Over the years, online business platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and so on have increased the level of competition among online businesses tenfold. Utilizing every known eCommerce promotional trick in the book with great success. 

But one genre of promotional work has been making headlines for its ability to bring in massive sums of revenue and customer satisfaction. And it’s called email marketing.

Email marketing campaigns can be as simple as sending your customers and clients a simple greeting. Or as complex as using email subscription signups to collect their information. 

We now have a variety of tools that can help us deal with all kinds of problems with email marketing campaigns and integrating email into our websites.

Thanks to the WordPress developer community, which has created a large variety of tools to integrate fast & secure contact form plugins for WordPress.

Although creating a WordPress contact form without a plugin is entirely possible and has been done in the past with the help of time-consuming coding processes.

But why take up this time-consuming process when we can easily create highly functional forms with the help of WordPress form builder plugins. 

Today we’ll be talking about two of the best WordPress form plugins out right now. And we’ll be taking an in-depth look at Contact Form 7 vs Ninja Forms with a detailed comparison between them. 

Note: For detailed testing and evaluation of the Contact Form 7 vs Ninja Forms comparison, we’ll be utilizing the ElementsReady Elementor Addons for its integrated widgets for both of the form builder plugins.

To be more specific, the Elementor contact form 7 widget and the Elementor Ninja Forms widget, respectively. 

Best Contact Form in WordPress Must Have the Following Features:

Building contact forms is the most common usage of these two popular form builders. But as the eCommerce business industry grows, there’s a lot more that needs to be done.

And these WP plugins must offer advanced form builder features but must be easy enough so that the end user can learn – ‘’How To Create A Contact Form In WordPress’’ without having to code. 

The following are the must-have requirements for an essential form builder plugin: 

• The ability to create custom form fields.
• The ability to customize the form.
• The ability to insert buttons & media submission fields. 
• Must have placeholder text for forms. 
• Support for form shortcodes and shortcode widgets of any Elementor addon. 
• The ability to create quizzes, polls, & surveys.
• Preset contact page templates. 
• The ability to import & export collected data. 
• Smart forms with conditional logic.
• White label form building capability. 
• The ability to create newsletters for WordPress users.
• The ability to create submission forms.
• Must be a suitable plugin for application forms. 
• The ability to create WooCommerce contact forms for eCommerce businesses. 
• Flexible form layouts. 
• The ability to create conversational forms for WooCommerce
• Visual drag and drop form building capability.
• Ability to integrate with payment gateways and services such as Paypal, Stripe, etc. 
• And so on. 

To us, this must be a benchmark for WordPress form plugins from now on. Since we need more functionality as the importance and usage of forms have increased on our websites. 

Contact Form 7 vs Ninja Forms: An In-depth Comparison

While both Contact Form 7 and Ninja Forms have numerous benefits, they also have some drawbacks that set them apart from each other, and here is where you should pick your champion.

We’ve gone through the features of these two widely used form plugins below. Here, we’ve gone over some of the most important ones. Including how well they work in terms of how easy they are to use, how customizable they are, how well they connect to third-party services, etc.

And their compatibility with third-party WordPress contact form widgets and modules for advanced customization. 

Quick Preview on Contact Form 7 vs Ninja Forms Comparison

In a hurry? Here’s a quick preview of Contact Form 7 and the strongest contact form 7 alternative Ninja Forms visual form builder. 

An Introduction to Contact Form 7

One of the first and most widely used contact forms to be included in the WordPress repository to this day is the Contact Form 7 WP form builder plugin.

In point of fact, it boasts over 5 million active installations and a buzzing user rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars.

With the help of this contact form 7, users are able to easily manage several forms with different styles & layouts and position them anywhere they want on their WordPress website.

Since the form builder constructs forms using clean code, it is highly adjustable and responsive. Moreover, it will not in any way influence the speed or performance of your website.

In addition to that, it is compatible with a variety of well-known plugins and tools, including CAPTCHA plugins, Akismet, SEO tools, Elementor addons, WooCommerce, AJAX power submitting, and more.

Ninja Forms – Drag and Drop Form Builder

Ninja Forms is another popular contact form builder plugin that has been making headlines for its unique and intuitive approach to form building and customization.

However, Ninja Forms’ popularity is not even close to that of Contact Form 7 at this point. In spite of this, it has more than 900,000 active installations and counting, with a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars.

Ninja Forms has proven itself to be a robust platform that is highly adaptable and a user-friendly solution for WordPress contact forms.

When interacting with this plugin for the contact form, users have complete control over everything from one editor screen. From which they are able to create anything from a simple contact form to complex submission form blocks and more. 

With complete control over every aspect of the visuals and operations of the contact forms, from the global settings to the details of individual fields, from the submission actions to the email answers.

Also, it’s easy to add to WordPress by using an Elementor widget, form builder shortcodes, or any preset Ninja Forms templates.

And best of all the ability to create WordPress interactive forms right from the drag-and-drop editor screen. 

Configuration, Setup, & Ease of Use

Contact Form 7

When it comes to the UI of Contact Form 7, there is a lot to be desired about this “WordPress web form builder”. And there is some disagreement as to whether or not it is as user-friendly as it might appear for those who are just starting out with their WordPress websites.

Contact Form 7 comes with a strong learning curve, despite the fact it is still going strong as one of the most popular free WordPress form plugins to date. 

When it comes to actual use, one problem that may come up for first-time users is that they need to know how to write HTML markups in order to build WP forms. 

Even though it is very simple to use, there is a learning curve that must be completed. To take full advantage of this ultimate form builder. Not many website owners are willing to put the time and effort into it.

The finished product of Contact Form 7, for example, a WordPress Submission Form, can be deployed right into the WordPress front end using the shortcode that has been generated.

For this, you can do it manually or use an Elementor Shortcode widget to do it with drag-and-drop functionality. 

For whatever reason, if you do not wish to invest your time learning the basics of HTML and coding. You have the option to utilize any community-generated Contact Form 7 free-to-use codes as you see fit.

Ninja Forms

WP Ninja Forms is by far the easiest to use of the two. This is because it has a visual form builder interface that lets you drag and drop modular fields to create forms.

Users have the option to go for a “clean slate” approach to take advantage of Ninja Forms advanced custom fields or can go for any of the preset Ninja Forms templates. 

Users can mix and match any number of Ninja Forms WordPress form fields right from the form builder’s dashboard. Toggle between email & CTA options and adjust the advanced settings to create a highly responsive form block. That can also be viewed from the same editor screen. 

Form Customizations

Contact Form 7 Customizations Options

Since Contact Form 7 is a straightforward plugin for creating contact forms only using codes, the amount of customization options available to users is limited. Nevertheless, you have the ability to change the parameters, mail, and message. 

Additionally, by utilizing HTML markup, you are able to insert any number of predefined elements to prop up the look and function of the Contact Form 7 generated forms. 

Furthermore, since the WordPress plugin is so popular, there are many third-party plugins, and Contact Form 7 addons to choose from that provide templates and visual customization options.

Such as this Elementor addon plugin called – ElementsReady that comes with its own set of Contact Form widgets, modules, and template library. 

Ninja Forms Customization Options 

When it comes to customization options, Ninja Forms reigns supreme. Because of its visual form builder, field customization, preset form templates, and third-party Ninja Form extension addons support. 

That makes it very easy to use and customize to fit your website’s overall aesthetics. 

And like Contact Form 7 Ninja Forms also has its own set of Elementor preset templates provided by all the popular Elementor addons plugins. 

Pricing 

Contact Form 7 Pricing 

There are some good reasons why Contact Form 7 is called the best free form plugin for WordPress. First of all, it’s completely free of charge. Can be downloaded from the WordPress repository and can be enhanced by WordPress community-developed addons and extensions. 

Ninja Forms Pricing 

Ninja Forms, on the other hand, has a robust suite of premium pricing options for WordPress users. Starting at just $49/ per year for a single website, and can be scaled up for large corporations with customized plans. 

But if your form builder usage is limited to just basic form-building activities, based on our testing of Contact Form 7 vs Ninja Forms, the free WordPress form plugin is enough for most users. 

Support Desk

Contact Form 7 Support 

Contact Form 7 comes with a limited but adequate support infrastructure. In the form of a WordPress.org support forum, an easy-to-understand Onsite Contact Form 7 FAQ section, and neatly organized documentation on the form builder. 

Ninja Forms Support

Ninja Forms, on the other hand, comes with a great and reliable support infrastructure. That caters to both free and premium users with quick response times, each Ninja Forms support ticket getting responses in an average of under 24 hours. 

Free Ninja Forms users can expect replies within 24 hours or less.

&

Premium Ninja Forms users can expect replies within 8 hours or less. 

It also serves its customers’ queries with a dedicated and informative Ninja Forms Blog page, and like Contact Form 7. It is also very well documented, which can be found at – Ninja Forms documentation.

Final Thoughts

In the end, it seems like Ninja Forms is the clear winner here with its intuitive visual form builder screen and preset form building templates. And for most WordPress users, it is the clear victor. 

But still, Contact Form 7 is considered one of the most powerful form-building tools to date. With more than double the number of active users worldwide. The plugin has been powering some of the top-ranking websites form building activities for years. 

Ninja Forms has its set of advantages, but it will not be easy to dethrone Contact Form 7. And it is likely that both will see a steady stream of growth for years to come. 

Like our quick comparison between these two best free form plugins for WordPress? Please consider giving it a share with someone who might find this interesting. And stay tuned for more comparisons and informative blogs on the WordPress ecosystem.