I think you’ll agree with me when I say that almost every website, blog or shop needs a feedback form. It is the best and easiest way to get in touch with the audience whether they are potential customers, readers or just interested people who can ask questions not by leaving comments, but by doing it on a separate page instead. In this respect WordPress has done a lot for it and offers a great variety of contact form plugins free to download and ready to be used.
Here you’ll find a review of three most popular contact form plugins: Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi, Fast Secure Contact Form by Mike Challis and Contact Form by BestWebSoft. All of them are easy-to-use, flexible and compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
Contact Form 7
According to the WordPress community it’s average rating makes up 4.4 points.
This plugin adds a contact form to your website with ease on the one hand and can manage multiple contact forms on the other. It is all but the most downloaded contact form plugins (about 15 million times).
Pros:
– you can create multiple contact forms;
– you can use them on different parts of your site;
– you can customize the form and the mail contents with simple markup;
– easy installation because shortcodes are given at once in the forms list;
– HTML-familiar;
– file uploading available;
– supports Ajax-powered submitting;
– Russian translation available;
– spam-proof via CAPTHCA and Akismet spam filtering.
Cons:
– it is not as flexible as stated;
– it is rather hard to set up forms;
– too many additional features to go into for a simple user.
Summary: Contact Form 7 is a rather functional and secure plugin, still you’ll need a bit of time to go into a great number of useful additional features.
Fast Secure Contact Form
According to the WordPress community it’s average rating makes up 4.5 points.
It is a very flexible plugin that blocks spam automatically. With more than 4 million downloads, Fast Secure Contact Form is a favorite of many multisite super admins.
Pros:
– you can create multiple forms;
– easy installation, the shortcode is given on the settings page that is to be pasted into the contacts page;
– you can set emails confirmation;
– you can redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent;
– you do not have to mess with templates;
– you can see a custom page on your site once a message has been sent;
– you can edit form easily;
– you can add extra fields of any type;
– visitors can send a meeting request to talk over phone or video;
– auto form fill for logged in users available;
– customizable form field titles;
– validates syntax of E-mail address;
– Russian translation available;
– spam-proof via CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering.
Cons:
– once you click “Edit form”, you see a lot of fields and settings;
– as usual, plugin settings are grouped in the sidebox of admin panel, but here you have to go into the “Plugins” menu -> FS contact form settings;
– not very appealing interface.
Summary: With its abundance of useful features and solid security system, Fast Secure Contact Form lacks simplicity in usage.
If compared, Fast Secure Contact Form has much more features than the first contestant – Contact Form 7, some of which are really of use, like auto form fill for logged in users and the option to send a meeting request to talk over phone or video. Still, we can find some similar features that can be rightfully considered indisputable advantages:
– both of them are easily installed, because you can see the shortcode directly on the settings page;
– available customization;
– spam security;
– you can create as many forms as you want.
On the other hand, a simple user will get lost in the wild jungle of additional features, no matter how useful they may seem.
Contact Form
According to the WordPress community it’s average rating makes up 4.5 points.
Developed not very long ago in comparison to the previous plugins, Contact Form by BestWebSoft has quickly drawn attention of a great number of users. It is an extremely easy form, that doesn’t require any additional settings, though there are some available options. All you need is just to activate the plugin and insert the shortcode into the text.
Pros:
– it is very simple, everything is clear as soon as you read the instruction;
– user-friendly interface;
– easy installation;
– you can add your own text fields such as name, subject and email address;
– you can allow your visitors to upload files and send them as attachments;
– you can choose where to send the messages – this can be any user and any email address;
– you can add a field for sending a copy of the message to the user who fills out the contact form. A copy will be sent -to the email address specified while filling out the contact form;
– you can change a label when the fields are displayed;
– Russian translation available.
Cons:
– there is no inbuilt spam-filter;
– it is not intended for creation of complex forms.
Summary: If you need to install an easy contact form in no time this plugin is the best solution! Spam security is not a problem for a captcha plugin can be easily added to your website.
So, we’ve compared the features and functionality of Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi, Fast Secure Contact Form by Mike Challis and Contact Form by BestWebSoft. Despite the common features, such as easy installation, translation into a great number of languages and easy form editing, the strong lead of the latter is apparent. It is simplicity of use that makes this plugin rank first on the list. On the one hand, it does exactly what it must do, on the other hand, it has no frills which is its utmost advantage.