How to Easily Create a WordPress Contact Form Without Jetpack

Do you want to add a contact form to your WordPress site with Jetpack? Using the right tool to create your form can help you save time and get way better results.

In this article, we’ll help you easily create a WordPress contact form on your site without Jetpack.

Why Not Use a Jetpack Contact Form on WordPress?

When it comes to creating a contact form, you’ve got quite a few choices to pick from. One of the most popular options is Jetpack.

Jetpack is a multi-purpose WordPress plugin. It’s made by Automattic and brings WordPress.com functionality to WordPress.org users.

Jetpack includes contact forms, image galleries and carousels, WordPress widgets, and more.

Jetpack does have a few good things that make it popular:

• Free to use
• Contact forms support Akismet for spam prevention
• Response times are usually quick in the WordPress support forums
• Includes a lot of other tools and features (though some are paid upgrades)

But while Jetpack can be useful, it’s not a good choice for every site.

Here are some big reasons why not to use Jetpack Contact Forms on WordPress:

1. Requires a WordPress.com Account

In order to use most of Jetpack’s features, you’ll need to connect your site with a WordPress.com account. And if you don’t know by now, there’s a huge difference between self-hosted WordPress and WordPress.com.

As the owner of a self-hosted WordPress site, you may not want a WordPress.com account. Or, if you have one, you may just want to keep it separate from your WordPress website.

2. Too Many Unnecessary Features

Jetpack has a whole lot going on. If the only thing that you need from Jetpack is a contact form, then installing Jetpack and all its extra features is unnecessary. There’s no reason to add all that bloat to your site when you could use a lightweight contact form plugin instead.

After all, your site’s speed and performance are important to your users, not to mention your form conversion rates. And while having plugins you actually need on your site is fine, having extras that just waste resources and slow your page load time isn’t the best idea.

3. Limited Contact Form Features

Jetpack’s contact form builder is contained in a WordPress block, so it’s missing a bunch of features and isn’t very beginner-friendly.

For example, there aren’t many options to customize your contact forms. Jetpack’s contact forms have just basic form fields, so creating one-of-a-kind forms is super tricky, if not impossible, to do.

Adding to that, there’s barely any customization available for each form field. And although Jetpack offers a WordPress Simple Payments button at an extra cost, it’s super bloated and takes up room on your site.

Many users also report problems with Jetpack contact forms not sending email.

4. No Email Newsletter Integration

Giving people a way to contact you is not only great customer service, it can help you grow your business. But an even better way to grow your business and revenue is to focus on your email marketing efforts.

And it just so happens that one of the best ways to build a bigger email list is to integrate your contact forms with your favorite email service provider. This will give your site visitors a chance to add themselves to your email list. People on your email list are much more likely to become big fans of your website who want what you’re selling.

Unfortunately, Jetpack contact forms can’t integrate with any email service providers. This means you’re missing out on a potential subscriber every time someone completes your form.

5. Limited Notification Options

While Jetpack can create email notifications for each form submitted, the options to customize your form notifications are limited.

In fact, the only things you can really customize are the email subject line and which email address to send the notification to once someone submits a form.

Being able to receive email notifications when someone submits a form on your site is important. So is sending notifications to your team members and site visitors. All of these features help streamline the process and make things much easier for everyone.

But in order to do all of that, you need something called multiple notification functionality and the ability to customize the notifications beyond the email subject line and email address.

6. Difficulty Creating Confirmations

People want to know immediately if the form they’ve submitted has been processed. That’s why displaying a confirmation message after a user clicks Submit is a good idea.

Jetpack does have the ability to display a confirmation message to site visitors after submitting a form. However, to show these custom messages, you have to deal with code in your functions.php file or use a coding plugin like WPCode.

As a result, this contact form solution suddenly becomes very complicated to use. Not all small business owners work with a developer or know how to use code.

Creating a WordPress Contact Form Without Jetpack

Now, you probably have a clear understanding of Jetpack’s limitations as a contact form builder. So, let’s see how easy it is to create a contact form without Jetpack by using WPForms instead.

Step 1: Create a Contact Form in WordPress

The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress.

Once WPForms is active, go to WPForms » Add New to create a new contact form.

On the setup screen, name your form and select the Simple Contact Form template.

Keep in mind you can create tons of different types of forms for your website using WPForms. WPForms comes with 2,000+ WordPress form templates

For example, you can create an order form and collect payments. In addition, you can run a contest and limit one entry per person or close the form at a specific date/time with the Form Locker addon. You can even create a membership site using both the registration and login form templates.

You can even use the Conversational Forms Addon to create a beautiful and interactive form:

Once you select your template and the pre-built form loads, most of the work is already done for you. For example, you’ll have a form with a Name, Email, and Message field already there.

You can add additional fields by dragging them from the left-hand panel to the right-hand panel. Then, click on the field to make any changes. You can also click on a form field and drag it to rearrange the order on your contact form. It’s super simple.

Once your form looks the way you want it to, click Save.

Step 2: Configure Your Contact Form Settings

There are many form settings to configure in the form builder.

In the General Settings, you can change things like your form’s name, description, and submit button copy. You can also enable additional spam-prevention features, including Akismet integration, to keep your website secure from unwanted form submissions.

Form confirmations are messages that display to site visitors once they submit a contact form on your website. WPForms has 3 confirmation types to choose from: Message, Show Page, and Redirect.

Notifications are a great way to send an email whenever a contact is submitted on your website. You’ll automatically receive a notification when a form submits. You can also send one to the site visitor who submitted the form and anyone else who needs to be notified of form submissions.

You can also integrate your form with your preferred email marketing provider. WPForms has addons for AWeber, Drip, Constant Contact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, MailerLite, GetResponse, ActiveCampaign, and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue).

Lastly, if you are collecting payments on your form, you can configure your payment settings in the form builder too. WPForms lets you choose from Square, Authorize.Net, Stripe, or PayPal payment integrations.

Step 3: Add Your Form to Your Website

Even though it’s different than Jetpack, adding your WPForms contact form to your website is really simple to do.

WPForms allows you to add your forms to many locations on your website, including blog posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets.

Let’s take a look at the most common post/page embed option.

To begin, create a new page or post in WordPress. Then, click inside the first block (the blank area below your page title) and click on the WPForms icon.

Next, select your contact form from the dropdown.

Then, publish your post or page so your contact form will appear on your website. It’s that easy.

Next, Add Users to Your Mailing List from Your Contact Form

And there you have it! You now know how to create a WordPress contact form without having to use Jetpack. Check out WPForms Lite vs Pro to see all of the fun stuff that’s included.

Want to get more subscribers to your newsletter? You might also want to check out our guide on how to ask visitors to join your newsletter while they’re filling out your contact form.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.

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