Let’s be honest. Managing WordPress plugins can be a challenging task. Often, WordPress users, like you, deal with compatibility issues between different plugins. Sometimes you have to face the frustration of finding a plugin that easily integrates with your contact form plugin.
To make your WordPress plugin journey a whole lot smoother, we are bringing you a list of the best WordPress plugins compatible with Ninja Forms. Some of them even offer diagnostic features to pinpoint and resolve plugin compatibility issues. Let’s explore together 7 best plugins Ninja Forms users love.
1. Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
ACF plugin allows you to transform your WordPress site into a robust content management system. With the ACF plugin, you’ll gain total command over your WordPress edit screens, custom field data, and beyond. But what if you want to connect your WordPress forms to ACF and store the data entered into the Ninja Forms as ACF post data?
While Ninja Forms does not have a direct integration with Advanced Custom Fields, you can use Ninja Forms with ACF. All you need is the Front-End Posting add-on.
You can get the ACF data in your for using the Custom Post meta options under the Advanced Settings of the Create Post action. However, you will need to know the meta keys from ACF to associate the data with ACF.
You could then use the merge tags {user_meta:YOUR_META_KEY} and {post_meta:YOUR_META_KEY} to recall the data from ACF using the corresponding meta key.
For example, if you had a custom field with a meta key of “fav_icecream”, then you would use “fav_icecream” within the Meta Key setting. You would map the fields from your form under the “Meta Value” settings.
2. Popup Maker
Pop up forms, despite their potential annoyance factor, can be highly effective. In recent years, pop-up forms have made a comeback as a favorite marketing tool. They’re great for promoting content, getting more blog subscribers, building email lists, and generating leads.
While Ninja Forms is not equipped to create pop-up forms, it is fully compatible with Popup Maker, the best popup plugin WordPress has to offer. With more than 700,000 active installations, you can trust that this plugin gets the job done effectively.
Want to create your own WordPress Popup form you can use, to improve your click-through rates and boost your subscriptions? Check our step-by-step guide How to Create a WordPress Popup Form or learn more about Popup Maker in the blog post Using a WordPress Popup Plugin to Grow Your Email List.
3. hCaptcha
If you search for the keyword “how to prevent contact form spam WordPress” SEM Rush yields a staggering 92.1 million search results. It’s quite a substantial number.
WordPress spam is not going anywhere but there are effective methods to safeguard your website from these unwanted intrusions. While our contact form plugin offers numerous solutions to reduce contact form spam in WordPress, we’d like to highlight the hCAPTCHA plugin.
Designed to comply with privacy laws in every country, including GDPR, LGPD, CCPA, and more, hCAPTCHA is a drop-in replacement for reCAPTCHA that puts user privacy first and offers an excellent protection against spam and abuse.
4. WP Mail Logging
WP Mail Logging is the first plugin you might want to reach for if you are having troubles sending your WordPress email but your email notification is set up correctly. It shows you what data is being sent out through wp_mail() and logs all outgoing emails, facilitating easy error detection and resolution.
Whether you’re troubleshooting, re-sending emails, or just keeping records, it stores crucial email details. So how does the WP Mail Logging work when you are troubleshooting WordPress email using Ninja Forms?
If the email shows up in the WP Mail Logging plugin’s log, then Ninja Forms has successfully handed off the email to the wp_mail function and has no more control over its deliverability.
However, if the email is present in the log without errors but you are not receiving it (and you have verified that the email is being directed to the correct email and is not being improperly filtered by a spam filter, for example), you’ll need to contact your host, as it is likely that the problem results from an issue in your email server.
Keep in mind WP Mail Logging doesn’t follow emails through to delivery, for that, we recommend the trusted WP Mail SMTP plugin such as SendWP.
5. Send WP
The vast majority of WordPress forms email issues stem from either 1) having the action configured improperly or 2) the email not being sent properly. Because #2 happens exclusively with the host (or email plugin), Ninja Forms is not able to help at all with those cases. We hated that we couldn’t be of any help there, so we created our own solution.
SendWP is your ace-in-the-sleeve. If you are tired of experiencing issues with your email deliverability and you are unable to resolve it with your host, just use SendWP and send email with WordPress forms without the middleman.
SendWP service will make sure that your emails are delivered as you expect. It is developed to eliminate the pain of email troubleshooting by taking over the responsibility of sending all outgoing mail from your WordPress website.
Why struggle when you don’t have to. Choose SendWP – a service that sends millions of emails every year and maintains a 99.5% deliverability rate!
6. Health Check
Health Check and Troubleshooting plugin is a great help if you don’t have a development environment for your site (this is best practice and highly recommended). This plugin has multiple features. It will give you a status on your site and let you know if anything is missing from the WordPress installation. It will also provide you with recommendations on fixes.
Troubleshooting feature gives you the option to put your website in debug mode where you can disable all plugins, and use a default WordPress theme for a single user session, instead of all users using your site. ( only you will see it until you disable it or log out)
The Tools section lets you verify the integrity of WordPress files, test email functionality, and check if your plugins will work with future PHP updates. For the full list of features, make sure to check this documentation.
The Health Check plugin can help you identify if there are plugins causing compatibility issues with your contact form plugin. Make sure to include it in your list of installed WordPress plugins; it’s a valuable tool.
7. Query Monitor
Aimed for developers, the Query Monitor is the developer tools panel for WordPress. It is a valuable ally during the debugging process. It doesn’t just help you find and fix issues; it also boosts the overall performance of your entire WordPress development workflow.
This WordPress plugin is very useful for finding slow plugins if you want to keep an eye on your backend load speeds. It enables debugging of database queries, PHP errors, hooks and actions, block editor blocks, enqueued scripts and stylesheets, HTTP API calls, and more.
It also comes with advanced functionalities such as debugging Ajax and REST API requests, checking user capabilities, and offering complete support for block themes and full-site editing. Additionally, you can filter its output by plugin or theme, making it a breeze to identify underperforming plugins, themes, or functions in no time.
Simplify your WordPress experience with the right plugins!
You’ve just finished the list of 7 best WordPress plugins compatible with Ninja Forms contact form builder. Now that you are armed with these powerful tools, your WordPress journey is set up for success. Do you know if you have another plugin in mind that should make the list? Let us know in the comment section below!
If you are eager to expand your knowledge about WordPress plugins, we’ve got a lot of resources including the following:
- Four Must-Have WordPress Form Plugins
- Four WordPress Plugins that Restrict User Access to Content
- 5 Best File-Sharing Plugins for WordPress in 2023
- Streamline Your Workflow With Project Management Plugins for WordPress
- The Very Best WordPress Plugins of 2022
Just select what piques your interest and download the best plugins to take your WordPress site to the next level. And remember the Ninja Forms core plugin (download) is always free, packed with incredible features you’ll instantly fall in love with!
