Build a petition website that a decision maker has to answer
A petition works when it asks one named person or body for one specific thing, and when the signatures can be shown to be real people with a stake. Your own petition website gives you the wording, the address and the list of supporters. With Anticode, each signature arrives as a form submission you can export; there's no public live counter on the page.
Start with the target and the ask
Most petitions that go nowhere address "the government" and ask for something vague. Name the decision maker who can actually say yes: the council's planning committee, the head teacher, the board of a housing association. Then state the ask so it can be answered with a yes or a no.
| Vague | Answerable |
|---|---|
| Save our library | We ask Kirkby Council's cabinet to keep Westvale Library open five days a week in the 2027 budget |
| Make our roads safer | We ask the county highways team to install a zebra crossing outside St Anne's Primary on Mill Lane |
| Better pay for staff | We ask the trust board to pay all support staff at least the Real Living Wage from April |
Below the ask, explain why in three or four short paragraphs, with sourced facts. Link to the council report or the data you're relying on. A petition read by an officer will be checked; one claim that falls apart weakens all the rest.
What a signature should collect
Signatures carry weight when they show who's affected. A petition signup form usually needs a name, an email, and a postcode or town so you can show local support. Add a tick box for consent to updates, separate from signing. Ask nothing you won't use.
Anticode's built-in newsletter form takes only an email, and the contact form asks for name, email and a message, so a petition with a postcode field and a consent choice is a custom form tied to a site function. It can carry up to 30 plain-text fields, and its thank-you page can say what happens next, for instance "We'll hand the petition in on 3 March. Please share this page." Formulas work on numbers only, so checking postcodes means a webhook function on your own endpoint; for most petitions, de-duplicating and checking in a spreadsheet afterwards is enough.
Where the signatures go
Every signature is saved in your dashboard and sealed at rest, and can be emailed to you. A connector can send each one on as it arrives:
- Google Sheets or Airtable for a list you can count, de-duplicate and sort by postcode before delivery.
- Mailchimp or Kit for campaign updates. These receive newsletter sign-ups only, so use the email form for supporters who want updates.
- Slack or Discord so the campaign team sees momentum building.
Each submission is sent once, without retries. Before you deliver, compare the count in your sheet with the count in your dashboard and export from the dashboard if they differ.
The two honest gaps
There's no live signature counter. Published Anticode pages run no scripts, so the page can't show a number that ticks up. If you want to show progress, update a line such as "1,240 people have signed" by hand every day or two; it takes seconds in the visual editor. Many campaigns find a regular, true update more credible than a counter anyway.
The free plan holds signatures over its monthly allowance. On free sites a monthly number of submissions is visible (100 by default) and the rest are kept but held until you upgrade. A petition that takes off can pass that in an afternoon. If you expect real numbers, check pricing before you launch rather than mid-campaign.
Platform or your own site?
Petition platforms bring visitors who browse causes, a live count and sharing tools. Your own online petition page gives you the address, the wording, the design and the supporter list without a platform's branding or its own asks to your signers. Official routes matter too: some parliaments and councils run their own e-petition systems with thresholds that trigger a response or debate, and a petition on your own site won't count towards those. If an official route exists, consider using it and using your site to explain the campaign and point people there.
Delivering it
- Close signing on a date you announced and say so on the page.
- Export the list, remove duplicates and test entries, and count by area.
- Deliver the count, the ask and a summary by area, not supporters' email addresses.
- Post the response, or the lack of one, on the page and email the people who asked for updates.
Signers' details are personal data. Anticode writes a Privacy Policy from what the form collects; read it as a starting point, not legal advice. A site that collects data also can't be published until the account owner and the person publishing have two-factor sign-in on.
Questions people ask
Can people sign without an account?
Yes. The form is on a public page and needs no sign-in.
Can I stop people signing twice?
The form doesn't check against earlier signatures. De-duplicate by email in your spreadsheet before you count.
Can I add a video explaining the campaign?
Not on the page itself: published pages can't play video or embed YouTube and other players. Put the video on YouTube or Vimeo and link to it.