Essential Form – The lightest plugin for contact forms, ultra lightweight and no spam
by Jose Mortellaro · Email & Marketing
The lightest contact form for WordPress. It's so essential you'll either love it or hate it. Ultra lightweight and no spam.
Daily downloads
Since 2023-03-04 · 1,230 days · wp.org + Plugin Pulse archive
30-day downloads
Trailing 30-day total · the growth curve wp.org stopped showing
Directory rank
Popularity rank over time · lower is better
Rating trend
Star average over time · dips mark rough releases
Health trend
Composite health score, snapshotted daily
Downloads per 1k installs · 30d
Engagement proxy · release spikes are signal, a long slide is an aging base
Estimated active installs
wp.org reports only “500+”. The real number sits in this band.
Refined from the date this plugin crossed into its current band.
Install history · since 2023-03-03 · 1,228 observations
Details
Growth timeline
Install-band crossings we have observed, and how long each band took to outgrow
- 2026-01-13 400+ → 500+ up after 1 days in band
- 2026-01-12 500+ → 400+ down after 56 days in band
- 2025-11-17 400+ → 500+ up after 1 days in band
- 2025-11-16 500+ → 400+ down after 15 days in band
- 2025-11-01 400+ → 500+ up after 204 days in band
- 2025-04-11 300+ → 400+ up after 273 days in band
- 2024-07-12 200+ → 300+ up after 1 days in band
- 2024-07-11 300+ → 200+ down after 1 days in band
Competes with
The plugins that solve the same job, ranked by shared tags then reach — closest match first
-
Akismet Anti-spam: Spam Protection 6M+ installs · 4.7★ · 2 shared tags A -
Gravity PDF 20K+ installs · 4.9★ · 2 shared tags B -
Contact Form Email 9K+ installs · 4.3★ · 2 shared tags A -
VS Contact Form 7K+ installs · 4.7★ · 2 shared tags A -
Generate PDF using Contact Form 7 4K+ installs · 4.5★ · 2 shared tags A -
PDF Forms Filler for CF7 3K+ installs · 4.4★ · 2 shared tags A
Embed this report card
Drop a live Pulse card for Essential Form – The lightest plugin for contact forms, ultra lightweight and no spam into a readme, a review or a deck. It updates itself.
<iframe src="https://plugins.wpmayor.com/embed/essential-form" width="480" height="300" style="border:0" loading="lazy" title="Essential Form – The lightest plugin for contact forms, ultra lightweight and no spam — Plugin Pulse"></iframe> Essential Form – The lightest plugin for contact forms, ultra lightweight and no spam: 500+ active installs, 4.9★ (19 reviews). Plugin Pulse (WP Mayor), as of 2026-07-15. https://plugins.wpmayor.com/plugin/essential-form