Contact form plugins for WordPress are helpful additions to your website because they allow you to easily add in a form that your visitors can fill out. Do you need a contact form? Not at all, you can simply tell your audience to contact you at a specific email or to follow you on various social profiles.
However, if you’re engaged in some sort of business activity then you’ll want to have a form to make it easy for outreach managers to get in touch with you. So what are the best contact form plugins? You have a lot of options so here are our personal favorites when it comes to creating helpful contact forms.
1 – WP Forms – The best overall form plugin
WP Forms is a feature rich, drag and drop form editor. It’s a great choice to use for a simple contact form as they offer a free “WP Forms Lite” version. With the lite version you can create a responsive, attractive from that you can easily secure using hCaptcha or reCaptcha. You can also setup a custom thank you page for form completion.
The premium version of this plugin is incredibly powerful and comes with pre-built templates for different types of forms such as your basic contact form, feedback forms, polls, surveys and support request form.
You can customize these templates to match the branding of your website, blog or online store. In addition to being able to customize the look and feel of your forms, WPForms also provides a number of features designed specifically for user experience optimization:
- Email automations when someone fills out a form
- Built-in spam protection
- Smart conditional logic
- Customizable fields and geo-location features
- Landing page form design
WP Forms the paid version is ideal for any professional blogger or ecommerce website. With integration of Stripe and PayPal built in as well as a form abandonment feature, WP Forms is ideal if you’re going to be using a wide variety of forms on your websites like surveys, payments forms, registration forms, newsletter and more.
If you’re looking for an all-inclusive solution to creating beautiful and functional forms on WordPress, WPForms is definitely something worth checking out . If all you need is a simple contact form then the free version of WP Lite is perfect.
2 – Ninja Forms – Beginner friendly option
Ninja Forms is similar to WP Forms in that they leverage a drag and drop editor as well as various pre-made templates. They are a good choice for total beginners due to their drag and drop nature and ability to add forms to your pages with their on screen walk-throughs.
However, Ninja Forms over does the beginner aspect in that it can be quite annoying and intrusive for more experienced creators to customize forms and add forms as appropriate to your pages. They really designed this plugin with the total beginner in mind.
Last, it’s quite annoying that you can’t adjust where the emails are sent to with Ninja Forms. Everything is sent to the admin email for your WordPress installation and in the free version there is no way to change this. Also, they offer a lot of helpful extension, but the extension are quite expensive.
3 – Gravity Forms – Excellent paid plugin
Gravity Forms is a premium WordPress contact form plugin. With Gravity Forms, you can create forms for contact information, lead collection, event submissions or anything else you need. This is not a plugin for simple contact forms (though it can do that), it’s to help you collect leads and market your website.
As a premium plugin, they only offer the ability to use a demo version as there is no free version. But if you’re looking for an alternative to WP Forms this plugin is it. It comes with three different pricing points, with each pricing point giving you access to different add-ons.
The ecommerce add-ons that enable Stripe, PayPal, Square and more do require a “Pro” subscription which can be quite expensive if you’re not pulling in the revenue to justify the cost. For more advanced features like polls, webhooks, user registration, 2checkout integration you’ll need an “elite” subscription.
Overall an outstanding, expensive choice for websites that engage in ecommerce and blogging.
4 – JetPack -The WordPress option
Jetpack is a plugin from the team behind WordPress (known as Automattic). A lesser known feature that is provided by this WordPress plugin is that it comes with simple contact form that you can add to your website.
The original goal of Jetpack was to bring over a lot of the beloved features users get when using WordPress.com to the self hosted version of WordPress you get when you self host your own blog and website.
The contact form builder from Jetpack allows you to create contact forms, appointment forms, registration and RSVP forms, newsletter signup and feedback forms. All for free. Last, it also integrates with Creative Mail (and email list provider) and Jetpacks own CRM.
5 – Forminator – The simple multi-purpose choice
Forminator is a plugin that is designed to focus on doing three things really well. Creating contact forms, creating polls and creating quizzes. It provides a drag and drop editor that contain a lot of useful fields and it’s GDPR compliant.
This plugin helps you easily create online forms for your blog, website, or store. You can use it to create an opt-in form for your site with just a few clicks using the built in drag and drop builder to customize the look of your form with ease.
While Forminator does have a pro version, it made our list because the free version provides the ability to setup Stripe or Paypal as a payment gateway for donations or selling of digital products. In general though, if you’re wanting a plugin to create quizzes, opinion polls and simple contact forms then checkout Forminator.
6 – Formidable Forms – The developer choice
While most forms on this list have the ability to setup calculations, that is a from where people can input information and the form puts out a result (think a real estate website for example), Formidable Forms is one of the few options that provide this feature for free.
But it does not stop there, like WP Forms, Formidable Forms comes with a drag and drop block builder for quizzes, payment gateways, user profiles, surveys and of course the contact form.
One aspect to note is that they do have excellent integration with Woo Commerce by way of allowing you to build product specific forms. They only slight drawback of this option is that they are no designed for total beginners like Ninja Forms. Instead, you should be an advanced user of WordPress.
Contact Form 7 – The Retired Option
One the most popular contact form option for WordPress, it has since been outpaced by all the other options here on this list. Contact Form 7 is free and decent enough to setup a simple contact form but beyond that there is not really any compelling reason to use it.
It has a dated interface that has not been updated in years, it’s difficult and clunky to secure it with any sort of Captcha and there is a massive lack on add-ons and integration.
We simply want to mention Contact Form 7 due to it’s legacy and popularity. If it gets updated to easily integrate hCaptcha or reCaptcha and if it comes with a better interface then we would happily suggest this plugin. But as it stands, it pales when compared to all other options.
Contact form plugin FAQ
Let’s me address some commonly asked questions when it comes to adding a form to your website. You have a lot of options and a lot of different use cases.
Do websites need a contact form?
Contact forms are strictly optional. While I do strongly recommend creating a contact page, the form is optional. If you want to make it difficult for people to contact you then don’t add a form. But if you’re building an online business then it is important for hygiene purposes.
Your visitors will expect a professionally designed website to offer up an easy to use contact form on a contract page.
What does it mean to make a secure contact form for WordPress?
A secure form is protected with some type of captcha to prevent spam bots from messaging you. If your form is not secure you will be bombarded with spam. Securing a form with WordPress is easy and free. Watch my tutorial here on how it’s done.
What contact form plugin is best?
If all you need is a contact form then WP Forms is the best. It’s free and easy to use. You can also upgrade your account to get access to other types of forms like for things like surveys, newsletters, registration and payment forms.
If you need a powerful form builder then Gravity Forms is still the industry leader. It’s only a select target market that needs such a powerful form builder, but if your business requires it then it’s worth getting.
Best contact from plugin for WordPress
If you’re looking for the perfect contact form plugin, we recommend Gravity Forms or WP Forms. WP Forms has a lite version that is perfect for simple contact forms, but if you need more advanced features for specific use cases like a calculation form or registration form then you can’t go wrong with Gravity Forms or WP Forms.
Using a contact form plugin not only provides an intuitive drag and drop interface that makes creating forms fast and simple, but with more premium options you get access to all sorts of features like conditional logic fields, adding custom validation rules or even using your own CSS styling in their templates.
Whether you want to offer lead generation opportunities with a subscription form or just keep track of subscribers who have signed up for your newsletter – there are so many ways that an advanced, premium form building plugin can help make your life easier as well and more profitable.
