SubtleForms

SubtleForms is a form builder for WordPress. You build on a canvas that looks like the live form, publish with a shortcode or the SubtleForms block, and read every entry in an inbox inside wp-admin. One builder makes regular, multi-step and conversational forms, and everything described here is in this plugin and works without an account or a licence. Everything in the free plugin

• Visual drag and drop builder with a live canvas and undo
• Regular, multi-step and conversational (one question at a time) forms
• 38 field types, including file and image uploads
• 12 ready-made templates, plus a blank form
• Field widths to place fields side by side
• Conditional logic: show or hide a field based on other answers
• Per-field settings for validation, logic and style
• Appearance presets, or custom colours and fonts that start from your theme
• Desktop, tablet and mobile preview
• The SubtleForms block and a shortcode
• Entries inbox with search, filters, stars, flags, notes and a Trash
• Unread entries counted in the admin menu
• Reports with a chart of recent submissions
• Email notifications with merge tags, plain text or HTML
• Webhooks after each entry, with a test button
• Confirmation message or redirect after submit
• Open and close dates, entry limits and logged-in-only forms
• CSV export of entries, JSON export and import of forms and entries
• Honeypot, minimum time and rate limiting on every form
• Optional Google reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha or Cloudflare Turnstile
• Data retention settings and WordPress personal data export and erase support
• Import forms from Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms and Fluent Forms
• Translation ready, with an RTL stylesheet

Three form types, one builder Start with a regular form that shows every field on one page. Add a Page Break and the same form becomes multi-step, with progress shown to the visitor. Switch to conversational and visitors answer one question at a time, full screen, then review their answers before they send. You change the type in the form settings and keep your fields. Drag and drop builder The field library is on the left, the canvas in the middle and the settings for the selected field on the right. The canvas shows the form as visitors see it, so there is no separate preview step to trust. Each field has tabs for Settings, Validation, Logic and Style. Drag a field from the library, click it to add it after the current one, or press the slash key to search the library. Undo is in the header, and the Preview tab shows the form at desktop, tablet and mobile widths. Fields included

• Basic: Text, Paragraph, Email, Number, Phone, Website, Name, Address and Password
• Choices: Dropdown, Radio buttons, Checkboxes, Single checkbox, Toggle, Country, Chained select (dependent dropdowns, typed in or loaded from CSV) and Consent
• Date and time, and more: Date, Time, Date and time, Rating, Opinion scale, NPS, Slider, Matrix, Colour picker, Rich text and Hidden (with merge values such as {user_email} and {get:param})
• Uploads: File and image uploads, one file per field, with allowed types and size limits, kept in a private folder and downloaded by admins only
• Layout: Section heading, Custom HTML, Notice, Page Break and Repeater
• Spam protection: reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha and Turnstile fields

Ready-made templates Start from a template and change what you need: Contact Form, Simple Contact, Contact + Attachment, Lead Capture, Newsletter, Newsletter Sign-Up, Free Resource Download, Product Feedback, Website Feedback, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), RSVP and Bug Report. Or start with a blank form. Conditional logic Show or hide a field when other answers match. Rules can use equals, does not equal, contains, does not contain, is empty, is not empty, greater than and less than, and a field is shown only when all of its rules match. Hidden fields are not validated or saved, in the browser and on the server, so a hidden required field never blocks a submission. Entries inbox and reports Entries arrive in an inbox with tabs, search, filters and a reading pane. Mark entries read or unread, star or flag them, add notes, resend notifications, and move them to the Trash, one at a time or in bulk. The SubtleForms menu shows how many entries are unread. Reports show submissions, unread entries and a chart of the last days. Activity, webhook and API logs show what happened and when. Export entries as CSV whenever you need them. Email notifications and webhooks Send an email after each entry to the people you choose, with merge tags such as {all_fields}, {field:email} and {entry_id}, in plain text or HTML. Set the reply-to address from a field. Add a webhook to send each entry as JSON to a URL you enter, and test it from the settings. After submit, show a confirmation message with the visitor's answers merged in and clickable links, or send them to another page. When the MailPoet plugin is active on the same site, a form can also pass each entry's email address to a MailPoet list, with no outside service involved. Looks like your site Pick an appearance preset, or switch to custom mode and set colours, fonts, fields and buttons with grouped controls that start from your theme colours and fonts. Choose a compact or comfortable density, and get a warning when text and background colours do not have enough contrast. Or let the form inherit the look of your active theme. There is no freeform custom CSS box: styling is done with structured settings. Fast and light SubtleForms adds its scripts and styles only to pages that contain a form. Code for date pickers, phone and country fields, uploads, repeaters, rich text and conversational forms is loaded only when the form uses that field or type. For a simple contact form, the plugin's own JavaScript is about 35 KB and its stylesheet about 11 KB, both gzip-compressed. It uses the copy of React that WordPress already ships. Spam protection and privacy Every form has a honeypot, a minimum time check and rate limiting, with no setup. You can add Google reCAPTCHA (v2 or v3), hCaptcha or Cloudflare Turnstile under Settings, Security and privacy; these are the only outside services the plugin can contact besides webhook URLs you enter (see External services). Choose how long entries are kept, and use the WordPress personal data export and erase tools for a person's entries. Uploaded files are stored under random names and served to admins only. SubtleForms sends no usage data or telemetry. Move from another form plugin Under Settings, Tools, Migrate, copy forms you made with Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms or Fluent Forms. The other plugin does not need to be active. Forms arrive as drafts with their fields, required rules, choices, email notifications and thank-you message, and a report names anything that was not copied. Entries and payment settings are not imported, no emails are sent, and your original forms are not changed. On a site with no forms yet, SubtleForms offers to import any it finds. You can also import a Gravity Forms or Fluent Forms export file. Accessible and translation ready Fields have labels, errors are announced and tied to their fields, choice groups use a fieldset with a legend, and dropdown, country, phone and date fields work with the keyboard. The plugin loads an RTL stylesheet for right-to-left sites and all text uses the subtleforms text domain with a translation template included. SubtleForms Pro SubtleForms Pro is a separate plugin sold at subtleforms.com/pro. It adds Signature, Calculation and Picture choice fields, several files per upload field, advanced conditional logic, form analytics, Stripe payments with coupons, WooCommerce checkout, extra email marketing options, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive and Close connections, Zapier, Make and n8n, entry PDFs and more templates. Documentation and support

• Documentation: subtleforms.com/docs
• Support forum: wordpress.org/support/plugin/subtleforms
• Bug reports and source code: github.com/smhz101/subtleforms

2.8.1 - 2026-11-09

• New: HubSpot is built in: connect a HubSpot service key (a legacy private app access token also works) under Settings, Integrations, CRM, then switch HubSpot on for a form to create or update a contact for each entry, with field mapping, custom properties, a consent checkbox and a line in each entry's activity log with an Open in HubSpot link.
• New: The SubtleForms menu shows the total number of entries as a short count (1k, 1.2k, 12k) with the full number as its tooltip.
• Change: The admin bar icon lines up with the other items, the bubble keeps its place on hover, and the SubtleForms menu has an Upgrade to Pro item on free sites.
• Change: Every connection screen (Mailchimp, Brevo, Kit, MailPoet, HubSpot and webhooks) now has numbered steps in plain words, and each step on another website links straight to that page; a rejected HubSpot key says to paste the new one.
• Change: All notices in the admin follow WordPress styling: square corners, the core border colours and a white background.
• Change: The "How to connect" steps on every service screen sit in an accordion that starts open until the service is connected, then closed, and remembers your choice.
• Fix: Forms with AJAX off lost every entry: the classic post handler was only registered on REST requests (broken since 2.4.0). The block default is now AJAX on, so form blocks saved without an AJAX setting now submit with AJAX.
• Fix: The New form page has the same space above its heading as the other screens.
• Fix: A form post without AJAX from a logged-in visitor now carries the REST nonce; a post without a valid one is handled as a guest post, so a cross-site post cannot act as the logged-in user.
• Fix: Behind Cloudflare each visitor now has their own rate limit: the visitor address from Cloudflare is used for requests that come from Cloudflare's published ranges without turning on a setting, and Security & privacy shows a dismissible notice when it sees Cloudflare in front of the site.
• Fix: The CSV export includes every matching entry instead of stopping at the newest 10,000, and the answer now carries the number of entries exported.
• Fix: The CSV export, Export selected included, is now sent as a file while it is written instead of being built in memory, so a very large form no longer runs out of memory, and a download that cannot start says why instead of failing silently.
• Fix: Notification emails are no longer lost when WP-Cron runs late: the queued email waits in the options table until it is sent instead of a transient that expired after 6 hours, and an email whose stored copy is gone is built again from the saved entry.
• Fix: A logged-in visitor whose page was open for a long time can send a form with the time trap again (the form retries once with a fresh token instead of repeating "Please send it again"), and a form with AJAX off no longer creates a second entry when Submit is clicked twice while the page is posting.
• Fix: An answer with a "<" in it, such as "Budget <5000", is saved and emailed in full instead of being cut at that point, and an entry is no longer lost when the visitor's browser sends a User-Agent longer than 255 characters (Facebook and Instagram in-app browsers on iPhone).
• Security: The Rich Text field now cleans its starting value with the same allowlist as typed text, so a value filled in from the block, a default or the page address can only show the allowed formatting and safe links.

2.8.0 - 2026-11-07

• New: Email marketing is built in: connect Mailchimp, Brevo or Kit under Settings, Integrations, Email marketing, then switch it on for a form to add people to a list with field mapping, tags, double opt-in, a consent checkbox and a line in each entry's activity log.
• New: Import forms from WPForms and Ninja Forms, from the site or from an export file, and copy their entries too if you tick the box that asks first.
• New: Text, Number and Phone fields have an Input mask setting that formats the answer as the visitor types, with presets for phone numbers, dates, times and US ZIP codes and a custom pattern, and the server checks the same format.
• New: MailPoet joins Mailchimp, Brevo and Kit under Email marketing, so people who fill a form can be added to a MailPoet list (never again if they unsubscribed or bounced), and each service now shows its own logo, in colour while it is on.
• New: Every admin page now has one shared page header with its actions, the menu is ordered with Settings last and an Upgrade page, the Dashboard and Reports show more, and there is a WordPress dashboard widget and an admin bar item with the unread count. Submissions has an Unread tab again, and "last 7 days" means the same seven calendar days (site timezone) on the Dashboard, the Submissions list and the widget.
• Change: Admin screens can receive their first data with the page, so lists appear without a loading step.
• Change: Settings has a Logs tab between Integrations and Tools for the activity, webhook and API logs, every Settings screen now uses the same content width as Integrations, and add-ons can reuse the section list and header that Integrations is built with.
• Change: Settings > Tools is a section panel like Integrations and Logs, add-ons share the admin app's data cache, and Settings opens with its data already loaded.

2.7.4 - 2026-11-04

• New: The SubtleForms menu and its Submissions item show the number of unread entries in a bubble, like the Comments menu, with counts above 9 shown as 9+.
• Change: SubtleForms has a new logo: the admin menu icon, the header mark and the block icon now use it.
• Change: Notices from WordPress and other plugins now appear under the SubtleForms header instead of above it.
• Change: SubtleForms screens have a footer with the version, documentation and support links and the list pagination, while the page content scrolls between the header and the footer. The full history is in changelog.txt in the plugin folder.