Ask HN: How to create a single email field like on basecamp.com

2 points by zaphodq 7y ago ↗ HN

I tried to implement a single email field on my saas website for free trial signups. But I got bombarded by spam. Using google invisible recaptcha make the user experience very bad. Is there are any other work around? Given the spam rate I decided to remove it for now. But I am curios about how basecamp is doing it. I have seen it on other websites as well but some of them do no post the data anywhere. They just capture the email and auto fill it in the final form. But basecamp is using the email to create a trial account right away. Any help?

6 comments

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newsbinator 7y ago ↗

Have you tried using Cloudflare?

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170066-W...

zaphodq 7y ago ↗

Cloudflare will provide some protection. But is there anything specific to this problem? Captcha is one solution but how are websites like basecamp and intercomm are doing it?

gshdg 7y ago ↗

Use a honeypot field.

zaphodq 7y ago ↗

Didn’t work. I added several variations of hidden fields like hidden email field, hidden url field, hidden name. But nothing worked.

verdverm 7y ago ↗

Did you send a confirmation link before granting access. Using an email is one way to do passwordless login, by sending them a link to login.

Maybe consider OAuth?

zaphodq 7y ago ↗

If I send email to spam bots won’t that decrease my domain score?