The Top 5 WordPress Contact Form Plugins (2021)

Whenever you launch a website or eCommerce store, you’ll be quick to realise that there are plenty of elements that need to be optimized. Parts of websites you would have previously taken for granted now become centre stage when improving your own site.

It’s important you sweat the small stuff, it’s these moments that will set your site and user experience apart from your competitors. The general rule is, your users will notice when something isn’t there, rather than when something is.

Your contact form is a prime example of this. We all likely have a memory of becoming increasingly frustrated after a site has either made a contact form difficult to find or simply hasn’t provided us with an obvious way to contact them. At the very least, you’ve been provided a contact phone or email address.

The lack of a contact form suggests that your business is uninterested in replying to user queries—don’t be this website.

A contact form is a piece of software that allows website owners to provide a space for users to fill in their contact information as well as ask queries. Contact forms can also become onboarding forms or legal forms if relevant to your business or organization.

Each contact form is different and should change as your business grows and you gain a better understanding of your users.

Before we get into choosing the perfect WordPress form, it’s important you understand all of the features associated with a contact form. Why? Because each contact form needs to be adapted to suit the specifics of your website and its users. Different plugins will allow you to better customize your contact form. Therefore, your plugin of choice needs to accommodate any custom features you need now and ideally in the future. If it doesn’t, that’s when you might need to hire a WordPress expert from CodeClouds to fix any discrepancies.

Filling out a form on a mobile device is usually slower than filling out one on a computer. If your form then turns into a game of Snakes and Ladders when accessed by a mobile user, the chance of that user filling out your form is extremely low. At this point, it’s simply modern eCommerce, your entire site needs to be mobile responsive and so does the plugin for your contact form.

The plugin needs to have spam protection. If not, it’s going to slow down your communication with users rather than enable more communication. It’s also important to keep in mind that there will always be spam to some degree. Your plugin doesn’t need to block all spam, doing so might add unnecessary weight to your WordPress site or filter out real customers. Your plugin should block most of the spam, and the small amount leftover will require manual clean up.

You can only reply to customer queries as fast as you know they’re there. A missed notification from a user submitting information to your customer could be a: general enquiry, potential client or business partner or a charitable donor that needs an acknowledgment email.

Choose a plugin that integrates with quality email marketing services. This gives you a reliable way to build an email list, create automated replies where appropriate. Being able to accurately automate replies will save you an impressive amount of time, especially when your website traffic grows.

This isn’t necessary, but is recommended for less technical business owners. Drag and drop functionality allows you to change elements easily without any coding experience. Which is important if you want to easily change the length,

As with every element on your site, they need to be kept consistent with your brand, your contact form is no exception. Your plugin should give you control over the color, typeface and associated fonts, and will give you the option to embed your logo.

Now that we’ve covered what features you need to look out for, let’s get into five of the most useful plugins you can choose for your WordPress contact form. Remember, there’s tons to choose from, many will do the same thing or were once popular and are no longer supported.

All the plugins listed below come with quality support, features integrations and upgrades to fit new use cases as your WordPress site grows.

WP Forms is a powerful yet simple contact form plugin made for non technical business owners.

The free version almost covers all the bases, offering basic form field manipulation, CAPTCHA spam protection, email notifications, and a thank you page post form submittal.

The premium version allows users to extend the functionality of your contact form. Essentially you are able to create multi-page forms, email subscription forms, order forms, registration forms, payment forms and much more.

The premium version gives you access to a range of features that can optimize your contact form, including conditional logic, geolocation, signature feature, progress bars, form abandonment tracking, login and user registration (WordPress) and 150 pre-built templates for you to choose from.

WP Forms is popular because it has a huge range of features, yet is user friendly and super well supported. It’s one of those situations where what’s popular is simply what’s good.

The main reason why you won’t choose WP Forms is because you’re certain your contact form has very simple requirements and if you pay for the premium version, it’s like buying an entire tool shed when you only need a spanner. WP Forms is for the non technical business owner who is unsure about what their contact form will look like in the future and want to be able to adapt with little stress.

Gravity Forms is for advanced users who want a contact form with advanced functionality and are happy to pay for it. It’s $59 if you’re running the plugin on one site, but can cost $259 for unlimited sites.

It’s still user friendly with drag and drop functionality and comes with over 30 pre-built form fields.

Generally, short contact forms are preferable, but not always. Multi-page or multi-step forms are appropriate for some businesses and can result in an increase in conversions, more data received and a user experience that isn’t as overwhelming as shorter contact forms that quickly go from email addresses to payment details. For businesses who want to create quality multi-page forms, Gravity Forms is recommended.

Formidable forms is the opposite of WPForms. It is for enterprise level businesses who are technically proficient and are willing to face a steep learning curve.

Formidable Forms is full of functionality and is often the developers pick when wanting to find a solution to complex use-cases. As an example, any business that wants to create a contact form with multi-step calculation, Formidable Forms has that functionality.

Essentially, Formidable Forms is like Gravity Forms, but with more integration options. Don’t get me wrong, Gravity Forms is good, but it does not cover every single possible base. Formidable will give large businesses with adequate technical expertise complete customization power over their contact forms.

Even amongst startup WordPress or WooCommerce sites, there are plenty of situations where you will need something that is more complex than a simple 3 field name, contact phone and email address phone number. Again, if you know this is all you need, go install a free version of WPForms.

But, if you find even at a beginner level, your ideal contact form requires a niche integration. For example, if you need your contact form to integrate with a certain email marketing service provider such as EmailOctopus, Ninja Forms will have that extension. While if you went with WP Forms, you’re likely going with the reliable but more mainstream MailChimp.

Ninja Forms saves non-technical business owners from having to create their own extension. The money you spend on even the basic version of Ninja Forms will prove cost-efficient compared to the time and money needed to create a custom extension.

Jetpack is a unique inclusion in this list. Technically, Jetpack is a range of marketing tools built specifically for WordPress sites and one of their free products is Jetpack’s contact forms. Instead of upgrading your contact forms, you will be upgrading to have more of Jetpack’s products at your disposal, such as Jetpack Backups and Jetpack Search.

Jetpack’s contact forms include a drag and drop editor, some integrations and will allow you to implement custom graphics or QR codes to improve form conversions. If you want to create contact forms with additional functionality, you will need to buy extra addons. Consider that any additional functionality would likely have been achieved intrinsically with a plugin solely made for contact forms, e.g Gravity Forms.

The approach Jetpack takes is worth considering for non-technical business. Instead of finding a plugin for one site element, you’re buying an all-in-one solution for a range of elements. The big positive is that everything is that you will quickly create good contact forms and other elements on your WordPress site. The big negative is that you have now limited both your potential for customization and optimization. If you’re a non-technical business owner looking to minimize technical burden for a range of marketing elements, Jetpack is a dream.

That’s all for our top contact forms for WordPress. Hey, if you found this helpful, feel free to leave a comment on the comment form below! Perhaps you have your own experience with one of the contact forms mentioned, we’d love to hear them.

For one final note, remember as with any plugin, it can be improved with the help of experts. Maybe you need some help making the most of an advanced plugin like Formidable Forms or perhaps a less advanced plugin you’ve installed is missing something you really need. If that sounds like you, you can always hire WordPress plugin developers from CodeClouds at an affordable rate.