How to Add a Newsletter Signup Form to Your Website

A newsletter signup form lets visitors give you their email address so you can send them updates, offers, or news. It's one of the simplest ways to build a direct line of communication with customers who already showed interest in your business, and you can add one to almost any website in a few minutes.

Step 1: Choose an email marketing service

You'll need an email marketing service to actually store the addresses people submit and send out campaigns. A plain contact form on your site is not built for this: you need a tool designed for list management, unsubscribe handling, and deliverability. There are several free-to-start services (for example Mailchimp, Brevo, or MailerLite) that let you create a signup form and give you a ready-made embed code.

1. Sign up for an account with the service of your choice.
2. Create an "audience" or "list" to collect your subscribers.
3. Find the option to create a signup form, often labelled Signup Forms or Embedded Forms.
4. Generate the embed code. Most services give you either a short snippet of HTML, or a block of HTML plus JavaScript.

Pick the "embedded" or "classic" form style rather than a popup if you just want a simple form on a page. Popups usually need their own separate setup inside the service.

Step 2: Add the form to a WordPress website

1. Log in to your WordPress Admin dashboard.
2. Open the page or widget area where you want the form to appear, and add a Custom HTML block (in the block editor) or a Custom HTML widget (in Appearance > Widgets, for a sidebar or footer).
3. Paste the embed code you copied from your email marketing service into the block or widget.
4. Click Update or Publish and then view the page to confirm the form displays correctly.

If your theme or page builder has its own newsletter or form widget, some services also offer a dedicated WordPress plugin that adds the form through a shortcode instead of raw HTML. Either approach works; use whichever your theme supports more cleanly.

Step 3: Add the form to a non-WordPress (custom HTML) website

1. Open the HTML file for the page where the form should appear, either through your website's page builder's custom code option, or by editing the file directly in File Manager.
2. Paste the embed code at the point in the page where you want the form to show, usually just before the closing </body> tag if the code includes a script.
3. Save the file and upload it back to your hosting account if you edited it locally.
4. Reload the page in your browser to confirm the form appears and submits correctly.

Step 4: Test the form

Before you consider it live, submit a test entry yourself with a real email address you can check.

• Confirm you receive any confirmation or "double opt-in" email the service sends.
• Confirm the test address appears in your audience/list inside the email marketing service's dashboard.
• Check the form displays correctly on both desktop and mobile screen sizes.

Only collect email addresses with a clear signup action from the visitor, and make it easy for subscribers to unsubscribe later. Most email marketing services add an unsubscribe link automatically, and keeping this in place protects your sender reputation.

If you'd also like a form for direct enquiries rather than a mailing list, see How to Add a Contact Form to Your Website.