4 Must-have & 3 Good-to-have Features<\/h2>\n
For us, the best contact form plugin is one that has all the following four must-haves:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Comes with captcha integration (preferably can integrate with Google Recaptcha Version 3<\/a>).<\/li>\n
- Able to store email entries (so that if you fail to receive the email notification, you can still view the messages inside the WordPress dashboard).<\/li>\n
- Able to redirect to a ‘Thank you’ page after submission (this is useful if you want to track conversion or show the visitor your products\/services).<\/li>\n
- Able to upload attachments (this is a popular feature as some of you may want to use the form to accept resumes, work scope, screenshots etc)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
Besides the above must-haves, there are also 3 good-to-haves:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The plugin should be able to generate PDF reports upon submission<\/strong> (some companies want a PDF report instead of an email especially if the form is used by their existing customers).<\/li>\n
- The plugin should have conditional recipients<\/strong> (for example, if a user wants to contact a specific outlet of the business, then the form will email to the respective branch).<\/li>\n
- The plugin should be able to accept payment<\/strong> (very useful for freelancers who provide simple jobs and accept payment upon submission of the form).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
And very importantly, this blog post is for people who do not have the budget to purchase a premium plugin. Thus, the best plugin should be able to have all the above features for free.<\/p>\n
Which contact form plugins were compared?<\/h2>\n
We tested out the following 6 popular contact form plugins to find out if they can do the 4 must-have and 3 good-to-have.<\/p>\n
- \n
- WP Form.<\/li>\n
- Contact form 7.<\/li>\n
- Formidable forms.<\/li>\n
- Forminator.<\/li>\n
- Ninja Forms.<\/li>\n
- Contact forms by Fluent Forms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
The Results!<\/h2>\n
If you do not want to read the whole post, you can find out the short answer here: – The only two plugins that fulfill our requirements are contact form 7 and Forminator.<\/strong> But Forminator would require you to do some coding for one of the features (in the good-to-have list). Thus, we would recommend the contact form 7 plugin<\/a> as the best WordPress contact form plugin at the moment!<\/p>\n
Scroll down the post to view the testing results details for each plugin!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Contact form 7 (Best Choice!)<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.websproutconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Contact-Form-7-\u2013-WordPress-plugin-WordPress-org.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nContact form 7<\/a> is one of the two mostly installed plugins (the other one is WP form) and at the time of writing this post, it has 5 million installations recorded in the WordPress directory.<\/p>\n
Contact form 7 is not the most user-friendly plugin but using it, you can achieve all the features we want because there are also many extensions available or contact form 7 in the WordPress directory.<\/p>\n
Let’s run down the list (must-have & good-to-have):<\/p>\n
- \n
- Able to integrate with Google recaptcha.<\/a><\/li>\n
- Able to view messages sent inside dashboard (using Flamingo addon<\/a>).<\/li>\n
- Redirect to ‘Thank you’ page (using redirection for contact form 7 addon<\/a>).<\/li>\n
- Able to upload file attachments<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Able to generate PDF based on form submission (using send PDF for contact form 7 addon<\/a>).<\/li>\n
- Conditional recipients<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Accept payment (stripe integrations<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
<\/p>\n
Contact form 7 is able to achieve all the above features. You can click on the above links to refer to the steps or resources on how to implement them.<\/p>\n
The following is a tutorial I have recently created to show you how to use contact form 7 in your WordPress website:<\/p>\n
- Able to view messages sent inside dashboard (using Flamingo addon<\/a>).<\/li>\n
- Able to integrate with Google recaptcha.<\/a><\/li>\n
- The plugin should have conditional recipients<\/strong> (for example, if a user wants to contact a specific outlet of the business, then the form will email to the respective branch).<\/li>\n