3 Months, 96 Signups, and 2 Paying Customers: What I Learned Building Formgrid in Public
Source: Dev.to
Three months after launching Formgrid, I got my first paying customer.
That sentence looks simple. It wasn’t.
Formgrid is an open‑source form backend and form builder in one place.
If you’re a developer building a static site, portfolio, or landing page, you already know the pain: your HTML form looks great, but you have no way to actually receive the submissions without spinning up a server.
Formgrid solves that with one endpoint URL:
Send
- Point your form at it.
- Receive submissions in your inbox.
Features included out‑of‑the‑box:
- Spam protection
- Email notifications
- File uploads
- CSV export
Self‑hostable with Docker. Fully open source under the MIT license.
But that’s only half the story now. More on that below.
The early days
- I launched quietly. No Product Hunt. No big announcement. Just posted on DEV.to, shared on GitHub, and let it grow organically.
- Sign‑ups started coming in slowly at first, then steadily. By month three, I had 96 sign‑ups – and 0 paying customers.
Classic early SaaS: people sign up, explore, and leave.
I kept building:
- Added features I thought people wanted.
- Tweaked the dashboard.
- Improved the API.
None of it moved the needle on conversions… until someone upgraded.
First paying customer
- He had been on the free plan for a while, processing form submissions for his business.
- When he hit 47 submissions (close to the 50/month free limit), he decided to upgrade instead of switching to something else.
- There was a small activation issue on my end when he upgraded. Instead of asking for a refund, he emailed me:
“It’s a wonderful and cost‑effective product and is working very well for me.”
I fixed the issue the same day. That message meant more than the $8 he paid.
Lesson: People don’t upgrade because of a pricing page. They upgrade because the product is already solving a real problem.
Second paying customer
- Same pattern: heavy free‑plan usage, hit a limit, upgraded because the product was already working for them.
Both customers came organically – no ads, no cold outreach. They found Formgrid through Google, DEV.to, and interestingly, Perplexity AI search. One user said he discovered Formgrid by asking Perplexity for alternatives to another form service that had changed its pricing.
That was the moment I realised AI search tools were already sending me users I hadn’t done anything to earn.
Realising the missing piece
While all this was happening, I was only serving half my potential users.
- Formgrid was built for developers – endpoint URL, HTML forms, API calls.
- But many sign‑ups weren’t developers. They were small business owners, training‑institute founders, people collecting internship applications or course inquiries.
- They saw “endpoint URL” and left. They didn’t need an endpoint; they needed a shareable link they could paste into WhatsApp or any other social platform.
The solution: a form builder on top of the existing backend
Now Formgrid has two modes:
| Mode | What it does | Who it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Form builder | Drag‑and‑drop fields, get a shareable link instantly. Share it on WhatsApp, email, or your website. No code needed. No hosting. No deployment. | Non‑developers, small businesses, educators |
| Form backend | Point any HTML form to your Formgrid endpoint URL. One line. Submissions, spam protection, and email notifications handled. | Developers, static‑site owners |
Both modes share the same submissions dashboard, email notifications, and built‑in spam protection.
Market gap: Typeform and JotForm give you a form builder, but no way to use your own HTML form. Formspree and Getform give you a form backend but no form builder. Formgrid does both for $8/month.
Metrics (as of now)
- 100+ organic sign‑ups
- 2 paying customers
- 22 GitHub stars
- 10,000+ submissions processed monthly
- Built with TypeScript, Node.js (Express), PostgreSQL, and React
What I’m focusing on next
- Improving activation – Users often miss existing features (email notifications, spam settings, form builder). Better onboarding can surface these without building new features.
- SEO & content – Formgrid already appears in AI search results unprompted. Doubling down on content will amplify passive traffic over time.
- Outreach – Directly contacting the businesses that need this most: training institutes, small business owners, anyone collecting applications or inquiries at volume.
- Integrations – Google Sheets, webhooks, and Zapier are on the roadmap for users who want to automate post‑submission workflows.
Real usage beats vanity metrics. 96 sign‑ups felt good. 2 paying customers felt real. One customer who says “it’s a wonderful product” is worth more than 1,000 sign‑ups who never come back.
Takeaways
- Talk to your users earlier than you think you should. I waited three months; I should have emailed the first 10 sign‑ups on day one.
- Build for the users you have, not the users you imagined. I built Formgrid for developers. Half my sign‑ups weren’t developers. The form builder exists because I finally listened.
- The free plan is your best salesperson. Both paying customers converted after heavy free‑plan usage. They didn’t need convincing – they needed capacity.
- It took 3 months to get the first paying customer, but I’d rather have 2 customers who genuinely love the product than 200 who signed up for a discount and churned.
Building in public. Onwards.
If you’re building something similar or have feedback on Formgrid, drop it in the comments. I read everything.
👉
formgrid.dev
github.com/allenarduino/formgrid
Tags: #showdev #webdev #opensource #saas #buildinpublic