WPForms Lite is free, friendly and installed on millions of sites. But when you open WPForms → Entries for the first time, you’ll find a surprise: there’s nothing there. WPForms Lite entries are sent to you by email and nowhere else. If that email lands in spam or never arrives, the submission is gone.
This isn’t a bug, and WPForms doesn’t hide it. The plugin tells you itself, right on the Entries screen. In this guide we’ll explain what WPForms Lite does with your entries, what its Lite Connect backup feature does and doesn’t do, and how to keep every entry on your own site for free, without rebuilding your forms.
What happens to WPForms Lite entries
When someone submits a WPForms Lite form, WPForms sends a notification email and shows the visitor your thank-you message. That’s it. The entry isn’t written to your WordPress database, so there’s no list to look back through. Open the Entries screen in WPForms Lite and you see this:
Seeing your entries inside WordPress is a paid feature. According to WPForms’ pricing page, entry management is included from the lowest paid plan, Basic, and the message above notes that only future entries are stored once you upgrade.
Why email-only entries are risky
An email-only form works until it doesn’t. Every submission depends on your server sending the message, your email provider accepting it, and your inbox not filtering it as spam. WordPress sites are especially prone to email trouble, and when it happens, nothing warns you. The visitor sees “Thank you,” and you see nothing.
WPForms says the same thing in its own settings: “If there’s a problem with deliverability, you’ll lose form entries.” Without saved entries you also can’t look up what someone sent last month, export your leads to a spreadsheet, or see how many people actually fill in your forms.
What Lite Connect does (and doesn’t do)
Lite Connect is WPForms’ answer to this. It’s a free option in WPForms Lite, found under WPForms → Settings → General as Enable Entry Backups. It’s off until you turn it on.
Here’s what WPForms’ documentation says it does:
- It backs up entries to WPForms’ servers, not to your WordPress site.
- It only covers entries submitted after you turn it on. Anything before that is not recovered.
- You can’t read the backed-up entries in WPForms Lite. You see a count. The entries are restored to your dashboard when you upgrade to a paid license.
- Backups expire after one year.
So Lite Connect is a sensible safety net if you plan to buy WPForms. If you want to see your entries without paying, it doesn’t solve the problem.
How to keep every entry for free
Custom Contact Forms is a free form plugin that saves every submission in your WordPress database by default, with no limits. It also imports WPForms forms directly, so you don’t rebuild anything by hand. Here’s the whole switch, which takes a few minutes.
Step 1: Install Custom Contact Forms
In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New, search for Custom Contact Forms, then install and activate it. Leave WPForms active for now, so your current forms keep working while you switch.
Step 2: Import your WPForms forms
Go to Forms → Import. Every WPForms form on your site is listed with a checkbox. Tick the ones you want and click Import selected forms.
Your WPForms forms stay exactly as they are, so you can import, compare and switch at your own pace. Running the import again skips forms you’ve already brought over instead of creating duplicates.
Step 3: Swap the shortcode on your pages
When the import finishes, you get a report with the new shortcode for each form. Open each page that shows a WPForms form, replace the WPForms block or [wpforms id="…"] shortcode with the new one, or use the Custom Contact Forms block in the editor.
Step 4: Check the imported form
The importer carries over your field labels and types, required fields, placeholders, field descriptions, dropdown, radio and checkbox choices (including the default choice), and your submit button text. Your first notification email comes across too, with its recipient and subject, set to include every submitted field.
A few things to check before you switch a busy page over:
- Your thank-you message. Set it in the form’s settings under Completion Message. Until you do, visitors see “Thank you for your submission.”
- Smart tags. If your WPForms notification was sent to a smart tag such as
{admin_email}, it goes to your site’s admin email instead. Smart tags in the subject are replaced by a standard subject. Adjust either one in the form’s notification settings. - Anything the report flags. Column layouts and page breaks aren’t carried over. The fields inside them are imported in order, and the report lists anything that needs a look.
Then send yourself a test submission.
Step 5: Every entry, saved
From now on, every submission is stored in your WordPress database as well as emailed to you. Open the form and scroll to Submissions to see every entry, choose which columns to show, view the full details, or click Export CSV for a spreadsheet.
Once every page uses the new forms and your test entries look right, you can deactivate WPForms.
What about my old entries?
Because WPForms Lite never stored entries on your site, there are none to import. Your past submissions exist only in your notification emails, and in Lite Connect if you turned it on. The import brings over your forms, and from the moment you switch, every new entry is saved.
What you get besides saved entries
All of this is in the free plugin:
- A Forms dashboard with entries, form views, conversion rate and blocked spam for any date range, plus an optional weekly summary email.
- Mailchimp built in, with double opt-in and a consent checkbox, chosen per form.
- Webhooks that send each entry to Zapier, Make, n8n or your own app.
- Conditional logic, file uploads and a signature field.
- Spam protection: Cloudflare Turnstile, hCaptcha, reCAPTCHA, a honeypot and rate limiting, plus Akismet checks with a spam folder, so a real message caught by mistake is never lost.
Which option should you choose?
- Stay with WPForms and turn on Lite Connect if you plan to buy a WPForms license soon and just want a backup until then.
- Upgrade to a paid WPForms plan if you love the WPForms builder and want entries inside WordPress from WPForms itself.
- Switch to Custom Contact Forms if you want to see and export every entry today, for free, on your own site, without rebuilding your forms.
Whichever you pick, do it soon. Every entry submitted before you start saving them exists only in your inbox, if it arrived at all.
Frequently asked questions
Does WPForms Lite save entries?
No. WPForms Lite emails each entry to you and doesn’t store it in your WordPress database. Its optional Lite Connect feature backs entries up to WPForms’ servers, and you can view them after upgrading to a paid plan.
Can I see Lite Connect entries without upgrading?
No. WPForms Lite shows how many entries have been backed up, but the entries themselves are restored to your dashboard only after you upgrade to a paid license. Backups expire after one year.
Does importing change my WPForms forms?
No. The importer only reads them. Your WPForms forms keep working until you replace them on your pages, so you can switch one page at a time.
Can I import from Contact Form 7 too?
Yes. The same Forms → Import screen imports Contact Form 7 forms. Contact Form 7 doesn’t save entries either; see Contact Form 7 Doesn’t Save Submissions.
Is Custom Contact Forms really free?
Yes. Saved entries, CSV export, the importer, the dashboard, Mailchimp, webhooks and spam protection are all in the free plugin on WordPress.org, with no submission limits. Custom Contact Forms Pro is optional and adds payments, PDF receipts, multi-step forms and more. See Free vs Pro.
Keep every entry. Download Custom Contact Forms free from WordPress.org and import your WPForms forms in a few minutes.
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Custom Contact Forms saves every entry on your site and includes conditional logic, file uploads, a signature field, Mailchimp, webhooks and spam protection, all free.
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