If one email per form submission is too many, switch that inbox to a digest: an hourly or daily email that lists every submission since the last one. Add quiet hours if notifications should never arrive at night; anything sent during them comes as one email when they end. Keep instant delivery for whoever answers leads, and set the schedule per recipient rather than per form.
Who actually needs every submission instantly?
Fewer people than get them. A salesperson answering demo requests does, because the first reply wins. A support lead does during working hours. A founder who wants to know the form is alive, a manager reviewing weekly volume, and an agency copied on a client's form do not. For them, twenty separate emails a day become a filter rule, and a filter rule becomes a folder nobody opens.
Instant, hourly or daily: how do you choose?
- Instant: whoever replies to submissions, and anything time-sensitive (bookings, urgent support).
- Hourly: busy forms read by someone who checks in during the day but does not need each one the second it arrives.
- Daily: oversight. Managers, clients, an archive inbox. Pick the hour they start work.
- Quiet hours: anyone whose phone shows email, on any schedule.
What should a good digest contain?
Enough to triage without clicking: which form, when, and the first few fields of each submission, such as name, email and the start of the message. Then a link to the full entry. A digest that only says "you have 12 new submissions" forces a login for every one and is worse than no digest. And when only one submission is waiting, send it as a normal notification; a digest of one is just a worse email.
What to watch out for
- Timezones: "9am" has to mean the recipient's 9am, including across daylight saving changes and half-hour offsets such as India's.
- Testing: a test submission should still arrive instantly, or every form change becomes a wait until tomorrow.
- Other channels: batching email should not batch Slack or your CRM. Those need the submission now.
- Missing things: the digest is a view. Submissions should be stored the moment they arrive, so nothing depends on the email.
Setting it up in WebForms
Open a form's Destinations tab and edit an email destination. Under Send, choose each submission instantly, an hourly digest or a daily digest at the hour you pick, and tick Quiet hours to choose a window. Times use your browser's timezone automatically. Several waiting submissions arrive as one email listing each with its first fields and a link (up to 50, with a count of the rest); a single one arrives as a normal notification. Test submissions always send instantly, other destinations are unaffected, and waiting notifications show as held on the Deliveries tab with the time they will go out. It is available on every plan, and the same settings are fields on the email destination in the API.