Web-to-Lead generates an HTML form you embed on your marketing site. Submissions create Lead records in Salesforce, optionally fire the Lead Assignment Rule, and optionally trigger an Auto-Response Rule to email the prospect. It's the simplest inbound capture path Salesforce ships.
- Open Setup → Web-to-Lead
Setup → Quick Find: Web-to-Lead → Web-to-Lead.
- Tick Web-to-Lead Enabled and pick Default Lead Creator
Default Creator owns Leads if no assignment rule fires. Pick a service-account user, not a real human.
- Set the Default Response Template (optional)
The Email Template auto-sent to prospects on submission. Lives in Setup → Email Templates.
- Click Create Web-to-Lead Form
Top of the page. The wizard generates the HTML.
- Pick fields to include
Standard Lead fields + custom fields. Skip required-on-the-platform fields you can't ask the user (e.g. you'd never ask for Lead Status).
- Set Return URL
Where the user is redirected after submit. Your thank-you page.
- Generate and embed the HTML
Copy the generated HTML, paste into your marketing site. The form posts to Salesforce — keep the hidden orgid field intact.
Owner of inbound Leads if assignment rules don't fire. Service-account user is the convention.
Auto-emailed to prospects (uses Auto-Response Rules for per-criteria templates).
Require reCAPTCHA before submit. Highly recommended — without it, bots flood the form.
Required on the form. Identifies your Salesforce org. Don't strip from the generated HTML.
Where the form redirects after submit.
- Web-to-Lead is rate-limited at 500 leads per day per org. Higher-volume forms need a paid integration (Marketing Cloud, Pardot, or a custom API integration with a token).
- Validation rules fire on Web-to-Lead submissions. A required-by-validation field that the form doesn't ask for blocks the lead silently — submissions just disappear into the Daily Lead Submission Log.
- Without reCAPTCHA, bots submit hundreds of garbage Leads per day. Always enable reCAPTCHA for public forms.