You are about to add a form, or replace one that a previous developer left behind, and two names keep coming up. Contact Form 7 is on a huge number of sites and costs nothing. WPForms is the one with the friendly builder and the upgrade prompts. Both will put a working form on a page, so the real question is which one you will be comfortable living with for years.
This comparison of Contact Form 7 vs WPForms looks at the things that matter once the form is live: how you edit it, where submissions are kept, how each deals with spam and what happens when you need more. It also says where Fluent Forms and Gravity Forms fit. It is not a setup tutorial; for that, see our walkthrough on putting a contact form on your site.
The short version
- Contact Form 7 suits people who are fine with a text-based editor, want a free plugin with no upsell, and will add a companion plugin to store entries.
- WPForms suits owners who want to see the form as they build it, like starting from a template, and may pay later for extra features.
Neither is the wrong choice for a normal business contact form. The differences show up in day-to-day editing and in what you need beyond a simple form.
Building and editing a form
In Contact Form 7, a form is a block of text with tags in square brackets, such as [text* your-name] for a required name field. Buttons above the editor insert the tags for you, but you still see the code-like version, not the finished form. The email you receive is built the same way, in a separate Mail tab, using those tag names. Change a field name in the form and forget to change it in the Mail tab, and that answer silently disappears from your notification.
In WPForms, you drag fields into a preview of the form and click each one to change its label, whether it is required, and so on. Templates give you a starting point for common forms. For an owner who edits forms once or twice a year, this is easier to come back to.
How each one looks on your site
Contact Form 7 adds very little styling of its own. The form takes on your theme’s look, which can be fine or can leave you with plain boxes, and changing that means writing CSS.
WPForms applies its own neat default styling, and recent versions let you adjust colours and sizes from the block’s settings when you place the form with the WPForms block. Either way, look at the form on a phone before you publish.
Where submissions are kept
Contact Form 7 sends the email and keeps nothing. If the email goes missing, the enquiry is gone. The usual answer is Flamingo, a free plugin from the same developer that stores submissions in the dashboard.
WPForms can store entries in the dashboard, but in the free Lite version you should check what is currently included, because entry management is one of the features the paid versions are built around. Our guide to storing form submissions on your site explains why this matters more than it first seems.
Spam protection
Both can be protected well, in different ways.
- Contact Form 7 integrates with Google reCAPTCHA and with Akismet, offers a quiz-style question field, and can use WordPress’s own list of disallowed words. Honeypot fields are available through separate add-on plugins.
- WPForms has its own built-in anti-spam protection and settings for CAPTCHA services such as reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile.
Whichever you use, our article on keeping spam out of your forms covers the settings that block junk without blocking people.
Notifications and email
Both let you choose who receives the notification, the subject line and a Reply-To address, and both can send a second email to the visitor. Contact Form 7 does it with a second mail template called Mail (2). WPForms does it with a second notification. Routing a message to different people depending on an answer is possible in Contact Form 7 with a feature called pipes, and in WPForms with conditional logic on notifications, which you should check against the version you have.
Neither plugin fixes email delivery on its own. They both rely on WordPress sending mail, which is why a site with either one usually needs an SMTP plugin as well.
When you need more than a contact form
Conditional fields, multi-page forms, payments, file uploads and connections to other tools are where the plugins pull apart.
Contact Form 7 keeps its core small and leaves extras to a large number of third-party add-ons, each from a different developer. That works, but every add-on is another plugin to keep updated and another dependency that may be abandoned one day.
WPForms keeps most extras inside its own paid versions and official add-ons, so features come from one developer. The trade-off is that you may need to upgrade to get them.
A form that shows extra questions based on an earlier answer is a good test of what you will need. If that sounds likely, read our post on showing fields based on an answer before you choose.
Contact Form 7 vs WPForms side by side
| Point | Contact Form 7 | WPForms |
|---|---|---|
| Form editing | Text with tags | Drag-and-drop with preview |
| Free version | The whole plugin is free | Lite version, with paid versions for more |
| Stored entries | Through the Flamingo plugin | Check which version includes it |
| Styling | Mostly from your theme | Its own default style, adjustable |
| Extra features | Third-party add-ons | Paid versions and official add-ons |
| Support | Documentation and the WordPress.org forum | WordPress.org forum for Lite, the developer’s support for paid users |
Where Fluent Forms and Gravity Forms fit
Fluent Forms sits close to WPForms in style, with a drag-and-drop builder and a free version. It is worth comparing feature by feature if you want a visual builder and stored entries without paying straight away.
Gravity Forms has no free version. It is often chosen for complicated forms, long multi-step applications or forms that feed other business systems, so you may find it already installed on a site a developer built.
Making the choice and avoiding regret
- If the site already uses one of these and it works, staying put is usually best. Switching means rebuilding every form and changing every page that shows one.
- Do not run two form plugins for the sake of one feature. Choose the plugin that does all your forms.
- Look at the plugin’s page on WordPress.org: when it was last updated, whether it is tested with recent WordPress versions and how support questions are answered.
- If you do switch, our guide to replacing a plugin safely covers the order of work, so no form is left broken in between.
Our guide to WordPress forms puts this choice alongside email delivery, spam and testing. Choosing tools like this is part of managing your WordPress site without letting plugins pile up.
Frequently asked questions
Is Contact Form 7 still safe to use?
Yes, as long as you keep it updated like any other plugin. It is actively maintained and widely used, which means problems tend to be found and fixed. As with every plugin, old versions with known issues are the risk, so apply its updates after taking a backup and check the form afterwards.
Can I move my forms from Contact Form 7 to WPForms?
There is no button that moves everything perfectly in every case, so expect to check each form by hand. Rebuild or import the form, match the notification settings, replace the old shortcode on each page, test every form, and only then remove Contact Form 7. Keep any stored entries exported first.
Does WPForms Lite stop working if I never upgrade?
No. The Lite version keeps working as a free plugin. You will see prompts for the paid versions in the builder and dashboard, and some features are reserved for them, but your forms and notifications carry on. Paying only changes what extra features and support you get.
Can I try both plugins before choosing?
Yes, and it is the surest way to decide. Install both on a staging copy of the site, build the same short form in each and send a few test submissions. Edit each form once more a day later. Then delete the plugin you did not pick rather than leaving it deactivated.
Inherited forms in a plugin you dislike are not always worth moving. Our WordPress support team can look at what you have and talk the decision through with you.
Next in this series: How to Send a WordPress Form to Multiple Email Addresses
