STOP Using Contact Form 7 Plugin, there are much better alternatives out there.
OK, this is slightly a rant post but think of it more like a public service announcement. Read the next statement very carefully… Please STOP Using Contact Form 7 Plugin!!!
Now this plugin might have over 3 million active installs, but we STRONGLY suggest against using it. Yes the developer does a great job of providing an easy to use free plugin that he supports and updates often but that is about the only 2 things we can find that are positive about it.
The biggest down side which is extremely important is the fact that this plugin is very script heavy and these scripts are slow and inject themselves on every page in your site when the plugin is active. Speed is a massive part of the overall visitor experience on your site and also helps the way Google decides to rank your site.
If you would like to know more on why Contact Form 7 is bad for site speed, please click on the link below.
http://pagepipe.com/contact-form-7-plugin-causes-global-site-drag
Another thing we dislike about this plugin is that while it may be easy to create simple contact forms, scaling it to do other things that are very common in form creation is either not easy or not possible. Even a basic option like Captcha are hard to integrate for the average WordPress user.
So we wanted to give you some alternatives so you can STOP Using Contact Form 7 Plugin.
Take a look below at some of our top picks for FREE contact form plugin solutions you can use on your WordPress site. Here are our favorite 5 alternatives to Contact Form 7 plugin.
Option #1 – Contact Form by WPForms
They believe that you shouldn’t have to hire a developer to create a WordPress contact form. That’s why they built WPForms, a drag & drop WordPress form builder that’s EASY and POWERFUL. WPForms allows you to create beautiful contact forms, subscription forms, payment forms, and other type of forms for your site in minutes, not hours!
Thei pre-built form templates and workflows make WPForms the most beginner friendly contact form plugin in the market.
WPForms is a 100% mobile responsive contact form solution, so your contact forms will always look great on all devices (mobile, tablet, laptop, and desktop). WPForms’ contact forms are also highly optimized for web and server performance because they understand the importance of speed when it comes to SEO and conversion.
Option #2 – Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is the ultimate FREE form creation tool for WordPress. Build forms within minutes using a simple yet powerful drag-and-drop form creator. For beginners, quickly and easily design complex forms with absolutely no code. For developers, utilize built-in hooks, filters, and even custom field templates to do whatever you need at any step in the form building or submission using Ninja Forms as a framework.
Option #3 – Form Maker by WD
Form Maker is a FREE and user-friendly plugin to create highly customizable and responsive forms in a few minutes with simple drag and drop interface. This free form builder plugin with its multi-functional features is one of the most intuitive and modern form creator plugins for WordPress. It takes just a few clicks to construct complex HTML forms, and configure their structure with easy-to-use drag and drop interface.
Form Maker plugin is the best choice both for WordPress beginners and advanced users. It provides exceptional and clean visual form editor toolbox, which does not require any programming skills to create a contact form.
Option #4 – Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is a flexible and free WordPress form plugin. Easily create contact forms, polls and surveys, or lead generation forms. Start with pre-built form templates or create totally custom forms. From the smallest sidebar opt-in form to large job application forms, Formidable Forms is built to do it all.
Create professional contact forms without any code. Use the built-in visual styler to instantly customize the look and feel of your forms. Additionally, changing the form layout is simple with included layout classes. If you need more advanced customizations, you have complete access to edit the form HTML and CSS.
Option #5 – Visual Form Builder
Visual Form Builder is a plugin that allows you to build and manage all kinds of forms for your website in a single place. Building a fully functional contact form takes only a few minutes and you don’t have to write one bit of PHP, CSS, or HTML!
Option #6 – HappyForms
HappyForms is the newest form builder released, it’s completely free and it’s the described as the simplest way for you to manage and respond to conversations with customers. HappyForms uses a friendly drag and drop form builder for creating contact forms. It is optimized to increase conversations with your website leads, and to help you keep track of these conversations in a filterable archive.You’ll be set up and going in 5 minutes or less.
Option #7 – JetFormBuilder
JetFormBuilder is a free form plugin to help you create advanced forms in the Gutenberg editor. This free plugin goes with 18+ field blocks, 11 post submit actions, conditional logic, calculated content, and more functional features.
Create your forms visually in Gutenberg WordPress editor and add any content you want to your next form. JetFormBuilder allows accepting all kinds of payments via WordPress forms.
Also, you can style your form fields with the free JetStyleManager as desired.
See another article claiming the same here. https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/the-slowest-wordpress-plugins-and-alternatives-to-try-instead/
Is there another that you love and would like to share with our readers? Comment below!
After a server move I just ran into massive problems with Contact Form 7 (the famous spinning wheel). After days of testing — without any result rather than frustration — I found your article and replaced one CF7 form with WPForms. Gutess what: It worked right out of the box.
I will see how CF7 support will deal with my ticket (https://wordpress.org/support/topic/no-email-sent-spinning-wheel/). If they can solve the problem I would still consider to stick to CF7 due to the various options it has in the free version.
From your experience: Could you recommend a free alternative that has similar features? WPForms in the free version is rather limited.
Cheers, Frank
If your site is important to you do not search for free solutions. Invest in it and pay for plugins.
Thank you for a well written article. I was tired of using Contact form 7 all of these years on all of our websites and needed a change. You lead me to Ninja Forms and I am so happy with the results! cheers!
AWESOME SAUCE!!!
Do all or any of these forms support Google recaptcha integration?
We get a lot of spam.
Some have this included at no cost and others it might be a paid add-on.
Thanks for the tips. In my search for an alternative to Contact Form 7, I found out something interesting. What do you think of SimpleForm – The simplest way to add a contact form ?
Keep up the good work.
Looks good!
I have used several contact forms and formidable has been the best. After using it for a couple years I bought the pro version and love it. I have the pro version for wp forms also, but like formidable the best. Formidable also has color styling options in free and paid. Support on both forms has been good.
Awesome sauce!
I enjoyed this article. My first job working on an existing WP site was to redo the whole site from scratch because “nobody uses it, it isn’t mobile friendly, it’s hard to update, it costs a fortune advertsing it”. They had the Contact Form 7 Plugin already installed, and zero form fill out’s made no sense to me but to them no smoke meant no fire so “leave that alone” were my instructions and don’t waste time fixing what isn’t broken.
So, I sort of followed instructions (by spending no time on it) and I just deactivated it and utilised an existing but unused Mailchimp account they had and for fun (because I hadnt used it much but always wanted to) I utilised Google Forms which was part of their “G-Suite” subscription. No big deal especially as they were using it for e-mail, cloud storage, Google Docs etc etc so what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, the office staff all commented on how much faster the website was and more online enquiries came thru over the next 30 days than the previous year. So now the new website was no longer a priority seeing as the old one was now doing fine and I was no longer needed. I heard things really hit the fan when the new Office/Marketing Manager that was hired to work full time to handle the enquiries couldn’t use Mailchimp, Google or WordPress. Lol.
Great input here. Thanks!
We have a form made with Contact Form 7 that used to work but stopped working.
We had a drop-down list of possible recipients of the message, and the respondent could choose who should get an email notification of the message. For every choice, one copy would go to our office staff and one copy would go to one of our volunteers.
Now Contact Form 7 has stopped sending email notifications, so we can only see the form response if we check Flamingo every day.
Can you tell me if any of these would allow for email notifications to a choice of recipients/
Which of these would also store responses in an online database like Flamingo (or even in a csv file that we can access).
Best would be to reach out to the plugin developer with your specific questions.
Very glad I stumbled across this article. I have been fighting trying to get CF7 to work on my site. All other mail works but not the contact form. It’s a complete pain in the rear. You have confirmed for me that I am not a complete idiot and time to move on with another contact form. Too many hours wasted on CF7.
Glad to help!
Thanks for this. Contact Form 7 has been a glitchy POS from day one and after trouble shooting it again for over 2 hours I’m moving on. Never again!
AMEN!
Which contact from (other than 7) supports the ability to send the form submitter an email with an attachment after they submit?
Gravity Forms and Jotform for sure.