Believe it or not, online forms share something in common with spoilers for Marvel movies—on the internet you can’t really avoid them.
Whether you’re after complex forms to take payments and sell your products, or just a basic registration page, sooner or later every website requires a form of some shape or size.
But there’s a problem for WordPress users (around 40% of the internet): there’s no built-in form functionality. This means you’ll have to rely on third-party plugins to add any type of form to your WordPress site.
So with that in mind, in this guide, we’ve gathered the best WordPress form builder plugins to help you find the right tool for your needs. Let's get started.
Plugins are a nifty piece of software that expand WordPress’s functionality. They allow you to enhance your site and take it beyond a basic text-based blog.
Whether you want to embed a playable browser game into your WordPress website, perfect your SEO strategy or just add an online form, plugins are the way to do it.
Form builder plugins refer to any plugins related to adding online forms to your site. It's simple: just install them from the WordPress plugin directory, and the new add-on will appear in your WordPress dashboard.
From there, you can create a custom form and add it to your website in posts, pages, footers or even pop-up widgets. The process is user-friendly and easy to pick up, no matter what tool you use.
In fact, the most difficult part is choosing the right tool in the first place. With over 1,600 form builders to choose from, finding the right one for your needs can feel like finding a needle in a digital haystack.
So before we get into our featured tools, let’s look for some factors to consider when choosing one of your own.
There are four main questions you should ask when deciding on a WordPress form builder.
Keep in mind, your answers will change based on your use case. For example, an ecommerce store will have different needs to someone requiring a simple contact form.
Whatever your needs, here’s what to consider when settling on a WordPress form builder:
Price: as a general rule, free form building software only allows basic types of forms (or limited form submissions). This is fine for basic forms, but if you require advanced features and functionality, you'll most likely require a paid version.
Question/Field types: not all form tools offer extensive field/question types. For example, text fields and dropdown boxes are common, but question types provided by Paperform, like product, image, appointment or slider questions, aren’t available on most platforms.
Features: all form builders are capable of basic contact forms, but if you need powerful features not offered by all online form builders (like payment forms, file uploads or advanced customization), make sure your tool of choice supports them.
Templates: templates speed up the creation process and make it easier to build forms, fast. If speed is essential, make sure you choose a tool with an extensive collection of relevant form templates.
Integrations: with integrations, you can connect to third-party apps and set up automated workflows that cut down on mundane processes. The best WordPress form builder plugins come with these baked-in.
Cross-Platform: in 2023, it’s not enough to have your form only work on a desktop. You need to make sure they look great no matter the browser or device users are visiting from. (Mobile responsiveness is critical.)
Customer Support: plugins are added by companies outside WordPress, so you’ll want to make sure whatever form builder you choose offers dedicated support should anything go wrong.
Security: the form entries of your respondents contain personal data. Whether you’re collecting user registration or order forms, you want to make sure this information is secure—look out for GDPR compliance in particular.
Spam Protection: some plugins don’t come with spam protection, which is a big no-no. If you want to avoid your inbox being flooded with spambots, double check your tool of choice includes this feature.
Taking the above criteria in mind, we’ve sifted through the thousands of WordPress form plugins and curated a list of the best. Take a look below.
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Most form builders use the same tried and true drag and drop interface. Paperform’s WordPress plugin brings a fresh form-building experience to WordPress.
Our editor is designed to feel like a Word doc—type anywhere to add questions, insert text, embed videos and images or even add your favourite GIFs straight from GIPHY. It’s intuitive to use, and has all the advanced features like conditional logic and built-in analysis you need to build beautiful forms without a lick of code.
🖥 Download Paperform's WordPress plugin.
With Paperform’s versatile tools there’s no limit to what you can create. Whether you need registration forms, conversational survey forms or an all-in-one ecommerce solution to sell products and take payments with PayPal, Stripe and Braintree, we’ve got you covered.
Select from 25+ unique form questions including image choice, slider, file upload and signature. Want to save time? Use one of our 650+ expert-designed form templates to make the process even faster, or use them as inspiration for your own custom creations.
Once you’re done building, jump into our theme settings to customize your form. Adjust fonts, tweak colours and UI, or even add your own unique flair with custom HTML and CSS support out of the box.
No matter what you make using Paperform, you can rest easy knowing it's got beauty and brains. Customize your forms to the nines knowing that no matter how they look, they'll be backed with some serious analysis and integration power.
All that’s left is to insert your fancy new form in WordPress. No code, no hassle and no cumbersome editor tied to WordPress' backend. It’s as simple as copying the URL into your WordPress site—we look after the rest.
Subscribers get access to our advanced analytics, conditional logic, 3,000+ direct and Zapier integrations to apps like Mailchimp and WooCommerce, as well as our award-winning customer support.
Best of all? We’re GDPR certified and all our forms are CAPTCHA enabled, meaning your form data is more secure than a Swiss bank. All that and more adds up to what we believe is the best WordPress form builder plugin on the market.
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HubSpot is known for its suite of marketing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, but they offer a neat (free) online form builder plugin for WordPress as well.
Just activate it in your WordPress dashboard and create your free HubSpot account. Then use the drag and drop builder to choose from a dozen question types and create a diverse range of single or multi-page forms.
The stock offering is fairly limited. You’ll get the most out of it if you’re already a user of their software suite, as you can send form data straight to HubSpot and access their marketing, CRM and analytics suite natively within WordPress. (You can also do this with Paperform's integrations.)
A lot of the best features are saved for premium versions. Paying HubSpot users can adapt their questions to each visitor or even trigger new questions for returning ones. You can also send email notifications to visitors or set them up for yourself—though this hardly reinvents the wheel.
The bottom line: HubSpot CRM isn’t a groundbreaking form solution, however if you’re already a user of HubSpot CRM (and many, many folks are) its integrations and responsive forms make it a great choice.
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JetFormBuilder is a Gutenberg WordPress form builder plugin that truly integrates with the WordPress design. You create single and multi-page forms using the same UI that you would when creating a WordPress page or post.
Unfortunately, the familiarity of the UI doesn’t mean that creating a form is intuitive. Finding the field blocks is simple enough, but the configuration is complicated.
In saying that, you can do a lot with this builder. In particular, the after-submission actions impress us. Through them, you can email the user, insert or update a post, register and update their user profile on your site, and integrate with other apps. The free version is pretty robust, with all the essential form features included in it.
In terms of appearance, you’re limited without the additional JetStyleManager plugin—you can either do it through WordPress’s native customisation or get into the HTML side of things. This means that you can do things like change the font and add images, but it’d be nice to have some in-built styling.
All in all, if you’re used to using WordPress and want a form builder that will fit right in with your Gutenberg editor, Jetform is a solid choice.
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Elementor is a website builder plugin for WordPress that comes with a handy form builder widget as well. Though there is a free plan, you'll have to sign up for one of the paid offerings to unlock the form building capabilities.
The best thing about Elementor is that it's very beginner-friendly. It started as a way to simplify the website building process for WordPress, so ease of use is at the core of their philosophy. You'll find adding content and tweaking the appearance of forms rather straightforward, though the UI can feel a bit cluttered at times.
All the essential question types you would expect are available, from multiple choice to dropdown boxes. There are also a range of after submission actions you can set up to do things like page redirects or connect with apps like Mailchimp. Customisation is rather simple, though you can edit the fonts and backgrounds.
Elementor's form builder embeds nicely into WordPress websites and won't cause any headaches on that front. It might not be the best options for advanced forms or high levels of customisation, but if you're already familiar with Elementor it makes sense to keep things in the same spot.
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Calculated Fields Form does exactly what is says on the tin: helps you build forms that calculate data. This is handy for form processes like financial calculations, date generation for reservations, or to calculate the pricing of products.
The killer app here is the excellent calculation abilities. As far as the form maker itself goes, let's just say it won’t win any design awards, though the user interface is easy to navigate. Plus, there are a variety of themes and templates, with the ability to match form styling to your WordPress theme.
The editor is built into the WordPress backend. It offers multiple question types and form fields that make it easy to find a solution for your needs. You can create multi-part forms and use conditional logic on the free plan, though you’ll need to be on a paid tier to build any advanced forms or access analytics.
Once again, the free plugin is scarce. You get no integrations; no analytics widget; no integrations with payment processors and you can’t even import or export—not even to download your data to a CSV file and analyse it in Google Sheets.
You also need to pay to access customer support, send notifications and get spam protection via Google reCAPTCHA. These three features are essential to any of the best WordPress contact form plugins, so we can’t recommend the free version.
However, if you’re looking for a barebones form builder that’s great at conditional logic and only requires a single payment, Calculated Form Fields is a good option.
Hopefully we've given you an idea of what to look for in a WordPress form building plugin, as well as which plugin is best suited to your needs.
Why not get started with Paperform’s 14-day free trial? Use our visual builder to create unlimited forms that truly reflect your brand—take payments, manage bookings and integrate with your favourite apps, from Campaign Monitor to Notion.
Learn about Alex's journey, passions, and what attracted him to work at Paperform.
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