Contact Form 7: The best extensions for your contact form

A contact form is the easiest way for your visitors to get in touch with you. We’ll show you extensions for the popular WordPress plugin Contact Form 7 that you can use to take your contact forms to the next level.

Contact Form 7 is probably by far the best-known contact form plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. With over five million active installations, the plugin is integrated on more websites than any other comparable plugin.

However, in contrast to premium paid plugins such as WPForm, Ninja Forms or Gravity Forms, the free Contact Form 7 is kept relatively simple: You can create contact forms, set up email responses and offer different input types and formats, for example text, email or phone numbers.

Contact Form 7 extensions: Realising complex tasks

However, Contact Form 7 is not suitable for more complex tasks. At least not without the right add-ons. But there are countless extensions for Contact Form 7 in the WordPress plugin directory that add practical functions to your contact forms.

An important note at this point: Most of these extensions do not come from Takayuki Miyoshi, the developer of Contact Form 7, but from other WordPress developers. You should therefore always check compatibility carefully.

The information in the WordPress plugin directory and a look at the active installations and the ratings of other users will help you here. You can also read the following articles:

• WordPress plugins: 13 tips for making the right choice
• Testing plugins in a WordPress test environment

Let’s look at a few of these extensions in detail, which allow you to create a database, a payment process, form terms, a drag-and-drop file upload and multi-site forms.

Create Contact Form 7 database

Contact Form 7 sends you an email every time you complete a contact form. And optionally also a confirmation to your visitors who have completed the form.

If you also need a database with the entries in your WordPress backend – for example, because you want to document your submissions better or because you are working with a team – then you can implement this with an add-on.

However, make sure that this is implemented in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), i.e. that you obtain permission from the sender in the appropriate form. You should clarify this with a law firm specialising in online law.

There are several plugins available here, one of the best known with over 300,000 active installations is Contact Form 7 Database Addon – CFDB7. This allows you to view and process all entries from your contact forms in the backend or export them as a CSV file (please also clarify data protection here).

Process PayPal and Stripe via contact form

A contact form is not the ideal way to process payment transactions in WordPress. It is better to use WooCommerce with the corresponding plugins. However, if you still want to process a booking or a purchase via Contact Form 7, there is also a solution for this: Contact Form 7 – PayPal & Stripe Add-on.

As the name suggests, this allows you to offer a payment process via PayPal and Stripe. As there are several sources of error, it is recommended that you only implement this with sufficient WordPress experience or with the help of experienced WordPress developers. This is also shown by the mixed reviews of the plugin. There is also a Pro version of this extension with additional functions if the basic version is not enough for you.

Forms with conditions in Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 offers a static contact form. This means that the form always looks the same, no matter what your visitors enter. This means you may be wasting a lot of potential, as you can either only offer a very limited data query or have to build a separate form for each purpose.

Dynamic contact forms are better. In other words, those that adapt accordingly depending on the entries made by your visitors. A practical example: If you offer two products that can have different errors, you can first ask about the product in the support contact form. If the visitor selects product A, they will receive additional fields that ask exactly what you need to rectify faults with product A. And vice versa, of course, with product B.

There are also extensions for this, for example Contact Form 7 – Conditional Fields. This allows you to create entire groups of fields that are only displayed according to a certain logic, for example when a certain option is selected.

Admittedly: You have to familiarise yourself with this logic at first. But once you have done so, you can get very powerful functions and processes out of the Contact Form 7 forms.

Drag-and-drop file upload for Contact Form 7

Although Contact Form 7 offers an option to upload a file, your options are unfortunately limited. It’s more user-friendly with a drag-and-drop file upload, which allows your visitors to upload multiple files at the same time.

As the name suggests, this is exactly what the Drag and Drop Multiple File Upload – Contact Form 7 plugin offers. You can also use it to restrict the file types and sizes, limit the number of documents to be uploaded and have the uploads sent to you as email attachments or links.

There is also a Pro version available for a fee, which offers zip compression, an image preview and automatic deletion of documents after a certain period of time, in addition to many other advantages.

Forms over several pages – Multi-level questionnaires

Longer contact forms in particular can quickly have an intimidating effect on your visitors. For example, if you want to offer a questionnaire that asks for a lot of data and input, this can become confusing.

There are multi-site forms for this purpose, i.e. a contact form that is split across several pages. Unfortunately, Contact Form 7 does not come with this option as standard. But there is a suitable extension for this too: Contact Form 7 Multi-Step Forms.

This makes it easy to insert page breaks into your contact forms. The data entered is of course transferred and is not lost. This allows you to split contact forms into as many subpages as you like and thus create a better user experience.

Important: Observe the GDPR

As already mentioned, it is important for contact form solutions that you comply with the current rules of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). After all, your users usually leave their contact details or other personal data here.

This applies not only to the contact form using Contact Form 7 as such, but of course also to all the extensions that we have presented in this article.

It is therefore essential that you check the compatibility of all your plugins with your privacy policy. This applies in particular to sensitive data such as the processing of payment transactions via PayPal and Stripe, but also to the creation of a database with your visitors’ form data.

Conclusion: Contact Form 7 is a modular all-rounder

There is hardly an application that cannot be found in the WordPress plugin directory as an extension for Contact Form 7. Even if Contact Form 7 itself is only the best plugin for the basics of a contact form, it can be transformed into a true all-rounder with the modular extensions.

If you are looking for extensions for Contact Form 7, you can search for “Contact Form 7” in the WordPress plugin directory or in the well-known stores. It becomes more specific with the additions “add-on”, “extension” or the abbreviation “CF7”.

But one question remains unanswered: How useful it is to put together such an all-rounder with various plugins yourself. The more plugins and extensions you install, the more cumbersome your WordPress installation becomes. What’s more, each extension harbours the risk of additional sources of error.

You can certainly add a missing feature to Contact Form 7 with a plugin. It becomes questionable if you need several extensions at once and the contact form becomes a patchwork. Alternatives are offered by professional contact form plugins, as we have presented here. These may cost you some money, but you have everything in a single solution. In addition, the support is usually better and already included in the purchase price.