The cinnamon rolls sell out every Sunday and the orders arrive as WhatsApp messages: a voice note at 11pm, a "same as last week", a screenshot of a transfer with no name on it. You keep the list in Notes, count it twice and still bake four too many. The usual advice is to open a shop. A shop is a lot of shop for forty orders a week.
This guide is the other way round: an order form that is a link. Claude writes the page with the menu and the form, Hostus hosts it, orders land in an inbox and in your email, and the form closes by itself at the number you set. Hostus is the option we put first, and the category matters: best if you want an order page that is a link and closes by itself. Jotform, forms.app, Google Forms, a real shop and the WhatsApp list each have a case, covered below with what their own sites said today.
What the buyer sees
Here is one, live: a fictional home bakery's Sunday pre-order page, capped at 40 orders. The menu with prices, a pickup slot and the order form. The bakery does not exist, the prices and the payment details are illustrative, and the form is real: send an order and it lands in the demo's inbox.
When the 40th order is in, the form closes for everyone. The menu stays on the page, so the link in your bio still says what you bake; it just stops taking orders until you open it again. The buyer who arrives 41st sees the menu and a closed form, which is the honest version of "sold out".
How an order form works without a shop
Hostus hosts one HTML file as a page on a link. Any <form method="post"> in it with named fields records its submissions on the document: no action URL, no key, no backend, nothing to connect. The order form is a normal form; the page is its own receiver.
Each order lands in an inbox on the document, where you read it and export the lot as CSV for the shopping list, and in your email, one per order or a daily summary. Claude reads them too, through the connector: "how many cinnamon rolls on Sunday?" is a question it can answer from the orders.
Four settings live on the document, not in the HTML:
- Stop at N responses. The cap. 40 orders and the form closes by itself.
- Close by hand. Friday night, whatever the count.
- Success message. Up to 200 characters, shown in place of the form after sending. This is where the payment instructions go.
- Email. One per order, or one a day.
And a redirect, if you would rather send the buyer to a page after ordering than show a message. The free plan takes 100 responses a month, with no clock and no card: 40 orders on two Sundays fits, a bakery that does 40 every Sunday wants the paid plan, which has no monthly cap.
The cap: closing at 40 orders by itself
The cap counts responses on the document. An order you send while signed in to Hostus is marked as a test and does not count toward the cap; one sent from a private window does. A buyer who presses send twice does not create two orders. At the cap, the form closes for every visitor at once; it does not close per person, and it does not reopen on its own. Raise the number or reopen it in the dashboard, or ask Claude, and it takes orders again.
The page does not show a public tally of orders left, on purpose. The page can read its own responses through the document's storage, and in the default mode, called shared, so can anyone who opens the link and knows where to look: every field except the email, which is redacted. An order carries a name and a phone number, so the right setting for an order page is per reader mode, one switch in the dashboard or one line to Claude, under which nobody but you reads the orders. The closed form is the "sold out" sign.
Payment: the money moves where it always did
Hostus does not take payments. There is no card field, no checkout and no wallet. What the page does is carry your payment instructions in the success message: "Pay 50% to confirm: transfer to Sunday Crumb, IBAN in the pinned WhatsApp message, or PayPal.me/sundaycrumb." Bank transfer, Pix, a PayPal.me link, cash at pickup: whatever you use today keeps working, and the buyer sees it the moment the order is in.
If the message needs more than 200 characters, use the redirect instead: after sending, the buyer lands on a page of yours with the full instructions and the pickup address. Then you confirm by WhatsApp when the money arrives, the way you do now; the difference is that the order itself is written down, with a name, a slot and a total, in a place you can count.
If you need the card charged inside the form, this is the moment to pick Jotform or forms.app and accept their limits, which are below.
The prompt
With the Hostus connector on in Claude, this writes the page, publishes it and sets the form in one turn. If you came here looking for an order form template, this is the template.
Make me a Sunday pre-order page for Sunday Crumb, a home bakery. Menu: sourdough loaf 9, cinnamon rolls (box of 4) 12, cardamom buns (box of 4) 12, banana bread 8. Pickup on Sunday in three slots: 9 to 10, 10 to 11, 11 to 12.
Show the menu, then an order form: <form method="post" name="order"> with a named quantity field per item, a pickup slot (select), name, phone or email, and notes. Compute the total in the page before sending and include it as a hidden field. No action URL, no key in the page, no backend, no localStorage. One HTML file, mobile first.
Publish it to Hostus. Set the form to close at 40 responses, to email me on every response, and to show "Order received. Pay 50% to confirm: transfer to Sunday Crumb (IBAN in the pinned WhatsApp message) or PayPal.me/sundaycrumb. We confirm by WhatsApp." instead of the form after sending. Set the data mode to per reader so nobody but me reads the orders. Give me the link.The page is born private: in the Hostus dashboard, switch it to public before you share the link. The form settings (the cap, the email, the success message, a redirect instead of a message) are document settings, not HTML: Claude sets them with hostus_update, and you change them in the dashboard later without touching the file. For next Sunday, paste the new menu and say "update the same page"; the link stays and the previous version stays in history. The cap counts every response the document has recorded, so for a fresh week raise it by 40 (80, then 120).
Hostus first, then Jotform, forms.app, Google Forms, a real shop and the WhatsApp list: pick it if
Hostus first, for the case this page is about: an order page that is a link, closes by itself, and costs nothing. The rest were read on their own sites on 18 October 2026; where a site did not say, this guide says "check their pricing page" rather than a number.
- Jotform. Pick it if you need to charge the card inside the form. Starter is free with 5 forms, 100 submissions a month and 10 payment submissions a month, with Jotform branding.
- forms.app. Pick it if you want payments on a free plan without the ten-a-month cap. Its pricing page lists Free at 0 USD with up to 5 forms, unlimited responses, 10 MB of storage and payments, taken through Stripe and PayPal per its FAQ; "Remove branding" first appears under Basic, 19 USD a month billed annually (29 monthly).
- Google Forms. Pick it if the orders can live in a spreadsheet and the page does not need to look like your bakery. Its help center shows a built-in response limit ("After a number of responses"), a close date, and an editable message for when the form is closed. The product page says nothing about taking payments, and the price for personal use is not on the pages we read, so check theirs.
- A real shop: Shopify or Square Online. Pick it if you want a cart, stock and a checkout that takes the card, and will grow into it. Shopify's pricing page lists Basic at $19 a month, or $14 a month billed yearly, and does not list the Starter plan today. Square's pricing page says its plans start at $0 with processing fees on each sale; the rate did not load for us, so check their pricing page.
- The WhatsApp list. The baseline. Free, already on your phone, and every order is a conversation you have to read back. It does not close at 40, it does not add up, and the screenshot of the transfer still has no name on it.
Side by side
| Option | Closes at N orders by itself | Success message with payment instructions | Takes the payment | You get an email per order | Page is yours | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hostus, one HTML page | Yes, stop at N on the document | Yes, 200 characters, or a redirect | No | Yes, or a daily summary | Yes, one HTML file | Yes: 100 responses a month, 20 docs, no clock |
| Jotform | Check their help center | Check their help center | Yes, 10 payment submissions a month on Starter | Check their help center | No, a Jotform form | Starter: 5 forms, 100 submissions a month, branding |
| forms.app | Check their help center | Check their help center | Yes, Stripe and PayPal, listed on Free | Yes, "unlimited notifications" on Free per its pricing page | No, a forms.app form | Free: 5 forms, unlimited responses, 10 MB |
| Google Forms | Yes, built in per its help center | Check their help center | Not on its product page | Check their help center | No, a Google form | Price not on the pages we read; check theirs |
| Shopify or Square Online | Not stated on the pages we read | The checkout replaces it | Yes, with processing fees | Check their help center | No, a shop on their platform | Shopify Basic from $14 a month billed yearly; Square from $0 plus fees |
| WhatsApp list | No | You type it every time | No | No | It is a chat | Yes |
Prices and limits were read on each vendor's own site on 18 October 2026 and change without notice. Where a cell says "check" or "not stated", the vendor did not publish the fact on the pages we read, and we would rather send you there than guess.
Good to know before you switch
There is no payment processing on the page: the money moves where it always did, by transfer, Pix, PayPal or cash, and the page carries the instructions. The cap counts responses from visitors: an order you send while signed in is a test and does not count, and a buyer who presses send twice does not create two. Keep the data mode on per reader: in the default shared mode the orders, minus the email, are readable through the page's storage by anyone who opens the link. At the cap the form closes for everyone, the page keeps showing the menu, and nothing reopens on its own.
The free plan takes 100 form responses a month, 20 documents and 2 MB of storage in total, with no card and no clock; a 40-order Sunday every week needs the paid plan, which has no monthly cap. Orders past the free 100 are stored and held until you upgrade. There is no custom domain: the link ends in hostus.page.