Title: LocalForm – Form Builder for Contact Forms, Surveys & Event Registration
Author: thexerox
Published: août 12, 2026
Last modified: août 27, 2026
---
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# LocalForm – Form Builder for Contact Forms, Surveys & Event Registration
By [thexerox](https://profiles.wordpress.org/thexerox/)
[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/localform.2.4.1.zip)
* [Details](https://tah.wordpress.org/plugins/localform/#description)
* [Reviews](https://tah.wordpress.org/plugins/localform/#reviews)
* [Installation](https://tah.wordpress.org/plugins/localform/#installation)
* [Development](https://tah.wordpress.org/plugins/localform/#developers)
[Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/localform/)
## Description
LocalForm is a form builder for WordPress. Add your questions, drag them into order,
pick your colors, and hit publish. Your form gets its own page and a link you can
share right away – no page building, no shortcode wrangling, no fighting your theme’s
CSS.
The name says what it does: every response stays local, on your own site, under
your own domain and branding. Nothing is sent to a third-party form service, so
you stay in control of your visitors’ data. And there is nothing to set up before
your first form is live – install, activate, and start building.
If you have been collecting answers with a cloud form service such as Google Forms
or Microsoft Forms, LocalForm covers the same ground – write your questions, share
a link, read the results back as a summary – except the form lives on your own domain
and the answers never leave your site.
#### What you can build
* **Contact forms.** Name, email and a message, with an email in your inbox every
time someone writes in. Start from the template and publish in a minute.
* **Surveys and feedback forms.** Ask your questions and read the results back
as a summary with counts and charts, right in the admin.
* **Sign-ups and intake forms.** Collect the details you need and get an email
every time someone submits.
* **Event registrations.** Set the event date, time, location, organizer and price,
cap the number of registrations, open and close the form on a schedule, and send
every registrant a confirmation email.
#### Why LocalForm?
* **Simple to use.** A distraction-free builder: add questions, drag to reorder,
pick your colors, publish.
* **Share a link.** Every form gets its own page with a URL you choose – or drop
it into an existing page with a shortcode or block.
* **Your data stays yours.** Responses are stored on your own site and can be downloaded
as an Excel file whenever you like.
* **No surprises.** No account, no license key, no trial period, and no limit on
the number of forms or submissions.
* **Nothing calls home.** No analytics, no telemetry, and fonts are served from
your own domain – so building a form never sends your visitors anywhere else.
* **Works with AI assistants.** Built-in MCP support lets an assistant like Claude
build and edit your forms for you, on your own site – see below.
#### Features
**Building forms**
* Drag-and-drop builder in the WordPress admin – no code, no page builder needed.
* Starter templates for a contact form, a feedback survey, an event registration
and an RSVP – they open the builder with the questions already written, and every
one of them stays editable. Nothing is saved until you hit Save.
* Question types: text, long text, email, phone, number, dropdown, single choice,
checkboxes, consent, date, date range and rating.
* A consent question renders as a single tick box with your own wording beside
it – put a link to your privacy policy in it and require it before the form can
be sent.
* Add section titles, text and images between questions to explain or break up
a long form.
* Choose the colors and the font; pick from seven bundled font families.
* Organize your forms with tags and filter the forms list by them.
* Light mode hides the webhook URL, the redirect URL and the custom fields on a
form’s Settings tab, for a builder that shows only the questions – per form,
or as the default for new forms.
**Sharing your form**
* Every form gets its own page at a web address you choose.
* Place a form inside an existing page or post with the `[localform id="123"]`
shortcode or the LocalForm block.
* Share dialog in the builder: copy the link, copy the embed code, or download
a QR code for print and posters.
* Forms are shown full-screen by default, or in your theme’s normal page layout
if you prefer.
**Collecting responses**
* Visitors get instant validation and a thank-you message you can write yourself,
without the page reloading.
* Get an email whenever someone submits, and send the person who submitted a confirmation
email you can customize with their answers.
* Cap the number of registrations and set an opening and closing date and time,
with your own message shown when the form is full or closed.
* Built-in spam protection: a hidden trap field that differs per site and rotates
daily, a check that the submission came from a real browser, rate limiting, blocking
for repeat bot attempts, and duplicate-submission checks.
**Reading and keeping your results**
* Browse every submission per form in the admin.
* Summary view per question: counts and bar charts for choice questions, lowest/
average/highest for numbers, per-day counts for dates, and the most recent answers
for open questions.
* Download all responses as an Excel (XLSX) file.
* Back up every form, submission and setting to a single file, and restore it here
or on another site.
**Connecting to other tools**
* Send each submission to a web address of your choice (a webhook), to plug LocalForm
into your own system or an automation tool like Zapier, Make or Power Automate.
* Requests are signed and retried automatically if the receiving end is down, with
a log of the last 30 days so you can see what went out.
* Optionally skip saving submissions entirely and only send them onward.
* REST API for a form’s field structure, for developers building a custom renderer
or syncing form definitions into another system. Authenticated with WordPress
Application Passwords.
**Building forms with an AI assistant (MCP)**
LocalForm speaks MCP – the Model Context Protocol – so an AI assistant such as Claude
can build your forms for you. Ask for « a registration form for the summer school
on 12 and 13 August, with a student rate », and the form is created on your site,
with its page, ready for you to review.
* Three WordPress Abilities are registered – list forms, read a form, and create
or update one – and become MCP tools as soon as the MCP Adapter plugin is installed.
* It is your site doing the work. The assistant connects _to_ WordPress; LocalForm
sends nothing out, and no form or response is uploaded anywhere.
* Everything goes through the same validation as the builder, so an assistant cannot
save something you could not have built by hand, and reconfiguring a form never
touches the responses already collected.
* Sign in with an Application Password and the usual WordPress permissions apply:
only an administrator can read or change a form.
#### LocalForm Pro
Everything described above is in the free plugin and stays that way – none of it
is a trial, a teaser or a limited version. LocalForm Pro is a separate paid add-
on for the sites that need more, sold at [localform.dev](https://localform.dev/#pricing)
and installed alongside the free plugin. If none of the following applies to you,
you are not missing anything.
* **Payments.** Charge for a registration and collect the money at submit, through
Mollie – iDEAL, Bancontact, card, whatever your Mollie account has enabled. The
response is saved before the payment starts, so an abandoned checkout still leaves
you a registration to chase rather than nothing at all. Paid, unpaid and abandoned
are all visible in Responses and in the XLSX export.
* **Build with AI.** Describe the form you want, in your own words, and watch it
built on your site – on the forms list for a new form, or docked beside the canvas
for a change to the one you are editing. The free plugin’s MCP support covers
the same ground from an outside assistant; this is the same three abilities driven
from inside the admin.
* **Conditional fields.** Show a question only when another answer matches a rule,
enforced both in the browser and on the server.
* **More event detail.** Several dates per event, each with its own start and end
time and its own count, and a labelled price list so adults, students and members
can be charged different amounts.
* **More question types.** A File Upload field, stored outside the public media
library and downloadable only by admins; a Yes/No switch built to drive conditional
logic; and a one-click Invoice Details block of billing questions that appears
only when that switch is on.
* **Webhook and field controls.** Reusable global webhook fields carrying real
JSON types, field name rules that keep the same concept arriving under the same
name from every form, reusable field templates, and prefill from URL parameters.
* **Elementor widgets.** Drop a form on any Elementor page, or list every upcoming
event with a register link per date that opens the form with that date preselected.
The Pro add-on is not hosted on WordPress.org; it is documented at [docs.localform.dev](https://docs.localform.dev/pro/licensing).
LocalForm is fully translatable, with translations contributed through translate.
wordpress.org.
### External services
This plugin does not connect to any external service on its own. It contains no
analytics, telemetry, license checks or remotely hosted assets.
The MCP support described above adds no outbound request either: it registers WordPress
Abilities, which an AI client calls by connecting _to_ this site over the REST API,
authenticated as a WordPress user. The plugin never contacts an AI provider, and
holds no API key for one.
The one outbound request it can make is entirely under your control: if you enter
a webhook URL on a form (or as the site-wide default under Forms > Settings > Webhooks),
each submission is POSTed as JSON to that URL, signed with HMAC-SHA256. That destination
is chosen and operated by you – the plugin has no default endpoint and sends nothing
anywhere if no webhook URL is configured. The payload contains the submitted answers,
the form title and ID, the event details you set on the form, and any custom fields
you added. Consult the privacy policy and terms of the service you point the webhook
at, since they are the party receiving the data.
## Screenshots
[⌊Form builder in the WordPress admin.⌉⌊Form builder in the WordPress admin.⌉[
Form builder in the WordPress admin.
[⌊Frontend fullscreen form page.⌉⌊Frontend fullscreen form page.⌉[
Frontend fullscreen form page.
[⌊Responses summary with per-question charts and XLSX export.⌉⌊Responses summary
with per-question charts and XLSX export.⌉[
Responses summary with per-question charts and XLSX export.
[⌊Webhook log viewer.⌉⌊Webhook log viewer.⌉[
Webhook log viewer.
## Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
* LocalForm
## Installation
1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins > Add New, search for « LocalForm », and
click Install Now. Or upload the plugin files to `/wp-content/plugins/localform/`.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ screen in WordPress.
3. Go to ‘Forms’ in the admin menu and click ‘Add form’ to build your first one.
4. Publish the form and use the Share button to copy its link.
## FAQ
### Do I need an account or a license key?
No. There is no sign-up, no license key and no trial. Install the plugin and everything
described here works straight away, with no limit on the number of forms or submissions.
### Is there a paid version, and what does it add?
Yes – LocalForm Pro, a separate add-on sold at [localform.dev](https://localform.dev/#pricing).
Nothing in the free plugin is limited, gated or timed to push you towards it: no
submission cap, no form cap, no trial and no license key, and that is not going
to change. Pro is for sites that need things the free plugin deliberately does not
do – taking payment for a registration through Mollie, showing a question only when
another answer matches a rule, several dates or several price tiers on one event,
file uploads, a « Build with AI » panel inside the admin, Elementor widgets, and
a set of webhook and field-naming controls for wiring forms into another system.
The full list is under « LocalForm Pro » in the description above, and the documentation
is at [docs.localform.dev](https://docs.localform.dev/pro/licensing).
### Does the plugin nag me?
Once, and only if you want it to. After your site has collected 25 responses, LocalForm
asks on its own screens whether you would leave a review – with « Not now » and «
Don’t ask again » next to it, both remembered. Untick « Ask for a review on WordPress.
org » under Settings > General and it never asks. Nothing else in the plugin interrupts
you, and nothing is reported back to us either way.
### Can I use this instead of a cloud form service?
That is what it is built for. If you are used to Google Forms, Microsoft Forms or
a similar service, you will recognise the way LocalForm works: add your questions,
publish, share the link, and read the answers back as a summary. The differences
are that the form sits on your own domain and carries your own branding, the responses
are stored on your site rather than in someone else’s account, and your visitors
are not sent to a third-party page to answer. LocalForm is not affiliated with,
or endorsed by, any of those services.
### Can I build a poll or a quiz?
For a poll, yes – a single Single Choice or Checkbox question works well, and the
Responses summary gives you counts and a bar chart per option without any extra
setup. LocalForm does not do scored or graded quizzes (there is no « correct answer»
or points system); if that is what you need, it is the one thing to look elsewhere
for.
### Where do my responses go?
They are saved on your own site, in your own WordPress database, and only you can
see them. LocalForm does not send them to any form service, and there is no dashboard
elsewhere holding a copy.
### Does LocalForm help with GDPR?
Keeping responses on your own server, under your own hosting agreement, is a real
advantage for data residency and minimisation compared with routing them through
a third-party form service. For the consent side there is a Consent question type:
one tick box, your own wording next to it, a link to your privacy policy if you
want one, and the answer stored with the response so you can show what was agreed
to and when. That said, LocalForm cannot certify your site as « GDPR compliant »
by itself – that still depends on things you configure yourself, such as what you
ask for, how long you keep it (see « Keep my data when the plugin is deleted » under
Settings > Data), your own privacy policy, and any consent you need before collecting
personal data. There is no telemetry or third-party call for a submission to leak
through in the first place.
### Do I have to start from a blank form?
No. The Forms screen has a « Start from a template » row with a contact form, a
feedback survey, an event registration and an RSVP. Picking one opens the builder
with the questions already written – rename them, reorder them, delete the ones
you do not want. Nothing is written to your site until you press Save, and a saved
form keeps no link to the template it started from.
### How do people find my form?
Every form gets its own page with a web address you choose – just share that link,
by email, on social media, or as the QR code you can download from the Share button.
You can also place the form inside a page or post you already have.
### Can I put a form in an existing page?
Yes. Add the LocalForm block in the block editor, or paste the `[localform id="123"]`
shortcode. The form’s own page keeps working at the same time.
### Do I get an email when someone fills in my form?
Yes. Each form can email you on every submission, and can also send the person who
submitted a confirmation email. You can write that message yourself and drop their
answers into it – for example the form title, the event date, or any question you
asked.
### Can I stop taking registrations after a certain number, or on a certain date?
Yes. Set a maximum number of registrations and/or an opening and closing date and
time per form. Once the form is full or closed, visitors see a message you write
instead of the form. The maximum requires responses to be saved in WordPress.
### Will the form match my site’s design?
You choose the colors and font for each form, and forms are shown on a clean full-
screen page by default so nothing in your theme gets in the way. If you would rather
the form sit in your theme’s normal page layout, there is a per-form setting for
that.
### How do you stop spam submissions?
LocalForm uses a hidden trap field that real visitors never see, limits how often
the same visitor can submit, and blocks accidental duplicate submissions. You can
adjust all three under Forms > Settings > Security.
### Can I get my responses into Excel?
Yes. The submissions screen for each form has a download button that gives you an
XLSX file of every response.
### Can I move my forms to another site?
Yes. Under Forms > Settings > Data, « Download backup » gives you a single file
with every form, its submissions and your settings. Upload that file on any other
site running LocalForm to bring everything across. If a form already exists there,
you choose whether to keep it or replace it with the backed-up one – so restoring
the same file twice never duplicates your responses. Webhook logs are not included
in the backup.
### What happens to my forms if I delete the plugin?
Deactivating LocalForm never touches your data. Deleting it removes everything by
default – your forms, responses and settings. If you want them to survive, turn
on « Keep my data when the plugin is deleted » under Forms > Settings > Data before
you delete, or download a backup first.
### Can I send submissions to another tool?
Yes. Enter a web address (a webhook) on the form, or as a site-wide default under
Forms > Settings > Webhooks, and each submission is sent there as it comes in –
handy for connecting to a CRM, a spreadsheet, or an automation tool. Requests are
signed with a secret key so the receiving end can confirm they came from you, are
retried if the other side is temporarily down, and the last 30 days of deliveries
are logged so you can check what was sent. If you would rather not store responses
in WordPress at all, you can switch a form to send them onward only.
### Can I send submissions to Power Automate, Make or Zapier?
Yes. Any of them accepts an incoming webhook – paste the URL into the form (or set
it site-wide under Forms > Settings > Webhooks) and each submission is POSTed as
JSON as it arrives. With Power Automate, use the « When an HTTP request is received»
trigger and the submitted answers, form title, event details and custom fields arrive
as a structured payload you can map straight into SharePoint, Dataverse or an approval
flow.
### Can an AI assistant build my forms?
Yes, and it is built in. LocalForm registers three WordPress Abilities – list forms,
read a form, create or update a form – which become MCP tools once you install the
[MCP Adapter](https://github.com/WordPress/mcp-adapter) plugin. Point an assistant
such as Claude at your site with an Application Password and you can ask for a form
in plain language; it is built here, on your own domain, with its page created for
you. The assistant signs in with an administrator’s Application Password, and everything
it saves goes through the same validation as the builder – so it cannot create something
you could not have built by hand. Reconfiguring a form never deletes the responses
it has already collected.
The premium add-on, LocalForm Pro, adds the other half of this: a « Build with AI»
panel inside the WordPress admin that does the same thing without an outside assistant,
using whichever AI provider your site is already connected to.
### Does the AI support send my forms to an AI company?
Not by itself. The free plugin makes no outbound request of any kind – an MCP assistant
connects _to_ your site, the way your browser does, and the abilities only read
and write your own database. Whatever you type into that assistant goes to whoever
you are using it with, exactly as it does when you chat with it about anything else;
that is between you and them, and LocalForm is not in the middle of it.
### Does LocalForm send any data to an external service?
No. The plugin makes no outbound requests of its own: no analytics, no license checks,
no telemetry, and no remotely hosted fonts or scripts. The only request it can ever
make is to a webhook address you enter yourself.
### Where do the fonts come from?
The seven font families (Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, Montserrat, Poppins and
Nunito) are included with the plugin and served from your own site, not from Google
Fonts or any other network. Picking one never reveals a visitor’s IP address to
a third party. All seven are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; the license
text is included at `assets/fonts/OFL.txt`.
## Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
## Contributors & Developers
“LocalForm – Form Builder for Contact Forms, Surveys & Event Registration” is open
source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
* [ thexerox ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/thexerox/)
[Translate “LocalForm – Form Builder for Contact Forms, Surveys & Event Registration” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/localform)
### Interested in development?
[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/localform/), check
out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/localform/), or subscribe
to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/localform/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/localform/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).
## Changelog
#### 2.4.1
* Tested against WordPress 7.1.
* A form’s colours, font and background image are now checked against the same
allow-list wherever the form was saved from – the builder already did this, but
a restored backup, the `localform/save-form` ability an AI or MCP client calls,
and an add-on writing straight to `Form::save()` did not. A colour that is not
a colour is dropped and the default applies, so nothing a form carries can add
styling of its own to the admin screens. No form you built in the builder is
affected.
* Fixed: on a site running WordPress 6.9 or newer, the MCP abilities registered
their category through a function the plugin never checked for first. Nothing
goes wrong on a released WordPress, but a site part-way into 6.9 – a beta, or
the Abilities API arriving through a feature plugin – could hit a fatal error
instead of simply going without the feature.
* Notification emails: the name a message is sent under is now quoted and stripped
of anything a mail header treats as punctuation, so a name with a comma in it
stays one sender and nothing else can be smuggled into the header alongside it.
#### 2.4.0
* A formatting toolbar on every box where you write something for visitors to read:
the form description, the success and closed messages, the content of a Text
Block, a Section or a Consent question, and the default success message and footer
content under Settings. Bold, italic, links, bulleted and numbered lists, and
a button that takes formatting off again. Text pasted in from Word or another
web page arrives as plain words rather than dragging its old styling along. Everything
you wrote before is left exactly as it was, and the confirmation email keeps
its plain box – LocalForm sends plain-text email, where bold and links would
only show up as raw code.
* Starter templates on the Forms screen: a contact form, a feedback survey, an
event registration and an RSVP. Picking one opens the builder with the questions
already written; nothing is saved until you press Save, and every question stays
editable. Add your own with the `localform_form_templates` filter.
* New Consent question type: one tick box with your own wording beside it, links
allowed so you can point at your privacy policy, and the answer stored with the
response. Mark it required and the form cannot be sent until it is ticked.
* Minimum requirements lowered to WordPress 6.5 and PHP 7.4, so LocalForm installs
on around half again as many sites. Nothing in the plugin needed newer than that.
* The readme on WordPress.org now says what the paid add-on does, in a « LocalForm
Pro » section at the end of the description and an FAQ entry beside the one about
license keys. Both spell out that nothing in the free plugin is capped, gated
or timed, so anyone finding LocalForm through the directory can tell what they
are getting for free and what they are not, before they install rather than after.
* Launch offer for the paid add-on: 70% off every LocalForm Pro plan, and off every
renewal for as long as the subscription runs, until 31 October 2026. The code
sits on LocalForm > Pro, a page you only see if you open it, and the existing
forms-list pointer mentions it while it lasts. Both disappear on their own once
the offer closes, both disappear the moment Pro is installed, and `localform_show_promotions`
still removes them entirely. Nothing in the free plugin is limited, gated or
timed by any of it.
* The question type list in the builder can be searched. Open the type menu on
a question and start typing to narrow it down – by the name of the type or by
the slug it is called in the docs – then use the arrow keys and Enter to pick
one without reaching for the mouse, and Escape to close it again. With fifteen
types in the list, and more once an add-on registers its own, this saves scrolling
for the one you want.
* Tidied up the Rating question’s settings in the builder: the two scale boxes
and the Numbers-or-Stars choice now sit together on one line, instead of the
dropdown stretching the full width of the question and towering over the boxes
above it.
* Deleting a response now also deletes anything stored alongside it outside the
database – with the File Upload question in LocalForm Pro, that means the uploaded
file itself. Previously the response row went and the file stayed on the server
for good. The same applies to the retention setting under Settings > Data: expiring
responses take their files with them. Nothing changes for a site not using file
uploads.
* Notification emails print a file upload’s filename instead of its internal storage
reference, so the email reads properly and no longer carries the one identifier
that could be used to reach the file directly.
* Two new extension points for add-ons: `localform_submission_deleted` (a response
was removed – clean up what you stored for it) and `localform_email_field_value`(
say how your field type’s value should read in a notification email). Both documented
in docs/hooks.md.
#### 2.3.0
* After your site has collected 25 responses, LocalForm asks once – on its own
Forms and Responses screens – whether you would leave a review. « Not now » keeps
it quiet for three months, « Don’t ask again » for good, and untick LocalForm
> Settings > General > « Ask for a review on WordPress.org » and it never asks
at all. Nothing is sent anywhere: the plugin never checks whether you reviewed
it.
#### 2.2.0
* Stronger spam protection. The hidden trap field is no longer the same on every
LocalForm site: it is derived from your own site and rotates daily, so a bot
that learned to skip it elsewhere does not skip it here. A signed token, handed
out when the form loads, shows that the submission came from a browser that actually
opened the form rather than from a script posting straight at it. Bot-shaped
attempts now count towards a block of their own, so tripping the trap over and
over stops working. Nothing changes for the person filling in the form, and forms
served from a page cache keep working across the upgrade.
* Light mode for the form builder: hide the webhook URL, the redirect URL and the
custom fields on a form’s Settings tab, so the builder shows only what the people
writing forms need. Set it per form, or set the default for new forms under LocalForm
> Settings > General. Nothing is cleared and nothing stops working – the hidden
settings keep doing their job.
* One switch under LocalForm > Settings > General turns every notification email
off site-wide, for a staging site or a quiet period. The per-form email settings
are left untouched and resume as they were when you switch it back on.
* New « Pro » page under LocalForm describing the paid add-on, with one dismissible
pointer to it on the forms list. Nothing in the free plugin is limited, gated
or disabled by it, both disappear once Pro is installed, and the `localform_show_promotions`
filter removes them for good.
#### 2.0.0
* The MCP abilities now also describe LocalForm Pro’s per-form settings (multiple
event dates and multiple event prices) when Pro is active, so an AI assistant
can set those too.
* Minimum requirements raised to WordPress 6.9 and PHP 8.1.
#### 1.12.0
* First release on the WordPress.org plugin directory.
#### 1.11.0
* Share dialog added to the form builder: copy the link, copy the embed code, or
download a QR code for the form.
#### 1.10.0
* MCP support added: three WordPress Abilities (list, read, create/update a form)
that an AI assistant can call once the MCP Adapter plugin is installed.
#### 1.4.0
* Renamed the plugin to LocalForm. Existing forms, submissions, webhook logs and
settings are migrated automatically on upgrade.
* Event details (date, time, location, organizer, price) are now part of the free
plugin, with their own settings card in the form builder.
* Fonts are bundled with the plugin and served from your own domain; the form page
no longer requests anything from Google Fonts.
* All request data is sanitized at the point it is received, before it is shaped,
stored or passed to any filter.
* Per-form colors and fonts are attached to the enqueued stylesheets instead of
being printed as inline `