WordPress Form to CRM: How to Send Leads Straight to Your Pipeline (Free)

You built a contact form. People are filling it out. Now you want those submissions in a CRM — as actual contacts with deal stages, tags, and follow-up reminders. Not as rows in a submissions table you'll forget to check.

The standard WordPress approach? Install a form plugin. Install a CRM plugin. Then pay Zapier $20/mo to pass data between them. Or hire a developer to build webhook integrations. Or export CSVs and import them manually like it's 2009.

There's a simpler path.

The typical WordPress form-to-CRM setup

Here's what most people end up with:

1. WPForms / Gravity Forms / Contact Form 7 — captures the data
2. HubSpot / FluentCRM / Groundhogg — manages the contacts
3. Zapier / WP Webhooks / Make — glues them together

Three plugins. At least one paid service. And field mapping configuration that breaks every time you change a form. We've covered why this Zapier dependency is unnecessary in detail.

The worst part isn't the cost (though $200-$500/yr adds up). It's the fragility. Rename a field in your form? The Zap breaks. CRM plugin updates? Field mapping resets. Zapier hits your task limit? Leads disappear silently.

I've seen this stack fail on client sites and the business owner doesn't notice for weeks. Those leads are just gone.

The one-plugin approach

SkunkForms was built alongside SkunkCRM from day one. They're separate plugins — you install each from the WordPress plugin directory — but they were designed to work together. No middleware required.

Here's what the setup looks like:

1. Install SkunkForms (free)
2. Install SkunkCRM (free)
3. Create a form, toggle CRM integration on in the form settings
4. Map your fields (name, email, phone — it auto-suggests mappings)
5. Choose a pipeline stage for new deals
6. Done

When someone fills out that form, SkunkCRM instantly creates a contact record and (optionally) a deal at whatever pipeline stage you chose. The contact gets tagged with the form name, so you can segment later.

No Zapier. No webhook URLs. No API keys. No "test this Zap" debugging loops.

What actually happens on form submission

Let's trace a real submission:

1. Visitor fills out your "Get a Quote" form with name, email, and project description
2. SkunkForms saves the submission (you still get the normal submissions table)
3. SkunkForms checks if a SkunkCRM contact exists with that email
4. If no → creates a new contact with the mapped fields
5. If yes → updates the existing contact (no duplicates)
6. A deal is created in your pipeline at the stage you configured (e.g., "New Lead")
7. The deal is linked to the contact
8. A tag like "get-a-quote-form" is applied to the contact
9. All of this happens in the same database transaction — no API calls, no delays

The contact record in SkunkCRM then shows every form they've filled out, every deal associated with them, and a full activity timeline. If they fill out a second form later, it updates the same contact.

Why this matters for small businesses

If you're running a SaaS with a dedicated marketing ops team, you've probably already got Salesforce or HubSpot and a RevOps person maintaining your integrations. This isn't for you.

This is for the freelancer who just wants to know which leads came from which form and where they are in the sales process. The agency building client sites that need lead tracking without a $500/yr plugin stack. The small business that wants a pipeline view of their inquiries instead of an email inbox.

The bar is low: most small WordPress sites track leads in their email inbox. Or a Google Sheet. Or they don't track them at all. Moving from "I think someone emailed us last week" to "I can see every lead, where they came from, and what stage they're at" is a massive jump — and it shouldn't cost hundreds per year to get there. (Read more about why you're losing leads without this visibility.)

Setting it up (5-minute walkthrough)

Step 1: Install both plugins

From your WordPress dashboard → Plugins → Add New:

• Search "SkunkForms", install, activate
• Search "SkunkCRM", install, activate

Step 2: Create a pipeline in SkunkCRM

Go to SkunkCRM → Pipelines → Add New. Create stages that match your sales process:

• New Lead → Contacted → Qualified → Proposal Sent → Won / Lost

Step 3: Build your form

Create a form in SkunkForms — contact form, quote request, whatever you need.

Step 4: Enable CRM integration

In the form settings, you'll see a "CRM" tab. Toggle it on. Map your form fields to CRM contact fields. Pick which pipeline and stage new deals should land in. Save.

Step 5: Test it

Fill out your own form. Check SkunkCRM — you should see a new contact and a new deal. That's it. Every real submission from now on follows the same path.

The cost

Both SkunkForms and SkunkCRM have free tiers that include the CRM integration. You can capture leads, create contacts, build pipelines, and track deals without paying anything.

Pro plans exist for both plugins — they add things like conditional logic, advanced fields, email sequences, and priority support (see pricing). But the form-to-CRM pipeline? That's free.

Compare that to the standard stack:

When this isn't the right fit

Honesty corner: if you need to send form data to an external CRM like Salesforce or Pipedrive, SkunkForms + SkunkCRM won't replace that. The CRM lives inside WordPress — that's both its advantage (your data, your server) and its limitation (it's not Salesforce).

If you're running complex multi-step automations — form submission triggers email sequence, waits 3 days, checks if they opened, branches into different paths — you'll need more tooling.

But if you want form submissions to land in a CRM as contacts with deals and tags, and you want it to work without middleware? This is the simplest way to do it. Once set up, you can turn every submission into a trackable deal with pipeline stages.