How To Embed Google Forms In WordPress: Manually Or With A Plugin

Looking for a way to embed Google Forms in WordPress?

Google Forms is great because of how easy it makes it to create complex forms, as well as the detailed analysis options you get for viewing responses.

But it’s not very user-friendly to link your visitors to an external site just to fill out a form, so it makes sense that you’re looking for a way to bring those Google Forms onto your WordPress site.

Bad news:

You don’t have a lot of options. Just one, actually:

• Manually embedding a Google Form using Google’s Embed HTML

For basic uses, this method is fine. However, you must use a WordPress forms plugin if you want to accept payments through a form or create multi-page forms for your site.

If you’re a beginner, I recommend you stick with the manual method. But if you want more control than the manual method offers, I suggest trying different WordPress forms plugins.

Why Use Google Forms in WordPress?

I’d like to address one important question before I show you how to embed a Google Form on a WordPress website. 

How is Google Forms better than other forms plugins for WordPress? The quick answer is that it isn’t, but it does have certain advantages. 

Most importantly, Google Forms is free and you just need a Google account to use it. If you want to create customer feedback surveys, polls, or order forms Google Forms is an easy-to-use and inexpensive solution. 

You don’t need previous experience to build a form, since you can select a template you like and customize it. Google Forms is compatible with other Google products, so you can store your polls and surveys on Google Drive.  

Now that I’ve addressed the elephant in the room, let’s see how you can embed a Google Form on a WordPress website. 

How To Manually Embed A Google Form In WordPress

You don’t actually need a plugin to embed a Google Form in WordPress, all you need is the Google Forms embed code. Here’s how to find it:

Step 1: Create Your Google Form

If you haven’t already, get started by creating a Google Form just like you normally would (you can do that by going here).

Step 2: Generate Embed Code

Once you’ve finished creating your form, click on the Send button in the top-right corner:

Then, choose the < > symbol on the Send via line. This should generate an Embed HTML code snippet. Copy that code snippet because you’ll need it in the next step. You can also adjust the width and height if desired before copying the code:

Step 3: Add Embed HTML To Text Tab In WordPress Editor

To finish things out, go to the post or page where you want to embed your Google Form.

Click on the Text tab and then paste in the Google Form Embed HTML that you generated in the previous step. It should look something like this:

Now, when you publish or update the post, you should see your embedded Google Form on the front-end of your site:

Yup! It’s that easy.

If you don’t like how the default Google Forms styling looks on your site, you can customize your form’s looks from the Google Forms interface. Just open the Theme Options interface when you’re editing your form in the Google Forms interface:

The styles on your embedded form will automatically update.

Why Does My Embedded Form Look Weird On Mobile Devices?

If the embedded form looks wrong on mobile devices, one easy fix is to change the width of the form in the embed code to 100%. For example:

It still won’t look perfect, but that can help make the sizing better, at least.

Whatever Happened to the Google Forms WordPress Plugin?

WordPress repository featured the Google Forms plugin that allowed users to build forms and analyze the data they gather from the admin panel until recently.

This plugin is not available for download since late November 2022 due to security reasons. The developer hasn’t updated the plugin for years, so its removal from the WordPress repository seems more than justified. 

Currently, there are no other WordPress plugins that enable a user to build Google Forms from their website’s dashboard

Downsides of Using Google Forms with WordPress

Despite its simplicity and relatively rich customization features, Google Forms is still an odd fit for a WordPress website. 

Besides potential integration problems, there are other issues you’ll have to solve. Google Forms doesn’t offer SEO optimization options, and it might slow down a website even though it allows you to store forms on Google Drive. 

In addition, you can’t receive payments through Google Forms or add images larger than 2MB to a form. Google Form’s safety features are far from impressive and using it on a WordPress site might make data vulnerable.

To make matters worse, Google Forms are not famous for its responsiveness. So, it’s hard to know how your form will look on a tablet or Smartphone.

What Are Google Forms Alternatives?

Hundreds of WordPress forms plugins offer the same or better features you’ll get from Google Forms. In fact, some WordPress themes require a form plugin to function properly. 

The good news is that there’s a heap of free forms plugins you can add to a WordPress website in just a few minutes. I’ve listed a few Google Forms alternatives below, so let’s see what they have to offer: 

• Contact Form 7 – After you download this plugin, you’ll get a block you can use to create forms with WordPress default block builder. Contact Form 7 has over 5 million active installations and it is one of the most popular forms plugins for WordPress. 

WPForms – The plugin’s free version has an extensive form template library and a form builder, so you can easily create a contact or payment form, surveys, and polls. WPForm’s Pro version supports integration with marketing or online payment services, offers spam protection and countless other features.

Frequently Asked Questions about using Google Forms with WordPress

How to Add Google Forms to WordPress?

The Google Forms WordPress plugin is no longer available for download. That’s why embedding the form’s code to a page is the only way to add it to a WordPress site. 

The process is painless and you don’t need coding skills to complete it. 

• Build a form in Google Forms 
• Click Send button 
• Click<> Embed icon and copy the HTML code 
• Open the Text tab in the WordPress Editor and paste the code 
• Preview the page to see if the form is displayed correctly

How Much Does Google Forms Cost?

Google Forms is free and anyone with a Google account can use it to create forms. Moreover, there’s no Pro version of Google Forms, so extending the range of tools you have at your disposal isn’t an option.

Final Thoughts On How To Embed Google Forms In WordPress

I think the best reason to use Google Forms is if you want to create a simple form for a WordPress website for free. While there are some issues with responsive design using this method, you can mitigate them a bit by setting the form width equal to 100%.

WordPress Forms plugins like Contact Form 7  or WPForms are a much more reliable option for membership websites or eStores that want to keep their data safe.