Contact Form 7 email verification
ZeroBounce’s plugin for WordPress/WooCommerce supports Contact Form 7 to keep invalid/risky emails off your email list.
The integration validates email addresses upon submission within Contact Form 7. Emails need to pass the validation rules you’ve set for the form to submit.
Before you get started, you must have a fully operational WordPress installation to install the Contact Form 7 and ZeroBounce plugins.
How to set up Contact Form 7
If Contact Form 7 is your preferred web form and you’re ready to start collecting email addresses, follow the steps below to install the plugin and set up your first form.
1. Install Contact Form 7
Log in to your WordPress account. From your dashboard, navigate to Plugins → Add New Plugin, and search for Contact Form 7. Click Install Now, and then click Activate.
2. Add a new contact form
From the left-hand navigation menu, go to Contact → Add New.
3. Configure and save your form
Customize your form’s layout and tags (make sure a required email field is included, such as [email* your-email]). Once you’re happy with your form, click Save at the top or bottom of the page.
How to install the ZeroBounce plugin
The ZeroBounce WordPress/WooCommerce plugin lets you validate single email addresses from within WordPress/WooCommerce CRM – or via third-party plugins such as web forms. You can also automatically validate email addresses when users post comments, register accounts, and place orders from WooCommerce. This ensures that you only add emails to your list with validation statuses that you approve.
To use this plugin, you’ll need a fully operational WordPress installation. Here’s how to add the ZeroBounce plugin.
How to add the ZeroBounce plugin:
- Log in to your WordPress admin.
- Head to Plugins → Add New.
- Search for ZeroBounce and click Install when it appears.
- Once it’s installed, click Activate, and you’re ready to configure.
How to configure the ZeroBounce plugin
After you’ve installed the ZeroBounce plugin, follow the steps below to configure it.
1. Create and enter your API key
From the WordPress menu on your left, head to the ZeroBounce Email plugin and click Settings to enter your API key. You can find your API key on your ZeroBounce dashboard.
2. Set the API maximum timeout to 5-10 seconds
A 5-10 second API maximum timeout ensures smooth website flow/load times. It’s important as some mail servers can take up to 30 seconds to respond. If your maximum API is 5-10 seconds, the system will return valid if it takes longer to respond.
3. Select the Contact Form 7 hook
In your plugin settings, check the Contact Form 7 box for hook and validate forms. This means that every user submitting a form via Contact Form 7 triggers an automatic validation to check that their email status meets your accepted criteria.
If it does, the form is processed. If it doesn’t, the form isn’t processed. The user will also be shown an error message to explain that their form hasn’t been submitted.
4. Configure your email validation rules
You decide which email statuses you want to accept. We recommend only accepting “Valid,” “Catch-All,” and “Unknown” statuses. Make sure to check out our Status Codes for more information. Any emails that return a status you don’t accept display a user message to explain the form hasn’t been submitted.
The default error message that appears is “Sorry, upon checking, we cannot accept this email address.” You can customize this message by populating the Custom Invalid Error Message field. We recommend that you customize this message if your website is viewed by non-English audiences. The customer experience is damaged if they can’t read your information.
Important: The plugin won’t work if any of the steps listed above are skipped.
How to manually validate an email address via the ZeroBounce plugin
You can still validate emails outside of the Contact Form 7 plugin. Here’s how:
- Click Tools using ZeroBounce’s interactive email form.
- Enter the email address that you’d like to check and click Validate.
Please note: Manual testing and automatic email validation both cost one credit per email address validation. One credit equals one successfully processed email address. “Unknown” results are always refunded automatically.
You can also check out the Dashboard to see a graph detailing your email validation performance, statuses, and credit usage.
For a closer look, head to Logs in the Zerobounce plugin to see the source of validation, the validated email, status, sub-status, user IP address, and date with time. Click View to see the full details of individual validations.
You’re ready to validate emails within Contact Form 7
You’ve learned two quick and convenient methods to validate email addresses. Keep invalid and risky emails off your email lists and watch your email deliverability improve.
Did you encounter any problems setting up this integration? Contact our Support team. Help is available 24/7.
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