Easily Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Site

Looking for an easy way to create contact forms? WordPress doesn’t allow you to create contact forms natively, and if you’re not a developer, creating a contact form on your website can be a tedious task. The beauty of WordPress is that there are tons of different plugins that let you easily create contact forms on your site. But it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all those different choices. What are the pros and cons of each, and which one is best for your website? Let’s take a head-to-head comparison between the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress.

1. WPForms

WPForms is the most beginner friendly contact form plugin that comes with a drag and drop form builder to create beautiful WordPress forms. With WPForms, you can quickly build forms in just a few clicks with pre-built form templates. Contact forms, subscription forms, order forms, and more templates are available so you don’t have to build common forms from scratch. There are also plenty of more advanced features, including conditional logic, multi-page forms, geolocation, form abandonment lead capture, and more. You can also integrate WPForms with your email newsletter service to easily build your list. Pros:

• 100% responsive forms: Your WordPress forms will always look great on any size device.
• Optimized for speed: WPForms is highly optimized for web and server performance. It doesn’t negatively impact the page speed of your site.
• The easiest plugin: Several pre-built templates are bundled with WPForms, so you don’t always have to create a form from scratch. Just pick a template and edit it as necessary.

Cons:

• Free version is limited: The free version of WPForms comes with all the basic features most users need to build a contact form. For more advanced features such as order forms, digital signatures, and more, you’ll need to invest in the premium version. With the premium version, you’ll be able to integrate with third-party services like OptinMonster.

Price: A free version is available in the WordPress repository. For advanced features, you can get a license starting at $39.

Who Should Use WPForms?

WPForms is the best solution if you’re looking for the easiest way to build a form. Without any assistance, even a beginner WordPress user can create a WordPress form with WPForms. Developers looking for an easy contact form plugin to set up for their clients to edit forms themselves will also find WPForms to be the best option. If you’re looking for advanced features such as digital signatures or form abandonment lead capture, WPForms is also a very affordable option.  

2. Jetpack Forms

Are you already using the Jetpack plugin on your site? Jetpack is a multipurpose plugin by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, that offers different modules to enhance WordPress features like WordPress stats, mobile themes, related posts, and more. Jetpack Forms is one of the most popular features offered by Jetpack. If you’ve already installed Jetpack on your site, you can create simple contact forms by activating the contact form module. Pros:

• Customizable contact forms: Jetpack’s form builder allows you to make simple customizations like adding basic form fields. It also offers an option to change the subject line of the email sent to you whenever someone submits your form.

Cons:

• Limited options and features: The main downside is you can’t create complex forms with Jetpack Forms such as order forms, newsletter forms, post submission forms, and more.
• Bundled in a large plugin: Jetpack is a large plugin that includes separate modules for various features like basic site stats, related posts, and more. If you just need contact forms, there’s no need for such a large plugin on your site.

Price: Free

Who Should Use Jetpack Forms?

Jetpack Forms is most suitable for those who are already using other Jetpack modules on their site, and only need to create very basic forms without much customization. Otherwise, it’s not necessary to install such a large plugin to create simple contact forms.  

3. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is the most feature-rich contact form plugin in the market. It lets you quickly integrate your form with tons of different third-party online services through addons. With Gravity Forms, you can build powerful and complex forms with ease. The plugin is also developer friendly, so you can extend its functionality per your requirements. Pros:

• Tons of addons: Gravity Forms allows you to install from a huge list of optional addons that let you integrate your form with a variety of third-party services.
• Enhanced features: The plugin is constantly being improved with more advanced features. With Gravity Forms, the possibilities for creating a powerful form are endless.
• Developer friendly: If you’re a developer who needs to customize your form to any extent for clients, Gravity Forms might be the right solution.

Cons: Gravity Forms is a premium plugin. If you don’t have a budget to purchase a premium contact form plugin, Gravity Forms is not for you. The personal plan doesn’t come with any addons, and it allows you to use the plugin only for a single site. Price: Starting at $39

Who Should Use Gravity Forms?

Gravity Forms is not for everyone, especially for those who are on a limited budget. The plugin is a good fit if you need to create highly complex contact forms or want a developer friendly form that lets you customize your forms per your needs.  

4. Visual Form Builder

Visual Form Builder is yet another easy to use contact form plugin. The plugin is fully responsive. Both the admin and front-end interfaces adjust to any screen, so you can create contact forms on the go. The plugin is available for free to download from WordPress.org directory. There’s also a premium version available with addons for features such as payment processing. Pros:

• Basic spam protection: The premium version gives you an extra layer of spam protection with Akismet.

Cons:

• Each addon sold separately: If you need access to a lot of addons to enable more features, the pricing can quickly get more expensive than other form plugins.

Price: $29. Addons can be purchased separately.

Who Should Use Visual Form Builder?

If you’re looking for a cheap basic plugin with some cool features for your website, you might want to consider Visual Form Builder.  

5. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms comes with a simple drag and drop interface and visual styler. The plugin allows you to build forms in just a few minutes. It also allows you to choose from 30 different field types, so you can build any type of form. You can download the basic plugin for free from WordPress.org plugins directory. To access more advanced features like user registration, payment processing, and email marketing integrations, you can find several addons that can be installed along with the pro version. Pros:

• Style customizations: Its visual styler lets you change the look and feel of your form. You can change field colors and sizes, add backgrounds and borders, and more.
• Extendable with addons: Formidable Forms helps you integrate your form with several payment systems and online services.
• Supports charity: A portion of every Formidable Forms fee is donated to the Operation Smile charity.

Cons:

• Expensive: No addons are available with the basic license plan. Compared against other plugins, the basic plan is more expensive.

Price: Starting at $49.

Who Should Use Formidable Forms?

Formidable Forms is best suited for those who want to customize the look of their forms, but it can be pricey compared to other plugins.  

6. Contact Form 7

With 3+ million active installs, Contact Form 7 is the most popular contact form plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory. You can also find a limited number of addons for Contact Form 7. It is the only plugin featured in this article that doesn’t come with a drag and drop form builder. There is a learning curve if you’re using the plugin for the first time. However, the plugin provides you with a demo form that you can see inside your WordPress dashboard, so you can look at it to learn how to create a form. Pros:

• Free: The plugin is 100% free of cost.
• Established: As the plugin has been around for many years, many WordPress themes support and recommend Contact Form 7, and there are many third party addons available.

Cons:

• Coding skills required: The plugin expects you to have a basic understanding of HTML to create a contact form. The form builder interface looks almost like the text editor.
• Limited features: You can’t build a complex form with Contact Form 7 because it supports only a limited number of addons. The documentation contains technical jargon which would be hard for beginner users to understand.

Price: Free

Who Should Use Contact Form 7?

Contact Form 7 could be a nice choice if you know HTML and just need to create a simple contact form for your site, and don’t mind digging deeper into docs to find answers when needed.  

Which Is the Best Contact Form Plugin For You?

We’ve looked at various popular contact form plugins available for your WordPress site. With all the different contact form plugins out there, it is easy to get overwhelmed. If you need a fast and easy way to create beautiful contact forms, even with advanced features, WPForms is the best choice for you. You can try the free version and then move on to the premium version when you need enhanced functionality. If you’re after a feature-rich plugin, and want highly customizable complex forms, Gravity Forms is the best plugin for you. Which one is your favorite plugin? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

If your blog isn't monetized, you’re losing money. Blogs can be monetized regardless of their topic, number of followers, or purpose. Even if it’s your passion project, your blog can and should make you money. Both new and older posts can bring in passive income. Making money with your blog is easier than you might think; all you need are the right tools. We’re going to take a look at the 8 best WordPress plugins to monetize your blog. Don’t have a blog yet? No problem—get your site published in minutes with HostGator’s one-click WordPress installs. Learn more here.    

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the most popular conversion optimization software available. It helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers, so you can grow your email list, increase your page views, and make more money. You can use their pre-made templates and drag-and-drop builder to create high converting optin forms including popups, slide-ins, and floating bars. The tool comes with behavior targeting so you can show the right message to the right person on the right page at the right time, thus making maximum revenue. Cost: Plans start at $9/month when paid annually.   

2. WPForms

WPForms is a customer acquisition tool that lets you easily create customized forms designed to capture visitor information for lead nurturing purposes. It has pre-built templates that are all mobile responsible and translation ready. This means you’ll never lose a single customer, no matter what device they’re on or where they live. WPForms offers additional features to monetize your blog. Their true customization options—including the ability for users to upload files and make payments or donations— lets you create forms for everything from initial contact request forms, customer service questions, new subscriber optins, and even membership and product orders. It’s the easiest form creation software to use, and it’s flexible enough that you can make any form you need to bring more profit to your blog. Cost: Plans start at $39/year  

3. Insert Post Ads

The Insert Post Ads plugin inserts ads directly into blog posts themselves instead of just having ads on the periphery of your page where they are easily ignored. In-content ads have increased visibility and a significantly higher likelihood of engagement, drastically increase click-through rates and revenue. The plugin can even insert these ads automatically so you don’t have to manually enter each one into every post, saving you a ton of time and simplifying the process. Its flexibility lets you choose where and how often you want the ads to show up, giving you complete control over how many ads are showing up in your content for maximum potential revenue. Cost: Free  

4. ThirstyAffiliates

Aside from ads, affiliate selling is perhaps the fastest way to monetize your blog. ThirstyAffiliates lets you import affiliate links from Amazon and other major selling sites. You can quickly and easily earn commissions from sales just by placing these links in your content. They have a link creator that cloaks the affiliate link in your URL; when a user clicks, they’ll see a redirection from your URL instead of a traditional affiliate link. This also ensures reliable sales tracking so you earn commission on every sale, guaranteed. Unlike other similar plugins, ThirstyAffiliates has options like “Open Link in New Window” so you won’t lose readers from your blog in exchange for commission. You can also add images and graphics to affiliate links to make them more eye-catching and dynamic, driving more clicks from the customer and commission for you. Cost: Basic plan is free, with add-ons available for purchase  

5. WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce’s Memberships plugin lets you create membership-only sections on your site. You are in complete control of how much access you want to give and to whom, allowing for different levels of membership (and price points) to be created. You can even drip content to different levels of membership, giving new content to “premium” members first, which can incentivize users to pay for more exclusivity. You can sell memberships as an exclusive product or as part of a different package purchase, so you can offer the types of memberships that benefit your business and sales most. Cost: $149/year for a single site  

6. Ad Blocking Detector

Ad Blocking Detector can detect the ad blocking software that has cost bloggers large amounts of revenue. This plugin will automatically replace blocked ads with other types of content like newsletter sign-ups, which provide alternative methods to monetize your blog and prevents overall loss of revenue. It recognizes all major ad blocking browser extensions to offer you the best protection possible against lost opportunities for monetization. Cost: Free  

7. Videe.TV Monetization

The Videe.TV Monetization plugin lets you place high-engaging video ads in your content. This means more clicks and more commission while enriching your blog posts with relevant videos. This plugin provides you with a library of video content you can choose from to create playlists that you know your audience will find relevant and interesting, maximizing views. Each user view earns you a commission, and their real-time reporting helps you track every cent as you earn it. Cost: Free  

8. Mobile Ad for WordPress

The Mobile Ad for WordPress plugin focuses on the increasingly-important mobile ad revenue. It offers ad units designed specifically for mobile users and sites. The ads they serve load faster and don’t use as much data as traditional ads, resulting in optimal performance and more clicks. This plugin gives you plenty of customization options, including different ad formats to choose from and the ability to choose when users see your ads. You can even wait to show users an ad until they’re clicking away from your site, so you don’t lose traffic until they’re already leaving.  Cost: Free  

Conclusion

Monetizing your blog doesn’t have to be difficult; these plugins allow you to generate additional income on all of your posts without a lot of hassle. Choose one of the plugins above to get started and you’ll be on your way to making money from your blog.

As a writer, you may be looking for ways to enhance your WordPress blog and expand the reach of your content. The good news is, there are a vast number of WordPress plugins that can help. The bad news is, it can be difficult for writers to choose the best ones. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about that.

In this article, we will share the 9 best WordPress plugins for writers that can enhance your blog and expand your reach.

Don’t have a website yet? No problem. Get your site published in minutes with HostGator's one-click WordPress installs. Learn more here.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the best WordPress plugin for ranking your blog posts in the search engines. It optimizes your page title, meta description, focus keywords, sitemap, social metadata, and much more.

This plugin is a must-have for any content writer. (See this guide on how to install Yoast SEO.)

Cost: Free with multiple price tiers

2. Edit Flow

Edit Flow helps your editorial teams to collaborate on your posts and pages.

This plugin adds an editorial calendar to your dashboard so you can look at your monthly content plan. It also creates custom statuses for keeping track of the key stages in your workflow. You can even communicate with your writers and editors in the private editorial comments.

Cost: Free

3. Monster Insights

Monster Insights helps you to monitor your daily blog traffic with Google Analytics.

This plugin allows you to easily setup Google Analytics on your WordPress site with just a few clicks. It highlights your most important stats, so you can easily grow your blog traffic and get a clear idea of how you are doing at a glance.

Cost: Free or pro version at $89 / yr

4. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress plugin for adding forms to your site. Its features make it the most powerful and user-friendly WordPress form builder on the market.

This plugin creates contact forms and custom form types with a powerful drag & drop builder. It also includes simple and beautiful form templates that you can start with to save you time. Plus, you can create high performance forms with their smart conditional logic.

Cost: Free with paid upgrades starting at $39 / yr

5. ClicktoTweet by CoSchedule

ClicktoTweet is one of the easiest ways to get more shares for your content.

It is a simple WordPress plugin that encourages readers to share your content by adding Click to Tweet boxes in your blog posts.

Cost: Free

6. Revision Control

Revision Control gives writers more control over the WordPress post revision system.

You can save revisions of posts or pages in your WordPress backend. It allows you to set the number of revisions for your content, and these settings can be changed according to your needs. You can also delete post or page revisions from Revisions post meta box.

Cost: Free

7. Co-Authors Plus

Co-Authors Plus is the best author box plugin that adds multiple authors to one post. If you have two or more contributors working on one post, then this is the plugin for you.

You can add bylines to WordPress posts, pages and more with the search-as-you-type input box. It allows you to list the authors anywhere on your site using template tags. It also has multiple templates for displaying the authors.

Cost: Free

8. Post Forking

Post Forking allows writers to create an alternate versions of their content for a collaborative approach to WordPress content curation.

This plugin gives authors the ability to submit proposed revisions and to edit published posts without the changes appearing immediately.

Cost: Free

9. TinyMCE Spell Check

TinyMCE Spell Check helps you to identify the mistakes in your posts and correct them by adding a spell check button.

With this plugin, you no longer have to copy and paste your blog posts into a Word document to check for errors: you can do it right within your WordPress backend.

Cost: Free to try with upgrades starting at $29 / month

WordPress plugins make it so much easier for writers to enhance their blog and expand the reach of their content. Now that you know the best ones, choose one of the above plugins to start with. You’ll see the improvement in no time.

If you want to get organic traffic to your site, optimizing your blog posts for search engines is critical. Wordpress SEO plugins can really help to simplify and speed up this process. However, with the myriad of SEO plugins available, it can be overwhelming to know how to choose the best one(s).

In this article, we will share the 9 best WordPress plugins to optimize your blog posts for SEO and grow your organic traffic.

Don’t have a website yet? No problem. Get your site published in minutes with HostGator's one-click WordPress installs. Learn more here.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the most comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin that exists today.

It allows you to add an SEO title, meta description, and meta keywords to all your posts and pages.

You can also optimize your pages, archives, categories, image titles, breadcrumbs, XML sitemaps and more. The entire list of features is extremely long!

Cost: Free and premium versions are available. A single site license of the premium version is $69 per year.

2. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is a comprehensive SEO plugin, and the #1 most downloaded WordPress plugin (over 30 million downloads).

This plugin features Google Analytics support, XML sitemap support, advanced canonical URLs, automatic post title optimization, automatic META tag generation, and it automatically notifies search engines about changes to your site.

Cost: Free and pro versions available. The pro version starts at $39 per year for the annual plan.

3. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps has been supported for over 9 years, and has been rated as the best WordPress plugin. It generates a special XML sitemap that helps search engines to crawl and index your blog. (Sitemaps make it easier for them to see the structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently.)

This plugin also automatically notifies all major search engines whenever you create a new blog post or make changes to your site.

Cost: Free.

Note: It's typically not a good idea to install multiple plugins that do the same thing. Yoast SEO, All in One SEO Pack, and Google XML Sitemaps all share functionality, so choose one to avoid causing any issues.

4. WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a quick caching engine that turns your dynamic blog content into static html files. This significantly speeds up your site and improves your search engine rankings.

This plugin has been heavily tested in real world conditions, is currently enjoyed by over 1 million active users.

Cost: Free.

5. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker monitors your blog posts and your entire website content, looking for broken links and notifying you if any are found. Fixing broken links is not only important for the user experience, but it is important for SEO as well.

This plugin has the option of notifying you via the WordPress dashboard or via email. You can also choose to automatically prevent search engines from following broken links.

Cost: Free.

6. Rel Nofollow Checkbox

Rel Nofollow Checkbox adds a checkbox to the Insert/Edit Link dialog box, allowing you to quickly and easily add the nofollow tag to your links. This is important for controlling which pages you want to give credit to, and which pages you don’t want to give credit to as far as the search engines are concerned.

For example, you can use the nofollow tag to give credit to another site for an infographic you used in your post, without fully endorsing that site.

Cost: Free.

7. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery helps your images and photo galleries to rank in the search engines.

With their Deeplinking Addon, you can create dedicated, SEO friendly URLs for any image in your photo galleries.

Also, with their Standalone Addon, you can create unique URLs for each of your galleries, so they aren’t tied to a specific blog post and the search engines can index them separately.

Cost: Free and premium licenses available. Premium licenses start at $19.

8. Redirection

Redirection allows you to manage URL redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and tidy up any loose ends that your blog may have. Especially when you are migrating pages from an old website, or when you’ve changed the directory of your WordPress installation, it is important to redirect your URLs to the new ones.

This plugin allows you to create 301 “moved permanently” redirects, which is recommended for SEO and passes between 90-99% of ranking power to the redirected page.

Cost: Free.

9. All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets

All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets improves your SEO by creating a short summary (a rich snippet) of your page in the search results. This gives search engines only the important information that you want them to display, and includes interactive elements like photos, star ratings, price, author, etc., to help you stand out from your competition in the search results.

This plugin helps you to rank higher by increasing your click through rate.

Cost: Free.

Conclusion

SEO can seem complicated at first, but with the right plugins it’s a whole lot simpler than you might think. Choose one of the plugins above to start with today, and you’ll be well on your way to higher rankings.

If you want to add videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or another video platform to your WordPress site, you can copy and paste the embed code and customize it to suit your needs. However, that is not the most efficient way to do it. If you want to save time and have more advanced features, such as video galleries or lightboxes, you are going to need to install a WordPress video plugin.

In this article, we will share the 8 best WordPress plugins for video so that you can quickly and easily customize the way your videos are displayed on your website.

Don’t have a website yet? No problem. Get your site published in minutes with HostGator's one-click WordPress installs. Learn more here.

1. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is the best WordPress gallery plugin with video capability.

It comes with a Videos Addon that allows you to create galleries from your YouTube, Wistia, and self-hosted WordPress videos. It includes lots of advanced options, including displaying the videos in galleries, open them in lightbox, and more.

Simply drag and drop the widget into any widget ready area to display a gallery there, or you can use the shortcode to display videos wherever you want.

Cost: Free and premium licenses available. Premium licenses start at $19.

2. YouTube Showcase

YouTube Showcase is a simple to use YouTube plugin for WordPress that creates custom post types for videos.

You can easily add categories and tags to your videos and make certain videos “featured.” It will even set up a video gallery page for you upon installation.

Cost: Free and pro versions available. Pro starts at $49.99.

3. YouTube Simple Gallery

YouTube Simple Gallery allows you to use custom post types to add videos and categorize them. It also comes with a shortcode that you can put anywhere in the post editor screen to insert your YouTube galleries.

It opens videos in a lightbox popup. You can also customize the video and thumbnail size.

Cost: Free

4. WordPress Video Gallery

WordPress Video Gallery has advanced features and a built-in HD .flv player for displaying your videos with HD quality. You can also display recent videos, popular videos and featured videos.

It includes customized skins and plenty of other customization options, making this a very versatile plugin.

Cost: Free

5. YourChannel: YouTube Channel on Your Website

YourChannel is perfect if you manage a YouTube channel or if you like curating videos.

With this plugin, you can turn your website into a video platform without needing any extra storage or bandwidth, because your visitors can watch your YouTube channel without ever having to leave your website.

Cost: Free

6. uTubeVideo Gallery

uTubeVideo Gallery allows you to display your YouTube video galleries on any post or page of your website.

This plugin also automatically fetches thumbnails for your videos and caches them on your WordPress site so that your page loads quicker.

7. Workbox Video from Vimeo & YouTube Plugin

Workbox Video from Vimeo & YouTube Plugin allows you to create a video gallery on any page simply by pasting the video URL. It works with YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia.

You can sort the order of your videos any way you want, and you can display your galleries anywhere you want by using shortcodes. (Note that this plugin is designed for more advanced users.)

Cost: Free

8. Ultimate Video Gallery

Ultimate Video Gallery adds galleries to your WordPress site quickly and easily; all you have to do is copy and paste the video URL and it will automatically fetch the details from YouTube.

You can create multiple, unlimited galleries with this plugin. It also includes support for mobile devices.

Cost: Free

Conclusion

There is a much better way to add videos to your site other than copying and pasting the embed code. These WordPress plugins allow you to efficiently add video galleries to your site, with tons of customization options, without touching a single line of code. Choose one of the above that suits your particular needs, and you’ll see what a big difference it makes.

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