Do you want to save form submissions from Contact Form 7 to your database? Are you looking for a Contact Form 7 Database (CFDB7) add-on plugin? Do you need a tutorial on ‘How to store form data in database in WordPress’? We will cover everything on contact form 7 database in this blog post.
Does Contact Form 7 have option to save contact form to database?
Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin is the most popular form plugin used by millions of WordPress users. It sends the form submissions to your email, so that you can reply to the form submissions. But it does not have the capability to save form entries to database.
As your website grows you would be getting tons of form submissions, it would be difficult to manage all leads by going through each and every email.
Why is saving form submissions to database important?
It would better to store all the form submissions on your site and view them when needed. Sometimes if your sever has a problem you might not be getting an email when a form is submitted. So storing form submissions would also help you not to loose any submissions.
Also See: Contact Form 7 redirect after submission
How to Connect Contact Form 7 to Your Database?
As we have already mentioned, Contact Form 7 plugin by default does not have the capability to save submissions to the database. To connect this Contact Form 7 form to database you will need to install Contact Form 7 DB WordPress plugin as an add-on.
The best and easiest way to save form submissions to your site’s database is by using Tablesome plugin that works as a Contact Form 7 Database (CFDB7) add-on.
Tablesome – Contact Form 7 DB add-on:
Not just saving form submissions to the database you can automate several workflows when a form is submitted.
- Trigger automated emails using the form entries
- Automatically display form entries on WordPress frontend pages and posts with several filters applied
- Edit and manipulate form entries, individually or by bulk editing
- Send data to your favorite apps and CRMs using APIs.
- Schedule auto-delete form entries so that you can comply to GDPR regulations
How do you save Contact Form 7 submissions to Tablesome?
- Since it saves submissions to tables, you can create new table for a new form
- Sync tables columns to form fields
- Add a secondary trigger to automate actions when a new form is submitted by a visitor
- Select which apps to send the new form entries such as Notion, HubSpot, Slack, Google Sheets, Google Drive, MailChimp, etc.,
- If you’re wondering how to get Contact Form 7 data from database, you can import form entries as CSV or XLSX tables to the database.
Tablesome is not only for CF7 plugin but it is a general contact form db WordPress plugin so you can also save form entries from other WordPress form plugins as well such as Gravity Forms, WPForms, Elementor Forms, Fluent Forms, Forminator, etc.,
Download Tablesome Contact Form 7 Database Plugin Now!
Other Contact Form 7 Database (CFDB7) add-ons:
There are several plugins that you can use to save Contact Form 7 entries to your database.
Flamingo – Store CF7 messages and contacts
The easiest way to do this is to use the official database add-on plugin known as Flamingo. We will see how you can do this.
You just need to install and activate this plugin. You don’t need any additional settings. Your form submissions would be automatically saved in the wp_posts database.
Using Flamingo you can View, Delete and Export as CSV the form submissions. You can take the exported CSV file and import it into other applications to add them as subscribers for mailing list, lead management on CRM, etc.,
Limitations of Flamingo for saving Contact Form 7 Submissions
Though features provided by Flamingo plugin are enough for many Contact Form 7 users, there are several limitations to what you can do with it, compared to other WordPress form plugins. Some of the limitations of Contact Form 7- Flamingo integrations are:
- Not GDPR compliant and auto-deleting form submissions is not possible
- Include/exclude forms for saving. All forms will be saved.
- Impossible Edit form submissions
- Cannot stop repeated/spam submissions
- No way to view specific data by sorting and filtering
- Cannot export selected data, meta fields to files
- Cannot automatically export to external sources using API
Also See: How to integrate Contact Form 7 with popular Apps
How can you overcome the limitations of Flamingo?
As we have mentioned that saving form submissions to databases using Flamingo comes with crucial limitations, we don’t mean that there are no means to overcome these limitations.
You can use Tablesome – CFDB add-on to overcome all of the limitations that come with Flamingo Contact Form 7 plugin.
Contact Form 7 DB (CFDB) add-on
Contact Form 7 DB was a popular Contact Form 7 to database extension for saving form submissions from the Contact Form 7 plugin. It had around 400,000+ active installations but it was removed from the WordPress plugin repository. It came with a Spamshield and Salesforce integration.
Many CFDB users are still looking for an alternative CFDB plugin. The main problem with looking for an alternative is that other alternatives do not have the ability to import form entries stored by CFDB to their database.
If you need an alternative to Contact Form DB plugin you can go with Tablesome Pro plugin. You can import entries saved on CFDB plugin to Tablesome-Contact Form 7 database.
There are also some other free and premium extensions to save form submissions from Contact Form 7 plugin. Each of these extensions have their own pros and cons. Lets see some of them:
Contact Form 7 Database Addon – CFDB7
Contact Form 7 Database Addon – CFDB7 is a Contact Form 7 extension that is similar to Flamingo. You can automatically save from submissions and export them to CSV files when needed.
CFDB7 comes with other premium add-ons for overcoming some of flamingo limitations such as Importing and Editing entries, Displaying submissions on frontend, etc., But you have to buy these extensions separately.
Also, it does not provide any extensions to automatically send data to external sources using API.
Download Contact Form 7 Database Addon – CFDB7 Now!
Form Vibes – Database Manager for Forms
orm Vibes – Database Manager for Forms is a plugin to save form submissions not just from Contact Form 7 but also from other free form plugins. It comes with a dashboard showing quick stats and analytics about daily submissions.
Download Form Vibes – Database Manager for Forms Now!
Database for Contact Form 7
Database for Contact Form 7 is a premium plugin to save all submitted forms from Contact Form 7 to a database. It is an easy to use plugin with which you can easily change tag name and drag and drop to sort columns.
For a premium plugin it does not provide you with an API, so you have to manually export the form submissions as CSV.
Price:
$ 25 for 6 months support
Get Database for Contact Form 7 Now!
Storage for Contact Form CF7
Storage for Contact Form CF7 is another plugin to save Contact Form 7 submissions. But it does have some good features like capturing file uploads from forms, saves the referral Post or Page URL, and also the IP address, browser and device information (user-agent) of the submission.
So if you require these features you can go with this Contact Form 7 add-on.
Price:
$ 29 for 6 months support
Get Storage for Contact Form CF7 Now!
Which Contact Form 7 database add-on did you go with? Let us know how you store Contact Form 7 submissions in the comments section.
Hello, first of all thanks for the post, was kind helpful for me. But I still have a problem. Is there any good plugin, which will read for example a csv file, which will be sent trough forms, into a database?