123ContactForm WordPress plugin

The well-known form builder 123ContactForm announced, by Twitter, that they released a WordPress plugin which allows the easy integration of forms created by 123ContactForm with WordPress-driven blogs.

Adding a form to the blog requires just 2 easy steps:
- installing the plugin
- adding a short code to the blog post where the form should appear

I see that the 123 Contact Form plugin for WordPress also has a live demo, in a post on the 123ContactForm blog.

Best free contact form generator

A user that is mad at the latest Emailmeform news asked me to tell him the best Emailmeform alternative. So I decided to create a short list with the pros and cons of the best free contact form generators on the market. They are in alphabetical order.

123ContactForm
Pros: Lots of features, including Captcha, form autoresponder, html form templates; no limit of form submissions.
Cons: no file uploads, form cannot be used in iFrame.

FormSite
Pros: Lots of features, including skip / branch functionality, html form templates, file uploading.
Cons: limited to 100 submissions, Captcha not available.

FormSpring
Pros: Lots of features, including Likert scales, multi-column layout, reports.
Cons: limited to 50 sumbissions, no file uploads, Captcha not available.

Wufoo
Pros: Lots of features, including predefined forms, html form templates, Likert scales, Captcha.
Cons: limited to 100 submissions, no file uploads.

This is a quick review of the main contact form generators: 123ContactForm, FormSite, FormSpring, Wufoo. They are not limited to contact forms, you can create a wide variety of forms with all these 4 services. If you need advanced features, every service has advanced service plans, that require a monthly fee, which will remove the limitations, and offer extra features, like Paypal order forms, Google Checkout integration, and so on.

Which one do you prefer?

myContactForm review

I've seen a lot of comments about myContactForm, some of them positive, others negative, so I decided to test their form generator, and see how it works. I find the site's layout a bit oldish, but this is not very important, as what I dont' like others might like very much :) Maybe getting a new layout (how EmailMeForm did) would boost their business. But let's go to the functionality of myContactForm.

The first thing that surprised me was the long wizard that you must use to create a simple form. It requires 14 (?!) steps. Another thing was that you are required to enter a page where to redirect the user after the submission. What if I ask my friends by email to fill this form, and I don't have a "thank you" page? This should be optional, in my opinion.


I liked the way they let you customize the form layout - a lot of settings, you can even alternate the background color of the form questions. This would be even nicer with a real-time preview... It's nice that you can easily customize the error messages, received by the user if the form is not entirely filled, or the email address is invalid. Surprisingly, using Captcha is not an option for Free users, but only for Premium users ($29.99/year). The Premium membership is cheap, but the features list is quite poor compared to the competition. I am sure their features list offers enough to create simple forms, but nowadays the top form generators offer awesome features like Paypal order forms or multi-page forms.

That's all, I would say myContactForm has potential, but it is not developed enough to offer the same things as other sites in this niche.

123ContactForm blog

You probably know 123ContactForm, one of the best contact form generators. The news is that they started their own blog, because they want to interact better with the customers, and create tutorials about html forms easier.

Wufoo announces pagination

It seems that Wufoo is preparing a nice feature, pagination. Especially for big forms, this makes the form submission seem easier. I believe this requires a lot of modifications to their engine, so I can't wait to test the feature (after it is officially released to the public), but knowing Wufoo, it will work very well :)

Emailmeform...

I know EmailMeForm for a couple of years. At some point, I created an account with them, to see what their services have to offer. At that time, it was one of the best contact form generators out there. But time has passed, and they are not doing well in this hard competition. Wufoo has a lot of new features, FormSite also, 123ContactForm announces a couple of new features every month. And EmailMeForm, who has a new layout and a new owner, remains with the same old features...
Quite disapointing, I would say...

Formdesk is funny :)

Browsing the web, doing some research on contact forms, my hobby, I found (by a Google Ad) another form creator: Formdesk. Looking at their features and pricing, I found the "We create your form" link, in their menu. Curious young man as I am, I wanted to see how much would it cost if they create your form. The simplest form possible, 2 fields (Name and Email, for example), no calculations, no dependencies.


OMG OMG OMG! €200 for such a form ?! Indeed, Formdesk is funny :)