WPForms vs Contact Form 7 – Best Free WP Form Plugins
Are you looking for the WPForms vs Contact Form 7 comparison? If you are, we have got you covered!
Form plugins are vital to collect helpful information from your users. Hence, it is necessary to pick the suitable one.
The primary concern of many WordPress beginners is the cost. Many WordPress users prefer free contact form plugins.
Although you cannot get all the features in a free-form plugin, it will provide the necessary features for a small website.
Going through different contact plugins available for WordPress might have confused you about choosing between WPForms and Contact Forms 7.
Today, In this article, we will compare two free-form plugins, WPForms Lite and Contact Form 7. So that you can decide the suitable form plugin for you.
What is Contact Form 7 Plugin?
Contact Form 7 is one of the oldest form Plugins for WordPress. It has crossed over 100 million installations over some time. That shows the popularity and importance of this free WordPress plugin.
WordPress developers have widely used this plugin, considering its advanced features.
However, the biggest drawback of this plugin is the lack of a visual builder. This makes it difficult for anyone who does not know how to edit HTML or its shortcodes.
Because of these difficulties in configuration and other issues like emails not being sent with contact forms 7, WordPress users have started looking for a user-friendly form plugin.
What is WPForms Plugin?
WPForms is a freemium form plugin started by Syed Balkhi and Jared Atchison.
When Contact Form 7 was the only free-form plugin with over a million installations, Syed Balkhi understood the importance and need for a user-friendly free-form plugin.
So, the idea of creating a user-friendly form plugin led the way for the evolution of WPForms.
WPForms Lite vs Pro Comparison
Before the comparison, we would like to inform you that WPForms is not a free-form plugin. It is a freemium plugin. This means It has got premium memberships too.
But, for this comparison, we will consider only their free version. For the premium version comparisons, check our articles on
- WPForms vs Gravity Forms – Which is the Best Form Plugin?
- WPForms vs Ninja Forms – Which is the Best Form Builder Plugin?
And for other form comparisons, check our resources on,
- Best WordPress Form Plugin: WPForms vs Wufoo
- WPForms vs Typeforms – Which one is Better?
- WPForms vs Google Forms – Which one should you choose?
How to Add a Contact Form in WordPress?
WPForms and Contact Form 7 are both contact form plugins. To add a contact form plugin, you will need to install the plugin first. For detailed instructions, refer to our guide on installing a WordPress Plugin.
And now, let us start comparing WPForms and Contact Form 7.
WPForms vs Contact Form 7
This Contact Form 7 vs WPForms comparison will compare these 4 criteria for evaluating these 2 WordPress plugins.
Ease of Use
As we said earlier, Contact Form 7 is one of the oldest form plugins available for WordPress. Looking at the user interface will still convey how old the plugin is.
You may look at the interface below.
You might find this a little complicated if you haven’t used shortcodes earlier in WordPress. And adding additional fields here is not easy if you don’t know how to work with HTML forms.
There aren’t options like previewing or drag-and-drop builders to visualize the structure.
But then you can still set the success/failure message you want to display to the user when he submits the form.
You can also change the mail template for sending the email responses. However, you can never see the answers in your WordPress dashboard.
On the other hand, WPForms is an entirely user-friendly plugin for modern-day WordPress users. And you don’t need the knowledge of HTML to create a form.
This ease of use starts from creating your form to setting up email responses.
Contact Form 7 allows you to add only fields like text, email, URL, telephone, number, date, text area, drop-down menu, radio buttons, acceptance, quiz, file, and submit button.
But WPForms allows you to add new form fields, rearrange them in order and customize them as you like with a complete drag-and-drop builder.
With the preview option available in WPForms Form Editor, you will always know how your form will look while making changes.
And it is super easy to test your forms in WPForms before publishing them.
Winner: WPForms
Advanced Form Creation
Even WPForms lite has got templates to create advanced forms. Therefore you don’t have to start from scratch every time to complete a form.
Using these templates to create your desired form is so easy,
- How to Create a Contact Form with WPForms?
- How to create an Email Subscription Form with WPForms?
- How to Create a Feedback Form with WPForms?
Contact Form 7 templates can also be found on the internet. But they are not official. Therefore, it can lead to security issues and is hard to install. Even after installation, it may or may not work.
Winner: WPForms
Features
Contact Form 7 is a relatively quick way to set up a contact form. But then the available features are limited.
And if you wish to expand the features available with this plugin, install more plugins. But then these plugins are not official and may or may not support your website.
You can refer to this list of additional settings you can add to the Contact Form 7 plugin.
You can choose the CSS classes you wish to add to your form with the general settings.
And you can set up email features to receive all the entries to your mailbox.
These are only limited to WPForms Lite. However, if you check out the premium membership of WPForms, it includes some of the extra-ordinary features like:
- Spam Protection
- Smart Conditional Logic
- Entry Management
- Survey and Poll Creation
- Partial form saving for capturing more leads
- Multi-part form creation
- Instant Email Notifications
- Collecting Payments
Winner: WPForms
Integrations
Being a free plugin, Contact Form 7 allows two integrations: Constant Contact and reCaptcha.
With Constant Contact integration, you can export the contact data collected from the users to your Constant Contact account, while reCaptcha protects your form from spam attacks.
Like the Contact Form 7 Plugin, WPForms allows you to export your form entry details to your Constant Contact account for free.
The rest of the integrations are available as add-ons for premium users.
The Anti-spam feature available in the Contact Form 7 plugin can be accessed under the General Settings tab.
These are only the limited integrations available in the WPForms lite. But then the premium Membership of WPForms has features like,
- Email Integrations with Constant Contact, AWeber, Mailchimp, GetResponse, Campaign Monitor, Drip, or Brevo
- Payment integrations like PayPal, Stripe, etc.
Recommended Read: How To Create WPForms Authorize.net Payment Forms and Accept Payments?
Winner: WPForms
Support
Contact Form 7 is available as a free plugin in the WordPress repository. Therefore it has a support forum to help its users. But then there is no necessity for tickets at the support forum to be responded to. And then there is no guarantee of timely responses.
For common issues, you must look at their FAQ and documentation.
But WPForms has extensive and dedicated customer support. In addition, the documentation is in-depth, and numerous tutorials are available on YouTube from WPForms and BlogHeist Channel.
Winner: WPForms
Pricing
Both Contact Form 7 and WPForms Lite are free plugins to get started. However, although the features of WPForms Lite and Contact Form 7 are comparable, the ease of use doesn’t favor Contact Form 7.
When you want more features, you can easily upgrade to WPForms Premium membership without losing the data of your existing forms and entries.
Similarly, data migration is easy when you want to downgrade from WPForms Pro to WPForms lite.
For degrading from WPForms Pro to WPForms lite, these are the steps to follow:
- When your WPForms Pro is installed and activated, install WPForms Lite (but don’t activate it yet).
- Go to WPForms » Forms and check with individual forms if you have any field not available in the Lite version.
- And then, you can export your entries (Optional)
- Now to get Plugins » Installed Plugins. Deactivate WPForms (Premium version) and activate WPForms Lite (Free version)
- We recommend checking your embedded forms to see if your forms are working fine.
Winner: Tie
WPForms — The Best Contact Form 7 Alternative
From the above comparisons,
Factors | WPForms Lite | Contact Form 7 |
---|---|---|
Ease of use | Winner | – |
Advanced Form Creation | Winner | – |
Features | Winner | – |
Integrations | Winner | – |
Support | Winner | – |
Pricing | Tie | Tie |
Contact Form 7 was launched over a decade, specifically designed to create a Contact Form. And being a free plugin, it has accumulated a lot of installs over the years. However, it is not the best form plugin available for WordPress users at the current date.
WPForms has many more features, allowing you to create customized forms using Templates. Although the Contact Form 7 plugin has got equivalent features to WPForms Lite. But cannot match the features and integrations of WPForms Pro.
WPForms has been continuously adding new features and integrations. WPForms is far better than Contact Form 7 Plugin, with dedicated customer support and a better user interface. So, I would recommend WPForms as a better plugin to go with.
Which plugin do you use for Contact Forms?
At BlogHeist, we use the WPForms plugin for contact forms. We have tested both WPForms Pro as well as WPForms Lite at BlogHeist.
Recommended Read: How To Integrate WPForms With Brevo And Improve Lead Generation?
Get Started with WPForms
So, I hope you would have loved this comparison between WPForms and Contact Form 7. If you are planning to get started with WPForms,
$This is an affiliate link
Frequently Asked Questions
Some of the frequently asked questions regarding the WPForms and Contact Forms 7 are:
Are They Free To Use?
Yes. The free version of both plugins is free for a lifetime. So you don’t need to pay a single penny to use those.
Can We Build Spam-Free Contact Forms?
Yes. Integration with Google reCaptcha will help you to build spam-free contact forms.
Which One Is The Best For Beginners?
In our experience, WPForms offers more features and a beginner-friendly form-building experience. As a result, you can choose WPForms for your business.
Conclusion
Choosing a form builder plugin can be challenging if you are new. However, in our experience, WPForms and Contact Form 7 are the two best options available in the market.
From above, you can clearly see that WPForms is far better than Contact Form 7. So, we highly recommend it.
We hope you have found this article helpful and enjoyed the read. Please consider sharing it with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media if you do. Plus, check out our blog archive for more related articles.
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Aaron says
Although both are free plugins, I think wpforms has got more features even in the free version itself.
Nirmal Kumar says
Hey Aaron, that’s true. WPForms has got many useful form features even in its free version. If you really love using WPforms, then you consider trying out the WPForms Pro plugin. It comes with a money-back guarantee too. So less risk involved.