Send Your Own Website Forms to LeadCentre

Your form sends the enquiry to your own server. Your server shows the visitor your thank-you page and posts the details to LeadCentre, which creates a lead and sends the alert.

Why not post the HTML form straight to the webhook URL?

A plain form with the webhook URL in its action attribute does reach LeadCentre, but you wouldn't want to keep it:

• Your visitor sees raw JSON. After pressing send, they land on a page reading something like ok: true, with no thank-you message and no way back to your site.
• Your key is in the page source. The URL contains the key, so anyone can read it and send junk into your account. All you could do then is replace it.
• Calling it from JavaScript doesn't solve this. The key is still visible in the browser. LeadCentre also sends no cross-origin headers, so browsers block JSON posts and hide the response from other kinds.

So use your backend. A serverless function on your hosting counts, if it keeps the URL in an environment variable.

Example: PHP

<?php
// contact.php receives your form, then passes it on.
$lead = [
  'name'    => $_POST['name'] ?? '',
  'email'   => $_POST['email'] ?? '',
  'phone'   => $_POST['phone'] ?? '',
  'message' => $_POST['message'] ?? '',
];
$ch = curl_init(getenv('LEADCENTRE_WEBHOOK_URL'));
curl_setopt_array($ch, [
  CURLOPT_POST => true,
  CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => json_encode($lead),
  CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => ['Content-Type: application/json'],
  CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
  CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 10,
]);
curl_exec($ch);
if (curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_RESPONSE_CODE) !== 200) {
  error_log('LeadCentre did not accept a lead');
}
header('Location: /thank-you');

Note json_encode on the fields. Passing PHP cURL an array sends multipart/form-data, which LeadCentre doesn't read.

Example: JavaScript on your server

// Runs on your server, never in the browser.
const response = await fetch(process.env.LEADCENTRE_WEBHOOK_URL, {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({ name, email, phone, message }),
});
if (!response.ok) console.error('LeadCentre refused', response.status);

Don't pass a FormData object as the body, for the same reason: it sends multipart.

File uploads

Forms with a file input have to be sent as multipart/form-data, and LeadCentre doesn't read that. It refuses the post with a 415, so no lead is created. If your form takes files, have your backend receive the form, store the file, then post the text fields to LeadCentre as JSON, with a link to the file if you want one. LeadCentre doesn't store files, and a post can be up to 64 KB.

Spam

LeadCentre doesn't filter spam, so check submissions on your backend first. A hidden honeypot field or a captcha will stop most junk becoming leads and alerts.