The first premium plugin you invest in for your website should be a quality WordPress contact form plugin – not a page builder or security plugin. These priceless tools provide more value than first meets the eye.
While there are form plugins that you can install for free, their offerings are limited. You will need a premium contact form plugin unlock advanced features such as email marketing and payment forms. These advanced features can truly transform your WordPress website, much more than a page builder plugin can.
In this article, we’ll discuss five key reasons to invest in a premium WordPress contact form plugin. Let’s get started!
5 Reasons to Invest in a Premium Contact Form Plugin
It’s understandable that you might be hesitant to invest in a premium contact form plugin when there are excellent free alternatives like Contact Form 7. We’re going to show you how premium contact form plugins are so much more valuable than their free counterparts, and other more popular plugins..
1. Accept Payments
If you have a product or service, an important consideration is how to sell it via your website. You could create invoices, but that would require a lot of manual work. You could set up a shopping cart, but that may mean additional fees and a having to learn something new.
Premium contact form plugins can make accepting payments for your services much simpler. Your clients will be able to fill out the form on your website to pay you directly. The form will process payments through a gateway like Stripe or PayPal, and boom—you just got paid!
ClickWP has a form like this too, and we even use the dynamic field feature so we can set the amount to be paid by modifying the URL e.g.
clickwp.com/make-a-payment/?amount=199
You can add a quantity field, dropdowns or checkboxes for product or service options. This effectively enables a very lightweight e-commerce system on your website.
Types of payment forms you can create:
2. Grow Your Email List
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach leads as well as existing customers and drive more conversions on your website. However, before you can start sending promotional content to subscribers, you have to build out your list of recipients.
Premium contact form plugins can integrate with your email marketing platform to make this process smoother. You can set up a dedicated subscription form, and also collect emails through other forms such as support requests or your checkout process.
Note that not all plugins integrate with all email marketing platforms, so it’s important to choose one that’s compatible with your existing system.
A WordPress contact form plugin makes it easy to deliver a lead magnet such as a discount code or digital download as an incentive for subscribing. You can do this by creating a custom confirmation screen or confirmation email message.
3. Collect Detailed Data
Contact forms created with free plugins tend to be on the generic side. However, your site is unique. Gathering all the details you need to provide the best experience for your customers is difficult when you’re stuck with a predefined form template.
This can result in back and forth emailing with potential customers to collect additional information, too, which is time-consuming for both parties. Using a premium contact form plugin can prevent this.
With more advanced form builders, you can incorporate custom fields to ask for key information relevant to your business. This enables you to create more complex forms, such as intake or client onboarding questionnaires, event venue bookings, property or equipment rentals, and more.
Premium contact form plugins also often include drag-and-drop functionality to make adding new fields easy. If you want to provide set options, you can use dropdowns or checkboxes.
If your business takes bookings or appointments, you can use date and time selectors. Enabling file uploads via your form can be helpful for collecting signed service contracts. These advanced options are generally missing from free plugins.
4. Accept Guest Posts
If your website accepts guest posts, creating a new author account for each submission can lead to serious security issues. Writers will retain access even after their article is published, and more user accounts mean more points of entry for malicious attackers.
However, receiving guest posts via email and publishing them yourself can be time-consuming. This is where your premium contact form plugin comes in. Post submission form add-ons allow guest authors to submit their articles without accessing the back end of your website. All you need is a front-end submission form with the right fields.
Submission forms collect important information such as the post’s title, content, featured image, and excerpt. You can even ask for a meta description. A draft post is created when the form is submitted, and you can review and polish the post before publishing it.
This provides you with the flexibility you need to ensure guest posts match the rest of your website’s style while streamlining the submission process. No more copying and pasting from emails or trying to manage large volumes of user accounts.
Multifunctional forms can automate and link different processes in your business
5. Combine All of the Above Into a Single Form
Many people assume that form plugins are only meant for contact forms. But as you’ve seen throughout this article, you can do so much more with form builder plugins. These plugins are multifunctional and could help you streamline several areas of your business.
You can even include all of the functions we’ve described so far into a single form. Some examples of more extensive forms you might create include:
- Membership registration. You can take new members’ first payments, collect their email addresses for your mailing list, and enable them to RSVP to an upcoming event. This type of form is adaptable for use by private schools, volunteer organizations, and more.
- Job applications. If you’re looking to fill an open position at your company, you can use a form to collect contact information for applicants, enable them to upload their resumes, schedule their interviews, and more.
- Surveys. With a premium contact form plugin, you can create extensive surveys to collect data on customer satisfaction, trends related to your industry, and more. You can also include an email address field and add respondents to your mailing list.
You can easily drag and drop fields to suit your particular needs. Many premium plugins also support multi-page forms, which can help you separate different types of information and minimize frustration for users.
Recommended Premium Contact Form Plugins for WordPress
There are many premium contact form plugins available, but WP Forms and Gravity Forms are among the most popular. Both include many of the features we’ve mentioned throughout this post.
WPForms
WPForms is one of the most user-friendly WordPress form plugins. The interface is intuitive and offers easy integration with third-party products. Watch how easy it is to create a form with WPForms.
You can link your forms to your email marketing platform and use add-ons to process payments. WPForms Basic version costs $39.50 per year. However we strongly recommend the $199.50/yr Pro version to enable email opt-in forms, payment forms and more.
Want to test drive WPForms for free? Try out their Lite version, available for free in the WP.org directory: WPForms Lite
Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms offers several stand-out features including advanced fields, chained selects, signature add-on and a very handy Save and Continue Later function.
They also have a vibrant community of third-party developers that extend Gravity Forms even further. This means that the Gravity Forms ecosystem is most likely to have the functionality you need.
A Basic license for Gravity Forms costs $59 per year for a single website, and comes with add-ons for email opt-ins. To accept online payments, consider the Pro or Elite licenses.
Want to test drive Gravity Forms? Create a free demo site to try all of their features, no credit card required.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that contact forms are useful, but you may be hesitant to invest in a premium plugin for building one. However, holding back will only result in you missing out on the advanced features tools such as WPForms and Gravity Forms provide.
Five key reasons it’s worth it to invest in a contact form plugin include:
- Accepting payments for your services.
- Growing your email list.
- Collecting detailed data to help your customers.
- Accepting guest posts without providing access to your website’s back end.
- Combining multiple functions into a single form.
Do you have any questions about premium contact form plugins? Let us know in the comments below!
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