A drop is the one day your form has to be right. Five hundred units, one link, and a rush at 10:00 AM that lasts eleven minutes. If the form takes 540 reservations, you spend the afternoon writing forty apologies and the next drop starts with less trust than this one.
Most overselling is not greed. It is a form that cannot count under load. Here is what a drop needs from its waitlist, and the ready-made setup that does it.
Why forms oversell
A typical drop form has a note in the description that says "first 500 only." The form does not read the note. It takes every submission and leaves the counting to you, later, in a spreadsheet, after the damage.
Even forms with a response limit tend to fail on the one morning it matters. The limit is checked before the write, not with it, so two submissions that arrive in the same second both see "499 taken" and both get in. Multiply that by a rush and the sheet ends up ten or twenty rows past the line.
The other leak is duplicates. One person, three email addresses, three spots. A note that says "one per person" catches nobody.
Full means full
The drop template below sets capacity to 500 in total. The 501st person does not see a form. They see a message you wrote, and nothing is recorded for them.
The number and the cap are assigned in the same database write, under a row lock. When two hundred people tap at 10:00:04, they are queued up and handed 1, 2, 3 in the order the database sees them. Two people never get the same number, and nobody gets a number past the cap. It is not a check followed by a save. It is one operation that either succeeds with a number or fails as full.
Each email address gets one entry. If someone submits twice, the second attempt shows them the number they already have instead of a new one. That is the dedupe, and it costs the person nothing but a repeated screen.
The form asks for an edition and a terms checkbox that reads "One per person, no resale." The count is shown on the form as it climbs, which is honest and also good for the drop: people can see 412 of 500 and decide now.
The window before the window
Some drops should not be open all week. A sneaker release with 300 pairs usually opens at a set hour so regulars and scalpers start from the same line.
The sneaker template adds opening hours to the total cap. The list opens Saturday at 10:00 AM and closes at 2:00 PM. Before Saturday, the page does not show a form. It shows the exact opening time, in the visitor's time zone, so nobody refreshes a dead page at 9:58 wondering whether they missed it. At 10:00 the form appears. At 2:00 it closes, whether or not the 300 pairs are gone.
The form asks for name, US size, and the one-per-person checkbox. The success screen tells them to bring ID and their number to the store on Saturday.
What people get after they tap
Every person who reserves a spot gets a private status link on screen; Starter and Pro can also email it. The link shows whether they are still on the list and lets them leave it. When someone leaves, their spot frees up and the next person to reach the form can take it. Numbers are never reused, so spot 88 stays spot 88 in your records even if it was released and taken again.
You get an email for each reservation too. On a 500-unit drop that is a lot of email, so most people filter it to a folder and watch the dashboard instead.
Release day, in order
When the list fills, or when you decide it is time, pause the waitlist from the dashboard. The page shows your closed message and stops taking entries. Then export the CSV. It comes out in position order with every field, so the edition and the size are right there next to the number.
Fulfil in order. Send checkout links to 1 through 100, then the next hundred, or all at once if stock is certain. If someone does not pay by your deadline, remove their entry and the spot goes to the next person you invite. The list is the source of truth for who was first, and it is the same list everyone saw their number on.
On the Starter plan and up, a webhook fires for each reservation, so you can push entries into a sheet or your store as they arrive instead of exporting at the end.
When not to use Unwaited
If your drop is really a pre-launch campaign that depends on referrals, leaderboards, and moving people up when they share, use GetWaitlist or LaunchList. Those are built around sharing and we are not. Positions here are the order people joined and nothing moves them.
If you need to take payment the moment someone reserves, we do not do that. Reserve here and charge from your store when you confirm. And if you need to email the whole list from one place with a template, export the CSV and use your email tool. Starter and Pro can send confirmation emails; the Entries tab can send one "your turn" email at a time, not campaigns.
For everything else a drop needs, a cap that holds, one spot per person, a number, and a list in order, the template above is live in about a minute.