Integration
Netlify Forms notifies you when someone submits, but it has no built-in way to email the submitter back. The usual workarounds are a serverless function, a Zapier hop, or a third-party email API — code and glue for what should be one setting.
Request Router works with the notification email Netlify already sends. Add one recipient in your Netlify dashboard and every submitter gets an instant, on-brand reply that asks a real qualifying question — written by an AI trained on your business. Our own homepage demo runs on Netlify Forms; the reply you get there is this exact pipeline.
A real submission, as your form forwards it
Name: Tom R.
Email: tom.r@example.com
Message: Hi — we're a small brewery redoing our website and need a brand video for the launch, ideally shot before mid-October. Do you do that kind of project, and what's the ballpark?
What Request Router sends — in seconds
Hi Tom — a launch film for a brewery sounds right up our alley, and mid-October is workable if we lock dates soon.
Ballpark depends mostly on shoot days: a one-day shoot with a cut for web runs differently than a two-day with interviews. Are you picturing a single anthem piece, or a set of shorter cuts for social too?
What a generic auto-reply sends instead
By default, the submitter receives no email at all. Netlify's notifications go to your team, not to the person who filled out the form.
Netlify Forms is a capture product: it stores submissions and notifies your team by email, Slack, or webhook. Emailing the submitter would make Netlify an email sender on your behalf, so it simply doesn't offer it — their answer is “use a function.” That means provisioning an email service, writing and deploying the function, and maintaining templates for what is ultimately still a canned confirmation.
Forwarding the notification skips all of it. The notification already contains everything — name, email, message — and Request Router parses it, writes the reply, and sends it from your business in seconds.
In the Netlify dashboard: Project → Forms → Form notifications → Add notification → Email notification.
Set the notification's recipient to your agent's inbound lead address (copy it from your Request Router dashboard). Keep your own email as a second notification if you still want raw copies.
Fill it out like a customer with a personal email. The qualifying reply lands in that inbox within a minute — and your forward-to inbox gets the enriched summary when they answer.
The full walkthrough — with what to upload and how to test before paying — is in Connect your form & go live.
Do I need a serverless function or an email API key?
No. No function, no SendGrid/Resend key, no OpenAI key, no code. The integration is one email notification recipient in the Netlify dashboard.
Can Request Router parse Netlify's notification format?
Yes — it parses whatever the form sends, picks out the lead's name, email, and message, and replies to the lead's address, never to Netlify's mailer.
I have several Netlify forms. Do they all work?
Point each form’s notification at the same inbound address. They share the agent’s training and count toward the same $49/mo, 500-lead plan.
Does this work with Netlify’s honeypot and reCAPTCHA?
Yes. Anti-spam happens before the notification is sent, so the agent only ever sees submissions that passed your existing protections.
Try the live demo on our homepage — it runs on Netlify Forms and replies in seconds.
