Keeping the door open for your visitors to contact you, helps give you an idea on how to improve your website, and overall business. Unfortunately, plopping an email address on the page isn’t the most ideal solution, so you’re going to need to look at using a contact form. In this article, you’ll learn a few solid reasons you need a contact form on your site. Additionally, you’ll learn a little about the best WordPress contact form plugins in the market.
Why you should have a contact form on your site?
There’s a lot of reasons why you should have a contact form on your site, but here’s just a few to mention:
- Greatly reduces spam emails
- Track and organize form submissions
- Potentially build your email newsletter list
- Welcome content submissions from site visitors
- Make appointments
- Sell services
- Give customer support
- Contact forms are an easier method of contact versus copy and pasting email.
Greatly reduces spam emails
Hate spam? Well, contact forms prevent bots from crawling and stealing your email address, so they can dump a bunch of spam in your inbox. Most contact forms even have anti-spam features or extensions that you can reduce spam by form submission too!
Track and organize form submissions
You can design your form to send to specific email addresses, whether it’s you or your team members. You can also ask people to select why they are contacting you, in order to streamline and prioritize your incoming emails.
Potentially build your email newsletter list
If you’re trying to build your list email marketing newsletter, most forms have options to help you integrate with 3rd party providers like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and more.
Welcome content submissions from site visitors
If you’re running a website that allows your visitors to submit content, you can build submission forms that you can review and edit pending articles. You can even allow them to upload photos to accompany their written content.
Make appointments
If you need to keep track of your busy schedule, and offer consulting or just need people to make appointments with you, then you can build a form to do that.
Sell services
Some WordPress contact form plugins offer payment processing extensions, so if you’re selling one-off services or products, then you can set up a simple form for this. The great thing about doing this is, that if you don’t need a full ecommerce solution, then a simple form and ability to take a payment will suffice.
Give customer support
You can offer customer support for your services. Just put up a form, and you can integrate it into help forums like HelpScout, live chat extensions, or even Slack.
Contact forms are an easier method of contact versus copy and pasting email.
People are lazy. They don’t want to add more keyboard and mouse movement than necessary. A form adds an easy prompt for your website visitors to fill out and send. Whether clicking on a linked email on the page, or copy and pasting the email into your email provider, both options are more tedious than filling out a form.
10 Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins
- Jetpack Forms
- Ninja Forms
- WPForms Lite
- Simple Basic Contact Form
- Contact Form by BestWebSoft
- weForms
- Contact Form 7
- Contact Form by Supsystic
- Formidable Forms
- Gravity Forms
1. Jetpack Forms
Jetpack has been known as a plugin that offers a lot of features like social sharing buttons, security, speed optimization, comment enhancement, and even a form. If you just need a basic contact form, and already use this plugin, then just activate the CRM extension and you have a Jetpack form block to add to your pages or posts.
2. Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is another drag and drop WordPress form builder plugin. The great thing about this plugin is that when you install and activate it, there’s already a default contact form ready for you to either use, or edit to suit your needs. The free version is good for basic types of forms. If you need payment processing, conditional logic, or more advanced form functions, then you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version of the plugin.
3. WPForms Lite
WPForms Lite allows users to easily drag and drop in form fields, in order to create most types of forms. The “Lite” version is the free version and includes basic fields like radio, checkbox, message, name, text, email, reCaptcha, and GDPR agreement. If you need anything more, then you’ll need to upgrade for more types of fields.
4. Simple Basic Contact Form
WPKube’s Simple Basic Contact Form plugin is a very straightforward and simple plugin. There’s no drag and drop options. Just fill in the field names to whatever you desire, and then add the shortcode to your page or widgets.
5. Contact Form by BestWebSoft
Contact Form by BestWebSoft is a flexible form building plugin with a lot of emphasis on helping you create a dynamic form for most of your needs. In the free version, you can expect the following features:
- Ability to add contact form to any post type or widget using a shortcode
- GDPR Compliance
- Data validation before the submission
- Option to send a copy of the submitted message to the email
- Receive submissions to the default admin or custom email addresses
- Add additional data about the sender to the email notification
- Responsive Layout
- Editable field labels
- Required fields
- Select used/required for the following fields
- File attachments
- Option to enable additional pre-build fields
- Option to enable two column layout
- Ability to change the contact form’s width
- Drag and drop fields to whatever order you prefer
- Protect contact form from spam with reCaptcha
- Option to add custom code via plugin settings page
For more extension of Contact Form by BestWebSoft, there are both free and paid extensions available.
6. weForms
The weForms contact plugin is a newer form builder in the WordPress community. Users can drag and drop in their desired fields to build responsive and mobile-friendly forms. The plugin offers users the ability to build their forms from scratch or choose from pre-built templates. If you need email marketing integration, payment processing, or other advanced form functions, you’ll need to upgrade to the paid pro version of weForms.
7. Contact Form 7
Contact form 7 is one of the oldest form plugins in the WordPress community. Out-of-the box, it’s a super simple plugin. While there’s no drag and drop, you can use tags and HTML to customize what fields to display, as well as how you want to display them. This plugin is free, and has a lot of free extensions in the WordPress plugin directory to turn this basic contact form into something a little more robust.
8. Contact Form by Supsystic
Contact Form by Supsystic is a full-fledged drag and drop form builder plugin that offers pre-built templates, and has options to allow you to place your form in a widget. Other features include:
- Google reCaptcha
- Ability to publish content from form
- Embed popup forms
- Options for quiz, registration and subscription forms
- File uploader
- Conditional logic functionality
- A/B testing
- Stats
Like most of the form plugins in this list that are free, you an opt to buy the pro version of Contact Form by Supsystic.
9. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms says it’s a solutions-focused form that will allow you to drag and drop fields into places, for forms. You can create a regular contact form or offer surveys, registration forms, payment processing forms, and more. The free version seems to be useful if you don’t need much, but if you need more features, like multi-page forms, file uploader, advanced form for email subscriptions, or conditional logic functions, then you’ll need the paid version of the plugin.
10. Gravity Forms
Of all of this list, Gravity Forms is the only premium paid plugin. It’s one of the oldest drag and drop forms that offers a lot of form power. It’s super easy to use, and if you happen to have trouble, the Gravity Forms user guides and video tutorials are really helpful. You can create nearly any type of form, from a conditional form, to accepting payments, to calculations, and even integrate with your newsletter provider, provide surveys, and even offer quizzes.
While the more you need for the plugin can cost you quite a bit, Gravity Forms is a solid form plugin. Purchasing a license gives you access to their world class plugin support, and depending on the package you bought, all of the extensions included.
In Summary
If you don’t have a contact form, you should seriously think about having one on your site. Less spam and scam emails by having one on your website should convince you to install a WordPress contact form plugin on your site. Try any of the WordPress contact form plugins suggested in this article, and whichever one is easiest for you to use, go with that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WordPress free?
All you need to do to use WordPress is to invest in a web hosting plan since the software itself is free.
Are WordPress plugins free?
WordPress has loads of plugins you can install, some of them are free, but some of them you will need to pay for. You can learn how to use WordPress Plugins on our blog.
Can WordPress be used for eCommerce?
WordPress offers many different ways to build an eCommerce online store for all types of products and markets. Almost 40 percent of all online shops are powered by WooCommerce, a WordPress eCommerce plugin.
How do I keep WordPress plug-ins up to date?
In most cases, your plug-ins will scan for updates automatically, but it’s always worth logging into your dashboard on a regular basis and performing a manual scan. This can usually be done in just a few clicks.
Nile Flores is a long time professional blogger, as well as WordPress website designer and developer from the St. Louis Metro East. Nile blogs at NileFlores.com, where she’s passionate about helping website owners, whether they’re small business owners or bloggers. She teaches about Blogging, Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, Website Design, and WordPress. Additionally, Nile loves to speak at WordCamps (WordPress conferences) across the United States. When Nile isn’t knee-deep in coding, she’s a proud mom of a college student, and enjoys oil painting, cigar smoking, nail art design, and practicing traditional Okinawan kempo karate.
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