Contact Form 7 vs SkunkForms: What CF7 Is Missing

Contact Form 7 is the most installed form plugin in WordPress history. Five million active installs. Translations in 60+ languages. It's been around since 2007 — before Gutenberg, before the REST API, before WordPress was even a real CMS.

And that's kind of the problem.

CF7 still works. It still does what it says on the tin. But WordPress has moved on, and CF7 hasn't really moved with it. If you're evaluating a Contact Form 7 alternative in 2025, here's an honest look at how it compares to SkunkForms.

What Contact Form 7 does well

Credit where it's due — CF7 earned those 5 million installs:

• Completely free — No premium tier, no upsells, no "upgrade to unlock" dark patterns
• Lightweight — Minimal footprint, doesn't slow your site down
• Massive community — Every WordPress question about CF7 has been answered somewhere
• Rock-solid stability — 17+ years of battle-testing
• Developer-friendly — Hooks, filters, and custom mail tags for developers who want control

If you need a simple contact form and nothing else, CF7 is hard to argue with. It's free, it works, and it'll probably outlive us all.

Where CF7 starts to fall short

The issues show up the moment you need anything beyond a basic contact form.

No submission storage

This is the big one. CF7 doesn't save form submissions. At all. Your leads arrive by email, and if that email gets lost, bounces, or ends up in spam — they're gone.

Want to store submissions? You need Flamingo, a separate plugin by the same developer. It works, but it's another plugin to install, maintain, and keep updated.

SkunkForms stores every submission by default. No add-on needed.

No visual form builder

CF7 uses a text-based editor with shortcode-like markup. Building a form looks like this:

[text* your-name placeholder "Your Name"]
[email* your-email placeholder "Your Email"]
[textarea your-message placeholder "Your Message"]
[submit "Send"]

It works, but it's 2025. Most site owners expect a visual builder.

SkunkForms uses the native WordPress block editor. You build forms the same way you build pages — drag blocks, configure settings, done. No proprietary builder to learn. If you know Gutenberg, you already know how to use SkunkForms.

No CRM integration

When someone fills out your contact form, what happens next? With CF7, the answer is: you get an email. That's it.

Want to track that lead? You'll need a CRM plugin, plus an integration plugin (or Zapier) to connect them. That's three plugins minimum for what should be a basic workflow.

SkunkForms integrates natively with SkunkCRM. Every form submission can automatically create a contact, assign tags, and add them to a deal pipeline. No Zapier. No middleware. No monthly fees. The free version of both plugins handles this out of the box.

No form analytics

CF7 doesn't track form views, submission rates, or abandonment. You're flying blind — no way to know if your form is converting at 2% or 20%.

SkunkForms includes form analytics for free. See how your forms perform, identify drop-off points, and make data-driven improvements.

No conditional logic

Want to show or hide fields based on user input? CF7 can't do that natively. You'll need a third-party add-on like Conditional Fields for Contact Form 7 (a separate plugin with its own update cycle and compatibility concerns).

SkunkForms Pro includes conditional logic built in — no add-ons required.

No spam protection out of the box

CF7 ships with basic Akismet integration, but for reCAPTCHA or Cloudflare Turnstile, you need additional configuration or plugins.

SkunkForms includes spam protection by default in the free tier. SkunkForms Pro adds reCAPTCHA v3 and Cloudflare Turnstile integration for more advanced protection.

Feature comparison

The hidden cost of CF7's add-on ecosystem

CF7 is free. But the moment you need real functionality, you start stacking plugins:

• Flamingo (submission storage) — Free, but another plugin to maintain
• Conditional Fields for CF7 — Free with limitations, $29+ for pro
• CF7 to Zapier — $49/yr to connect forms to anything
• CRM plugin — $99-199/yr depending on which one
• Analytics plugin — $49-99/yr for form tracking
• reCAPTCHA plugin — Free, but yet another plugin

You're looking at $200+/year in add-ons and integrations to match what SkunkForms and SkunkCRM provide together. And that's $200/year for a patchwork of plugins from different developers with different update schedules, different support channels, and different compatibility guarantees.

What SkunkForms Pro bundles

SkunkForms Pro includes conditional logic, file uploads, multi-step forms, reCAPTCHA, and Cloudflare Turnstile. It also bundles SkunkCRM Pro for free — so you get the full CRM platform (contact management, deal pipelines, activity tracking) at no extra cost.

One purchase. One vendor. Everything works together.

The block editor question

This matters more than people think.

CF7 was built for the shortcode era. You create a form in its own editor, then paste a [contact-form-7] shortcode into your page. The form exists separately from your content.

SkunkForms is block-editor native. Your form lives inside the page editor alongside your headings, images, and text. You can see exactly how it'll look while you're building it. No context switching, no shortcode guessing.

WordPress is moving towards full-site editing with blocks. CF7's shortcode approach works, but it's building on a foundation that WordPress itself is moving away from.

Who should stick with CF7?

Be honest — CF7 is still the right choice for some people:

• Developers who prefer code-level control over visual builders
• Simple contact forms where you genuinely only need name, email, message, submit
• Sites that already use CF7 and have no complaints — if it's working, don't fix it
• Budget-conscious sites that need literally nothing beyond email notifications
• Minimalists who want the smallest possible plugin footprint

CF7 has earned its reputation. It's free, it's stable, and it has the biggest support community in WordPress forms.

Who should switch to SkunkForms?

If any of these sound familiar, it might be time to look at alternatives:

• You're tired of form submissions disappearing into email
• You want to know who submitted what, when, and track them as leads
• You need forms and CRM without stitching together five plugins
• You prefer building in the block editor over writing shortcode markup
• You want form analytics without installing another tracking plugin
• You're paying for CF7 add-ons that cost more than a purpose-built solution

The bottom line

Contact Form 7 is a good plugin that solved a real problem in 2007. It's still solving that same problem in 2025 — and that's both its strength and its limitation.

If your needs haven't changed since 2007, CF7 is great. If you want your forms to actually do something with the data they collect — store submissions, track leads, feed a CRM pipeline, show you conversion rates — you'll end up bolting on plugins until you've rebuilt what SkunkForms does natively.

Try SkunkForms free and see if it fits. It takes two minutes to install, and you keep everything — forms, submissions, contacts, deals — on your own server. No subscriptions required for the core features.

If it doesn't click for you, CF7 will still be there. It's not going anywhere. That much we can promise.