There are only three main Contact Form Plugins that have opportunity to save emails to DB. One of them includes all features as Contact Form and an opportunity to save emails to DB. The others are only add-ons for certain plugins.
Well, let’s begin. The plugins under analysis are as follows: Contact Form DB by Michael Simpson, Contact Form to Email by Codepeople and Contact Form to DB by BestWebSoft.
We will review this plugins only as Contact Forms with opportunity to save emails to DB. First of all let’s review the main features of these plugins.
The first one is Contact Form DB by Michael Simpson and it works only with certain plugins. This “CFDB” plugin saves contact form submissions to your WordPress database and provides shortcodes to retrieve and display the data. Once you install the plugin, it will automatically begin to capture submissions from:
- JetPack Contact Form plugin
- Contact Form 7 (CF7) plugin
- Fast Secure Contact Form (FSCF) plugin
The second one is Contact Form to Email by Codepeople. It is Contact form that sends the data to email and also to a database list and CSV file. So this plugin includes Contact Form and an opportunity to save emails to DB. The main purpose of the Contact Form to Email is, as the name indicates, to create contact forms and send their data email addresses. In addition to that basic feature it also saves the contact form data into a database, provides printable reports and the option to export selected data to CSV/Excel files.
The third plugin is Contact Form to DB by BestWebSoft. This plugin allows you to manage the messages that have been sent from your site. Contact Form to DB plugin is an exclusive add-on for the Contact Form plugin by BestWebSoft. The plugin provides a unique opportunity to manage messages sent from your site via the contact form. The list of its features is really impressive: messages can be saved, browsed, deleted or downloaded from the Dashboard. In case you decide to deactivate the plugin, it will serve as a repository for your old messages.
We have reviewed the main features of these plugins. We can obviously distinguish the Contact Form to Email. This plugin includes a conventional Contact Form plugin and opportunity to save emails to DB. As for others plugins they work in pair with certain Contact Form plugins.
I think that Contact Form to E-mail is rather difficult to use, because it provides functions of Contact Form and an opportunity to save emails to DB. In this case using separate plugins would be much better because they perform their functions well. It is better to install two simple and multifunctional plugins than one very difficult.
Each plugin has a number of advantages and disadvantages.
1. Contact Form to Email.
Let’s consider advantages of this plugin:
– Gives the opportunity not to lose submissions and keep a record of the received contact form messages.
– Exports the CSV data according to the selected filters/options. This way you can easily import data from other applications or just select the columns/fields that you need (example: select only the emails).
– A CSV file can be opened and managed using Excel.
And now Let’s consider disadvantages of this plugin:
– It is hard to use and install.
– Free version is not customizable. You have to get the professional version to be able to customize your contact form.
2. Contact Form DB.
Advantages:
– It is a functional plugin to store “contact us” data into database.
– plugin that displays data you collected from custom forms.
– CFDB will help you find and recover the information that CF7 didn’t send.
Disadvantages:
– Multilanguage problem. When you import from CSV to Excel some languages can get missed.
– Developers of JetPack, Contact Form 7, Fast Secure Contact Form plugins are not the developers of this plugin. So, there is no single concept.
– It works only with certain plugins.
– Your WordPress site must be running PHP5 or better. This plugin will fail to activate if your site is running PHP4.
– It is so hard to install and there are a lot of additional installation processes.
– to extend the functionality of this plugin you need to use and install certain shortcodes.
3. Contact Form to DB by BestWebSoft.
Let’s consider advantages of this plugin:
– You can save messages that have been sent from the site via the Contact Form to your database.
– You can manage messages (browse, delete and download messages) from Dashboard.
– In case you decide to deactivate the plugin, it will serve as a repository for your old messages.
– It’s extremely easy to install without any additional processes.
– This plugin is an add-on ONLY for Contact Form plugin by BestWebSoft. There is a one team of developers and it has a single concept.
Disadvantages:
– Free version is not so multifunctional as Contact Form to DB Pro plugin. Of course, this “disadvantage” looks rather forced since such a difference between a free and a pro version is evident and undisputable.
I think it would be great to add the feature like in Google Mail to display all messages from one user in the same chain.
So after reviewing all the plugins we can make a conclusion that the easiest, most useful and powerful plugin is Contact Form to DB by BestWebSoft. Because it includes all the best features of other plugins.
Contact Form DB is a great plugin but it has a lot of disadvantages. This plugin is very complicated for people who are not IT specialists. It works only with certain plugins and has different developers, support teams and concepts. It is a great minus.
As for Contact Form to Email it is different from all others plugins because it has both Contact form and opportunity to save emails to DB. It is a very good solution. But this plugin is very difficult to use and install. There is a lot of unnecessary information. It is better to install and use two simple and multifunctional plugins than one very difficult.
So Contact Form to DB by BestWebSoft is a great solution for you. Once you install and activate it, not a single message will be lost!
