online form support

Published January 29, 2025

Top 5 Reasons Your WordPress Forms Might Be Failing (And How to Fix Them)

WordPress forms are essential for generating sales leads, capturing customer questions and even processing online orders and payments via WooCommerce checkout. However, form failures can lead to frustrated users, missed opportunities, and detrimental loss of revenue in no time. 

Why WordPress Forms Fail

Here are the top reasons your WordPress forms might be failing and practical steps to fix them.

1. Plugin Conflicts

Why It Happens: WordPress sites often rely on multiple plugins to add functionality, forms and checkout included. When two or more plugins try to perform similar tasks or override each other’s scripts, it can result in broken forms or missing functionality. Plugin conflicts are typically due to conflicting code between different third party plugins or customized scripts. While developers do the best they can to test their plugins with things like unit testing, they cannot test every edge case out there, leaving plugin conflicts to break forms without notice.

How to Fix It:

  • Deactivate all plugins except the one managing your forms or checkout and test if the issue persists.
  • Gradually reactivate plugins one by one to identify the conflict.
  • Consider replacing conflicting plugins with alternatives or consult plugin developers for support.
  • Keep all plugins and your WordPress core updated to the latest versions.

2. Incorrect Email Settings

Why It Happens: If your form is supposed to send notification emails but isn’t, it could be due to misconfigured email settings or broken SMTP.. Most shared hosting servers are not optimized for reliable email delivery and you should use a dedicated transactional email service such as PostMark or SendGrid instead.

How to Fix It:

  • Ensure the “From” email address matches your website’s domain (e.g., [email protected]). While this isn’t 100% necessary, if you are using your web hosts’ built-in PHP mail or similar, this may be required or your emails won’t send properly.
  • Use an SMTP plugin (like Fluent SMTP) to configure email delivery through a third-party transactional provider like PostMark, MailGun or SendGrid.
  • Test your form emails after making these changes to confirm successful delivery to several email addresses in different platforms such as Gmail, Office 365, etc.

3. JavaScript Errors

Why It Happens: JavaScript is often used for form validation, conditional logic, date pickers, Woo checkout, and other advanced form functionality. A conflict or error in the JavaScript running on your site can cause forms to malfunction or not submit properly, leaving users frustrated and likely to bounce.

How to Fix It:

  • Use your browser’s Developer Tools (usually accessed with F12) to check for JavaScript errors in the developer console.
  • Identify whether the error is coming from the form plugin or another script on the page, typically by viewing the relative URL of the error or researching online what often generates the error.
  • Switch to a default WordPress theme and disable plugins temporarily to see if the issue is related to your theme or plugins, typically on a staging website.
  • Reach out to your form plugin’s support team for help resolving the issue.

4. Missing CAPTCHA or Anti-Spam Protection

Why It Happens: Forms without adequate spam protection are vulnerable to bots, leading to spam submissions or a blocked form by hosting providers. This can disrupt the functionality of your forms.

How to Fix It:

  • Add a lightweight CAPTCHA solution like Cloudflare Turnstile o hCAPTCHA to your forms to block spam bots.
  • Use built-in spam protection features such as honeypots offered by your form plugin.
  • Consider additional security or malware plugins to monitor and mitigate malicious activity on your site.

4. Broken or Outdated Form Plugin

Why It Happens: If your form plugin is outdated or poorly coded, it might not be compatible with the latest version of WordPress, causing forms to stop working.

How to Fix It:

  • Regularly update your form plugin to the latest version.
  • Check the plugin’s changelog for any updates addressing bug fixes or compatibility issues.
  • If the plugin is no longer supported, switch to a well-maintained alternative like WS Form or Gravity Forms.

Additional Tips for Reliable WordPress Forms

  1. Regular Form and Checkout Testing: Use automated testing tools for WordPress like CheckView to automatically test your forms and ensure they are functioning correctly across various scenarios on a daily or weekly basis. Automated testing can help identify issues before they impact real users.
  2. Testing Multiple Forms on a Single Page: If you have multiple forms on the same page, testing them individually is crucial to ensure they work without conflicts. CheckView allows you to test multiple forms on one page by targeting each form’s unique ID or selector, ensuring precise diagnostics for potential issues. This feature is particularly helpful for complex pages, such as landing pages or e-commerce checkouts, where form interactions need to be flawless.
  3. Backup Before Changes: Always back up your site before making major updates or changes to plugins, especially your forms or WooCommerce plugins. This ensures you can restore your site quickly in case of issues.
  4. Mobile Optimization: Test your forms on mobile devices to ensure they are responsive and easy to use. Forms should adapt to smaller screens without losing functionality.
  5. Error Logging: Enable error logging on your WordPress site to capture and diagnose issues quickly. Logs can provide valuable insights into the root cause of form malfunctions.
  6. Performance Monitoring: Slow-loading forms can frustrate users. Use tools like CheckView can ensure the performance of your forms and optimize them for faster submission and response times.

With CheckView’s advanced testing capabilities, especially for WordPress sites, you can maintain reliable functionality and enhance the user experience. Make sure to leverage these tips for an efficient WordPress form setup.

By addressing these common issues, you can keep your WordPress forms reliable, user-friendly, and optimized for capturing leads and delivering the best customer experience possible. Regularly testing, updating, and monitoring your forms ensures they remain functional and free from disruptions. With the right tools and practices, like leveraging CheckView for automated WordPress testing, you can enhance your website’s functionality and maintain high user satisfaction. A smooth, hassle-free form experience is key to your website’s success, so take proactive steps to ensure your forms are always in top shape. Let CheckView help you provide exceptional customer experiences every step of the way!

Ready to keep your WordPress forms and WooCommerce checkout error-free?

Sign up for a free trial of CheckView today!

Frequently Asked Questions:

It’s a good practice to test your WordPress forms at least once a week or after any major updates to plugins, themes, or WordPress itself. Regular testing ensures that new changes or updates haven’t introduced conflicts or errors. For critical forms, such as payment or lead generation forms, consider using automated testing tools daily.

Your WordPress form might not be submitting entries due to JavaScript or plugin conflict errors, which can disrupt form functionality. These errors often stem from conflicts with your theme or other plugins. Use your browser’s Developer Tools (F12) to check for errors in the console, and temporarily switch to a default WordPress theme to identify if the issue is theme-related. Additionally, consider enabling error logging on your WordPress site to uncover deeper server-side issues that may be preventing successful form submissions.

If legitimate form submissions are being flagged as spam, it may be due to overly aggressive spam filters or misconfigured CAPTCHA solutions. To resolve this:

  • Adjust your spam filter sensitivity in the form plugin’s settings.
  • Use a more modern CAPTCHA solution like Cloudflare Turnstile or hCAPTCHA for better accuracy.
  • Ensure that your email settings, such as SPF and DKIM records, are correctly configured to improve email trustworthiness.

WordPress updates can sometimes introduce changes that are incompatible with outdated plugins or themes. To prevent this:

  • Always update your plugins and themes before updating WordPress.
  • Test your site on a staging environment to identify potential issues before updating the live site.
  • Use automated testing tools like CheckView to monitor for form errors after updates.

Yes, combining multiple spam protection methods can improve the reliability of your forms against spam, but can also increase the chances of forms breaking or user’s being falsely flagged as bots. For example:

  • Use CAPTCHA alongside the spam protection features built into your form plugin, but test thoroughly to ensure they don’t break or conflict with each other. Avoid using two CAPTCHA fields at once.
  • Employ server-level anti-spam tools like Akismet or Cloudflare.
  • Ensure spam filters do not block legitimate user submissions by adjusting their sensitivity in the plugin or platform settings.

Validation errors can occur due to:

  • Outdated or conflicting JavaScript libraries affecting form validation.
  • Improperly configured field rules in the form plugin.
  • Conflicts with custom or commercial themes or plugins.

Check your browser’s developer console for errors, ensure your form plugin is updated, and test for conflicts with a default WordPress theme or disabled plugins.

Tracking form submissions can help analyze engagement and conversions. To do this:

  • Integrate your forms with analytics tools like Google Analytics using event tracking.  If using automated testing tools like CheckView, make sure to whitelist the bot IPs in tracking tools to ensure they do not affect the accuracy of your tracking.
  • Use built-in reporting tools provided by your form plugin, such as Gravity Forms or WS Form.  CheckView automatically removes test submissions from your form submissions table to ensure the reporting tools built-in to your form plugins is still accurate.
  • Leverage CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce to store and manage form submissions. Use form conditional logic to prevent these third party add-ons from triggering with CheckView.

Automated testing tools like CheckView can:

  • Continuously monitor your forms to ensure they work correctly after updates or changes.
  • Test complex scenarios, such as multi-page forms or conditional logic, to identify hidden errors.
  • Save hours of developer and QA testers time by running regular tests without manual intervention, ensuring your forms remain reliable for users.