The best way, by far, is to use PHP, ASP or a Perl CGI script to handle your form submissions. If your web hosting account allows you to use one of these options, you should. They work with all browsers, and you can process the information and make sure it is valid before sending it on by email or storing it in a database.
It is also possible to receive form submissions by using a mailto: URL as the ACTION attribute of your <FORM> tag. This method does not work with every browser, but does work with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla/Netscape, and the old Netscape 4.x browsers, which are used by 95% or more of users at the time of this writing.

The biggest disadvantage: as of this writing, Microsoft Internet Explorer will display a warning to the user, pointing out that submitting a form by email will disclose their email address to the recipient, and asking if they really want to do that. This is a good reason to consider using ASP, PHP or CGI instead.

Here is a simple example of a form submission using a mailto: URL:

<FORM METHOD=POST
ACTION="mailto:you@yoursite.com?Subject=Form Submission"
ENCTYPE="text/plain">
<input name=name value="Your Name"> Age<p>
<input name=food value="Food Preference"> Food<p>
Your Details:
<p>
<textarea name="details"></textarea>
<p>
<input type=submit value="Send Application Now">
</FORM>