compare
Let's lead with the part most comparison pages get wrong: on Netlify's current credit-based plans, Forms are free and unlimited. The widely repeated "100 submissions a month" figure is a legacy limit that only applies to accounts created before 4 September 2025. If you are on Netlify, staying on Netlify, and you just want a contact form, the honest advice is to use Netlify Forms. It costs nothing and it is already there.
The reason to look elsewhere is not the quota. It is that Netlify Forms only exist while your site lives on Netlify, and that they handle forms and nothing else. mailcontact gives each project one inbox that takes both form submissions and its own real email address, and it does not care who serves your HTML.
what is netlify forms
Netlify Forms works by parsing your HTML at deploy time: add a netlify attribute to a form and Netlify wires up the endpoint, stores submissions, and shows them in your site dashboard. There is no client code and no service to configure, which is genuinely the smoothest setup in this category. Submissions are filtered with Akismet, and file uploads are supported at one file per field, within an 8MB request limit.
Two things define its shape. It is deeply tied to the platform: a Netlify staff member confirmed on their own forum that you cannot use Netlify Forms without a Netlify site in the equation. And it is forms-only, so a public contact address is a separate problem you solve somewhere else.
side by side
Every Netlify Forms figure below was checked against their own pricing page on . Found something out of date? Tell us and we'll fix it.
| mailcontact | Netlify Forms | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of the form itself | Free tier for a form, an address and up to 2 projects; Pro at launch | Free and unlimited on current credit-based plans. Hard to beat |
| Works off Netlify | Any host, any origin. Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages, a VPS | No. Netlify staff confirm a Netlify site is required |
| Inbound email address | Included: yourproject@mailcontact.app, live immediately | Not offered; forms only |
| If you migrate hosts | Nothing changes. The endpoint and the archive are not tied to a host | The form stops working and the submission history stays behind |
| Setup | Paste a form with an action. Same markup on every host | Add a netlify attribute. Genuinely zero config, on Netlify |
| Spam filtering | Honeypot field, dropped silently server-side | Akismet, plus optional honeypot and reCAPTCHA |
| Maturity | New: currently in beta, launching soon | Long-established and running at very large scale |
the honest take
faq
On current plans it is free and unlimited: Netlify's own docs state that for credit-based plans, Forms are free and unlimited with no submission limits or tier levels. The 100-per-site-per-month cap is a legacy limit that still applies to accounts created before 4 September 2025. If you signed up recently, that number does not apply to you, whatever the comparison pages say. Checked on 17 July 2026.
No. A Netlify engineer answered this directly on the Netlify forum: you can POST to a Netlify site that has the same form, but eliminating the Netlify site from the equation is not possible. In practice that means Netlify Forms is a reason to stay on Netlify, which is fine if you were staying anyway.
For most single-site Netlify users, you should not. The cases where it does not fit are structural rather than about price: projects spread across hosts, wanting a real inbound email address alongside the form, or wanting the archive to be portable. If none of those describe you, keep the free thing.
Netlify does not publish a retention window for form submissions, so the honest answer is that they persist until you delete them, and you manage any personal data in there yourself. One documented detail worth knowing: after you delete a form, its uploaded files stay reachable by direct URL for 24 hours.
more comparisons
Forms and a real email address, together, with notifications where you live. Launching soon. Be the first to know.