How to send website enquiries straight into your CRM

Before choosing a tool, write down how your team handles an enquiry today. What information do you need to reply? Who takes responsibility? Is a new contact enough, or do you also need a sales opportunity, a task or a note on an existing customer's record?

Start with one form and one clear outcome. Keep the fields customers actually need to complete. An integration will copy unnecessary information just as efficiently as useful information.

• List each website field and the CRM field where it belongs, including the enquiry message.
• Decide how to recognise an existing customer and whether a new enquiry should create a separate sales opportunity.
• Choose who receives the enquiry and what happens if that person is unavailable.
• Record the source page if you need to know which service the customer asked about.
• Decide what confirmation the visitor sees and whether anyone needs an email notification as well.

Acme Ltd receives a repair enquiry from Sam, an existing customer. The useful result is a new repair enquiry linked to Sam's existing contact, with a follow-up task for the repairs team. A second copy of Sam's contact would make the history harder to follow.

This is often the simplest option. Build the form inside the CRM, then link to its hosted page or embed it on your website. Embedding means showing the CRM's form within your page. You map fields in the CRM and avoid a separate connector for that first step.

HubSpot offers forms across its products and plans. Its current editor can connect fields to CRM properties, provide an external-site embed code and give you a standalone share link. Some features need a paid subscription. For example, conditional logic, which changes what the form shows based on earlier answers, requires particular Professional or Enterprise subscriptions.

Pipedrive's Web Forms can feed submissions into leads or deals and can be embedded or shared as a link. They are part of its LeadBooster offering. Check whether that is included in your account or an extra cost. Other CRMs may have similar form tools, but the available fields, styling and follow-up features differ.

Choose this route if the form looks and works well on your site and creates the records you need. Check the actual plan before relying on automated assignments or tasks. The presence of a form tool does not mean every follow-up action is included. Test the embed on a phone and with your website's privacy settings.

A connector such as Zapier links supported tools without building the connection from scratch. A form submission starts a workflow, then an action creates or updates something in the CRM. This can be a good choice when your existing form works well and the connector supports the exact CRM actions you need.

Check both ends before paying. Support for your form tool and CRM does not guarantee support for a particular custom field, attachment or type of record. Use an integration that receives the submission from the form itself where possible. Reading notification emails adds another dependency on email delivery and on the wording staying the same.

As checked on 13 October 2026, Zapier's Free plan includes 100 tasks a month and two-step workflows, one trigger and one action. Multi-step workflows and premium apps need a paid plan. Successful chargeable actions use tasks, while triggers do not. The number of enquiries alone therefore does not tell you the allowance you need.

A connector has ongoing costs and needs someone to check failures, but that can still be better value than custom development for a small, standard workflow. Test it with your own form and CRM before buying an annual plan.

If an illustrative workflow handles 100 enquiries and performs two successful chargeable actions for each, it uses 200 tasks. Check how your connector counts the actual steps, because some built-in tools do not use tasks.

A direct integration uses the CRM's API, its documented software connection. Your website sends structured information to the CRM through code written for your process. It can keep your own form design while deciding which records to create, which team should receive them and what to do when a customer already exists.

This becomes useful when an enquiry needs information from several systems, follows different handling rules or cannot be represented by the available connector actions. For example, you might need to check a service area before assigning a job, then link the enquiry to a customer and a quotation system. Confirm that each system's API and your subscription allow the required operations.

You do not have to replace your CRM or rebuild an otherwise suitable website to get a direct connection. A custom website makes more sense when the form itself has outgrown the existing site's options, such as a guided enquiry that asks different questions for different services. Custom software can handle the process behind that form.

The build has an upfront cost and needs maintenance when services change. Specify who owns the code, who can access the hosting and what support covers. Having a direct connection does not remove CRM subscription charges or make the integration immune to outages.

An existing customer can make several enquiries. Decide whether the integration should update their contact details, add a note, create a separate opportunity or do some combination of those. Do not let each new message overwrite the only copy of an earlier enquiry.

HubSpot's contacts API supports creating and updating contacts, including updates identified by email. Its documentation treats email as a main identifier for avoiding duplicate contacts. That does not decide how your business should handle shared email addresses, a customer changing address or several people from the same company.

• Test a new customer and an existing customer with another enquiry.
• Check that dropdown choices arrive as the right CRM values rather than unreadable codes or blank fields.
• Decide whether a blank website field should leave an existing CRM value alone.
• Check that a repeated submission or a retry does not create the same enquiry twice.
• Confirm that the full message and any supported attachments reach the right record, not just the name and email address.

A connection can fail because its permission expired, a CRM field changed, an allowance ran out or the CRM was temporarily unavailable. HubSpot, for example, applies API limits and returns an error when callers exceed them. A success message on the website is not enough evidence that the CRM has the enquiry.

For a connector, check where errors appear and who receives alerts. Zapier sends error notifications to the account email address by default, with settings that users can change. Make sure that address belongs to an inbox someone monitors. Check the workflow history as well as email alerts.

For a custom integration, include a secure record of accepted enquiries, delivery status and controlled retries. A retry should wait appropriately and avoid creating duplicates. Keep access credentials on the server, away from the visitor's browser. Agree how failed enquiries can be recovered and who investigates failures.

Test a failure deliberately in a safe test environment before launch. Check what the customer sees, what the team sees and what happens when service resumes. If the system cannot safely accept the enquiry, show an honest error and another contact route rather than an unsupported success message.

The ICO says you must choose a lawful basis for using personal information and explain the use in your privacy information. Give that information when you collect the details. Put a clear privacy link beside the form and review the notice when you add a CRM or connector. Explain the purposes, relevant recipients and how long you keep enquiries.

Consent is one lawful basis, not an automatic requirement for every enquiry. Submitting an enquiry also does not automatically give permission for every future marketing email. Check the ICO's electronic-mail marketing guidance for the rules that apply to your customers and any proposed mailing list.

Limit what each service receives to what it needs. Give staff and integrations only the access they require. If enquiries can contain health information or other sensitive details, check the additional requirements before putting them through a general-purpose form and connector. Get advice on your circumstances where needed.

Use the CRM's own form if its fields, appearance and record handling fit. Use a connector if the handoff is standard and its allowance and monitoring are manageable. Choose a direct integration when specific rules, several systems or repeated manual corrections justify the build and its upkeep.

Before launch, complete the whole process as a customer would. Submit on a phone, find the right CRM record, check the assigned person and follow through to a reply. Repeat with an existing customer and an invalid entry. Keep a record of the expected outcome so someone can retest after changes.

If staff still have to copy details between systems or correct every new record, count that work when comparing costs. A custom connection can be a better fit than adding more workarounds, while letting you keep the CRM that already suits your team.