By default, Firefox’s ETP is set to Standard, which will allow your HubSpot forms to work fine. But if the user has set ETP to “Strict”, your HubSpot forms will not be able to load.
Thankfully, Firefox does include the warning that some sites might break when enabling Strict ETP mode, but the user will probably forget about this warning by the time they get to your site.
Error Message in Place of Form
With Strict ETP mode enabled, all the users will see on your site is just a big empty space where the form should be. There will be no indication that anything is wrong, which can be very confusing – even worse than a blatant error! The most direct way to address these users is to display an error message in place of the form. You can do this by modifying the HubSpot form embed script. Before hbspt.forms.create, add the following code:
if (!hbspt) {
document.currentScript.insertAdjacentText(‘afterend’, ‘It looks like your browser might be blocking the form. Please try changing back to the default privacy/tracking mode in your browser. Thank you!’);
return;
}
// hbspt.forms.create…
With this, at least the user will understand the problem lies with their settings, and they can help themselves.
Custom Domain for HubSpot Forms
The form doesn’t load in Firefox Strict mode because it is loaded from HubSpot domains, including:
- js.hsforms.net
- forms.hsforms.com
- track.hubspot.com
- forms-na1.hsforms.com
Firefox uses Disconnect to determine which domains have trackers. You can see the list of domains. Ideally, the HubSpot forms could be loaded through a custom domain matching the root domain of your site (for example, hubspot.mydomain.com) to get around the issue of third-party scripts and cookies, but unfortunately, HubSpot does not support this feature at this time. There is a feature request currently open for it, though.
Alternative Services
Some services do allow custom domains for forms, the primary notable one being Marketo. With Marketo, you can use a custom domain matching your website root domain, so that your forms load even in Firefox Strict ETP mode.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, there isn’t a silver bullet to get HubSpot forms working in Firefox Strict ETP mode, but at least we can give the user an error message instead of a big blank space. Firefox’s market share is estimated to be around 2%, and only a fraction of those users will have Strict ETP mode enabled. Hopefully, with the informative messaging we showed above, this will have minimal impact on your business.
