Automations are part of the Orbit and Landing plans. On Launch, you can see the tab but not add an automation. The Newsletter sign-up form's own automation is the exception: it runs on every plan.
You need to be able to change the form. Only those people see its Automations tab. See Who can see a form.
Each step reads its details from the form's fields, so add the fields first: an Email field for a person, and a Text field for a name or a company.
The Contact form your organisation is given to start from comes with an automation, New Contact, which finds or creates the person and their company. Select it to see how it's built, or to change it.
Open the form and choose the Automations tab.
Choose Add automation.
Give it a Name, for example "Add enquiries to contacts". Switched on is on to start with.
Choose Add a step, pick what should happen, and fill in its settings.
Add more steps, up to 10.
Choose Create automation.
Assign the response to: the member who should have it. They need to be on the form.
Their email address is in: the Email field that holds their address.
Their full name, or first name, is in: a Text or Email field, if you like. Without one, they're named after their email address.
Their last name is in: a Text or Email field. Use it only if your form asks for first and last names separately.
Their phone number is in: a Phone field, if you like. The number is saved when it's an international one, like +44 1632 960000.
Opt them in to marketing: a switch, off to start with. When it's on, someone who agrees to your privacy policy on the form is opted in to marketing, including someone already in your contacts. It needs the form's privacy policy agreement switched on in its Settings, and a privacy policy set in your organisation's brand settings, so the switch is on the form. Nobody is opted out by it. A live form can't have this on without both, and you're told which is missing when you save. To email each person a link to confirm first, see Collect newsletter sign-ups.
Add a new person as: the lifecycle a new person starts at.
A title at the start is left out: "Mr Test User" is saved as Test User.
Their last name keeps the words that belong to it: "Ludwig van Beethoven" is Ludwig and van Beethoven, and "Martin Luther King Jr" is Martin Luther and King Jr.
A name written surname first, with a comma, is read that way: "Lovelace, Ada" is Ada Lovelace.
One word is their first name, and their last name is saved as "(not given)".
The company's name is in: the Text or Email field that holds the company's name.
Add a new company as: the lifecycle a new company starts at.
Create the deal in: the stage the deal starts in. Only open stages are offered.
Name the deal after: a Text or Email field, if you like. Without one, the deal is named after the form.
Assign the deal to: Whoever the response is assigned to, A specific member or Nobody.
Send it to: the address the response is emailed to, such as a shared mailbox. If your organisation has set up its own email addresses, they are suggested as you click or type. Choose one, or type any other address.
Choose Add a step, then If / else.
Select the first path. Under Take this path when, choose All of these or Any of these.
For each condition, choose the Field, a Comparison of Is or Is not, and one or more Options. Choose Add a condition for another, up to 5.
Add the steps that path should run, up to 5.
Choose Add a path for another set of conditions. An If / else step can have up to 4 paths.
Add steps under Otherwise for a response that matches no path, if you like.
The person and the company are linked, so the person shows as working at the company.
The deal gets the person and the company as its contacts.
If the field a step reads from wasn't answered, that step is skipped. Make the field Required on the form to avoid this.
If the member a response should be assigned to has left your organisation, it isn't assigned.
If the deal's stage has been deleted or is no longer open, the deal isn't created.
If a deal should go to whoever the response is assigned to and nobody is, or the member has left, the deal is still created, with nobody assigned.
Add to a list and Remove from a list act on the person a Find or create the person step found or added earlier in the same automation. Without one, they're skipped. If the list has been deleted, they're skipped too.
Someone already in your contacts is left as they are. An automation finds a person by email address and a company by name, and never edits either.
Contacts an automation adds get the source Form, so you can filter for them in your contacts.
A new person needs a first and last name. A name given in one field is split into the two. If it holds one word, their last name is saved as "(not given)".
A phone number that isn't international, starting with +, isn't saved. The person is still added.
Whoever a response is assigned to is notified once, even if they were also told when it arrived.
A locked response doesn't set off the automation until it's unlocked. See Manage responses in the inbox.
If your plan stops including automations, the one you've built is kept but paused. It starts running again when your plan includes them.
Duplicating a form doesn't copy its automation. Deleting a form deletes it.
Putting someone on a list can start that list's sequences, but only for someone who can be sent marketing email. See Automate emails with sequences.