Hi @danielfdickinson1, thanks for your comments!
Will it eventually be possible to specify specific pages with forms (so Netlify doesn’t need to scan every page for them)?
Good question. Right now there’s nothing in the roadmap for it but it’s a really good idea! I’ll create an issue internally to investigate this (but can’t promise anything!)
Also, for a plain HTML/CSS with only vanilla JS (and then only for search) using an SSG (in my case Hugo), what kinds of options are there for contact forms (the only forms I have on any of my sites) that don’t involve a third-party service?
If there are alternatives that would work in this scenario with only Netlify-based features (preferably with a light usage ‘Starter’ option, even though I will (soon) be going Pro), and there aren’t already Hugo modules to make it easy for others, I’m interested in creating one.
This is exactly what Netlify Forms is for! You can enable form detection for your site and, with just a tiny bit of setup, you can receive email notifications for each submission, without the need of a third party service.
You can find more details in our docs about setup and notifications