Contact form, newsletter and JavaScript function counter

[blazing wharf]

I'm a beginner and have started to build my first site, so are still trying to learn and research. I know I want to have a contact form and a newsletter signup. I'm looking for a free solution, I'm not expecting any big quantities.

Am I better of going with a 3rd party API type solution or is there a better way? Astro DB?

A little tricker thing is I have some client side JavaScript functions that I want to try and count the amount they are running. I now have a simple solution that increases a counter in a .txt file using php. But I plan to deploy to netlify and assume that isn't possible for their free option?

Is this something I can solve with Astro DB or what other solutions is there?

[unique elk]

Depending on the size of your project you could use EmailJS (when people fill out my contact form I get an email with the data)

I use it for my company site and a few client sites (smaller local businesses) and have never needed more than the 200 emails/month free tier

https://www.emailjs.com/

For the second part of your question I don't have a solution offhand but I'm sure someone will have some ideas

[blazing wharf]

thanks this looks great, 200/month should definitely be enough.