Create a Hosted Signup Form

Every Mailchimp audience comes with a flexible, customizable signup form that will help you grow your subscriber base. We call it our hosted signup form, because we publish it on our servers.

Decide what information you want to capture from your audience, customize the look of your form, share the URL across your online channels, and we'll handle the rest.

In this article, you'll learn how to create a hosted signup form.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• Before you can send marketing text messages, you need to obtain SMS marketing consent from your contacts. This is different from email marketing consent.
• SMS Marketing is available as an add-on feature for customers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia with the Essentials plan or higher.
• At this time, you can only send text messages to subscribed contacts based in the same country as your business. For example, if your business is in the UK, you can send text messages to subscribed SMS contacts in the UK.

About the hosted form

We automatically generate a signup form for your Mailchimp audience. This form isn't visible to others until you share it. You can collect email and subscribed SMS contacts on your hosted form.

Your default signup form has a simple gray and white design, and you can use it right away. If you want to customize your form to fit your style and brand, use the form builder.

Here's an example of a default signup form, before and after it's customized in the form builder.

Default form	Customized form

To help protect your audience from scammers and spambots, all hosted signup forms require subscribers to check a Google reCAPTCHA box.

Access the form builder

To access the form builder, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then choose Signup forms.
   
2. Scroll to the Form builder tile, then click Manage forms.
   
3. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.

Now that you're in the form builder, you're ready to build, design, and translate your hosted signup form.

Create your form

The form builder features 3 navigation tabs to help you find your way around and accomplish certain tasks: Build it, Design it, and Translate it.

In the following sections, we'll show you how to use the tabs to edit your form, emails, and pages.

Build it

On the Build it tab of the form builder, you can add or remove form fields, customize text, and add a message to the top of your form.

In this example, you'll learn how to customize your greeting message, and add a new text field to your signup form to collect extra information from subscribers.

1. In the form builder, click the Build it tab.
   

2. Click the click to add a message field, and type your greeting message.
   

3. When you're done, click Save & Close.

4. To add a new field, choose a field type from the Add a field menu.
   

5. Click Field settings to edit the Field label, Field tag, Field visibility, Help text, and Default merge tag value. You can also make the field required or optional with the Required field checkbox. Either an Email Address or SMS Phone Number input field is required.
   
   Other field settings are available to edit depending on the field type you choose.

6. When you're done, click Save Field.

Well done! Now you're ready to put your own spin on the form design.

Design it

On the Design it tab of the form builder, you can make your design more exciting with custom colors, fonts, or images.

In this example, you'll learn how to change the form's color scheme, and replace the header text with an image.

1. In the form builder, click the Design it tab.
   

2. Click Background.
   

3. Click the field to open the color picker, then select the hue and saturation you want for your form’s background. Your changes save automatically.
   

4. To add a band of contrasting color to your form, click Outer wrapper.

5. Click the field to open the color picker, then select the hue and saturation you want for your form’s outer wrapper.
   

6. To insert a header image, hover over the header of your form, then click Use image.
   

7. Upload an image from the content studio, then click Insert.

8. Set image proportions, then click Save & Insert Image.
   

All set! You’ve designed your signup form. If you need to translate your form, move on to the Translate it tab.

Translate it

On the Translate it tab of the form builder, you can set your default language, turn on auto-translate, customize default form text, or change text direction.

In this example, we'll show you how to change the default text of the Subscribe button on your signup form.

1. In the form builder, click he Translate it tab.
   

2. Click the Subscribe field, then type your custom or translated text.

3. Click Save Translation Settings.

Nice! Your signup form is customized. You’re ready to share your signup form and grow your audience.

Next steps

Your signup form is built, designed, and translated. Now what? Here are some ways to enhance your signup experience.

• Share your signup form across all your online channels.

• Monitor form success with subscribe notifications or audience statistics.

• Use merge tags in your signup response emails to greet your new subscribers by name.

• Try different types of signup forms.

• Advanced developers can use our powerful Mailchimp Developer API to build a signup form from scratch.