WP Forms Lite Review

You might wonder what to do next after setting up your new website powered by WordPress. You’ll find that setting up emails is among one of the top five things recommended by pros.

WordPress, by default, uses the PHP mail() function to send emails. Yet, this function is blocked by many hosting providers due to various security and compatibility issues and to avoid abusive usage.

The best solution for this issue is to use a third-party email delivery service that operates via Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Such a third-party email delivery service offers a number of benefits that PHP mail doesn’t offer, such as reliability, scalability, and better security.

SMTP services can be easily integrated into WordPress using an SMTP plugin. There are many such plugins available in the WordPress repository.

In this article, we’ll consider the WPForms plugin. It is a widely popular form builder plugin that helps you get conversions and more businesses/sign-ups along with any other forms you will need on your website.

WPForms makes it super easy to create forms, such as contact forms, payment forms, newsletter forms, registration forms, surveys, and many more.

Features of Contact Form by WPForms

The Drag and Drop form builder. This form builder enables anyone to create an amazing form in just a few minutes without writing a single line of code. Moreover, it has a very simple interface that anyone can get familiar with very quickly.
Pre-built form templates. You can start building your form with a pre-built customizable template, which will save time. The free lite version of the plugin includes fewer templates compared to paid versions.
Responsive and mobile-friendly forms. All the forms built with WPForms are responsive and look good on any device.
Integration with page builder plugins. WPForms works really well with popular page builders such as Elementor, Divi, Visual Composer(WP Bakery), Gutenberg, Classic Editor, and more. Moreover, it provides native widgets/addons for many page builders.
Integration with email marketing services. Email marketing is one of the best ways to attract more leads to a website. WPForms can be easily integrated with a number of Email marketing platforms. Its lite version only supports integration with Constant Contact, while paid versions support more integrations.
Integration with other services. The Lite version supports Uncanny Automator integration which helps you to send form submissions to other plugins automatically. Paid versions support additional integrations.
Community support. WPForms Lite has huge community support in wordpress.org forums. Finding support for the plugin will be very fast and convenient with this massive user base.
Ability to create unlimited forms. Unlike some other plugins, WPForms does not limit the number of forms you can create.
Integrated spam protection, form notifications, and optimized forms to provide the best possible performance, with the added bonus of SEO friendly setup.

Contact Form by WPForms Paid versions Features

WPForms has four different paid plans (Basic, Plus, Pro, Elite ), which provide extra features over the free Lite version. Available features may vary depending on the package.
Application forms, payment, registration forms, Surveys, and Polls are only available with paid plans.
File uploads and Conditional logic are available in paid plans.
Paid versions offer additional form fields such as HTML, Maps, Password, Credit cards, hidden fields, and Custom captchas.
Multi-step forms are available in paid plans.
Provides the ability to include a signature field for visitors/customers to sign a form using the Signature addon.
Additional notification features such as multiple notifications for a single form, 1-click notification cloning and conditional notifications.
Form entry storage feature, which will save submission data allowing to access them later. This feature is useful for applications such as Surveys and Polls, and application forms.
More than 100 pre-built templates are available.
The ability to create conversational forms as conditional multi-page Q&A forms which can be used to show a different next question depending on the answer provided in the first question.
Robust integrations with email marketing services and some other third-party services such as Mailchimp, Getresponse, Sendinblue, Campaign Monitor, AWeber, ActiveCampaign and Zapier. The availability of integrations will depend on the selected plan.

Installing and setting up Contact Form by WPForms

WPForms can be installed in the WordPress admin in a similar way to installing any other plugin.

Simply go to Plugins → Add New from the admin dashboard and search for WPForms. Alternatively, you can go to the plugin repository at https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpforms-lite/ and download the plugin if you prefer the manual installation process.

Activate the plugin once the installation is complete. Then visit the settings screen by going to WPForms → Settings.

You can add your activation key in the General tab if you’ve opted into a paid plan. Otherwise, you can simply ignore it. You will get the option to select form styling and define whether resources of the WPForms plugin should be loaded globally or only for the pages that contain an actual form(s). The last option is to enable GDPR related features. It’s advisable to enable this option if they are applicable to your country.

In the Email tab, you get the option to enable asynchronous email sending, which will simply make form submissions faster.

Additionally, you can select base template formatting for your emails as HTML or Plain Text. HTML is recommended if you wish to use the features provided by WPForms.

You can also customize the background color of the HTML template and choose a custom header image for email notifications. The last option provides the ability to enable CC when sending emails.

In the Recaptcha tab, you can define whether to use Recaptcha in your forms and choose from Google reCaptcha and hCaptcha.

The Validation tab allows you to customize validation messages.

The integrations tab provides the configurations for available service integrations, while their availability will depend on your plan.

The geolocation tab is a premium feature that allows website admin to gather information on visitors who fill out forms on the website. Similar to Geolocation, Access Control is also a premium feature that provides controlled access to forms using conditions.

Configuring SMTP with WPForms

While WPForms paves an easy way to integrate SMTP services into your WordPress website, it does not provide direct SMTP functionality. Instead, it provides a convenient interface and guidelines for setting it up within the plugin. It recommends using WP Mail SMTP, a plugin developed by the same team who brought you WPForms.

Visit WPForms → SMTP to begin the setup process.