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10 Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins (Reviewed and Compared)

  • Category : WordPress
  • Posted on : Sep 06, 2018
  • Views : 3,713
  • By : Xavier N.

You’ve pieced together your new WordPress site like a work of art. Everything’s in place: the logo, About Us page, a small eCommerce store, menu, and customized blog. It’s time to pull the trigger, right? Wait a minute. Did you forget one of the most basic parts of a website? That’s right: the contact form.

Some developers know to add it right away, because it’s incredible how easy it is to forget about this form of communication. And it would be a shame to skip the contact form, since many customers scoff at the idea of calling into your customer support line, while others have no intention of taking their mind off work to sit on a live chat module.

That’s where these WordPress contact form plugins come into play. Customers can send in a quick email without spending too much time, and the website with the form can field the message in a timely manner. Not only that, but contact forms prevent spam and allow you to expand the way you interact with your customers (like with conditional logic, which updates the form based on how the user responds).

These WordPress contact form plugins come in many forms, so it would be prudent to browse through the comparison to see which one is right for you. After all, some websites require an expensive, and powerful, WordPress contact form, while others only need the basics.

WordPress Contact Form Plugins Features

At its most basic, a WordPress contact form plugin delivers a handful of fields and minimal design tools. It’s meant to keep your customers in contact with you. On the other hand, the more advanced contact form plugins support conditional logic, design tools, and file submission options. This is in no way a complete list, but here are some features to look forward to:

  • Custom forms – With multiple fields, options, and branding tools.
  • Visual builders – Drag and drop editors are great, but not entirely needed.
  • Conditional logic – Show or hide certain elements (like buttons, fields, or form sections) based on what the user selects on the form. This also helps to send customers to different departments.
  • Communications – Some sort of email communication system that lets the right people know that a new message has arrived.
  • Frontend file submission – Let clients upload ideas in document form. This is also great for customer support where the user takes a screenshot of their problem and submits.
  • Responsiveness – You’ll want the form to show up on all devices, big and small.
  • Spam protection – Forms are made to prevent some spam in the first place. But you should expect even more protection from your WordPress contact form plugin.

1. Gravity Forms – Starting at $59 per year

Gravity Forms combines a clean interface with user-friendly tools that are still somewhat advanced for improving customer support websites. The forms, entries, and conditional logic is all unlimited through Gravity Forms, and it also supports things like file uploads and multi-page forms.

The standard Gravity Forms support includes a full ticketing system, an FAQ page, documentation, language translations, and several other resources. The priority support is only available if you go with the most expensive plan ($259 per year,) so that would send you to the front of the line.

There’s no live chat or phone support, but as you’ll see with most contact form plugins, those aren’t really necessary.

Main Reasons to Consider This WordPress Contact Form Plugin

  • The plentiful documentation includes a getting started guide, information on add-ons, popular features, and developer docs.
  • Gravity Forms supports a wide range of add-ons and external integrations. You can find dozens of them listed here, including AWeber, Dropbox, Freshbooks, GetResponse, MailChimp, PayPal Pro, and Stripe.
  • The pricing is great for all the features you get.
  • You get access to more than 30 form fields.
  • Conditional logic is built right in.
  • Gravity Forms supports email notifications, file uploads, and the option to save and continue.
  • Perform advanced calculations based on user submissions. (Might be used for a finance or real estate website).
  • You have the option to limit the number of submissions through a form. You can also schedule forms.
  • Gravity Forms allows for frontend user content submissions, which would publish to your WordPress blog.

2. Ninja Forms – Free (Memberships Start at $99 per year)

Ninja Forms has a free version in the WordPress library, but we figure most legitimate companies will consider a premium version membership. The free contact form plugin provides a beautiful user interface for building your own contact forms. There aren’t any limitations for forms, fields, or emails received, and you can save your forms for later.

The majority of the fields and features in the free version are pretty basic, but it’s easy to configure your forms and make them look nice on your website. This plugin rivals that of the Contact Form 7 plugin (featured below).

When you signup for a membership you gain access to dozens of add-ons, customer support, updates, layouts, multi-part forms, conditional logic, and more. Plus, Ninja Forms does a good job of keeping costs low when you decide to buy a package or membership instead of one or two add-ons.

Main Reasons to Consider This WordPress Contact Form Plugin

  • Ninja Forms has more than 40 add-ons, including one for conditional logic, multi-part forms, front-end posting, file uploads, layouts, and styles.
  • You can hook your forms up to services like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and AWeber.
  • Collect payments directly through your forms with the help of PayPal Express or one of the many other payment processors.
  • Connect with Zapier to remove most limitations in terms of integrations and automation.
  • Hook up to your favorite CRM, like SalesForce.
  • The pricing isn’t bad either.

3. HappyForms – Free

HappyForms is one of the newer contact form plugins on the block, but one thing we really like about it is that it’s completely built in the WordPress Customizer. This means you don’t need to learn a new UI, it’s something that most of you are probably already familiar with. It’s being developed and maintained by The Theme Foundry, who know the WordPress space very well as they’ve been designing themes for years.