Six steps to your first form
Install & activate
In WordPress go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the Lifetime Forms ZIP, then click Install Now and Activate. A Lifetime Forms menu appears in the left sidebar with Dashboard, Create New, Entries, Integrations, Settings and More Plugins.
Needs WordPress 5.8 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer. No account and no license key are required for the free plugin.
Create a form from a template
Open Lifetime Forms → Create New. The Start with a template chooser opens with 27 ready-made forms grouped by category (Simple Contact Form, Request a Quote, Appointment Booking, Newsletter Signup, Event Registration, Job Application, Donation and more) plus Blank form. For a first form, pick Simple Contact Form: it loads Name, Email and Message onto the canvas. Give the form a title in the toolbar.
Need another field? Drag it from the Fields palette on the left. Drag cards to reorder them, and use the Duplicate and Delete actions on each card.
Set up the fields and the notification
Click a field to edit it in the right panel's Field tab: label, required, placeholder, help text and Field width (choose Half to put two fields side by side). Then open the Form settings tab:
- Email notification: keep Send an email on each submission on. Send to defaults to
{admin_email}, the site admin address; replace it with your own, or list several addresses separated by commas. Set a Subject. Replies to the notification go straight to the visitor's email address. - Confirmation: show a thank-you message, or redirect to a URL.
- Submit button: change the button text if you like.
Protect it from spam
Still in Form settings → Spam protection, the Honeypot field and Time-trap are already on: they stop most bots with zero setup and are invisible to real visitors. For stronger protection, add a captcha:
- Go to Lifetime Forms → Settings and save the Site key and Secret key for Cloudflare Turnstile, reCAPTCHA v2, reCAPTCHA v3 or hCaptcha.
- Back in the form, pick it from the Captcha dropdown.
- Optionally tick Check submissions with Akismet (if the Akismet plugin is active) and add phrases to the Keyword blocklist.
Activate and embed it
Flip the toggle in the editor toolbar from Draft to Active and click Save. Copy the shortcode shown next to it, for example [lifetime_form id="123"] (the Dashboard lists it for every form with a Copy button), and paste it into any page or post: a Shortcode block in the block editor, the classic editor, or any page builder that renders shortcodes. The form appears on your site with neutral styling that adapts to your theme.
Draft forms output nothing on the front end, so if you see an empty space, check the Active toggle.
Test it and manage entries
Fill in the form on your site and submit it. The notification lands in your inbox, and the submission appears under Lifetime Forms → Entries as Unread. Open View to read it, mark it read, or move it to Spam or Trash, and click Export CSV whenever you want the whole list in a spreadsheet. Entries are stored in your own database, free, with no limit.
Want the leads in your email tool as well? Connect Brevo, Mailchimp, SendGrid, MailerLite, Kit (ConvertKit), ActiveCampaign, GetResponse or a webhook under Integrations, then enable it on the form under Form settings → Integrations.
If the notification email never arrives or lands in spam, open Lifetime Forms → Settings → Email delivery (SMTP), tick Send emails through SMTP, enter your mail provider's host, port, encryption and login, save, and click Send test email. No separate SMTP plugin is needed. Your entries are always saved under Entries, even when an email fails.
Split long forms into steps with a Page break field, show or hide fields with Conditional logic, let visitors Save and continue later, and take one-time payments through Stripe or PayPal by adding a Payment field. All of it is in the free plugin and covered in the full documentation.
Want the full reference?
Every field type, templates, integrations, anti-spam, payments, conditional logic, GDPR and the FAQ, in one place.