How to Create a Secure Contact Form in WordPress

We didn’t think much about our contact form when we started blogging – until we started getting flooded with spam and weird messages.

If you’ve ever added a form to your WordPress site, then you’ve probably been there, too.

Forms are incredibly useful for letting visitors get in touch, sign up for newsletters, book appointments, and more. But they can also be an open door for hackers and spammers if you’re not careful.

That’s why one of the most common questions we get is, ‘How do I create a secure contact form?’ And honestly, it’s a smart question to ask. 🌟

We’ve built and managed all kinds of forms across our business websites. And from our experience, making them secure isn’t optional.

In this guide, we’ll share how to create a secure contact form in WordPress while keeping things simple for you and your visitors.

Here is a summary of what we will cover in this article:

What Do You Need to Secure WordPress Forms?

To make your WordPress contact forms completely secure, you need two things:

• A secure WordPress contact form plugin
• A secure WordPress hosting environment

Let’s start with the form plugin.

1. Choosing a Secure Contact Form Plugin

A secure contact form plugin allows you to save form entries securely on your website. It also allows you to use secure email methods to deliver your form notifications.

We recommend using WPForms, which is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market, trusted and used by over 6 million websites. This includes us!

We use WPForms across WPBeginner for just about everything – contact forms, user surveys, product submissions, and even our site migration request form. It’s flexible, beginner-friendly, and gets the job done. See our complete WPForms review for details.

It comes with tons of powerful features to secure WordPress forms and protect your website from spam, hacking, and data theft.

There is also a free version available called WPForms Lite. It is equally secure but has limited features.

2. Choosing a Secure Hosting Platform

Choosing the right WordPress hosting is crucial for the security of your website and your contact forms.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

More importantly, they are offering WPBeginner users a generous discount along with a free domain and SSL certificate (you’ll need this for better WordPress form security).

You can also use other popular WordPress hosting companies like SiteGround, Hostinger, HostGator, etc., because they all offer free SSL.

What is SSL? And why do you need it to secure WordPress forms?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It switches your WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS (secure HTTP).

You’ll notice a padlock icon next to your website, indicating that it is using the SSL protocol to transfer data.

SSL protects your information by encrypting the data transfer between a user’s browser and the website. This adds WordPress form encryption support, which makes it harder for hackers to steal data.

For more details, see our article on how to get a free SSL certificate for your website.

That being said, now let’s take a look at how to create a secure contact form in WordPress.

Creating a Secure Contact Form in WordPress 🔒

Creating a secure WordPress contact form is easy if you have already checked the above-mentioned requirements. See our tutorial on how to quickly add a simple contact form in WordPress if you haven’t already done so.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to add security layers to your WordPress contact form. This helps you keep form data safe, reduce spam, and improve your website performance.

The following are some of the most common ways someone can steal information or abuse your WordPress forms.

Firstly, they can “sniff” the information. Information sniffing is like someone secretly listening to or capturing data as it travels over the internet. If you submit a contact form on a website that isn’t securely protected (like one without HTTPS encryption), a hacker could “sniff” the network and steal the information you sent.

You can address this by using a secure WordPress hosting platform and enabling SSL encryption on your website.

The next part is when your WordPress form sends notification emails.

Business email services are not part of WordPress, and if you are not properly sending those emails, then the information in them can easily be leaked.

Lastly, your WordPress forms can be abused to send spam messages and DDoS attacks. If you are using a custom WordPress login form, then hackers can use brute force attacks to log in to your WordPress site.

Now, let’s address each one of them to make your WordPress forms more secure.

Tip 1: Securing WordPress Contact Form Email Notifications

As we mentioned earlier, insecure emails can be spied upon and are not safe. There are two ways you can handle form notification emails.

1. Don’t send form data via email notifications

The first thing you would want to consider is not sending form data via email.

For instance, when someone submits your contact form, you only get an email alert that someone has submitted the form and not the form data itself.

WPForms comes with a built-in entry management system that stores your form data in your WordPress database.

You can simply go to the WPForms » Entries page from the WordPress dashboard to view all form submissions.

2. Send secure WordPress form notification emails

For some users, sending form notification emails is necessary for their business.

For instance, if you have an online order form, registration, payment, or donation form, then you may need to send email notifications to your users.

To do this, you need to set up a proper SMTP service to send emails securely.

SMTP stands for Secure Mail Transfer Protocol. It is the industry standard to securely send emails on the Internet.

We recommend using Google Workspace, which allows you to create a professional business email address. Powered by Google, it allows you to use the familiar Gmail interface to send and receive emails.

However, if you’ll be sending a lot of emails, then we recommend using SendLayer, Brevo, Amazon SES, or any of the reliable SMTP service providers.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to properly configure your WordPress email settings.

Next, you need to connect your email service to WordPress so that all your WordPress form notifications are sent using your secure email connection.

To do that, you need to install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. It works with any SMTP email service and allows you to send WordPress emails securely.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to set up WP Mail SMTP in WordPress.

Tip 2: Securing WordPress Forms Against Spam and DDoS Attacks

Your website forms are publicly accessible. This means anyone can access and fill them out. We’ll cover restricting form access to specific users in the next step, but for this step, we will look at public forms.

When your form is accessible by anyone on the internet, it can become a target for spammers and hackers. While spammers try to use your form for fraudulent activities, hackers may try to use it to gain access to your website or even bring it down.

Luckily, WPForms automatically protects your forms with a hidden anti-spam token that spambots can’t see. Unlike older methods like honeypots, this token doesn’t affect the user experience.

To verify that anti-spam is enabled on your form, you just need to switch to the ‘Spam Protection and Security’ tab.

From here, just toggle the ‘Enable anti-spam protection’ switch. Your forms will now be completely secure.

To further add an extra layer of security, you can also use the following spam protection tools:

1. Enable Google reCAPTCHA in Your Forms

WPForms comes with Google reCAPTCHA support.

To enable this feature, simply go to the WPForms » Settings page from the admin sidebar and switch to the CAPTCHA tab.

Here, you’ll have to select the reCAPTCHA option.

Once you’ve done that, choose a version for the reCAPTCHA. We recommend selecting the reCAPTCHA v2 option because it is more user-friendly.

After that, you’ll need a site key and a secret key to enable reCAPTCHA on your site.

To do this, simply go to the reCAPTCHA website and click on the ‘ v3 Admin Console’ button at the top.

This will take you to a new screen where you must provide a label for your site and then select the ‘Challenge (v2)’ option.

This will open some new settings where you have to choose the ‘I am not a robot’ checkbox.

After that, click on the Submit button to continue.

Here, you will now be shown the API keys.

Go ahead and copy these keys and paste them into the WPForms settings page. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Settings’ button to store your changes.

You can now edit your form and add the reCAPTCHA field to your form.

You’ll see a notification that reCAPTCHA is now enabled for your form. You can go ahead and save your form.

If you haven’t already added a form to your website, then you can simply edit the WordPress page or post where you want to embed the form and add the WPForms block to the content area.

Simply select your form from the dropdown menu, and WPForms will load a preview of it.

You can now save your post or page and visit it in a new browser tab to see your form with the reCAPTCHA field in action.

2. Enable Custom CAPTCHA for Your WordPress Forms

If you don’t want to use Google reCAPTCHA, then you can use your math quiz or questions with the WPForms Custom Captcha addon.

Simply head over to the WPForms » Addons page to install and activate the Custom Captcha addon.

Once you’ve done that, the addon’s status will be changed to ‘Active.’

After that, you can edit your contact form and add the ‘Captcha’ field to your form.

By default, it adds a random math question.

You can change that to add your own custom captcha by changing the captcha type to text.

You can now save your form by clicking on the ‘Save’ button at the top.

From here, you can add the form to a post or page using the WPForms block.

You can now visit your post or page to see the custom CAPTCHA in action.

Tip 3: Restricting WordPress Forms Access to Certain Users

Another way to protect your WordPress forms is to restrict access to logged-in members or by using a unique form password.

WPForms comes with a Form Locker addon that lets you enable various form permissions and access control rules.

With Form Locker, you can:

• Password Protect Forms – This requires users to enter a password to submit the form. This added protection helps decrease the number of unwanted form submissions.
• Close Form Submissions After Specific Date / Time – This is great for a job application form or other time-sensitive forms.
• Limit the number of total submissions – This is great for contests or giveaways. Once the maximum number of entries is in, WPForms will automatically close the form.
• Limit one entry per person – If you want to avoid duplicate submissions, then you will love this option. This is very useful for scholarship applications, giveaways, etc.
• Restrict Forms to Members Only – You can restrict your forms to logged-in users of your WordPress site. This is great for membership sites or businesses that want to restrict support to paid customers only.

You can access the Form Locker settings inside the Form Builder Settings panel:

For a detailed tutorial, please see our step-by-step guide on how to password-protect WordPress forms.

Bonus Tip 💡: Keeping Your WordPress Site Secure

The security of your WordPress forms depends on the security of your entire WordPress website. With a few simple steps, you can enhance your WordPress website’s security.

We recommend using Cloudflare, as it is the best WordPress security plugin on the market. It comes with a website firewall that blocks any suspicious activity even before it reaches your website.

For more practical tips, see our complete WordPress security guide for beginners.

We hope this article helped you create a secure contact form in WordPress. You may also want to see our step-by-step guide on how to password-protect your WordPress forms and our ultimate guide to using WordPress forms.

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