Per-form submission limits for capacity-limited signups

[jacoplane]

Problem

I need to limit the number of accepted submissions for an individual form. The first-party @emdash-cms/plugin-forms does not currently offer this setting, which would be a requirement for migrating a site I help run to EmDash.

Once a form reaches its limit, further submissions should be rejected with a clear message that registration is closed. The limit needs to hold when several visitors submit for the last place simultaneously; hiding the submit button alone would not be sufficient.

A remaining-places indicator would be useful, but the essential requirement is enforcing the limit. Existing forms could remain unlimited unless a limit is configured.

Use case

I help run a community organization whose current WordPress site uses Elementor and WPForms. We use forms for camp and event registrations with limited capacity. Organizers need to avoid accepting more registrations than they can accommodate, and visitors need to know when registration is full.

For example, with a limit of 30 and 29 submissions already accepted, two concurrent valid submissions should result in one acceptance and one response explaining that the form is full. Each accepted submission would consume one place, and accepted submissions would remain available in the normal forms inbox.

Current workarounds

The site is still on WordPress. As preparation for a possible migration, I have a prototype in a fork of a third-party sandboxed forms plugin that explores submission limits, concurrent last-place submissions, and frontend capacity display. This is feasibility evidence, rather than an implementation proposed for the first-party plugin.

I'd appreciate guidance on whether this belongs in the existing forms plugin or a separate registration plugin, and whether a feature plan or RFC would be appropriate. Counting rules, including whether deletion or retention cleanup releases a place, would need to be agreed during design.

AI assistance: Codex helped research and draft this post.

Your involvement

• I am requesting this capability.
• I am offering to champion the design in a feature plan or RFC.
• I am offering to implement it after the design is accepted.

[minemeraj]

This would be a great addition.