How to Send Website Form Submissions to Telegram (Instant Notifications)

Why send form submissions to Telegram?

If you run a small team (or you're solo), checking email all day is a slow feedback loop. Telegram, on the other hand, is where you already live: your phone vibrates, you see the message, and you can reply immediately.

By connecting your website contact forms to Telegram, you turn submissions into real-time notifications: Contact form → Telegram ping → quick response. This is especially valuable when:

• You're trying to respond to new sales leads before your competitors.
• You want support requests to be visible to the whole team, not buried in one inbox.
• You're collecting waitlist signups and want to see growth as it happens.
• You use a simple bug report form and want instant alerts when something goes wrong.

Instead of refreshing your inbox or logging into an admin panel, Telegram just tells you: “You have a new submission.”

How DropForm → Telegram integration works

The architecture is simple and doesn't require you to build a custom backend:

1. Your website form submits to DropForm instead of your own server.
2. DropForm validates and stores the submission (including file uploads and spam checks).
3. For each new submission, DropForm calls the Telegram Bot API and sends a message to your chosen chat.

You configure the integration once (bot token + chat ID), and DropForm takes care of pushing every new submission into Telegram in real time. No cron jobs, no extra services, no scripting.

Where a Telegram form integration really shines

Sending form notifications to Telegram is useful for more than just a basic contact form. Once the integration is in place, you can reuse it across multiple forms:

• Sales & demo request forms – every request goes straight to a Telegram group where your sales team hangs out.
• Customer support forms – new tickets appear in a support channel, so on-call agents see them immediately.
• Waitlist / beta signup forms – get a quick dopamine hit each time someone joins your launch list.
• Bug report forms – send critical issues to a dedicated “alerts” chat that the engineering team watches.
• Internal request forms – handle small operational requests (like “access to X” or “new account needed”) via a Telegram thread.

Because DropForm is your form backend, you only have to wire the front-end once. You can then plug the same Telegram integration into different forms as your workflows evolve.

Setup in minutes: HTML form → DropForm → Telegram

Let's walk through the minimal setup required to send form submissions to Telegram using DropForm.

1) Post your form to DropForm

First, make sure your form submits to DropForm. Here's a simple example using fetch in plain JavaScript:

2) Create a Telegram bot (BotFather)

In Telegram, open @BotFather and run /newbot. Follow the prompts to choose a name and username, then copy the bot token you receive at the end. This token allows DropForm to send messages on behalf of your bot.

3) Add the bot to your chat and get the chat ID

Decide where notifications should land: a private chat with yourself, a group, or a channel. Add the bot to that destination and make sure it's allowed to post.

Then send at least one message in that chat (e.g. “test”), and read updates:

In the JSON response, look for chat → id. This value is your chat ID. For groups and channels, it's often a negative number (for example -1001234567890), which is normal.

4) Connect Telegram inside DropForm

In your DropForm dashboard:

• Open your form.
• Go to Integrations → Telegram.
• Paste your bot token and chat ID.
• Click Save.

From now on, each new submission for that form will trigger a Telegram message.

5) Test it

Submit your form once and check Telegram. You should see a clean message with the main fields and a link back to the submission inside DropForm. If you see it, your Telegram form integration is live.

For deeper details, troubleshooting, and more advanced patterns, read the Telegram Integration Guide.

What your Telegram notifications can look like

A good notification should be short enough to skim, but detailed enough that you can decide what to do next without opening a dashboard. A typical pattern is:

• Header: New submission – {Form name}
• Key fields first: name, email, company, main message.
• Optional fields: additional details, dropdowns, checkboxes.
• Link: “Open in DropForm” pointing to the full submission with files.

Keeping field names short (for example Name instead of Your full name here) makes the message much more readable inside a chat app.

Benefits vs email notifications

You can of course send form notifications via email, but Telegram form notifications have a few big advantages:

• Speed: push notifications arrive faster and are harder to ignore than email badges.
• Shared visibility: messages in a group or channel are visible to everyone on the team.
• Focused channels: you can route different forms to different chats (e.g. Leads, Support, Alerts).
• Less clutter: submissions don't get buried under newsletters and transactional emails.

For many small teams, “forms → Telegram” ends up being the simplest way to make sure nobody misses an important submission.

Best practices for Telegram form integrations

• Create a dedicated Telegram group or channel such as “Incoming Leads” or “Support Inbox”.
• Pin your DropForm dashboard link in that chat for one-click access to full submission details.
• Keep field names short and descriptive to improve readability in messages.
• Use separate forms or integration configs if you want different types of submissions to go to different chats.

Security and reliability

When you connect a bot token to DropForm, you're essentially granting permission to send messages into your Telegram chat. To keep this secure:

• Treat your bot token like a password – don't share it publicly or commit it to version control.
• Rotate the token in @BotFather if you suspect it was exposed, and update it in DropForm.
• Use separate bots for testing and production if you want a clean separation between environments.

Troubleshooting

“Bad Request: chat not found”

This error almost always means one of the following:

• The bot was not added to the group or channel yet.
• The bot doesn't have permission to post in that chat.
• You're using the wrong chat ID (remember: group/channel IDs are often negative).

No updates returned from getUpdates

Make sure you:

• Sent at least one message in the target chat after adding the bot.
• Aren't using webhooks for the same bot token somewhere else (Telegram will then stop sending updates via polling).

FAQ

Can I notify multiple chats?

Yes. You can connect multiple DropForm forms to different Telegram chats, or create multiple integration configs that use different chat IDs for different types of submissions (for example, Leads vs Support).

Can I send rich formatted messages?

Telegram supports Markdown and HTML formatting, so messages can be styled with bold text, links, and lists. Depending on how you configure your integration, you can enable this formatting or stick to clean plain text.

Quick setup checklist

1. Make sure your website form posts to DropForm.
2. Create a Telegram bot with @BotFather and copy the bot token.
3. Add the bot to your target chat and send a test message.
4. Use getUpdates to read the chat ID from the response.
5. Paste bot token + chat ID into Integrations → Telegram in DropForm.
6. Submit a test form and confirm the notification arrives in Telegram.

Next step

If you want to respond to leads and support requests faster, connecting your website forms directly to Telegram is one of the highest-impact automations you can set up. You'll see every submission as a message in the app you already use all day.

When you're ready to go deeper (message formatting, multiple bots, and detailed error handling), continue with the Telegram Integration Guide.

Related guides

• Telegram Integration Guide
• What is a Form Backend?
• What is a Form API?
• How to Send an HTML Form to a Backend
• How to Submit Form Data with JavaScript
• How to Upload Files to a Form Backend