting confirmation, and Delete, which removes the submission but leaves any contact it already created. Five checks guard every form: a hidden field that only bots fill in, a minimum time on the page, an hourly cap, a response cap, and a bot challenge most people never see. Forms that add to a list also check your suppression list and your contact limit. Tune them on the Settings tab, under Bot protection and After submitting. Most rejections look like a success to the visitor on purpose. Telling a bot which check caught it helps it get past, and telling a stranger that an address is already on your list gives away information about your contacts. You still see the reason under the status here. Raise Submissions allowed per hour before you share a form somewhere busy, such as a live event: real people who arrive over the cap see an error and have to try again later. Rejected submissions are kept for 7 days and expired ones for 90 days. Confirmed submissions and responses are kept until you delete them.

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Form statistics

The Forms page shows how your forms are doing over the last 30 days, and the figures change with the type filter. Across All forms you get Live forms, Signups (30d) and Responses (30d). Filtered to Signup form you get Live signup forms, Signups (30d) and Confirmation rate. Filtered to Full page form you get Live page forms, Responses (30d) and Added to a list (30d). Submissions include rejected ones, so a burst of bot traffic raises Signups (30d) and lowers Confirmation rate. The 30 days roll: each day the oldest drops out. A figure shows - while it’s loading or can’t be read. A low confirmation rate usually means one of two things. Lots of Rejected rows point at bots; lots of Awaiting confirmation and Expired rows point at confirmation emails not reaching inboxes.

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Troubleshooting

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