Do you want to add a contact form to your WordPress website?
A contact form is essential for any WordPress website. Whether it’s a single-page portfolio, a multi-author blog, or a multi-product eCommerce website,.
As a website owner, I can tell there are a million things you would rather do than spend time building contact forms. That’s where contact form WordPress plugins came into the picture.
A contact form plugin lets you build contact forms within minutes, either from scratch or using their in-built form templates.
However, with so many options available, choosing the best contact form plugin for your WordPress website can be challenging.
In this article, I have discussed the essential features, pros, and cons of the best contact form plugins for WordPress. This guide will help you choose the perfect contact form plugin for your WordPress website.
Which is the Best Contact Form Plugin for WordPress?
There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ contact form plugin. The best WordPress contact form plugin depends on your website’s needs, use cases, and budget.
Almost every free WordPress contact form plugin comes with basic fields and minimal design options and fulfills the purpose of a contact form, i.e., to keep your customers in contact with you.
On the other hand, paid contact form plugins offer more advanced features such as conditional logic, advanced fields, file submission options, and third-party integrations.
To help you choose the best option for your website, I have compiled a list of features that you should consider while choosing the best WordPress form builder for your website.
Overview of the Best Contact Form Plugins for WordPress
| Best For | Pricing | Free Version | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Formidable Forms | Powerful and data-driven forms | Starts at $79/yr | Yes |
| 2 | Gravity Forms | Complex and highly-customizable forms | Starts at $59/yr | No |
| 3 | WPForms | Easy and powerful forms | Starts at $99/yr | Yes |
| 4 | Fluent Forms | Visually appealing and dynamic online forms | Starts at $79/yr | Yes |
| 5 | Contact Form 7 | Basic contact forms | Free | Yes |
What Features to Look For When Choosing a Contact Form Plugin for WordPress?
During my research and testing, I found these features to be the most important when looking for a WordPress contact form plugin.
1. Drag and Drop Form Builder
Though it’s not a necessary contact form feature, it’s a very good one. A drag-and-drop form builder allows you to create beautiful custom forms easily just by dragging form fields into the editor area without any coding knowledge. It also lets you change the form styles, adding more complex logic such as conditional fields or file uploads within minutes.
2. User-Friendly Interface
User interface become super important, especially for non-technical users, such as bloggers, startups, and millennial entrepreneurs who want to spend less time figuring out the plugin options and creating forms and more time running their websites and businesses.
3. Responsive Mobile Friendly
Recently, Exploding Topics found out that over 60% of website traffic comes from mobile devices. Therefore, it’s important to know that forms created by the form builder plugin look great and function on all screen sizes and devices, including mobile, tablet, and desktop.
4. Pre-built form templates
Pre-built form templates can save you tons of time and effort, as they give you a starting point and a rough idea of where to begin and what can be included in the form that you want to build. Also, check if the plugin offers the form templates that your business website is going to need. Some popular form templates are multi-step forms, quizzes, polls, surveys, conversational forms, feedback forms, and payment forms.
5. Conditional Logic
Conditional logic allows you to show or hide form fields based on user choices. This makes the forms more dynamic and personalized, which improves the overall user experience.
6. Spam Protection
Spam protection features, such as reCAPTCHA, honeypot fields, hCaptcha, and data validations, are must-have features to protect your forms from receiving fraudulent spam entries by bad bots on the internet.
7. Entry Submissions and Management
Entry Submissions and Management allows you to view, manage, and export the submitted form entries right from the WordPress dashboard. It enables you to handle user responses and data collected more effectively.
8. File Uploads
File uploads allow your website users to upload files, images, and videos via your contact form. This feature is primarily used with job application forms, support request forms, etc.
9. Email Notifications
Email notifications are being sent to you and/or the user when a form is submitted. A contact form builder plugin should allow you to customize email notifications so that you can not only keep track of the submitted form entries but also reply to your users immediately.
10. Third-party Integrations
Third-party integrations enhance the functionality of contact forms by connecting them with email marketing services, CRMs, marketing software, payment gateways, and more. Make sure the plugin offers integrations with services that your business requires.
11. Reporting and Form Analytics
Reporting and form analytics help you understand how well a contact form is performing, user behavior, submission rates, completion times, etc. With these reports, you can further optimize your contact forms for better results.
12. Support and Documentation
Support plays a crucial role in any product or service because it makes you feel assured that someone will always have your back when you need help. Make sure the contact form plugin offers reliable support options, such as multiple channels like a ticketing system, email, phone, etc., and well-written, user-friendly documentation.
Of course, the factors you consider to be the most important will vary depending on the type of business you’re building and your skill level. That’s why we recommend you try and evaluate each option on the list carefully.
1. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is one of the most advanced contact form builder plugins for WordPress that specializes in building powerful WordPress forms and data-driven WordPress applications.
The star feature of Formidable Forms is Formidable Views, which allows you to transform the form-submitted entries into calendars, listings, directories, reports, graphs, charts, WordPress posts, and powerful front-end content.
With over 40 fields and 300 pre-built form templates, you can easily build simple contact forms or complex multi page forms using the easiest drag-and-drop form builder.
There is a rich array of features, from save-and-continue options, cascading form fields, conditional logic, and partial form submissions to powerful integration options for front-end user post submissions, calculated fields, quizzes, and user flow management.
Formidable Forms Pros
- Pre-built Form Templates: The free version comes with 33 pre-built templates, while the Pro version offers over 300 contact form templates.
- 4+ Million Downloads: The free version of the WPForms plugin has over 4 million active installations on WordPress.org with a 4.8 rating.
- 40+ Unique Form Fields: The free version offers 15 fields to begin with, and the pro version unlocks over 40 form fields.
- Spam Protection: It offers spam protection using reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, Honeypot’s invisible spam protection, and JavaScript token protection.
- Compliance: Accessible design with WCAG compliance and GDPR compliance.
- Advanced Forms: Create advanced forms like WooCommerce product forms, calculator forms, subscription payment forms, and conversational forms.
- Powerful Features: Supports conditional form confirmations, cascading lookup fields, repeater fields, SMS notifications, automated form actions, and much more.
- Powerful Integrations: Offers integration with top email marketing platforms, CRMs, and automation platforms.
- API Integrations: It connects with 5000+ applications through Zapier and Uncanny Automator.
- 3rd Party WordPress Plugins and Applications: It also integrates with third-party WordPress plugins and apps, including MonsterInsights, AffiliateWP, LifterLMS, MailOptin, etc.
- Money-back Guarantee: Formidable Forms offers a 14-day money-back guarantee with a no-questions-asked policy.
- Payment Integration: It integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net.
Formidable Forms Cons
- Limited Support Options: Formidable Forms have limited support options as they only support them via their documentation and ticketing system.
- Limited Features in the Free Version: You need to upgrade to the Pro version for advanced and powerful features like conditional logic.
- Decrease Performance: Formidable Forms loads form styles and JS scripts even on pages that don’t have a form. It affects the overall page speed of the WordPress site and results in decreased performance.
- Higher Renewal Cost: The pro version renews at full price. The discounted price is only for one time.
- Multisite Support: Multisite support is only present in the Elite plan, which costs $599/year.
- Limited Expansion Options: It has limited extensibility options.
- Extras Cost for Addons: Each addon comes with a separate cost.
- Steep Learning Curve: It comes with a steep learning curve.
Formidable Forms Pricing
Formidable Forms offers 4 different pricing plans:
- Basic: The Basic plan costs $79/year for 1 WordPress site.
- Plus: The Plus plan costs $199/year for up to 3 WordPress sites.
- Business: The business plan costs $399/year for up to 7 WordPress sites.
- Elite: The Elite plan costs $599/year for unlimited WordPress sites.
Formidable Forms offers a 50% discount for the first year and charges 100% at renewal.
Also, all plans have a 14-day money-back guarantee, and features keep adding up as you upgrade to a higher plan.
2. Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is a paid WordPress form builder plugin that can be used for everything from creating a simple contact form to complex and highly customizable forms.
With over 30 fields available, the drag-and-drop visual builder becomes even more powerful when combined with built-in advanced features like conditional logic and workflow automation.
It makes it easy for everyone, including beginners, to create advanced forms like conversational forms, payment forms, content submission forms, and multi-page forms.
High extensibility with third-party add-ons, webhooks, great documentation, and easy integration with Zapier makes Gravity Forms the #1 choice for WordPress developers. It also allows developers to create their own add-on via BYOA (Build Your Own Add-On).
Gravity Forms Pros
- Mobile Responsive and Robust: Builds highly robust and customizable mobile responsive forms.
- Advanced Entry Submissions: Collects entry submissions both in the database and via email notifications. Also, automatically sync submitted entries with your email marketing service or CRM.
- Dynamic Features Based on User Submissions: Unlimited email notifications and confirmation messages can be set up based on user submissions.
- Powerful Features: Supports file uploads, advanced calculations based on user submissions, in-dashboard entry management, front-end user submissions, and powerful data capture setups.
- Spam Protection: Offers anti-spam features with Honeypot, Google Recaptcha, and Akismet.should
- Compliance: Accessible design, GDPR, and PCI compliance.
- Advanced Forms: Create advanced forms like payment forms, email opt-ins, quizzes, surveys, registration, and lots more.
- Seamless integrations: Integrations with your favorite third-party tools and services, including email marketing services, payment providers, CRM, Zapier, and many more.
- Great support: There are multiple support options, like email support, forums, and FAQs.
- Documentation: Handful documentation, a video library, and a huge community to help.
- Popular addons: Some of the most used Gravity Forms addons are Convert to PDFs, Generate Charts, Display Entries on the Front End, and Fillable PDFs.
- Third-party extension marketplaces: Many third-party extension marketplaces are available – GravityFlow, GravityWiz, and GravityKit.
- Worthy of its Pricing: It may look a little expensive compared to other WordPress contact form plugins, but its pricing is worth all the features it offers.
- Money-back Guarantee: Gravity Forms offers a 30-day money-back guarantee with a no-questions-asked policy.
Gravity Forms Cons
- Only Premium Plugin: Gravity Forms comes in a premium version, and there is no free version available, unlike all the other plugins.
- Limited Form Templates: It comes with a limited number of form templates to choose from. Way less compared to other contact form plugins available on the market.
- No Trial Version: Though no trial version is available, Gravity Forms offers a 14-day free demo with limited features.
- Multisite Support: Multisite support is only present in the Elite plan, which costs $259/year.
- Costly with Third-party Addons: Annual costs hike with the purchase of third-party add-ons.
- Need for a Developer: You may need a developer with some of your requirements.
Gravity Forms Pricing
Gravity Forms offers 4 different pricing plans –
- Basic: The Basic plan costs $59/year for 1 site.
- Pro: The Plus plan costs $159/year for up to 3 sites.
- Elite: The Elite plan costs $259/year for unlimited sites.
There is a 30-day money-back guarantee on all the Gravity Forms plans, and features keep adding up as you upgrade to a higher plan.
3. WPForms
WPForms is the most-user friendly WordPress contact form plugin that lets you build any type of form easily.
It is known for its simplicity and powerful features like smart conditional logic, real-time form notifications, entry management, spam protection, and payment integration.
It has the most intuitive drag-and-drop form builder that’s super easy to use and allows you to build even advanced forms such as online surveys, order forms, multi-page forms, email subscription forms, post-submission forms, and user registration forms within minutes.
WPForms Pros –
- Pre-built Form Templates: A rich template library of over 1800 pre built form templates.
- 6+ Million Downloads: The WPForms lite version has over 6 million active installations on WordPress.org. That means, currently, over 6 million websites are using WPForms.
- 40 Unique Fields: The free version comes with 16 basic form fields, and the pro version unlocks all 40 fields to use.
- Extra Spam Protection: It offers spam protection using Honeypot, Google Recaptcha, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, and custom-anti spam features, including a country filter, keyword filter, and custom captcha.
- Conversion-focused Features: User segmentation, form abandonment, user journey reports, and geolocation.
- Automated Workflows: Entry management, data routing, and integration with Uncanny Automator streamline the automated workflows with CRMs and email marketing platforms.
- Integrations: Offers integrations with popular email marketing services, CRMs, payment gateways, and useful utility apps.
- 7000+ Zapier Integrations: Zapier allows integration of WPForms with over 7000 apps.
- Compliance: Helps you stay compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws.
- Money-back Guarantee: WPForms offers a 14-day money-back guarantee with a no-questions-asked policy.
- Documentation: They have many articles, guides, and complete documentation on their website.
- Support: They offer different support options based on the purchased plan. Also, they have email support and a Facebook group to help.
WPForms Cons
- Limited Features in Free Version: You need to upgrade to the Pro version for advanced and powerful features.
- Bit Expensive: It’s more expensive than its competitors.
- Bloated CSS & JS Code: WPForms loads CSS and JS files along with inline CSS code throughout the site, even on pages that don’t have a contact form. This slows down the overall performance of the website.
- It loads CSS and JS files even on pages that don’t have a Contact Form 7 form. This slows down the page speed of the website.
- Limited Expansion Options: This is not the best option for extensive customization and doesn’t have many expansion options.
- Addons: Each specific functionality add-on has its own plugin. You may end up having more plugins to extend the functionality, which will result in more complexity and can affect performance.
- Multisite Support: Multisite support is only present in the Elite plan, which costs $599/year.
- Learning Curve: It is easy to use but comes with a learning curve.
- Costly Renewal: Pro version renews at full price. The discounted price is only for one time.
WPForms Pricing
WPForms offers 4 different pricing plans –
- Basic: The Basic plan costs $99/year for 1 site.
- Plus: The Plus plan costs $199/year for up to 3 sites.
- Pro: The business plan costs $399/year for up to 5 sites.
- Elite: The Elite plan costs $599/year for unlimited sites.
WPForms forms offer a 50% discount for the first year and charge 100% at renewal.
Also, all plans have a 14-day money-back guarantee, and features keep adding up as you upgrade to a higher plan.
4. Fluent Forms
Fluent Forms is a lightweight and easy-to-use, beginner-friendly WordPress contact form builder plugin that effortlessly lets you create visually appealing and dynamic online forms with no code.
It has the most intuitive and fastest drag-and-drop builder and comes with over 45 unique form fields and necessary features like multi-column form layout, conditional logic, conditional email notifications, numeric calculation, visual reporting, and advanced form style customization options.
Fluent Forms Pros
- No Bloated Code: One of the best things is that it only adds form styles and javascript files to the pages where a Fluent Form is present. No bloated code is added throughout the website.
- Pre-built Templates:
- 4+ Million Downloads: The free version of the WPForms plugin has over 6 million active installations on WordPress.org. That means, currently, over 6 million websites are using WPForms.
- Extra Spam Protection: It offers spam protection using Honeypot, Google Recaptcha, hCaptcha, Cloudflare Turnstile, and custom anti-spam options, including a country filter, keyword filter, and custom captcha.
- Visual Reports: It builds a visual report of the entries submitted for each form and presents them in an insightful view, such as bar charts and pie charts for the last 30 days.
- Integrations: Offers integrations with 45+ third-party tools such as CRMs, automation tools, notification software, and more.
- 4000+ Zapier Integrations: Zapier allows integration of Fluent Forms with over 7000 apps.
- Integrations with Other Fluent Products: It offers seamless integration with other Fluent products such as FluentCRM, FluentSMTP, and Ninja Tables.
- Compliance: Helps you stay compliant with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy laws.
- Money-back Guarantee: Fluent Form offers a 14-day no-risk money-back guarantee.
- Documentation: They have documentation for normal users and separate documentation for developers
- Support: They offer ticket support on their website.
Fluent Forms Cons
- Limited Integrations: There are very limited direct integrations with third-party services like email marketing, marketing campaigns, payment gateways, etc.
- Slow Support: Many users have complained about their slow responses to support.
- Limited Design Options: The form styles work great but don’t match the website brand styles or WordPress themes styles. Also, there are limited editing options available to match it. You need to write custom CSS to match the styles, which could be difficult for a non-tech user.
- Lifetime Plans are Pricey: The lifetime plans are a bit pricey.
Fluent Forms Pricing –
Fluent Forms comes with 3 different pricing plans:
- Single Site License: The single site license costs $79/year for 1 domain license.
- Agency License: An agency license costs $159/year for up to 5 domains.
- Unlimited License: The unlimited license plan costs $299/year for unlimited domains.
One of the best things about the pricing plans of Fluent Forms, unlike other form builder plugins, is that they include everything from add-ons, integrations, and features in all of their pricing plans.
They offer priority support and a 14-day money-back guarantee.
5. Contact Form 7 (Not Recommended)
Contact Form 7 is the oldest, most downloaded, and most popular free contact form plugin. It was added to the WordPress.org plugin repository on August 2, 2007.
Though it offers very limited features, which is understandable as there is no PRO version by the author, it fulfills its purpose nicely, i.e., to create contact forms that are stable and reliable.
It lets you build unlimited forms and comes with basic form fields like text, email, tel, date, dropdown, checkboxes, radio buttons, email, URL, etc. You can also manage email addresses of your choice to receive the submitted entries and alter the messages.
Contact Form 7 Pros
- Free: It’s always been free since it was first released.
- Minimal: The minimal features make it lightweight and do the job it was developed for. Forms can be added to pages and posts using shortcodes and blocks.
- 10+ Million Downloads: That’s right. It’s that popular but limited.
- Spam Protection: It offers spam protection using Google reCAPTCHA and Akismet.
- Support: The plugin author is still maintaining and replying to the queries posted on the WordPress support page.
- Documentation: There is documentation and FAQs on the plugin’s official website.
Contact Form 7 Cons
- Affects Performance: It loads CSS and JS files even on pages that don’t have a Contact Form 7 form. This slows down the page speed of the website.
- No Visual Form Builder: It becomes less intuitive due to the absence of a drag-and-drop visual editor.
- No Complex Forms: Contact Form 7 is ideal for creating basic contact forms but doesn’t support complex forms.
- No Support for WooCommerce: It is not compatible with WooCommerce.
- HTML Knowledge: HTML knowledge is required if you want to customize the fields.
- No Database Submissions: By default, Contact Form 7 doesn’t save submitted form entries in the database, but there is an additional plugin with the name “Flamingo” that stores the submissions in the database and dashboard.
- Conflicts: Many users have experienced conflicts with many themes and plugins.
- No in-built SMTP: It relies on the WordPress mail function for email notifications. Due to the lack of an in-built SMTP, many users have faced deliverability issues using Contact Form 7.
Contact Form 7 Pricing
Contact Form 7 is free of charge.
Which WordPress Contact Form Plugin Should you choose?
As I said earlier, the best contact form builder plugin for WordPress will vary depending on your needs. However, here are my recommendations based on common scenarios.
- If you are a beginner, you can choose WPForms or Fluent Forms; they have the easiest drag-and-drop builder to figure out.
- If you don’t want to pay, you can go with the free version of WPForms, Formidable Forms, or Contact Form 7.
- If you want to create advanced data-driven forms, Formidable Forms is the best choice.
- If you want highly customizable forms, Gravity Forms does it best.
- If you want to create conversation forms, you can go with WP Forms, Formidable Forms, or Gravity Forms.
- If you want pre-built beautiful contact form templates, choose WPForms since it has the most contact form templates available.
- If you want the best value, Gravity Forms or Fluent Forms have the cheapest pricing plans.
- If you are familiar with HTML and need the most basic WordPress contact form plugin, go with Contact Form 7.
I hope this guide helped you choose the best contact form builder plugin for your WordPress website. Do let me know in the comments which plugin will you choose.
