The very moment anyone makes the decision to start up an eCommerce venture of any sort there becomes an immediate need to make it as easy and straightforward as possible for customers to be in touch with you. If they have any inquiry about your products, services, or even more simply needing help with anything related to your eCommerce website then they need to be able to find that help and get it quickly and without any difficulty. No online store owner is going to need to be convinced of that, and especially considering it’s all to easy for those people to make their way over to a competitor’s website and take their business there. If they have a WordPress business website then managed WordPress hosting with no tech setup is going to be best.
That’s because with managed web hosting all aspects of website optimization are taken care of, and that includes ongoing SEO improvements that mean more of those would-be customers end up at your website in the first place. But that does nothing to ensure that they have the ease-of-use you’re looking to ensure for them, and contact forms that put those folks in touch with you easily and reliably every time is going to be something you’ll need to address separately. So as is always the case with any WordPress website it becomes about plugins, and as you’d expect there are ones that customize contact forms for better functionality very nicely.
We’ll also take a quick chance to promote managed WordPress hosting Toronto too. No matter what plugins you choose to install for your eCommerce site you’ll have more to gain with having your site ranking higher in search results for searches related to any type of business operating in Canada’s biggest city and most competitive business environment. Vancouver and other big cites in Canada have much the same competitiveness, and if you’re in an industry where there are plenty of other readily-available providers there for potential customers then it’s even more necessary to have the best means of contact for them.
So what we’ll do with this week’s entry is look at the top contact form plugins for WordPress, focusing on the features that make them the best choices as well as any notable pros and cons that will apply for each of them. Plugins for WordPress business websites have been our focus here for the last several week and so this entry will be a continuation of that theme. Our lengthy experience with providing good WordPress web hosting for Canadian businesses has given us plenty of perspective with adding the right plugins to a site, and we’re happy to share what we know with any and all of you who are putting together an eCommerce website for your small business.
Readily Available
Developers are definitely going to know about the importance of this form of communication and having it made readily available to customers bringing business via a website. They should never skip the contact form, because many of those potential or returning customers will not be inclined at all to call into a customer support line, or spend time with a live chat module that may not have a provider ready to go at that moment.
It’s here that WordPress contact form plugins come into play and make so much sense if you’ve chosen to go with managed WordPress hosting no tech setup. Customers are able to submit a quick email without asking too much of their time, and the website with the form can field the message in a timely manner. Plus a good contact form will prevent spam and allow you to expand the way you interact with your customers and updating the form based on how the user responds.
A WordPress contact form plugin delivers a handful of fields and minimal design tools and functions to keep your customers in contact with you. More advanced ones will support conditional logic, design tools, and file submission options. All are a good fit with managed WordPress hosting Toronto.
Here’s what you will want to see with any of them and factoring into the one you choose for your eCommerce website:
- Custom forms : With multiple fields, options, and branding tools
- Visual builders : Drag and drop editors make it easier to implement these plugins
- Conditional logic : Show or hide elements like buttons, fields, or form sections based on what the user selects on the form
- Communications : There should be an email communication system that informs recipients that a new message has arrived
- Frontend file submission : Clients should be able to upload ideas in document form, like attaching a screenshot of their issue to provide even greater clarity on the help they need
- Responsiveness : You’ll want the form to show up on all devices
- Spam protection : The WordPress contact form plugin you choose should have spam protection built in so that submitters don’t end up having to their inbox flooded with junk just because they’ve used your contact form.
Our Top 10 WordPress Contact Form Plugins
Gravity Forms is good because it combines a clean interface with user-friendly tools that are still fairly advanced for improving customer support websites. Forms, entries, and conditional logic are all unlimited with Gravity Forms, and file uploads and multi-page forms are also supported. With this plugin you will be able to set up a full ticketing system, FAQ page, documentation, language translations, and several other resources. Priority support is also possible if you go with the premium paid plan, but most online store webmaster are just fine with the free optionThere’s no live chat or phone support, but for most of these webmasters that isn’t something that is necessary for them.
Gravity Forms features include documentation with a getting started guide, information on add-ons, popular features, developer docs, and a wide range of add-ons and external integrations like AWeber, Dropbox, Freshbooks, GetResponse, MailChimp, PayPal Pro, and Stripe. Most users also like that conditional logic is built in, and this plugin supports email notifications, file uploads, and the option to save and continue. Another good feature is that it allows for frontend user content submissions, which can the be published on your WordPress blog.
Ninja Forms is solid too, and it provides a beautiful user interface for building your own contact forms. There aren’t any limitations for forms, fields, or emails received, and you can save your forms for later. The majority of the fields and features in the free version are pretty basic, but it’s easy to configure your forms and make them look nice on your website. Users who choose this plugin have access to dozens of add-ons, customer support, updates, layouts, multi-part forms, conditional logic, and more.
Practical features for this one include more than 40 add-ons, including ones for conditional logic, multi-part forms, front-end posting, file uploads, layouts, and styles. It’s also advantageous that you can have your forms linked up to services like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and AWeber. This plugins allows you to collect payments directly through your forms with the help of PayPal Express or one of the many other payment processors. You may also like how it lets you connect with Zapier to remove most limitations in terms of integrations and automation.
Everest Forms is super functional for form building. Go with this one for your site backed with managed WordPress hosting with no tech setup and you’ll have an excess of features that allow you to create unlimited contact forms and other types of forms easily for your WordPress site. The drag and drop form builder makes putting them in place as easy as possible as possible and then from there you have a wide range of templates so you’re never starting from scratch. Go ahead and change the form settings and customize the form according to your requirements, and then make use of this plugin’s preview feature that lets you to see how the form is displayed on the frontend.
Go with the Pro version of Everest Forms and you have even more features and functionalities with 14 additional form fields, dedicated Entries tab for user submissions, and integrations. Even with the free version there’s a lot to like about using this contact form plugin for WordPress sites. It has an intuitive UI and supports shortcodes so you can add your form to your website by page, post, and sidebars. Plus it is translation-ready and compatible with translation plugins and has built-in spam protection and will also defend against bots using Google reCaptcha.
There are also 14 add-ons to extend the plugin features such as conditional logic, style customizer for changing the look and feel, multipart forms for a step by step form submissions, and more. It can be integrated with Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Zapier, Stripe, or PayPal and with Survey, quiz, and poll add-ons you can collect feedback and increase user interaction.
Metform is an Elementor-based drag and drop form builder that excels with creating amazing contact forms. With it users can create any type of contact form, feedback form, or subscription form for their WordPress site in minutes. There are plenty of premium features rolled up into it, including a secured and trustworthy payment system and compatibility with all popular payment gateways like Paypal and Stripe, along with Smart Conditional Logic to show or hide fields in your form as need be.
Users of this plugin also like their advanced validation fields that allows users to add multiple fields through advanced validation fields and then easily divide the large field of contact form into a multiple steps forms. It’s great how you can do this so quickly using the multi-step contact form widget, and editing the contact form validation field is impressively easy too. You can store user form submissions’ data ( email address, phone number, password, name, etc) by connecting with popular CRM services like Hubspot and Zoho.
You are likely to be just as pleased if you choose HappyForms for your WordPress contact form plugin. One of the biggest advantages with this one is that it’s completely built in the WordPress Customizer and so there’s no need to learn a new UI. It’s a newer plugin that is super lightweight in terms of code and performance, and the fact that it’s free is also going to appeal to a lot of small business owners who are making use of a website for the first time.
It has the same drag-and-drop functionality as many of the others we’ve looked at here, and greater ease of use is always going to be a plus for those considering Managed WordPress hosting in Toronto. Submitted customer messages are copied into the WordPress admin dashboard along with a handy notification or another option is to have them sent to your email as well.
The array of features with this one is a little more limited, but you have one-click honeypot and Google ReCaptcha spam prevention as well as the ability to have forms dropped anywhere into pages or posts, or even by means of a widget in areas set up with shortcode.
Contact Form 7 is very popular, and for good reason. It’s seen as a minimalist gem that still provides everything that most blogs and small businesses need - a basic contact form that’s stable and reliable. Install this one into select pages of your site and you’ll have documentation, an FAQ, support forum, and a full website with information. There’s no shortage of features too, and users of this plugin have the ability to create an unlimited number of forms, choose from several types of fields like date, URL, email, and text, and also include the email address of your choice to receive your messages from customers.
Keep in mind as well that with this one you have support for several unique fields such as a CAPTCHA, file submission, quizzes, acceptance, radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down menus. Having docs, FAQs and support links all placed right in the WordPress dashboard is a nice design feature too, and like the others here you’re able to place the contact form anywhere you want using simple shortcodes.
Our last offering in our list of the best WordPress contact form options is HubSpot’s WordPress plugin. It is more than just your traditional form builder, and it’s the choice of many webmasters who want to connect HubSpot CRM with WordPress to easily organize and segment your contacts into lists. First among the advantages of using this one is the way you get a lead generation dashboard, lead capture tools like popups, slide-ins, and exit intent forms, plus a static form builder, a contact database, and lead insights for the first seven days of website activity after lead capture.
What else is there to like about HubSpot All-In-One Marketing? Where to begin really. For starters it’s free for users, and then from there it has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, unlimited fields and submissions, and it’s compatible with other plugins like Ninja Forms and Gravity Forms. Users also tend to be fans of the built-in analytics to analyze your best pages and the way this WordPress plugin seamlessly integrates with a CRM to manage your contact database.
A WordPress business website will often make a lot of sense for smaller businesses that don’t need to be spending a ton on website design, and instead need a basic online storefront form themselves. Managed WordPress hosting with no tech setup usually looks plenty good to those of them who see the value in paying to have their site optimally seated on the web at all times, and then choosing from free or paid WordPress plugins that give the site the functionality it needs to meet customer expectations as they buy goods or services through the site.
