Are you looking for a form builder plugin for your WordPress site?
Want to add a simple contact form to your Contact or Advertisement page?
Pretty much every single WordPress site needs at least a basic contact form, so a form plugin is the best plugin for bloggers.
That is why the most popular form plugins have hundreds and thousands, or even millions, of installs:
As you can see, WPForms is very popular and has a great rating (4.9 stars on over 12,400 reviews). In this post, I hope to show you why the plugin is so well-rated, as well as all of the more powerful features that go beyond simple contact forms.
Read: 5 Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins: Hands-On Comparison
WPForms Review: All The Features That The Plugin Offers
I want to start off with a quick list of some of the plugin’s most powerful features. These are:
- A beginner-friendly drag-and-drop editor that makes it simple to create custom forms.
- Premade templates for common form types to save you time.
- Spam protection to help keep your form submissions spam-free.
- Conditional logic so that you can display different form fields depending on how a visitor answers previous fields.
- Option to view form submissions in your WordPress dashboard, as well as the option to receive email notifications.
Beyond those core features, WPForms includes tools that let you go beyond basic contact forms and create things like:
- Payment forms
- Registration/login forms
- Surveys/polls
- Email opt-in forms
- Guest post submission forms
How The WPForms Editor Works
To give you an idea of how easy WPForms makes it, I’m going to take you through the process of building a basic contact form.
When you launch the WPForms form builder, you can choose from a variety of different templates for prebuilt form types:
These are nice because they will save you time. Instead of building everything from scratch, you can start with a template and just edit as needed.
For this example, I chose the Simple Contact Form template.
Once you launch the editor, you’ll see a live preview of your form on the right and the form options on your left:
Adding, Rearranging, And Editing Form Fields
No matter what type of form you’re building, fields are your building blocks.
WPForms includes a wide variety of fields that you can choose from depending on the information that you want to collect.
For example, if you want to collect a person’s website, you can use the pre-made Website/URL field.
In addition to all the basic field types, WP Forms also includes more advanced fields for things like:
- File uploads
- Ratings
- Payments
To add a form field, you just drag it over from the left-hand side:
Similarly, to rearrange existing form fields, you just drag and drop them as needed:
To edit an actual form field, you click on it. Then, you’ll be able to configure the forms:
- Label: This is what appears above the field
- Format: This will be unique to each type of field
- Required: Whether or not visitors need to fill out the field to submit the form
- Other smaller details
If you’ve previously used something like Contact Form 7, WPForms’ easy form builder will feel a lot more user-friendly.
Configuring General Form Settings
Once you’ve set up the specific form fields that you want to include, you can go to the Settings tab to configure:
- Spam settings: These help you avoid spam submissions without requiring your users to enter a CAPTCHA (though you can add a CAPTCHA if desired).
- Notifications: WPForms will automatically store the entry in your WordPress dashboard. But you can also set up email notifications, or even notifications to a Slack channel.
- Confirmation: This is what the visitor sees after submitting the form. You can either display a message or send them to a specific page.
One nice thing about this area is that you can actually set up multiple different notifications. So you could, for example:
- Send one type of notification to yourself
- Send a different notification to your blog’s editor
Embedding Your Form
For a basic form, that’s all you need to do!
Now, you just Save your form and click the Embed button to access the shortcode:
4 Powerful WPForms Implementations Beyond A Simple Contact Form
There are a lot of plugins that can help you create a basic contact form. While WPForms is great owing to the easy form builder that I showed you above, the bigger thing that differentiates WPForms from much of the competition is all the helpful things it can do beyond just creating a contact form.
Here are some of the ways that you can use WPForms on your site to make your life easier.
1. Create A Survey Or A Poll To Engage Your Visitors
With the Surveys and Polls add-on, you can create detailed survey forms or simple multiple-choice polls to collect feedback from your visitors:
2. Accept Payments As Part Of A Form
If you think about it, every payment checkout in existence is really just a form connected to a payment processor.
That means, with the Stripe or PayPal add-ons, you can actually use WPForms to accept payments or donations.
You can even calculate different payment amounts depending on which item a user selects:
3. Create A Custom Login Or Registration Form
People are always looking for ways to customize the default WordPress login and registration forms.
Rather than limiting yourself to WordPress’ core functionality, though, you can actually use the WPForms User Registration add-on to create your own login or registration forms that you can embed anywhere on your site.
The cool thing about this is that, in addition to being able to display the forms anywhere, you can also collect extra information, like a short bio:
You can then choose how to input these fields in the user’s actual WordPress profile in the form’s settings:
4. Let Users Submit Blog Posts From The Frontend Of Your Site
With the Post Submissions add-on, you can let people submit actual posts via a form on the front end of your site.
This feature is powerful because it lets you accept guest post submissions without needing to give people access to the WordPress dashboard (or without needing to upload the posts yourself).
Instead, you can allow them to submit the actual post as a draft. Then, all you need to do is approve or deny it.
If you get a lot of guest post requests, this method can definitely save you some time.
WPForms even includes a pre-built template that lets you collect author information in addition to the blog post content:
Just like the user registration forms, you can choose how to connect the various form fields to the actual areas in the WordPress editor, as well as what status to give the post:
How Much Does WPForms Cost?
WPForms has a free version that’s available at WordPress.org. This free version is great for basic contact forms, but it lacks all the more advanced form uses that I discussed above.
If you want access to those features, the premium version of WPForms starts at $39.50 per year and goes up to $299.50 per year depending on the specific add-ons that you want access to:
To save some money, though, you can use our exclusive WPForms coupon code. By entering ShoutMeLoud at checkout, you’ll get 20% off on your order.
Why I Recommend WPForms WordPress Plugin
WPForms is one of those great plugins that manage to blend powerful features with ease of use.
First off, the drag-and-drop editor is already beginner-friendly. But what makes it even easier is all of the prebuilt templates.
For example, rather than needing to figure out how to construct a front-end post-submission form, you can just choose the prebuilt template and edit as needed. This keeps things simple and saves you time.
When you combine that ease of use with features like surveys, payment forms, custom login/registration forms, and more, you get a really powerful WordPress form plugin.
Have you tried WPForms on your own site? Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the plugin.
Here are a few hand-picked guides for you to read next:
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Great Article! After reading this article I come to know about WPForms Plugin! Thank you Harsh for sharing!
Hi Harsh, good to know about all these forms. do prefer to use forms that don’t require a plugin
Hey! Maybe every one of us is used to Contact Form 7. Moreover, it being FREE, the average blogger may not be in a position to afford WPForms. However, the user-friendliness of the new premium plugin can make it a good alternative.
@Srinik
You don’t need the pro version of WPForms. It’s only for users who need advanced features. You can use the free version which works flawlessly and offers almost all features offered by CF7; https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/
Great! I got to know much more about the WPForms Plugin through this article! Thank you Harsh for this information!
I am currently using the Contact from 7 plugin and it works quite best for me. However after reading the Wp form review I am surely going to try this out.
@Nayan
I also shifted from Contact form 7 to WPForms. You can use the free version which is a perfect alternative to CF7 https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/
Hi Harsh Sir,
Wp form is the best plugin but a newbie blogger does not handle the cost of this plugin.
By the way, your article is very good and thanks for sharing amazing articles with us.
Regards
Rahul
@Rahul
You can use the free version of the plugin which offers all necessary features https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/
Hi Harsh, I just used WPFORMS on my website and found it quite easy to use. Your review has all the details about this plugin. Thanks for sharing such valuable information.
@Alok
That’s the first thing that I liked about this plugin; User experience. Thanks for adding value.
That was a great review, sir. 🙂 However i think Gravity Forms is a better alternative for WP Forms.
I was hoping to hear about Gravity forms. I know a lot of users like it as well.
Hi Harsh, good to know about all these forms. I may try them out for a poll. I have contact 7 form like Rajeev mentioned above. I’ve had it for years and really like it!
I do prefer to use forms that don’t require a plugin but there are times it makes it so much easier.
Thanks for sharing about these options for us. You are always giving me ideas Harsh.
@Lisa
CF7 was what I used for years (Like 6-7 years) 🙂
Really loved that plugin and it’s still good. However, lately, WP Forms got my attention with continuous development and features.
The founder of this plugin “Syed Balkhi” is a good friend and I really like his products like this one and OptinMonster.
Hi Im using Ninja Forms, it is also good. But i think wp forms has some more features. I want to know all the features in wp forms are free or not. Also like to know which is better wp forms or contact forms 7
@Dev
I have been a long time user of Contact form 7 and loved it. It was best free contact form plugin out there, and it still works great. I tested WP forms quite late (It’s hard to replace something when you are using it for a while), and I loved the UI.
It was so easy to build contact form with WPForms. Moreover, in the latest release of Contact form 7, I was getting few errors. So finally one day I shifted entirely to the free version of WP Forms and later on upgraded to pro version.
However, you can definitely enjoy most of the CF7 features with the free version of WP forms. Let me know your experience once you have tested both.
I think Caldera Forms is great and Ninja Form is also best both are free available. Caldera Forms has out of the box functionality and the developers also do custom development for you.
Thanks for more recommendation Vishal.
It’s best, but one thing that i hate of this plugin is that we can decrease the size of message or textarea as per our requirement. So i think Contact 7 is better but requires shortcode coding and WP Forms can be designed visually….
@Irfan
Yah the UI and usability of WPForms makes a lot of difference. It makes sense as well as this plugin was launched in past couple of years with all new UI and features whereas Contact form 7 is almost a decade old.
Do check out the free version of WPForms and you may replace it with CF7.
Hi Harsh Sir,
Wp form is the best plugin but a newbie blogger does not handle the cost of this plugin.
By the way, your article is very good and thanks for sharing amazing articles with us.
Regards
Basit Ansari
@Basit
Not everyone needs the pro version of WPForms. In fact, the free version offers many features which most of us need. Pro version is for advanced users who need specific features.
Shout me loud always describing helping topics to blogger and now it is for contact form.
Thanks
@Paratpararao
Glad that you find SML articles useful and happy to see your comment.
That’s a nice review of both plugins. I am using contact form 7 and I just love it.
Wp contact form plugin is very useful for wordpress user. thanks for publish this article
Nice information Harsh Sir. Best plugin is contact form 7 for me but I know in this article about more plugins. Thanks Sir
@Mukesh
Contact form 7 is also very good. I liked this now because of more features and better UI.
These Wp extension made blogging easier.
Thank you for sharing this.
I am using this contact form 7 from Day 1 of my Blogging. Found it very simple, clean and easy to use …
There is no replacement of this form.
@Rajeev
Good to see your comment. I also started using them after using Contact form 7 and liked it. It offers more features and have a much better UI.
That was a great review, sir. 🙂 However i think Gravity Forms is a better alternative for WP Forms.