If your WordPress website is attracting traffic, you’ll likely want to capture the details of interested visitors looking to find out more about your products or services.
There are two common ways to collect your potential customer’s information, or in other words, generate leads from your website:
- By leaving your phone number and email for visitors on your web pages, hoping they’ll contact you; or
- By collecting interested customers’ information through a contact form
There are downsides to leaving your contact information on your web pages directly. You will likely receive more spam calls and emails than genuine customer inquiries. Additionally, it’s quite tedious for potential customers to switch to email and type a message from scratch explaining what they’re interested in. That’s why WordPress contact forms are more popular these days among websites looking to collect details of their interested visitors.
In this article, we highlight the benefits of WordPress contact forms and help you identify the best contact form WordPress offers to suit your business website.
Table of contents
What are WordPress contact forms?
Benefits of WordPress contact forms
The 5 Best WordPress contact form plugins for generating leads
1. Best beginner-friendly WordPress contact form plugin
2. Best free contact form plugin
3. Best WordPress contact form plugin for customisation
4. Best value-for-money plugin
5. Best contact form plugin for advanced features
Conclusion
What are WordPress contact forms?
WordPress contact forms are simply forms on your WordPress websites that allow visitors to fill in their details. Website owners mostly use them to generate leads, placing contact forms on landing pages and “Contact Us” pages.
From a technical point of view, however, a WordPress contact form is a WordPress plugin that you use to build and display a contact form on your WordPress website. Since WordPress sites don’t have built-in contact forms, you need a contact form plugin to add contact forms to your site. The good news is that there are many free WordPress contact form plugins that perform the way you want.
If you want to include contact forms on your site, you’ll have to download a contact form plugin and activate it. Most of these tools allow you to build customised contact forms as per your preference.
Benefits of WordPress contact forms
A contact form for WordPress is an excellent tool to collect your customer’s information on your website. You can place them on pages that people visit often and encourage leads to fill in their information. You can also place one on your contact page so interested people can leave their details. WordPress contact forms are beneficial for your website, helping you protect your information while collecting customer details.
Some of the benefits of WordPress contact forms are:
- Avoid spam calls and emails: Putting your information on your web pages directly risks attracting more spam emails and calls. Since they don’t reveal your contact information, contact forms help avoid annoying and unwanted spam. That being said, forms may still be targeted by spambots. The good news is that some WordPress contact forms have built-in anti-spam protection features.
- Provide better customer experience: WordPress contact forms are user-friendly and do not break a visitor’s flow by forcing them to switch to their phone or email. People may find it annoying when they have to visit another platform (such as email) or a device (such as their phone) to contact a business. WordPress contact forms make it effortless for visitors to contact a business or fill in their details.
- Help you collect more details and reduce manual work: You have to ask every potential customer the same questions over and over again just to get their name, contact details, requirements, preferences, etc. With a contact form on your website, you can automatically ask those questions upfront on your form so all the details are available before you even speak to the lead for the first time. This way, you minimise repetitive back-and-forth and can be fully prepared with a personalised pitch on your first call or message.
- Provides more flexibility around hours and communication channels: Contact forms work 24/7 on your website, which means you don’t have to worry about missing customers’ queries no matter what time they show up. No more looking at missed calls from unknown numbers and trying to figure out who they are or what they want.
- Helps you build a solid contact list: Whether you follow up with your customers via email or regular messaging, you first need to build a list of interested people. WordPress contact forms let you not only collect data but also manage your prospects, helping you build a contact list for your business.
The 5 Best WordPress contact form plugins for generating leads
You need to install and activate WordPress contact form plugins to put forms on your WordPress websites. These plugins offer form builders that help you create, customise, and place a form on your web pages according to your preferences. Here’s the list of the five best contact form plugins for WordPress, and what use cases they’re best suited for
1. Best beginner-friendly WordPress contact form plugin: WPForms
WP forms is a popular WordPress contact form plugin that more than five million WordPress websites use. It features a simple drag-and-drop form builder that helps users easily create online forms that suit their priorities. WPForms offers a massive library of form templates with built-in fields, allowing users to quickly set up and publish a form on their websites. Furthermore, with this plugin, you can also create forms with multiple email recipients, so different members of your team get lead notifications at the same time.
While WPForms is easy to use, you can’t have all the great features on its free version, which is very limited. It could be costly if you’re looking for a large-scale solution.
2. Best free contact form plugin: Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is the best contact form plugin for WordPress that is fully free. You can enjoy all its features without paying for anything, and it’s SLDO compatible with all WordPress themes. It’s easy to install and offers pre-built forms you can effortlessly use on any post or page.
Contact Form 7 is an excellent WordPress contact form plugin for simple websites. However, it might be a bit difficult to set up for non-technical users. Plus, you may not be able to create advanced forms with this plugin.
3. Best WordPress contact form plugin for customisation: Elementor Forms
Elementor Forms is a highly-customisable WordPress contact form plugin that you can use to include aesthetically pleasing and complex contact forms on your web pages. It offers an easy drag-and-drop editor for users.
Since the Elementor Forms plugin is integrated into the Elementor interface, you get access to tons of Elementor design, layout, and style options. Plus, it easily integrates with CRMs and marketing automation tools like HubSpot and MailChimp. However, some of its cons include a steep learning curve for beginners and the lack of some features advanced form builders offer, such as conditional logic.
4. Best value-for-money plugin: Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is another popular WordPress contact form plugin that offers a drag-and-drop editor. It’s one of the easiest constant contact signup form WordPress supports, as even beginners can add a simple form to their website in minutes. Ninja Forms also offer advanced features such as letting users upload files and export submissions as PDF, Excel, or Google sheets.
However, what sets Ninja Forms apart from its competitors is that instead of subscribing to the whole package, you can individually purchase add-ons should you wish to pay for specific advanced features on your forms.
While this plugin is great for beginners and advanced users alike, its free or core plugin lacks higher-end features. Also, it might get really costly if you wish to access all the top-notch functionality you need. However, as long as you’re fine using limited add-ons, you’ll be creating a lot on a budget.
5. Best contact form plugin for advanced features: Gravity Forms
Often heralded as one of the most powerful WordPress contact form plugins, Gravity Forms is also one of the most mature forms. If you’re looking for the best form builder for WordPress that supports advanced features, you could try out this contact form plugin. It includes features such as conditional logic that you can include on your forms effortlessly. It too features a drag-and-drop form builder.
While Gravity Forms allow you to create advanced forms for your website, this plugin doesn’t come for free. It doesn’t even offer a free trial. Plus, if you’re a beginner, you might struggle to create a form with this plugin and may not like its limited style options.
Conclusion
A WordPress contact form can be a great tool to generate leads from your website. But unfortunately, WordPress websites don’t offer built-in forms, so you need to install and activate a separate contact form WordPress plugin. Luckily, there are many plugins available on WordPress that you can use for free. If you want advanced options, you have paid upgrades and alternatives as well.
Choosing the right plugin depends on what you want to do with your forms. If you just want to collect your customer’s general information, then a free WordPress contact form plugin, such as Contact Form 7, could be the ideal WordPress form for you. However, if your business requires advanced features on your form, you may want to select a paid form.
If you’re generating leads via your WordPress contact forms, you probably don’t want them to be missed or go cold. You want to contact them as soon as possible and convert them into customers. To do this, you’ll need a quick and easy way to receive, contact, and follow up with your leads.
Privyr is an app that sends you instant alerts of new leads and lets you contact them via phone call or auto-personalised messages on WhatsApp, SMS, iMessage, or email in one tap. Plus, it offers automatic follow-up reminders and easy lead management, helping you turn more leads into customers, from your phone. Try Privyr for free today.
