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Web forms are not necessarily a new technology, but they’re the gold standard for collecting leads and information from website visitors. And there are no shortage of options for WordPress contact form plugins.

That said, online form builders have come a long way since their early internet roots.

Now, depending on what software you use, you can integrate with email and marketing automation software, automatically enrich lead data with more contact properties, automatically sync touch points to your CRM, and even personalize form fields and placement based on website behavior.

There are tons of options out there, though. To demystify the selection process and help you select a tool, here are 15 WordPress form plugins.

The Best Free WordPress Form Plugins

1. HubSpot – Free Marketing Plugin for WordPress

When it comes to WordPress form plugins, HubSpot’s very own plugin offers some special advantages.

First, it’s more than just your traditional form builder. It includes tools to help you convert visitors on your site, tool that help you in building an email list, generating and tracking leads, and tracking user behavior on your website.

These include a lead generation dashboard, lead capture tools like pop-ups, slide-ins, and exit intent forms, a static form builder tool, a contact database, and lead insights for the first seven days of website activity after lead capture. All these features work immediately, right out of the box, with no dev help required.

You’ve also got the benefit of a native integration with the free HubSpot CRM, so you can track and manage all of your leads’ touch points across the customer journey.

 

2. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is quite a powerful option for a WordPress contact form builder.

With Gravity Forms, you can build out multi-page/multi-step forms, create rules to limit which domains are acceptable on your forms (excluding gmail and competition for instance), and schedule forms to be implemented during a set time period.

In addition, they offer a deep integration library with email software, automation software like Zapier, and payment processors like Stripe and PayPal so you can accept payment with your forms.

In my experience, Gravity Forms is a bit complicated from the end-user perspective. Setting up custom integrations and even some basic design options can be somewhat difficult to set up, but if you want something highly customizable and advanced, this may be worth the effort.

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3. FormCraft

FormCraft is WordPress form plugin that focuses on ease of use and design. Basically, they make sure all the forms made with FormCraft are as stylish and beautiful, and you can make them that way with ease.

It’s responsive, somewhat customizable, and includes email notifications so you don’t need to log in to monitor your lead generation process. The premium version has a lot more features, such as conditional logic, auto-save form progress, form analytics, and more. The free version is somewhat limited, but again, it’s easy to use and makes nice looking forms.

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4. Qu Form

Qu Form is another WordPress form builder that bills itself as “advanced.” It’s primarily a drag and drop editor that can build out a variety of form types, from contact us forms to billing forms.

This one comes with most features you’d want, including multi-page forms and smart branching logic, and it’s also pretty customizable on the style and design side of things (also pretty easy to do so).

Plans start at $29.

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5. Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is one of the more powerful WordPress form builders. It’s free. It’s easy to use. It’s got no limitations on form fields, forms, or submissions.

It also has several native integrations with popular email service providers as well as payment processors, so you can easily sync of your systems and automate much of the administrative process usually inherent with forms tools.

It also contains a pretty easy to use drag-and-drop editor.

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6. Jetpack’s Contact Form

Jetpack is a popular WordPress plugin that comes with many templates. It’s actually made by Automattic, and it includes more than just a form builder. Some of its features include:

• Site stats and analytics
• Automated social media posting and scheduling in advance
• Elasticsearch-powered related content and site search
• SEO tools for Google, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress.com
• Advertising program that includes the best of AdSense, Facebook Ads, AOL, Amazon, Google AdX, and Yahoo
• Simple PayPal payment buttons

Its WordPress contact form feature is relatively limited in scope, but if you’re already using Jetpack and just want something simple, this is a good place to start.

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7. Form Maker

Form Maker by WebDorado is an easy to use and intuitive form builder. It has a drag and drop editor, and they have several functionalities for their forms, including questionnaires, contact forms, surveys, and quizzes.

The free version, however, is limited to seven fields. Their integrations are somewhat limited as well.

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3. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular WordPress form plugins. Its main focus (no surprise here) is on contact forms.

The big benefit is that it is super simple to create contact forms and deploy different forms across your site. The downside is that its use cases are limited compared to other WordPress form plugins.

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9. WP Forms

WP Forms is another widely used form builder that offers advanced branching logic, customizability, and a drag and drop editor.

They emphasize their ability to work across many use cases, and offer templates and ready to use workflows for payments, contact forms, registration, subscription, and more.

As far as I know, they don’t offer any free plans, but they’re basic plan is $49 per year.

10. eForm

eForm, but WPQuark, is probably one of the more feature rich solutions for WordPress forms.

They have advanced implementations for most common uses cases, notably their eCommerce setup which includes full checkout and payment flows and native integrations with Stripe, PayPal, and WooCommerce.

There’s no free plan, but it starts at $38. This is a form builder if you have highly specific feature requirements and a desire to tweak things so they’re precisely the way you want them. It’s not necessarily the easiest tool to use.

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11. Nex Forms

Nex Forms is a feature-rich form builder that has many interesting functions, like interactive forms, personalization, and pretty robust form analytics.

 

 

12. Visual Form Builder

Visual Form Builder is a WordPress plugin that allows you to build and manage many different kinds of forms for your website in a single application. It’s easy to use for non-developers, and you can build a pretty nice looking form without writing any PHP, CSS, or HTML (though it doesn’t hurt if you can hack together some CSS).

 

13. Caldera Form Builder

Caldera Form Builder is designed to be responsive and to have an intuitive, visual creator.

It’s got tons of native integrations as well as conditional logic and smart spam detection. There’s no free plan, though. Prices start at $14.99 per month.

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14. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms prides itself on simplicity; it’s got a nice drag and drop visual editor, easy and automatic email notifications for form submissions, and all your basic pre-built form templates.

This is one of the easier tools to use and set up, but it’s a bit limited in its feature set (though to their credit, they have tons of add-ons you can download depending on what you want to do with your online form).

 

15. Pirate Forms

Pirate Forms is easy to set up, includes Recaptcha and SMTP, and has all the basic field properties you’d expect in a WordPress contact form.

The free version is super limited, though. To get multiple forms, or even basic integrations, you have to upgrade to pro.

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The options are endless for WordPress form plugins.

The choice is ultimately up to you which one fits your personal workflow and your specific website needs. Most form builders include the basics - popular contact properties like email and name, multiple forms across your site, and some native integrations.

It just depends how simple versus customizable you want things, or if you care about things like automatically enriching your leads or analyzing their website behavior.

If you're looking for a solution that is simple, inherently beautiful and designed with the user experience in mind, and that includes built-in lead intelligence mechanisms that sync to a free CRM, check out HubSpot’s free form builder software.

Hashtag contests can be a great way to boost brand awareness and engagement - here's what you need to know about running one on Instagram or Twitter.

Why are these two or three sentences so hard to formulate?

Sometimes they are the most time-consuming sections of documents PR pros put together.

Through experience, feedback and education, PR pros can glean helpful tidbits to create quoteworthy statements.

Here's a collection of anatomical components that make a good quote and how you can use them to better represent your organization to the wider world:

1. First, keep in mind that a quote is the only place where you can editorialize.

The body of any release should be facts-based, which helps reporters put together their stories. In your press release, quotes should be the only section in which your organization editorializes. That means your commentary, analysis and opinion should come from someone and can make a great quote.

2. Answer the question, “Why is this important?”

Quotes should put the announcement, event or milestone into the broader context of the industry, company or climate. Include the newsworthiness of your announcement in this section so stakeholders understand the impact.

[RELATED: Join us for the 30th annual Speechwriters and Executive Communicators Conference.]

3. Make sure the quote adds color and context.

Quotes often reiterate the announcement; that's a mistake. They should be complementary and provide commentary or analysis, or you risk boring the reader or sounding stilted and formulaic.

4. Every part of a quote needs to work on its own.

Does this sound familiar?

“They only took a piece of the statement. That quote is totally out of context!”

To avoid getting heat from your boss, quotes should be carefully reviewed to ensure that every section, no matter how it may be sliced, is effective.

5. Keep it pithy.

Keep it concise and to the point. Otherwise, it loses impact and seems to ramble. Shorter quotes are also easier to remember.

6. The author must be someone relevant.

This may be an obvious one, but the spokesperson should be familiar with and involved in the situation. Attention should be paid to make sure the author of the quote is the most relevant to the situation they are commenting on.

7. A quote can be used to address concerns or correct facts.

In a sensitive situation, what do you want to make sure stakeholders understand?

A quote or statement is where you can ensure that your key messages get across, and sometimes that message is a correction or a redirect.

8. The quote can be aspirational or inspirational (or both).

Like adding context, a quote can address how the announcement gets an organization to its goals. In a message to employees, being inspirational and aspirational should be an important consideration.

Julia Sahin works in financial communications at one of the largest PR firms in New York and is a monthly contributor to Muck Rack. Connect with her on Twitter. A version of this article originally appeared on Muck Rack, a service that enables you to find journalists to pitch, build media lists, get press alerts and create coverage reports with social media data.

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SAN DIEGO — Marvel who?

Warner Bros. more than held up the superhero end of the bargain at Comic-Con on Saturday morning, showing Hall H an extended reel of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which went over so well that half the hall leapt to its feet to applaud and yell "Play it again! Play it again!"

SEE ALSO: Comic-Con 2015 is here - but where did half the movies go?

After the panel ended, they did — all 3 minutes and 31 seconds of it — and here's what we saw:

After his battle with Zod in Man of Steel, Superman is a polarizing figure — not everyone trusts this alien being with the power to level a city. And right off the bat we see a skyscraper being razed by a flaming beam (is that Superman doing that, or someone else?) and Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) running toward the billowing cloud as the building falls. That building: Wayne Financial. Read more...

More about Movies, Warner Bros, Comic Con, Entertainment, and Film

Several major brands are unapologetically celebrating LGBT couples and families during Pride Month. Here’s a quick roundup of some of the more high profile campaigns, commercials and more:

Google’s features transgender community in with “Google My Business” video

This video tells the true story of Jacob, a transgender man. The Google branding is light and relevant. It includes details about how City Gym is using Google to help connect it to Kansas City’s transgender community.

Seattle Sounders celebrate Pride Month during match

The Seattle Sounders soccer team announced that it plans to celebrate Pride Month during an upcoming match with the San Jose Earthquakes. Team owner Adrian Hanauer said the following in a press release:

We are excited to celebrate Seattle’s LGBTQ community at CenturyLink Field this coming weekend. Saturday’s match and its surrounding events will be a fun and meaningful occasion for all to enjoy. Having Jason Collins on-hand is an added bonus, and the Sounders FC community is honored to welcome him to the Emerald City.

American Airlines doesn’t back down from using rainbow avatar

After changing its Twitter avatar to a rainbow pride flag, American Airlines didn’t back down from customers who criticized the brand. A Daily Beast writer pointed out the following exchange, which The Advocate also highlighted:

I guess I'm cool with companies turning their logos rainbow as long as they all act like this on social media: pic.twitter.com/FdER1ZZ1uZ

— Samantha Allen (@SLAwrites) June 15, 2015

Chobani’s “Simply 100” commercial features lesbian couple

A Chobani spokesperson told The Huffington Post the following about its newest commercial that features a lesbian couple:

As part of our founding mission to make better food for more people, inclusiveness is at the heart of Chobani. We’re proud that our products are enjoyed by all and we celebrate that diversity whenever—and however—we can.

Wells Fargo draws Christian ire over lesbian commercial

Banking giant Wells Fargo was largely lauded for the touching commercial it created featuring a lesbian couple learning sign language in preparation for adopting a deaf child:

But Charlotte-based evangelist Franklin Graham called on his followers to boycott the brand, and even went so far as to pull the accounts for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association from Wells Fargo. The organization opted instead to go with BB&T, a banking brand that has supported gay-pride events in Miami.

“I think there is a difference between being friendly and being a public advocate,” Graham wrote in a USA Today column.

Fisher-Price celebrates same-sex couples in photo campaign

Fisher-Price has teamed up with LGBT parenting forum Proud Parenting to create the Proud Parenting LGBT Family Photo Gallery.

From The Huffington Post:

The project is a curated photo collection of LGBT parents and their families that will be featured across digital media outlets and promoted by Gay Ad Network on a number of websites and mobile apps. You can check out the photo gallery on the web, as well as on Facebook and Instagram.

[RELATED: Join us at the LinkedIn Headquarters on July 30-31 for our Content Marketing and Brand Journalism Summit.]

Though many brand managers are taking part in Pride Month, despite the controversy it may bring, they stayed silent on Caitlyn Jenner’s transformation earlier this month.

What do you think of these moves, PR Daily readers? Is it wise for brands to make statements like these?

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KALUGA, Russia — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is about to walk on stage at a rally in Kaluga, a provincial city about 100 miles southwest of Moscow, when tumult breaks out at the entrance.

A rowdy group of a dozen men from the pro-Kremlin National Liberation Movement, flanked by 30 or so hired young thugs in sportswear, is arguing with security to let them in. One man's t-shirt reads "Fuck USA." Another man sports a shirt with an image of the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. He holds a sign saying, "Navalny, get out of Russia," loudly shouting that the opposition figure is a "spy for America!" Read more...

More about Russia, Moscow, Vladimir Putin, Us World, and Alexei Navalny

Do you post social media updates when your audience has the highest chance of seeing them, or just whenever you think of it or happen to have a free minute?

If you aren't posting to a social media site when most of your audience members are on it, all that time you spent crafting the update goes to waste. And you're a busy person. You don't have any time to waste.

An infographic from Fannit.com lists the best and worst times to post to all the major social media sites: Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Facebook and your blog. While all audiences are different, you can use these times as a general guide. Here are the best times to post to each site:

Pinterest: On Saturday from 2 p.m.-4 p.m. and 8 p.m.-11 p.m.

LinkedIn: 7 a.m.-8:30 p.m. and 5 p.m.-6 p.m.

Google+: 9 a.m.-11 a.m.

Twitter: On weekends from 1 p.m.-3 p.m.

Facebook: Weekdays 6 a.m.- 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.-5 p.m.

Blog: Monday, Friday and Saturday at 11 a.m.

For the worst times to post to each social media site, as well as other helpful posting tips, check out the graphic:

(View a larger image.)

Kristin Piombino is assistant editor at Ragan.com.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee defends decision not to bake security into www Register Sir Tim's views are in contrast with those of another internet pioneer, Vint Cerf, who recently said he regretted not building in security to basic internet protocols. Berners-Lee strongly supported the current push towards always-on crypto (https) for ... and more »