Contact form for WordPress websites

Two options. (1) Block editor: add a Custom HTML block, paste the form snippet, replace YOUR_ACCESS_KEY. (2) Theme file: paste the PHP/HTML snippet from this page into your page-contact.php template. Both work without installing anything.

Yes — use a Custom HTML block. The form survives Gutenberg's wpautop processing because Custom HTML blocks render verbatim. Reusable Patterns work too — save the form as a Pattern and drop it on any page.

If you use the native form style with a redirect configured in the dashboard, splitforms sends the browser there on success and returns an error page on failure. For inline error handling, wrap the form in a small JS snippet that fetches splitforms.com and renders the error from data.message. See the AJAX page for the JS pattern.

Yes — both. For Multisite, use one access key per site (or one shared key with a form-name field to disambiguate). For headless WP (with Next.js, Astro, etc.), the form lives in your frontend framework — see the matching framework page.

Build the /thanks/ page in WordPress, then set its absolute URL in Dashboard → Form settings → Redirect. Splitforms sends the browser there after a successful native form submit. Submitted redirect fields are ignored.

The form widgets in those page builders all let you set a custom action URL. Set Action to https://splitforms.com/api/submit, Method to POST, add a hidden access_key field. Each builder hides this in a slightly different settings panel.

If you paste a <form> directly into a Classic Editor post, WordPress's wpautop filter wraps random <p> tags around your inputs and breaks the markup. Use a Custom HTML block (block editor) or a theme template file instead — wpautop doesn't touch those.

Page caching is fine — your form posts to splitforms.com directly, not a WordPress endpoint, so the cached HTML still works. But if you ever switch to a WP-side handler (e.g. wp_ajax), exclude /contact/ from the page cache or submissions will hit a stale page.

Some themes (Astra, OceanWP, GeneratePress 'Premium') auto-attach AJAX handlers to every form on the page. Add data-no-ajax="true" or a custom class your theme excludes — or use a Custom HTML block which most themes leave alone.

If you proxy your WP site through Cloudflare with Bot Fight Mode on, the redirect from splitforms.com → /thanks may be flagged. Whitelist your domain in splitforms's allowed-domains list AND ensure /thanks is reachable without a Cloudflare challenge.

The snippet shows <?php echo esc_attr( YOUR_ACCESS_KEY ); ?> as a placeholder. In real code, define your key as a constant in wp-config.php: define('SPLITFORMS_KEY', 'sk_live_…'); then echo esc_attr(SPLITFORMS_KEY). Don't paste the literal string into theme files.

Wordfence's Live Traffic and 'Block fake Google crawlers' rules flag form submissions to non-WordPress domains as suspicious outbound activity from a logged-out user. The submission still goes through (the browser POSTs directly, bypassing PHP), but Wordfence may rate-limit or temporarily IP-ban the visitor's session, breaking subsequent page loads. Whitelist splitforms.com under Wordfence → Firewall → Allowlisted Services, or move to iThemes Security / Solid Security which handles outbound endpoints more gracefully.

WordPress core has no contact-form feature — every contact form on a WP site is either a plugin (Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Forminator, Fluent Forms, Ninja Forms) or a custom theme template. Plugins add 3-7 database tables, increase TTFB by 50-300ms, and most require a paid SMTP plugin (WP Mail SMTP) on top because shared-host PHP mail() lands in spam. CF7 alone is 1.2MB of JS/CSS loaded on every page. Anti-spam is a separate Akismet subscription ($10/mo for commercial use) or a paid CAPTCHA plugin. Splitforms replaces the plugin: a <form> tag in a Custom HTML block, pointing at our endpoint, with a hidden access_key field. No plugin, no extra DB tables, no SMTP gymnastics.

WordPress runs on shared hosts (Bluehost, Hostinger), managed WP hosts (Kinsta, WP Engine, Pressable), or self-hosted Apache/nginx. The form's POST is cross-origin to splitforms.com, so the host doesn't matter for delivery. Caching plugins (WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, LiteSpeed Cache) cache the page that hosts the form — that's fine, the form action URL is static. Don't proxy through WP's admin-ajax.php or wp_remote_post — adds latency and re-introduces the SMTP problem. For Multisite, use one access key per site or a shared key with form-name to disambiguate. Headless WP (Next.js/Astro front) doesn't involve PHP at all — use the matching framework's snippet.