Summary: Forminit is a polished headless endpoint with typed server-side field validation and an llms.txt. Postbag adds versioned schemas with drift detection, streams that map many forms onto one contract, signed webhooks with a retryable outbox, and self-hosting.
| Capability | Postbag | Getform (now Forminit) |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 5 forms, 1,000 submissions/month, 5 destinations, 90-day retention (paid plans not yet on sale) | 100 submissions/month, 1 form (Forminit pricing) |
| Entry paid | Not yet on sale | Pro $19/month billed yearly |
| Management API | Full /v1 API for every object (forms, schemas, streams, mappings, destinations, routes, deliveries, events), OpenAPI generated from the live routes | REST API on Pro; submit and list-submissions documented, form CRUD not verified |
| Webhooks | Yes, HMAC-SHA256 signed (Postbag-Signature t=…,v1=…), retried with backoff, dead-lettered and retryable | Yes on Pro; signing not verified |
| Yes (Resend), Reply-To from the submission | Yes | |
| Chat destinations | Telegram today; Slack and Discord next | Slack, Discord |
| Spam | Honeypot, per-form rate limit, origin allowlist, Cloudflare Turnstile; spam is stored and reversible, never dropped | Honeypot, Turnstile, reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, domain allowlist, rate limits |
| File uploads | Not yet (text fields only; 256 KB) | Yes, including free tier |
| Self-hosting / source | Yes: one Docker image + Postgres, same image as the hosted product | No |
| Schemas and drift | Versioned, immutable form and stream schemas; observe / enforce / managed modes; drift detection and inference | "Form Blocks" typed validation; no versions or drift |
| Many sites → one destination | Projects, tags, streams (many forms → one schema → one destination), delivery windows, digests | Workspaces (Business) |
| For AI agents | llms.txt, openapi.json, GET /v1/me, POST /v1/quickstart, _test submissions with delivery ids to poll, errors with hint + docs, Idempotency-Key, if_exists: return | llms.txt; marketing aimed at AI site builders; no MCP or CLI found |
Getform (now Forminit) facts checked on against: forminit.com/pricing, Why Forminit (rename, Jan 2026), forminit.com/llms.txt. Prices and quotas change; verify on their pages. Tagline quoted: "A form backend for websites, apps, and AI-built frontends".
Choose Getform (now Forminit) if
- You need file uploads on the free tier.
- You want typed per-field validation set up in a UI.
Choose Postbag if
- You want schemas that are versioned contracts with drift detection, not just validation.
- Several sites must deliver one shape to one partner, with a window or a digest.
- An agent should be able to create, verify and route the form without a human.
- You need self-hosting.
What Postbag does differently, in one paragraph
Postbag treats a submission as a database row before anything else and delivery as an outbox drained by a worker, so every attempt is recorded and retryable and nothing is dropped, including spam. It adds streams, so many forms with different field names map onto one versioned schema and go to one partner or CRM with windows and digests. Every webhook is signed. The whole product is one API described by /openapi.json and /llms.txt, so an AI agent can create, verify and route a form without a browser. And it ships as one Docker image plus Postgres, so the hosted product and a self-hosted install are the same thing.