---
title: "Email notifications"
description: "Configure and customize email notifications for your Forminit forms. Set recipients, edit templates, and choose from three editor modes."
url: https://forminit.com/docs/email-notifications/
---

# Email notifications

Email notifications let you (and your team) receive a fully customizable email every time a form receives a new submission.

![Email notifications](https://forminit.com/docs/email-notification-ss.png) 

## How email notifications work

- Email notifications are a step in your form's [Workflow](https://forminit.com/docs/workflow/). When a new submission is received and passes validation, every **Send email notification** step in the published workflow runs.
- The default email body is built from your **visible form blocks** in order. You can edit block labels, order, and visibility from **Settings → Blocks**.
- You can customize the sender, recipients, subject, and email content, and you can use form block variables within the email body, subject, and email fields.

## Configuring an email notification

1. Open the form in your Forminit dashboard.
2. Select **Workflow** in the form header.
3. Select **+** where the step should run (beneath **Submission received**, or on an **If / else** branch to run it only for matching submissions), then choose **Send email notification**.
4. Select the step to open its settings.
5. Configure the fields below, then select **Publish** to make your changes live.

### From

> Sender email address of email notifications

- By default, all notifications are sent from `notifications@forminit.com`.

- To send from your own domain (e.g. `forms@yourdomain.com`), connect your SMTP by adding configs under **Account → SMTP**. After adding SMTP configs, you can select your custom email address from the **From** field in the **Send email notification** step.

> **Note:** SMTP is available on the **Business** plan.

### To

> Recipients separated by commas.

- Primary recipients for the notification.
- Example: `support@acme.com, team@acme.com`

### Cc / Bcc

> Add carbon copy or blind carbon copy recipients. Recipients separated by commas.

- **Cc:** Recipients who should see the email but aren't the primary owner (e.g. a manager or shared alias).
- **Bcc:** Internal recipients you don't want visible to others on the thread.

Example:

- **To:** `support@acme.com, me@acme.com`
- **Cc:** `teamlead@acme.com`
- **Bcc:** `archive@acme.com`

### Reply-to

> Set reply address. Supports form variables.

- Controls where **replies** to the notification email are sent.
- Common patterns:
  - A shared inbox: `Reply-to = support@acme.com`
  - The actual submitter: `Reply-to = {{sender.email}}` (insert via the form variable picker in the UI)

Using the submitter's email as Reply-to lets your team simply hit **Reply** in their email client to respond directly.

### Subject

> Email subject line. Supports form variables.

- The subject line of the notification email.
- You can mix static text with form variables to make subjects more meaningful and easier to scan in your inbox.

Examples:

- `New submission for {{@form_name}} {{@submission_id}}`
- `New message from {{sender.fullName}}`
- `New booking for {{@form_name}}`

> **Tip**
>
> Include the `{{@submission_id}}` variable in the subject to avoid all emails being grouped into a single thread.

## Email body

### Template

> Default body using your visible form blocks in order.

- To change visibility, order, and label names of form blocks, go to **Settings → Blocks**.
- Use this mode if you want a clean, auto-maintained notification that stays in sync with your form schema.

### Editor

> WYSIWYG editor for custom email content.

- The **Editor** lets you design a custom email layout with rich text:
  - Headings, text formatting, lists
  - Inline insertion of form variables

## Form constants (built-in variables)

Besides form block variables, your form exposes a set of built-in **Form constants** (prefixed with `@`) that help when building the subject and email body.

Form constants list:

- `{{@form_name}}` Form name
- `{{@date}}` Submission date
- `{{@submission_id}}` Submission unique ID
- `{{@referer}}` Referrer URL the form was submitted from
- `{{@location}}` Location of the sender as `City / Country` (e.g. `London / United Kingdom`)

## Best practices

- **Use a unique subject per submission.** Include a variable (date, ID, or sender email) to avoid long threaded conversations.
- **Set Reply-to to the submitter.** If you'd like to reply directly from your inbox, set `Reply-to = {{sender.email}}`.