How to Create a Contact Form in WordPress – Step by Step Guide

Have you ever visited a website’s contact page and wished to have a contact page just as beautiful on your own blog?
Well, it’s time to put an end to wishing and start doing. Because once you’re done with this article, you’ll have an even more stylish and a fully functional contact form in your WordPress website.
But, how are you going to design a contact form when you have no experience in web design or programming? It’s simple. We’re going to use a WordPress plugin to get the job done. No coding required.
Before we begin, let’s touch the basics and learn a little bit about the many uses of contact forms.

Why Use a Contact Form Plugin?

Now, you might be wondering why you should go through all the trouble to embed a contact form when you can easily leave your email address on the contact page to let visitors contact you, right?
Well, instead of exposing your email on your contact page, contact form plugins help protect you from nasty spammers, hackers, and bots by hiding your email address and placing spam protection on the contact form.
A contact form is a must-have feature for every website. It not only provides a convenient and more professional way for your readers to contact you, but it also helps you to battle spam as well.

Which Contact Form Plugin Should You Use?

While there are many free contact form plugins available in the WordPress directory, they are not the most beginner-friendly. Many can be a complicated process, using outdated technology and requiring you to edit HTML code.
Thankfully, there’s WPForms. One of the most intuitive plugins available with a drag and drop builder you can use to create a beautiful contact form in WordPress. Best of all, there’s no coding required, and you can quickly create contact forms in just a few minutes with pre-built templates.

How to Create a Contact Form With WPForms

WPForms is one of the most beginner-friendly contact form plugins that you can use to set up a contact form on your blog with a few simple steps.
The best feature of using WPForms is that it comes with a drag and drop form builder which you can use to build your own custom contact forms.
Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Install WPForms On Your Blog

Before we get to the fun part of designing the contact form, first you have to install the plugin on your blog.
To do that, you can login to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins and the Add New page. Then search for WPForms.

You’ll find the Contact Form by WPForms plugin on top of the search results.
Now click Install Now button and then activate the plugin.

Once you activate the plugin, you’ll be presented with a welcome message. This page also includes a tutorial video. You can watch it to learn more about WPForms.

Step 2: Design A New Contact Form

You can create a new contact form by going over to WPForms tab and selecting Add New.

From this page, you can either create a form from scratch or use the Simple Contact Form template to get started quickly.

Now you can customize your contact form using the WPForms drag and drop builder.

You can add more fields to your contact form by simply dragging an element from the list and dropping it on the contact form. And you can even customize each field to your preference.

Step 3: Configure Your Contact Form

Once you’re done designing the contact form, you can move over to the Settings tab on the WPForms to configure your contact form’s notifications and confirmation message.

Notification is the email you receive whenever someone contacts you using the WPForms contact form. Here, you can enter your email which you’d like to receive the messages from your contact form.
By default, the emails will be sent to the email address that you used to create the WordPress admin account. You can even enter multiple emails if you prefer messages to be sent to more than one email account.
You can leave rest of the fields as-is.

The confirmation is the success message that will be shown to your visitors after they submit your form. You can enter your own custom message in this tab.
After making all the customization, hit the Save button to save all the changes.

Step 4: Embed The Contact Form Into A Page

Now that you have yourself a complete contact form, let’s go ahead and embed this form into your contact page.

First, click on the Embed button on top of the WPForms builder and copy the shortcode for your newly created contact form.
If you don’t already have a contact page, head over to Pages tab in the WordPress dashboard and create a new contact page. And simply paste the shortcode inside the page. Or you can use the Add Form button in your WordPress editor to add a form.

That’s it!
Hit Publish and you’ll have a fully functioning contact page up and running on your blog.

Step 5 (Optional): Take It To The Next Level

WPForms free version is more than enough to create a simple contact form. But, why stop there when you can create many other types of forms like signup forms, email opt-in forms, payment forms, and more using the same plugin?

WPForms Premium lets you do more with the plugin and gives you access to a collection of advanced fields and form templates. It also supports creating unlimited forms and multi-page forms with unlimited entries. It will even let you integrate with third-party services, including Constant Contact, OptinMonster, PayPal, Stripe, and more with your forms.
There are even more advanced features such as digital signatures, and form abandonment lead capture where you can receive partial form entries even if your visitor doesn’t hit the submit button.
WPForms Premium pricing plans start at $39 per year and come with a 14-day money back guarantee.

Conclusion

As you can see, creating a contact form is not such a complicated process, as long as you pick the right plugin. If you’re already using an older contact form plugin on your blog, maybe it’s time to consider an upgrade! Share your favorite plugins below or browse Bluehost’s Pro Managed WordPress Hosting, or our Basic Shared WordPress hosting.

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Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on Twitter @syedbalkhi.