Every response to a form you can see lands in the inbox. Read it, reply from your own email, hand it to a teammate, and see the contacts, deals and projects it's filed with.
You see responses to the forms you can see. Owners and admins see every form's responses, and guests can't open the inbox. See Who can see a form.
Choose Inbox in the sidebar, above Contacts. Responses are listed newest first, with more loading as you scroll, and the one you select opens beside the list. A badge beside Inbox shows how many responses and conversations you can see are unread.
Use the controls above the list to narrow it:
The form menu shows All forms, or one form's responses.
Inbox and Archived switch between current responses and the ones you've put away.
Assigned to me shows only the responses assigned to you.
Each row shows:
the sender's name, or their email address if the form didn't ask for a name. If it asked for neither, the row says "Response"
their picture, which is their Gravatar if they have one, and their initials otherwise
when it arrived
the form's name, when you're looking at All forms
a paperclip, if the response has files
a Replied badge, once someone has replied to it
a dot in the corner while it's unread
the picture of whoever it's assigned to.
Select a response to open it. Its header shows who sent it, the form it came through and when, with Mark as unread, Archive and Delete at its right. Under that are who it's assigned to and the records it's filed with. The header stays in view while you scroll.
Below the header is each question with its answer, and any files, which open in a preview. On a wide screen, short answers sit in two columns. Replies follow the answers, oldest first, and a response opens at the latest one. Once there are more than three, only the latest shows. Choose Show earlier replies above it to see the rest.
An email address, phone number or link in an answer is a link. On a phone, tapping a phone number starts a call.
Opening an unread response marks it as read. To flag it again, choose Mark as unread, which also closes it. It stays unread until someone opens it again. Unread responses show a dot and bolder text.
Write your reply in the box under the response, then choose Send.
Type your message. Use the buttons under it for Bold, Italic, Underline and Link. To add a link, select the words first. To add the person's name or your own, choose the tag button and pick a merge tag. See Personalise proposals and emails with merge tags.
To copy other people in or change the subject, choose Cc, Bcc and subject. Separate several addresses with commas. Cc and Bcc can each hold up to 10. When people are already copied in on the conversation, the button shows how many, such as Cc (2), Bcc and subject, and they're copied on your reply unless you remove them.
Choose Send.
You see the reply box only when the response includes an email address.
If your organisation has set up its own email addresses, the arrow beside Send lists the ones you can use, and My email app. Your choice is remembered. See Set up email addresses.
An email sent from one of your addresses:
goes from that address, with your name and your organisation's, such as "Sam at Acme"
keeps its bold, italic, underline and links
has your email signature and your organisation's logo underneath, then the conversation so far
shows how it got on under the message: Sent, Delivered, Opened or Link clicked, or that it couldn't be delivered.
When the customer replies, their email appears in the same conversation, the response is marked unread again, and whoever it's assigned to is notified. A reply from someone who was copied in appears there too.
Files attached to their email are listed under it. Select one to open it in a preview.
When your reply goes from one of your organisation's addresses, you can send files with it.
Select the paperclip, Attach files, beside Send, and choose your files.
Each file is listed above Send with its size. Select the cross beside a file to remove it.
Select Send. Your files upload and the email goes; Send shows it's working until both are done.
An email's attachments can come to 25 MB together, across up to 10 files.
You can attach the kinds of file you can upload to Files. Programs and scripts can't be sent.
Attachments need one of your organisation's addresses. Your own email app can't be handed files, so the paperclip isn't shown for My email app. If you switch to it with files already chosen, choose an address again or remove the files before you send.
Files you send count towards your organisation's file storage. If there isn't room for them, the email isn't sent and a message says so. Free some space, or remove the files, and send again.
The files are listed under your message in the conversation. Anyone who can read the conversation can open them.
Nothing is kept until you send. A file you remove, or leave unsent when you close the conversation, was never uploaded.
Choose My email app, or just Send if your organisation has no addresses set up. Your email app opens with the message ready to go. Send it from there.
The email goes from your own address, as plain text. Bold, italic and underline show in 53° but not in the email, and a link is written out in full.
53° keeps what you wrote, which isn't proof the email was sent.
A very long conversation is cut short in the email, oldest part first.
Your own message is never cut. If it's too long for your email app to open, 53° says so and nothing is sent: shorten it, copy it into an email yourself, or send from one of your organisation's addresses.
If your organisation has an address you can use, it's copied in, so a reply to everyone still comes back to the inbox.
The menu above the list also has:
Proposals: the conversation with each contact a proposal was sent to from one of your organisation's addresses. You need to be able to see deals.
Emails: emails that arrived at one of your organisation's addresses on their own, not as a reply. If an address is kept to certain people, only they and your owners and admins see its emails.
Open, reply to, assign and archive these as you would a response. Emails are kept until you delete them. Deleting an email conversation removes everything said in it, and its attachments unless you've filed one with another record. A proposal's conversation is deleted with its proposal, and a response's with the response. An email from someone who isn't in your contacts has an Add to contacts button.
Files attached to an email that arrives are kept with it and listed under the message, as are the files you attach to a reply. Select one to open it in a preview. Anyone who can read the conversation can open its files, and they also appear in Files for those people.
Attachments count towards your organisation's file storage. See Plans and billing.
An email's attachments are kept up to 25 MB together, of the kinds you can upload to Files. They're kept in the order they came, so when an email carries more than that, the files that no longer fit aren't kept. Programs and scripts are never kept.
When a file can't be kept, the email still arrives and a note under it names the file and says why: your file storage is full, the email's attachments came to more than 25 MB, it's a type that isn't accepted, or it couldn't be downloaded. Ask the sender to send it again or to share a link.
Pictures shown inside an email, such as a logo in a signature, aren't kept.
Deleting the conversation deletes the files that arrived in it, and the files you sent in it, and frees their storage. A file you've since attached to another record is kept.
Open the response and, under the sender, choose Assign, then pick someone. They get a notification, and their picture shows on the response's row.
The chip then shows their picture and name, with "Assigned". To change it, choose the chip and pick someone else, or Nobody to clear it.
You can only assign a response to someone who can see its form. If they can't, add them to the form first.
A form's automation can give each response to someone as it arrives, with the Assign the response step. Pair it with If / else to send responses to different people depending on an answer, such as a "Department" dropdown. See Automate a form.
Anyone on the form can reassign a response from the inbox.
Choose Archive to move a response out of the inbox. It's marked as read and kept under Archived. Choose Move to inbox to bring it back.
Choose Delete, the red button, then confirm with Delete response, to remove a response for good, along with its answers and files.
Anyone on the form can archive. Only the people who can change the form can delete its responses.
A response can be filed with a company, people, deals and projects. Each shows as a chip in the open response's header, beside who it's assigned to. Choose a deal or a project to go to it.
You don't file a response by hand, and you can't remove a chip from the inbox. A response is filed in two ways:
The form's automation files it with the person, company and deal it finds or creates. See Automate a form.
A response to a project's form is filed with that project. See Projects.
Once a response is filed with a record, an Inbox tab appears on that deal, contact or project, listing the responses filed there, newest first and five to a page. Select one to open it in the inbox.
Add a Forward by email step to the form's automation. Each response is emailed to the address you give, as well as kept in the inbox, and replying to that email replies to the sender. See Automate a form.
When a response arrives, the people on the form's access list get a notification. Whoever a response is assigned to, by the form's automation or from the inbox, is told it's theirs. If they haven't read the first notification yet, it's updated, so they aren't told twice.
To get these by email too, turn on Form responses in your notification settings.
Some forms don't need answering, such as a newsletter sign-up whose automation does all the work. To keep one out of the inbox, open the form, choose Settings, turn on Hide responses from the inbox and choose Save settings.
Its responses then don't show in the inbox, its unread count or a contact's Inbox tab, and nobody is notified of them. They're still kept, still run the form's automation, still count towards your plan's monthly responses and still show on the form's Answers tab. Turn the setting off to see them again.
Your plan includes a number of responses each month. A response that arrives past that allowance, and that can't be charged for, is still accepted but locked. It shows in the list as Locked response, and its answers are hidden until it's unlocked.
A response is locked when either of these is true:
You're on a free trial and have used your plan's included responses. A trial can't go over.
Your organisation has reached its spend cap on form responses.
Locked responses unlock by themselves, oldest first, as soon as there's room:
when your first payment is taken at the end of a trial
when you move to a plan with a bigger allowance
when an owner or admin raises or removes the spend cap in Plan and billing
when your next billing month starts.
Each response that's unlocked counts towards the month it's unlocked in.
While a response is locked, nobody is notified and the form's automation doesn't run for it, so it isn't forwarded, assigned or filed. All of that happens when it's unlocked. See Plans and billing.
Read and unread are shared. Once someone opens a response, it shows as read for everyone on the form.
Owners and admins see every form's responses, but they're only notified about the forms whose access list they're on.
Responses to a project's form are filed with that project as they arrive. See Projects.
The sender's name is read from a field whose Key is name, or from fields with the keys first_name and last_name. A new form's Name field has the right key already.
When a visitor agreed to your privacy policy on the form, the response's header says "Agreed to your privacy policy". See Share or embed a form.
If your organisation's file storage was full when a response arrived, the response is kept and a note names the files that couldn't be. The same goes for an email: see Attachments.
To see all of a form's responses at once, question by question, open the form and choose Answers. See See a form's answers.
A response keeps the questions it was sent with, so editing the form later doesn't change it.
