Building forms

Capture leads with hosted forms that create contacts automatically.

Forms turn website visitors into contacts you can text. Every submission creates (or updates) a contact, can add them to a list, and can even land in your inbox as a message, so a “free trial” form submission starts a conversation, not a spreadsheet row.

Forms live on the Pages page, next to your landing pages. Click Create a page and choose Form to build one.

The form builder

The form detail page keeps everything in one place:

• Performance: unique visitors, submissions, conversion rate, sources, and individual responses.
• Build: questions, contact fields, steps, and content blocks.
• Design: color mode, brand color, imagery, and type. The Build canvas always renders your design, so Build and Design show the same live form.
• Share: hosted link, website embed, popup and takeover delivery, and link preview.

A new form walks the same path as numbered steps: 1 Build, 2 Design, 3 Share.

Build the form

Open Build to work on the form. Drag a field from the left panel onto the form, or click a field type to add it. Select anything on the canvas to edit its settings in the right panel. Drag a question to reorder it, or use the up and down controls in its toolbar.

The first time you build a form, a short welcome tour points out the canvas, the field palette, content blocks, and the steps to launch. Until it has questions, a new form also suggests a few common ones; tap a suggestion to add it with the label already filled in.

The dropdown at the top of the left panel, How visitors answer your questions, picks how questions appear. New forms start on One at a time: visitors answer one question per screen with a progress bar, and the canvas numbers each question with the screen it lands on. Prefer a single page of questions? Switch to All together. You can change this at any time.

On a smaller screen the builder gives the form itself the full width: use Add field on the canvas to add questions, and settings slide in from the right when you select something.

Select the header to set the title, subtitle, optional logo, and alignment. You can also click the title in the builder header at the top of the page to rename the form in place. If you save without a title, Helios names the form from the first heading, or Contact form when the form collects name or email. The subtitle is rich text: add line breaks, bold, italics, and links, and they render exactly as written on the live form. Mobile phone number is always included because Helios uses it to create or match the contact. Select a built-in contact field to turn name or email collection on or off.

Consent checkboxes

Every form ends with a text-message consent checkbox next to the submit button, and forms that collect email add an email consent checkbox below it. The text checkbox always starts unchecked, because US texting rules require visitors to opt in themselves. The email checkbox starts checked (US email rules allow it) and visitors can untick it. Both answers are saved with the submission, and the fine print under the button explains each program and links your legal pages.

Custom fields

Each visible field has a Label, optional Placeholder, and Required control. Depending on the field type, you can also reorder options, add validation, prefill from a URL parameter, or add conditional logic.

For Dropdown, Radio group, and Multi-select, turn on Include Other option to add a free-text choice. When a visitor picks it, a short write-in opens so they can type an answer that is not on the list. The typed answer is what gets saved on the contact.

Answers are saved onto the contact as properties. The field’s saved name stays stable even when you improve the label later, so existing segments and personalization continue to work.

Conditional logic

Open Logic in a field’s settings to show or hide that field based on earlier answers. Add one or more conditions, then choose whether all or any of them must match.

Multi-step forms

On the All together flow, click Add step below the canvas to split a longer form into smaller pages. The new step becomes active immediately. Drag questions onto the step where they belong, click a step to rename it, and use the step tabs to move through the form. The bar always ends with a Confirmation tab showing what visitors see after they submit. The One at a time flow paces the form automatically, so steps do not apply there.

Content around the form

The Content group under the field palette adds headings, text, and photos around your questions, turning the form into a landing page. Drag a block onto the canvas above or below the form, or click a block type to add it. Blocks use your form design, so they match the form in light and dark mode without extra setup.

Select a block to edit its content in the settings panel on the right, the same way the form header works. Text blocks support bold, italics, links, and lists.

The canvas keeps two clearly labeled regions with the form between them, and the labels follow your question flow. On All together, content sits above and below the form card. On One at a time, the regions move inside the form and are labeled Intro screen and Confirmation screen, because that is what the content becomes: blocks above the questions open the form as a welcome screen with a Continue button, and blocks below join the confirmation screen. Drag blocks to reorder them within a region or move them between regions, or use Placement in a block’s settings.

The Confirmation screen region also shows the screen’s title and confirmation message, exactly as visitors see them. Click them to edit the title and copy, or switch to a redirect, in the settings panel.

Content renders everywhere the form appears: the hosted link, website embeds, popups, and takeovers.

After submission

The confirmation screen is editable right on the canvas: on One at a time, click it in the Confirmation screen region below the questions; on All together, open the Confirmation tab next to the step tabs at the bottom of the canvas. Both open the same settings, where you can change the title (it defaults to “Thank you”), edit the message, or redirect the visitor to another page instead, such as your booking page.

Open the More menu (the ⋯ button) in the builder header and click Settings to configure everything else that happens after submission:

• Add to list(s): add every submitter to one or more static lists. Pair this with an Added to list flow trigger for immediate follow-up.
• Create an inbox message: put the submitted answers in the contact’s conversation so your team can see and reply to them.
• Spam protection: silently discard bot submissions caught by the form’s honeypot field.
• Legal links: optional privacy policy and terms URLs, linked from the consent fine print under the form.

Design the form

Switch to Design to style the form. The live preview shows the same canvas you built, questions and content blocks included, so you are styling exactly what visitors will see. Pick a brand color and Helios builds matching light and dark palettes with readable contrast, so one choice looks right everywhere. If the inbox has a ready Brand kit, a new form opens with Match visitor color mode (unless the kit is locked to dark), plus the kit’s brand color, font, and corner radius already filled in.

• Color mode: Match visitor follows each visitor’s light or dark setting, or lock the form to Light or Dark.
• Brand color: buttons and accents in both palettes come from this color. Body text stays neutral. The form’s background stays white in light mode and near-black in dark mode unless you override it below.
• Fine-tune colors: override the background, text, or button colors. Each swatch shows the color the palette already produces, so you can see what you are changing before you change it. On Match visitor, tabs switch between the light and dark palettes; on a locked mode you fine-tune just that palette. Helios nudges overrides that would make text unreadable and marks them as adjusted.
• Frame: Card shows the form on a bordered card, the default. No border drops the card so the questions sit directly on the page; your background color then fills the page behind the form instead of the card. Both work with either question flow.
• Image: show a photo above the questions or beside them. Choose Top of the form, Left of the questions, or Right of the questions; side images move above the questions on phones.
• Typography & shape: font family and corner radius.

The preview updates in place as you make changes. Use the toolbar above it to check the form on phone and desktop widths, and, when the color mode is Match visitor, in both light and dark mode. With No border selected, the preview area fills with your background color so you see the page visitors get.

Forms with more than one screen (one question at a time, or several steps) add a screen stepper to that toolbar. Use its arrows to page through every screen, including the confirmation screen, without filling in required answers.

For a closer look, click Preview in the header. It opens the form full screen at the width visitors actually get, with the same phone, desktop, color mode, and screen stepper controls.

Share and measure

Open Share to copy the hosted link, customize how it previews in texts and social posts, embed the form on a website, or open it over your site as a popup or full-page takeover. See Sharing and embedding forms for the installation steps.

After the form is live, Performance shows unique visitors, submissions, conversion rate, traffic sources, and the response table. Views count each visitor once, so refreshes and repeat visits do not inflate the number. See Submissions for details.

Click Save after making changes. The hosted link updates immediately.