Pre-Order Form Template
Capture committed buyers before your product exists — editions, quantities, and launch-update emails, with no money changing hands until you ship.
Reserve yours before launch. Pre-ordering locks your place in the first production run — you won't pay anything until we're ready to ship.
Production updates, your invoice, and the ship date land here.
So we can estimate freight and customs before invoicing.
A pre-order form answers the question every maker faces before committing money to manufacturing: do enough people actually want this? Because Formlark takes no payment, this template runs the honest version of a pre-order — a named commitment with an email attached — which is a far stronger demand signal than a like, and far less dangerous than charging cards for a product that might slip three months.
Why these fields. The edition choice is the core reading: how demand splits across price tiers tells you what to manufacture, and the collector tier exists partly as a price anchor that makes the deluxe look sensible. Units are capped at ten — anything larger is a wholesale conversation, and you want those buyers emailing you directly, not hiding in the pre-order list. Shipping country is a single short field rather than a full address on purpose: addresses collected months before shipping go stale, but country-level data is enough to estimate freight, spot surprise international demand, and decide whether customs paperwork is worth it. The email field's description tells buyers exactly what will arrive there, which is why this list gets opened later — people remember opting in to production updates.
What we left out. Card capture, obviously — that's the point of the pledge frame. Also full shipping addresses (collect them at invoice time when they're fresh) and marketing questions like "how did you hear about us," which read as taking a favor when someone is doing you one.
Who uses this. Hardware makers gauging a first run, authors and game designers sizing a print quantity, breweries and roasters pre-selling a limited release, and founders who want a demand number to show a supplier — or an investor — before wiring a deposit.
Make it yours. Put your real tier prices in the option labels and keep them there as the record of what pre-order buyers were promised. Cap the run by closing the form after a set number of responses in Settings — "first 200 units" is both scarcity and a production plan. Embed the form directly in your landing page (inline embed reads cleanest under a hero section), and export the CSV whenever you need the current tally by edition. When production starts, that same export is your invoicing list.
When money enters. The ending spells out the sequence: updates during production, invoice when units exist, shipment when it clears. Buyers who accept that sequence are the committed kind — which is exactly what you were trying to measure.
Frequently asked questions
Should I charge people at pre-order time?
This form deliberately doesn't. You invoice when units are ready to ship, which protects you from refund chaos if the timeline slips and gives buyers a reason to trust the process.
Can I limit the pre-order to a fixed run size?
Yes — set the form to close after a set number of responses in Settings. "First 200 only" becomes true automatically, and latecomers see your custom closed message.
How do I put this on my launch page?
Use the inline embed for a seamless section under your hero, or the popup embed behind a "Pre-order now" button. Both snippets are on the Share page, ready to paste.
How do I turn the list into invoices later?
Export responses as CSV — you get name, email, edition, units, and country in columns, which drops straight into your invoicing tool or spreadsheet when production wraps.