Ninja Forms vs. Contact Form 7: Which Form Builder is Best? (2024)

Web forms are an incredible tool for your WordPress website, allowing you to capture leads and build customer relationships. There’s really no end to the ways you can implement forms, including contact forms, newsletter subscriptions, event registration, customer feedback surveys, job applications, and more. And, all the information you gather via forms is sent willingly by your customers, making it an honest way to collect valuable data.

But how can you create, design, and post forms on your WordPress site? Form builder plugins are the most popular option, as manual form creation is tedious and requires coding skills.

Ninja Forms and Contact Form 7 are two of the most popular choices for WordPress form builders, but which one reigns supreme?

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a popular and longstanding WordPress form builder plugin. In fact, it’s one of the oldest form builders out there, with 5M active installations. CF7 packs enough features and form fields to create web forms for your site, with customizations made through HTML and CSS tagging.

CF7 is open-source software, so it’s completely free to use, though the developers do accept donations to help support the plugin’s ongoing improvements.

Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms vs. Contact Form 7

Which form builder is right for you and your website? Like any plugin, the answer depends on your unique needs. To make the most informed decision, it’s helpful to compare and contrast Ninja Forms vs. Contact Form 7.

User-Friendliness

Users need some coding experience to take full advantage of Contact Form 7. Customizations require HTML and CSS shortcodes and form tags. This knowledge is very basic for developers, but those without a technical background may need to do some research.

As a drag-and-drop form builder, Ninja Forms requires no technical knowledge whatsoever. Beginners will have no trouble creating and customizing forms to meet their needs. Plus, Ninja Forms includes a selection of pre-made templates, so users don’t have to make any forms from scratch if they don’t want to.

Features

Contact Form 7 is simple and straightforward, offering basic features like support for CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering, multiple form creation, AJAX submission, and form field customization. For more powerful features, CF7 users must rely on third-party add-ons.

Ninja Forms is a feature-rich choice, offering tools like conditional logic, multi-step forms, file uploads, email marketing and payment add-ons, and more. You’ll have to purchase a premium plan to access all of its features, but the features available in the core version of Ninja Forms still outpace CF7.

Support

Because Contact Form 7 is a free, open-source software, its support options are limited but sufficient. The CF7 website includes extensive documentation, along with a helpful FAQ page. When those aren’t enough, CF7 has a support forum led by volunteers and knowledgeable users. When all else fails, CF7 recommends finding an expert on Codeable.

Just like CF7, Ninja Forms’ website includes helpful documentation and FAQs. But Ninja Forms also has a dedicated support team to assist you with troubleshooting and other queries — even if you’re using the free version of the plugin.

Price

Contact Form 7 is 100% free, with no premium or paid plans.

Ninja Forms’ core plugin is free, but the plugin also has a series of premium plans that include more advanced features. Paid plans start at $49/year. Users also have the option to purchase single add-ons if they only need certain features — a rare perk in the form-building world.

Integrations

Contact Form 7 includes a few direct integrations, including reCAPTCHA, Constant Contact, Sendinblue, and Stripe. Other integrations require third-party plugins.

Ninja Forms offers many direct integrations, including Zapier, PayPal, Mailchimp, SalesForce, and HubSpot. Plus, Ninja Forms supports a wide variety of third-party plugins.

Ninja Forms: The Clear Winner

Though Contact Form 7 is a fantastic WordPress form builder, the clear winner between Ninja Forms vs. Contact Form 7 is Ninja Forms.

CF7 is an excellent choice if you want to create simple forms and have some coding knowledge. But Ninja Forms takes the crown for feature-rich forms that are easy to make and design. It’s also compatible with many third-party services, and it offers plenty of flexibility when it comes to purchasing additional features.

Download Ninja Forms today, and start building eye-catching forms for your WordPress website. Your customers will thank you!

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FAQs

Ninja Forms vs. Contact Form 7: Which Form Builder is Best? ›

CF7 is an excellent choice if you want to create simple forms and have some coding knowledge. But Ninja Forms takes the crown for feature-rich forms that are easy to make and design. It's also compatible with many third-party services, and it offers plenty of flexibility when it comes to purchasing additional features.

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What is the difference between Ninja Forms and Contact Form 7? ›

Contact Form 7 and Ninja Forms are two popular WordPress form builder plugins. Each serves our primary need — to create a contact form. While Contact Form 7 is known for its simplicity and effectiveness for basic form needs, Ninja Forms offers a more nuanced set of features that cater to complex form creation.

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Is ninja form good? ›

Ninja Forms and WPForms are known for being easy to use. They feature beginner-friendly drag-and-drop interfaces, allowing you to see your forms come to life as you customize them. As mentioned, you don't have to code when using either of these WordPress plugins.

Which is better, contact form 7 or WPForms? ›

Contact Form 7 offers an experience that's more similar to using the Classic Editor. Instead of creating forms using a drag-and-drop builder, it uses a text-based editor. WPForms offers a more visual approach. The entire plugin focuses on the drag-and-drop builder and offers a large collection of form templates.

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What is the difference between Ninja Forms and fluent forms? ›

Both the plugins have advanced input fields but the Ninja Forms plugin doesn't categorize anything as Advanced fields, but there are some input fields that work in an advanced way. While WP Fluent Forms provides a bunch of advanced input fields and the maximum you can get for free.

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What is the best contact form builder? ›

Overview of the Best Contact Form Plugins

		Price
🥇	WPForms	Starts at $49.50/yr
🥈	Formidable Forms	Starts at $39.50/yr
🥉	HubSpot Forms	Free
4	Gravity Forms	Starts at $59/yr

5 more rows

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Is Contact Form 7 any good? ›

Ratings and reviews

On the WordPress plugin directory, Contact Form 7 has a rating of 4 stars based on over 1,000 reviews.

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Why is Ninja build so fast? ›

Ninja achieves its incredible speed by reducing a key performance factor in modern build systems—parsing user-created control files. Other compilation systems process control files (i.e. Makefiles in GNU Make) that direct the builder to process commands and calculate dependencies.

Why use contact form 7? ›

Contact Form 7 is a free WordPress plugin to create contact forms simply and quickly. Flexible thanks to the presence of many customizable fields, it also helps fight against spam. It is one of the most popular plugins in the official directory.

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Why is contact form 7 not submitting? ›

Sending Emails That Aren't Authenticated

This is the most common issue for a contact form not sending email, and it links back to problems with PHP mail and your server. Chances are you're receiving the notifications, but they aren't landing in your inbox. In fact, they're hitting your spam folder.

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What is Ninja Forms used for? ›

Front-End Posting - Use Ninja Forms to create posts from the front-end. These can be added to any post type, including custom post types, and users can select categories and tags. Layout & Styles - Use Ninja Forms to create amzing form layouts and styles right from your WordPress admin.

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Is Ninja Forms safe? ›

Ninja Forms does not have any access to your site or the form data entered within your site. We NEVER collect or even have the capacity to see data entered into form fields or any other user data. Ninja Forms does everything it can to make sure all form-submitted data is handled in a secure way as possible.

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Where do Ninja form submissions go? ›

Submission data for all forms can be found under Ninja Forms > Submissions in your WordPress admin. Note: to ensure the privacy and security of submitted data, only users with the Administrator role can view and edit submission data by default in Ninja Forms.

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What is the difference between contact form 7 and gravity forms? ›

While Contact Form 7 is primarily designed for contact forms, with the right extensions, you can do more. Gravity Forms, on the other hand, is versatile right out of the box. Surveys, quizzes, order forms – you name it, Gravity can handle it.

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What is the difference between contact form 7 and fluent forms? ›

You have to manage every field manually whereas you can do it simply in the Fluent Forms. Another noteworthy drawback is, you can not get the drag and drop system in Contact form 7. Just compare contact form 7 dashboard with Fluent and you could realize it easily.

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