A few reasons to replace your WordPress form plugin with an embedded form

If you’ve had your website for any length of time, you’ve probably felt the pain of spammy contact form submissions. No matter what security feature you enable, it keeps coming in!

More and more spammers are using AI to wiggle their way into your priority inbox, website forms, and bypass Captcha. Beyond annoying it can ruin a data set, a log of messages, and make website forms unusable.

It was bad enough years ago, so what’s the solution now?

It’s simply really – and there’s an example at the bottom of this post.

An external form tool is the solution – one that embeds on your website.

Instead of hosting the forms on your website use an external tool like Tally, Airtable, or ConvertKit to host your forms. These tools allow you to embed forms on your website – and the responses are gathered and managed by the tool itself.

There are still some cases where a self-hosted tool is the best choice – but given the maintenance required, they are best for people with developers on retainer or who have someone on staff managing their website. We include form maintenance and security in our higher-tier care plans.

But the average website does not need to host, manage, and maintain their own forms.

An external form tool can benefit you in a bunch of ways. Here’s a few.

Benefits of using an external form tool

• The company engineers keep the form working so you don’t have to
• Their business model depends on fighting spam, so you don’t have to
• They host the forms on their own servers, which improves the speed of your website

Instructions: How to replace your contact form

It’s pretty easy to replace your contact forms.

1. Create a free account with Airtable or Tally
2. Create your form, including all the fields you need
3. Follow the instructions to copy the embed code
4. Paste the code into the section on your website where you want to display the form
5. Back up the form entries from your website (unless it’s just spam)
6. Remove the previous form plugin from your website

Don’t forget to ask for help

Another benefit of using an external form tool is that you can get support. Smaller companies like Tally are more likely to respond and give 1:1 support. If you have a website care plan you can also get personalized support to replace your form, create forms, and even suggest how to design the forms (and questions) to be most effective.

Maple Creative is a micro-agency that supports a limited number of website owners with technical and marketing support.

Get Help With Your Website

To check our availability and apply for a spot in our care plan service please contact our care plan manager Lindsay using the form below 😉