Working with contact forms

A contact form lets visitors send you a message directly from your website, without exposing your email address publicly. Many WordPress sites have at least one contact form. This guide explains how they work and how to manage them day-to-day.

How contact forms work

Here's the journey of a form submission:

A visitor fills out your contact form and clicks Submit.
The form plugin validates the information (e.g., checks the email address looks right).
Depending on the plugin, it saves the submission to your WordPress database.
The plugin sends a notification email to you (and sometimes a confirmation email to the visitor).

The email notification is what tells you someone has been in touch. That's why getting your notification email address right matters.

Which form plugin does your site use?

Common WordPress form plugins include:

Plugin	Notes
WPForms	User-friendly, popular for business sites
Gravity Forms	Feature-rich, often used for complex forms
Contact Form 7	Free, widely used, more manual setup
Elementor Forms	Built into Elementor Pro, no separate form plugin needed
Fluent Forms	Modern, user-friendly

If you're not sure which one your site uses, look in your WordPress sidebar for any of these names, or check Plugins → Installed Plugins.

Finding and reading form submissions

Many form plugins save submissions inside WordPress, not just as emails. Where your plugin does this, you have a backup copy even if notification emails get missed. Some only do it on a paid plan: WPForms saves entries only with a paid license, and Elementor's Essential plan doesn't include saved submissions.

Look in your WordPress sidebar for your form plugin's menu. In WPForms, it's listed as "WPForms." In Gravity Forms, it's "Forms." Elementor Forms uses "Elementor" → "Submissions."

Click on Entries (or Submissions: the label varies by plugin). In Gravity Forms, click Forms, hover over your form, and click Entries. You'll see a list of all submitted forms.

Click a submission to see the full details: the person's name, email, their message, and the date/time it was submitted.

Contact Form 7 doesn't save entries by default

If your site uses Contact Form 7, submissions are sent by email only. They're not saved in WordPress unless you've added a separate plugin like Flamingo. If notification emails are going to spam, you could miss submissions entirely. Talk to us if you'd like saved entries enabled.

Setting up or changing the notification email

If you're not receiving notification emails, check where they're being sent.

Go to WPForms → All Forms and open your form in the form builder. Click Settings → Notifications. The "Send To Email Address" field controls where notifications go. Make sure it's set to an email you check regularly, then click Save.

Why notification emails sometimes don't arrive

Form notification emails fail to deliver for a few common reasons:

The email ends up in spam. Check your spam or junk folder. If it's there, mark it as "not spam."
Your site isn't configured to send email properly. WordPress's built-in email sending doesn't guarantee delivery: it only confirms the message was handed off, not that it arrived. Many sites use an SMTP plugin (like WP Mail SMTP) to send email through a proper mail service. See Email sent from your website explained.
The notification email address is wrong. Check the form's notification settings (above).
Your email provider is blocking it. Some email services are strict about blocking automated messages. An SMTP setup often helps.

Both paths reach the same mail server. The difference is what the email is carrying when it gets there, and that is what decides which folder it lands in.

Read this as text

Your website sends email on its own: contact form notifications, order confirmations, password resets. Where that email goes next depends on one setting.

With SMTP configured, the site logs in to a real mail service using a username, password and server address. That service signs the message and keeps delivery logs, then passes it to the recipient’s mail server. Because the message is authenticated and the sending service has its own reputation, it normally lands in the inbox.

Without it, the site falls back to a basic server function called PHP mail. The message goes to the same recipient server, but with no authentication signature, no delivery log, and a sending reputation shared with every other site on that server, so if any of them sends spam, yours is doubted too. Some hosts block it outright.

Same sender, same recipient, same destination server. The only difference is what the email can prove about itself on arrival, and that is what decides the folder.

Missing form submissions can mean lost leads

If your contact form is silently failing (the visitor thinks their message was sent, but you never receive it), you're losing enquiries. If you suspect this is happening, check your form plugin's saved entries and contact us. We can diagnose and fix the issue.

Handling spam form submissions

Contact forms attract bots too. Common anti-spam tools:

CAPTCHARequires visitors to complete a small challenge before submitting
reCAPTCHA (Google)Checkbox, invisible, or score-based (v3) versions; supported by many form plugins
Honeypot fieldsHidden fields that bots fill in but humans don't; a simple way to catch basic bots

If you're getting a lot of spam submissions, ask us and we can add protection to your forms.

Editing a form

If you need to add a field, change the layout, or update the confirmation message, you'll do that inside your form plugin, not by editing the page directly. The page just contains a shortcode or block that displays the form. Changes to the form itself are made in the plugin. (Elementor Forms are the exception: the form is a widget on the page, so you edit it in the Elementor editor.)

Ask us if you'd like help making changes to your forms, getting form logic right is worth doing carefully.

Common questions

Someone submitted a form but I never got an email: where is the message?

Check your spam folder first. Then check the form plugin's saved entries (see the steps above). If the submission is there but no email came, your site's email delivery may need to be fixed with an SMTP plugin. Contact us and we'll sort it out.

The form submission says 'Your message was sent successfully' but nothing arrived, did it work?

The success message confirms the form plugin received the data. Whether an email was actually sent depends on your site's email configuration. Check saved entries and your spam folder. If nothing shows up, contact us.

Can I redirect visitors to a 'thank you' page after submitting?

Yes, many form plugins support this. In the form settings, look for a "Confirmations" section (WPForms and Gravity Forms), or a "Redirect" action in Elementor Forms. You can redirect to a specific page URL instead of showing an inline success message. This also helps you track form conversions in analytics.

How do I export form submissions to a spreadsheet?

Many plugins that save entries let you export them as a CSV file. In WPForms (paid license), go to WPForms → Entries, open the form, and click Export All. In Gravity Forms, go to Forms → Import/Export and use the Export Entries tab. In Elementor, go to Elementor → Submissions and click Export All to CSV. The CSV file opens in Excel or Google Sheets.