A contact form that sends every submission to your shared inbox
A web form in Sektra is a hosted contact form tied to one email inbox. Each submission opens a conversation in that inbox with the person who filled it in as the sender, so it is scored, tagged, assigned and answered by email like any other mail. The form is embedded on your site with a short snippet or shared as a link, and it carries its own fields, subject line, success message, color and spam protection.
A contact form to shared inbox setup replaces the forwarding step that most website forms rely on. A typical form emails its contents to one address, from a sending address that belongs to the website, and the team then forwards, replies and tracks the request by hand. The person who asked becomes a line of text inside the message rather than the sender the reply goes to.
Sektra writes the submission straight into the inbox as a conversation from the submitter's own address. The first reply goes out from the inbox's mailbox as a fresh email to that person, and their answer threads under it, so from then on the conversation looks and behaves like any email thread. The same owners, notes, tags, rules and service level targets apply, and the record of the person builds from the form as it would from an email.
A hosted contact form for each inbox
A form belongs to one Gmail, Outlook or IMAP inbox and holds up to twenty fields of five kinds: text, email, phone, long text and a select list, each marked required or optional. Exactly one email field is always present and required, because it becomes the sender of the conversation. The subject template can include any field, so a submission can arrive as Quote request from Acme, and the page shows a success message or redirects to an address of yours. A brand color and the form's name finish the page, and an account can run up to fifty forms.
Spam protection on the hosted form
Three checks run on every submission before anything is written. A hidden field that only automated senders fill in discards the submission while reporting success, and a per-address limit stops bursts. Daily caps of one hundred submissions per form and address, and ten per form and sender, keep a single source from flooding the inbox. An optional check that tells people from automated scripts can be turned on for the hosted page as well. Required fields and the email address are checked before any of this, and the page names the field that needs attention.
What your team gets
The submitter is the sender
A submission arrives as mail from the person who wrote it, so the reply goes to them without copying an address.
Handled like any email
Scoring, intent tags, round robin, notes, rules and service levels apply from the first second.
Fields you choose
Text, email, phone, long text and select fields, with a subject template built from any of them.
Embed or link
A snippet for your own page, or a hosted link for a signature or a profile, with a switch to pause the form.
Web forms setup in four steps
The steps follow the order a new workspace takes them in, and they use the names of the screens as they appear in the app.
- 1
Create the form
Under Settings, open Forms, choose New form, name it and pick the inbox it writes into.
- 2
Add the fields and the subject
Add fields and mark the required ones, then write the subject template and the success message or redirect address.
- 3
Place it on your site
Copy the embed snippet into your page, or share the form link, and send a test submission.
- 4
Answer from the inbox
Open the conversation in the inbox, reply as you would to an email, and the submitter's answer threads under it.
Common questions
These are the questions teams ask before they set this up. If yours is not covered here, send it to us.
Can a website contact form send to a shared inbox?
Yes. A Sektra web form belongs to one shared inbox, and every submission opens a conversation there from the person who filled it in. The conversation is assigned, tagged and answered by email like any other, and nothing needs to be forwarded.
Where does the reply to a form submission go?
The reply goes to the email address the person entered in the form, from the mailbox behind the inbox. It leaves as a fresh email with the conversation's subject, and the person's answer threads under it in the same conversation.
Does a form submission count as an email on my plan?
A submission is one inbound message in the inbox it belongs to, and it is analyzed like an inbound email. It uses no assistant credits on arrival. The form itself does not count as an inbox, and an account can run up to fifty forms.
How does the form stop spam?
A hidden field catches automated senders, a per-address limit stops bursts, and daily caps per form, address and sender hold the volume down. An optional check that tells people from scripts can be added to the hosted page. A submission that fails a required field is shown the field to fix rather than being discarded.
Other parts of the same inbox
Sektra compared with the tool you use now
Each page states what the other tool is built for, what it costs and what changes when a team moves to Sektra.
Articles on this subject
What is a shared inbox? How it works, who uses one and how to set one up
A shared inbox is an email address several people work from, with an owner and a status on each thread. This guide covers how it works, how it differs from a shared mailbox, team inbox and help desk, and how to set one up.
Read the articlePlaybooksInbox management for teams that answer hundreds of emails a day
Personal inbox advice assumes one reader. A team mailbox needs five jobs done each day, seven rules that keep them done as volume rises, and three numbers that show whether the system works, whether the team is in Gmail, Outlook or a shared inbox tool.
Read the articlePlaybooks12 shared inbox best practices for managing a team mailbox
Twelve rules for managing a shared inbox or shared mailbox, from one owner per thread to a weekly review of the oldest open item. Each rule names the failure it prevents and the setting in Gmail, Outlook or a shared inbox tool that enforces it.
Read the articleTry it on your own inbox
Connect a Gmail, Outlook or IMAP mailbox and the trial runs on your own mail, with nothing to migrate and no card required.