The diverse nature of WordPress means that finding what you need isn’t always a straightforward path. This is particularly true when you look at your choices for plugins and themes. Any given plugin might have up to 20-30 different alternatives. And this can lead to headaches as you try to understand what would work best in your given situation.
Fortunately, you don’t need to check each individual plugin yourself. Review articles such as this one can give you a clear overview of what is available, and why it might be a great pick for your specific purpose.
For this post specifically, the focus is on WordPress forms plugins. Such plugins come in handy in pretty much all website-management situations. Your website needs a contact form, and more often than not, you also need business-related forms to onboard new customers.
Forms can also be used to create surveys, collect user information, and otherwise enhance the social aspects of your website. And with all this in mind, we will go over the 10 most prominent forms plugins for your WordPress site.
Let’s start with the necessities.
Contact Form 7
All websites need a contact form, including yours. It’s the primary way for people to reach out to you if they have a question. And it’s also a great way to create new friends and establish new opportunities.
Contact Form 7 has been a long-standing winner in the space of WordPress contact forms. The plugin supports an unlimited number of forms, and you can place them anywhere on your site with a shortcode.
The plugin is compatible with reCAPTCHA and Akismet for better spam prevention. Though, it is advised that you mention this in your GDPR privacy policy.
Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms on the other hand is slightly more advanced. And with over a million active users, it’s also highly popular. The plugin provides a seamless interface for creating your own forms. They can be contact forms, or indeed forms related to business tasks. For example, you might want to collect important project information before someone submits their request.
In terms of features, Ninja Forms operates on the basis of a Drag & Drop forms builder. You can simply select the necessary form fields, and seamlessly create a form out of them. In addition to default values, Ninja Forms supports external plugins and automatically lists the available form values.
Form submissions are optimized with AJAX, which means users won’t need to refresh the page when clicking the ‘Send’ button.
The plugin is fully compatible with Gutenberg, which means you can add your forms anywhere on your site with a simple Block.
Popup Maker
Popups are an extremely efficient way of growing your email list. But, finding a plugin that does popups well isn’t always easy. Many plugins opt for a poor design choice or very limited features. Thankfully, Popup Maker is none of this things. And the hundreds of 5-star reviews should speak for themselves.
The plugin doesn’t just give you popup functionality either. You can customize settings like Cookies, Triggers, and different types of Conditions. For example, one Condition could be to show the popup after a certain time has passed. This ensures that users won’t feel patronized with annoying user experiences.
Best of all, Popup Maker integrates with your favorite email services such as AWeber, HubSpot, GetResponse, and many others.
Easy Forms for MailChimp
MailChimp is a household name in email marketing. And if you know how beneficial email marketing is to your success, you’ll know the value of having a plugin such as this one in your repertuar.
Easy Forms streamlines the entire MailChimp experience. Once you connect the plugin with your MailChimp account, you can start customizing your forms and adding them to your site.
Here’s an overview of the best features:
- Create an unlimited number of forms, including multiple different forms for the same email list.
- Insert your forms inside posts and pages using either a shortcode or a specific button allocated for this purpose.
- Customize your forms with custom themes or by applying your own CSS classes.
- Manage your email list from the WordPress dashboard. Supports adding and removing subscribers!
- Add the option to subscribe to your newsletter inside comments and registration forms.
- Custom overview for all of your statistics.
And so many other features that will make it easy for you to build a successful email list.
Caldera Forms
It’s not easy to make an impact in the WordPress forms plugin space. But, with 200,000+ active users, Caldera Forms definitely knows that bloggers need. This plugin stands out with its sophisticated conditional logic, multi-layered forms, custom layouts, and even file management.
Also, it’s based entirely on a visual layout building interface. And because this plugin doesn’t require custom styles, it will seamlessly integrate with your existing WordPress theme.
The visual builder is definitely one of the highlights. You can add columns to structure a layout, but also customize each field that you are adding. On top of that, all forms come out perfectly responsive and ready for mobile users.
Caldera integrates with apps like PayPal, Stripe, EasyDigitalDownloads, Zapier, MailChimp, and others.
Visual Form Builder
When it comes to visual form builders, very few are as diverse as this one from Matthew Muro. The plugin is built to remove the need to write a single line of code! Simply open the Visual Form Builder panel, and you get access to all the features. VFB includes Form Items such as Sections, Address, Textarea, Instructions, File Upload, and much more. Certainly enough to give you the freedom to create complex forms for all types of purposes.
Additional features include:
- Custom-built logic based SPAM protection.
- Custom stylesheets so you can style your forms.
- A confirmation Email to be sent to all form users.
- Seamless form submissions using jQuery (no refresh).
- All submitted entries are stored inside your database.
Superb plugin with a ton of positive reviews.
Everest Forms
Everest Forms, like many other plugins, is basing its business model on splitting the plugin in a Free and Premium version. And the Free version is more than enough to sort you out for all your WordPress forms needs.
The two most prominent features is the multiple-column support, and of course, and a Drag and Drop interface builder. You can even start creating forms purely by choosing one of the pre-built templates. Afterward, you can customize and apply modifications as you please. Any form you make with Eveerst is naturally mobile responsive.
Spam protection is ensured by Google’s reCAPTCHA, so you won’t have to deal with unnecessary junk mail. And last but not least, displaying your forms anywhere on the site is as easy as adding a shortcode.
Essential Addons for Elementor
There’s no denying that Elementor is changing the landscape of website design with WordPress. Our Business Startup theme is an excellent example of how Elementor’s page builder can greatly extend the capabilities of design. But, this isn’t about themes, rather, it’s about plugins.
And Essential Addons for Elementor will add much more than just forms functionality to your site. Besides, it’s much easier to use than combinations like Elementor Pro and ACF.
Just to give you an idea, this plugin includes support for Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Caldera Forms, WPForms, and weForms. All in a single plugin. So whichever of those forms plugins you like the most, you can simply pick and choose.
And the best part is that Essential Addons is also fully Gutenberg ready. This means that you can add the specific Elements, and the Forms, in any of your pages with a single click of a button.
Events Manager
It’s not always about contact and sales forms alone. Events are also a specific category that requires some kind of onboarding functionality.
Thankfully, the Events Manager plugin combines both spectrums in one unified solution. You can create and manage events, whilst have the ability to add registration forms anywhere on your site.
If you run a concert, then the form will include fields like ticket types, seating, and other relevant fields. Likewise, new members will be able to create an account on the spot. Best of all, you have the freedom to manage your entire events database from the WordPress dashboard.
Talk about efficiency!
Flo Forms
And lastly, we have Flo Forms. A fairly new addition to the WordPress plugins directory, but is already showing a lot of promise. The feature that stood out the most was the sleek design that Flo Forms is providing.
It’s a fresh take on the design trends we’re seeing in the industry right now. And it will go a long way saving you time by providing these designs out of the box. Flo embraces mobile, and so your forms are automatically ultra responsive. Ready to tackle different types of devices and screen sizes!
Here are the features:
- Emails are stored forever. Access certain emails whenever you need.
- GDPR-friendly. Users can tick a checkbox to ensure privacy compliance.
- Conditional logic: gather the exact information you need from your site visitors.
- Redirect users after they hit the submit button: any page!
- Add a hidden field to track the pages where your visitors are submitting the form from.
Looking forward to seeing this plugin grow and expand in the coming months. With this kind of a design scheme, Flo Forms has a bright future ahead of itself.
Closing words
As is evident by this post, finding a reliable forms plugin for WordPress is not that hard. A little bit of persistence and understanding of your scope will make it that much easier.
Let us know which plugins you liked the most and which one you ended up using for your blog.
Alex Ivanovs is an independent freelance writer with more than 10 years of experience in WordPress, Web Design, and Writing. He writes a personal blog over at Stack Diary.
