Hey there and welcome back!
One type of plugin that you need on your website no matter what you do with your website is a contact form plugin. People are going to need to get in touch with you in some way, and a contact form on your contact page is the best way to do it.
And the best news is that you have a lot of options in WordPress when it comes to picking a contact forms plugin.
So today let’s go through some of your top options for contact forms plugins that you might want to use for your website.
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Now let’s get started.
Why you might need a contact plugin
Before we get too far along, let’s first talk about why you would need to use a contact form plugin and some use cases for contact forms on your website.
Of course the obvious use case is just to have a contact form on your website. This likely would be on your contact page and just have a couple of fields like name, email and message. It’s super simple, and you don’t need a super powerful plugin to do that.
The other main use for forms that I use on my website is for lead generation. So on each of my services landing pages, I have a form at the bottom for someone to sign up to learn more about that service, and they get an email notification with a packet of information.
Some form plugins also have add ons that allow you to take payment information right in the form. So you can have someone sign up for a retreat or something similar and pay you through that form rather than having to use something like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads.
So there’s a lot that you can really do with these forms plugins outside of just a simple contact form.
Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is the contact forms plugin that I’ve been using on my website for about three to four years now. I absolutely love it, and it does everything I need it to.
The form builder screen is super simple to understand and use, and you can easily create complicated forms and hide or show fields based off of how other fields are filled out. And when a user fills out a form, you can simply show them some text saying thank you for submitting or you can take them to a different page to continue them down your sales funnel.
But the best part that I’ve found is that you can send as many email notifications as you want. So you can send one to yourself with all of the field information. You could also send one to a business partner. And you can send an email to the user with more information about what you do.
The one drawback with Gravity Forms is that it’s the most expensive one on this list, and there aren’t any free options. The base price is $59 a year, and the level that I use is $159 a year. But those prices also include a selection of add ons you can use as well, which is nice not to have to purchase a whole bunch of add ons.
If you want to be able to quickly and easily create powerful forms, I highly recommend it.
Ninja Forms
If you’re looking for something a little like Gravity Forms but want a free option, Ninja Forms is probably going to be the way to go.
The base plugin is free in the WordPress plugins directory, so you can install it on as many websites as you want. And you can quickly create the forms you need for your website. Plus there’s a really good community around it to help you out.
The main issue is that a lot of the different addons, like for CRM add ons and Campaign Monitor, will cost you money, and you could end up spending just as much as you would for another plugin.
Still, if you’re looking for something easy and free to use, Ninja Forms might be the way to go.
Contact Form 7
The biggest advantage of Contact Form 7 is the price. It is completely free to use on as many websites as you want. And you can’t beat that.
But beyond that, it’s a very, very simple forms plugin. It doesn’t do a whole lot of what the other plugins do. And that’s completely okay. There are some addons that you can install to extend the functionality if you need to.
So if all you need on your website is a super, super simple contact form and nothing more, Contact Form 7 is probably something you’re going to want to look at.
WPForms
WPForms also features a drag-and-drop form builder, which will make it pretty easy to create complicated forms.
You can create multipage forms, email subscription forms, order forms and a lot more. And if you grab the surveys and polls addon, you can easily create customer feedback surveys and interactive polls right from your website. Plus, you can get spam protection, which you’ll find out pretty quickly is pretty necessary.
And just like with Gravity Forms, you can customize all of the email notifications that get sent out.
WPForms is technically a paid plugin, but there is a lite, free version in the WordPress plugin directory so you can try it out before buying the real thing.
But it’s certainly a forms plugin that you’ll want to check out.
Warning about GoDaddy
Finally, I just want to give you a quick heads up about something that I learned the hard way about contact form plugins. If you use GoDaddy for your web hosting, the email notifications probably aren’t going to work. And it doesn’t matter what plugin you use.
It’s an issue on GoDaddy’s end, and it’s the only web host that I’ve ever had this problem with. The submissions will be fine, it’s just that the email won’t actually get sent out to anybody. So just a word of warning.
Outro
So what is your favorite contact form plugin? Is there one that you like that I didn’t list here? Be sure to leave your answers down in the comments section below.
Next Wednesday we’ll be talking about the best SEO plugins for WordPress.
To see that video and more videos about WordPress, ecommerce, digital marketing and other website related topics, be sure to hit the subscribe button and to ring the bell for notifications.
But until next time, happy WordPressing!
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