What’s The Best Form Plugin for WordPress Websites?

What’s the Best Form Plugin for WordPress Websites?

Whether you’re looking for a simple contact form plugin for WordPress or a plugin that offers a full-fledged set of features, there are plethora of available options.

While you can surf the internet and find a variety of reviews all parroting the same 5-10 popular plugins (which just so happen to all have lucrative affiliate programs), I’m limiting this post to the ones I’ve actually tried and used. I’m not an affiliate for any of the form plugins I recommend here, so I have no motivation to say something is good when it really isn’t.

So let’s get into it and talk about some form plugins.

Contact Form 7 – Contact Form Plugin for WordPress (Free)

With over 10 million active installations, Contact Form 7 takes the crown when it comes to the most widely used contact forms for WordPress.

To be honest, I strongly dislike Contact Form 7. While it’s a popular plugin, I learned early on in my WordPress journey that a lot of that has to do with age; Contact Form 7 has been around for a very long time – almost as long as WordPress itself. Many pre-built theme templates already have it integrated and so it’s popularity has very little to do with it actually being good. That’s not to say it isn’t good, it does what it says it does – but if you need more than a basic contact form, it’s probably not going to cut the mustard.

Contact Form 7 is also unique in that there’s no graphical interface for building a contact form. You have to write the form in HTML. And if you want styling? You need to provide your own CSS. For beginners who need to build forms, it’s not an intuitive plugin at all.

One thing I do like about Contact Form 7 in an world of monetizing everything, is that it’s free. There isn’t a premium version and there aren’t features locked behind a license payment. That being said, there aren’t many integrations. You’re limited to just these:

• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) – which allows you to build your marketing list through entries in Contact Form 7.
• Stripe – you can collect credit card payments via the Stripe payment gateway right in Contact Form 7. This is a real bonus because most other form plugins charge for the ability to use any payment gateways.
• reCAPTCHA – to help protect your form submissions from spam and bots, Contact Form 7 integrates with Google reCAPTIA. There’s nothing unique about this though because just about every form plugin offers this integration in their free tier.

And that’s it. There isn’t really any more to Contact Form 7. So you might ask, why I don’t actually like the plugin much? Contact Form 7 hasn’t really changed and even the way you build a contact form in the plugin is not intuitive and has no resemblance to how content is created in modern WordPress versions. It’s not fun to use.

All that being said, if you really just need a super basic contact form and nothing else, it’s worth a look.

Contact Form by WPForms – Drag & Drop Form Builder for WordPress (Freemium)

The plugin by WPForms is another behemoth when it comes to raw numbers. It’s got over 6 million active installations and is the contact form plugin I’ve spent the most time with. In fact, WPForms has been in my base plugin stack for almost 10 years.

WPForms comes in both a free and paid version. I’ve only ever used the free version, WPForms Lite, and it pretty much met my needs for just about everything I did – at least in my early days of WordPress design & management.

Because of it’s simple drag & drop interface, WPForms is perfect for beginners. In fact, the plugin was built and maintained by the same folks at WPBeginner, a great resource for those looking to learn WordPress or bump up their skills.

WPForms Lite has a whole host of great features but one thing I dislike is that there isn’t a clear list of what’s free and what you have to pay for. Even their plugin page on the WordPress plugin repository lists all of their integrations without separating what comes free and what requires the premium version of the plugin.

• An intuitive drag & drop form builder
• An integration collection that’s far too long to list, but includes payment gateways, email marketing integration
• Conditional logic forms
• Email subscription forms

The unfortunate part of WPForms Lite is that you have to install it and start using it to really find out what features are premium. In this way, they kind of trap their users because switching contact form plugins isn’t necessarily straight-forward.

Overall though, WPForms Lite is a great option if you’re a beginner or you just need a simple form. For anything more complicated, you’ll likely need to go with the full featured premium version.

Contact Form Plugin by Fluent Forms for Quiz, Survey, and Drag & Drop WP Form Builder (Freemium)

I recently started testing the free version of Fluent Forms and it’s quickly replaced all of my WPForms installations. The free version has features that I was missing in WPForms such as the ability to save form entries directly on your website and set up multiple notifications for a single form.

The builder isn’t quite as simple as WPForms, but it’s still very easy and intuitive. If you would have told me a year ago that my collection of 40+ websites wouldn’t have a single WPForms installation, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are – Fluent Forms has become my go-to form builder.

One of the nice things I liked about Fluent Forms was that it easily migrates forms you’ve already built with other form plugins including WPForms and Contact Form 7. This makes the transition much easier especially if you have a website with multiple forms.

Some of the great features that come with the free version of Fluent Forms include:

• Drag & drop form builder
• Multiple notifications per form
• Smart conditional logic
• Form scheduling & restrictions
• Form analytics
• Custom CSS & JS

The only thing the free version is missing is there are no payment gateway integrations. For most sites, this won’t be a deal-breaker because very few free plugins offer it anyway.

Add to that, onsite analytics that tell you how many times your contact form has been seen & conversion percentage, you get a really good idea of how your forms are truly performing.

Piotnet Forms (Freemium)

Piotnet Forms is a relatively unknown form builder with only about 3000 active installations according to the WordPress repository. I was turned on to the product a few years ago in a Facebook group for WordPress professionals and at the time, I snagged a lifetime unlimited site license for a price that was too good to turn down.

I can’t speak too much as to what the free version limits you to because I dove right in to the premium version. It was super-cheap at the time and has a ton of integrations.

From payment gateways, to conditional logic, & multi-step forms. Piotnet Forms has it all. But like most freemium plugins, you have to pay for the good stuff.

The basic free version includes the following:

• Basic fields
• Ability to send notifications to 2 separate emails
• Section & column arrangements

The Piotnet Form builder takes a little getting used to, but it’s far more flexible than any other form builder I’ve worked with so far (or at least on par with Fluent Forms). It not only is responsive, but allows you to completely design a mobile version of a form differently than a desktop version to ensure your forms look great on every device.

Final Thoughts

If I had to say which form builder is the best, it really depends on your use case. However, I would certainly rank Fluent Forms #1 right now in my list of go-to plugins followed by the premium version of Piotnet Forms. Between those two, all of my form needs are taken care of no matter what the website is.

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