Mailbag Contact Form

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Connecting a WordPress contact form to Mailchimp

You can paste Mailchimp's embedded form into a page, use a form plugin with a Mailchimp integration, or route entries through Zapier. Only the plugin route lets one form both email you and add the contact to your audience — and it's also the one that can fail silently, so the integration should tell you when Mailchimp stops accepting entries.

The three routes

  • Mailchimp's embedded form — free and simple, but it only does signups. It doesn't email you, doesn't keep a copy in WordPress, and doesn't match your site's form styling.
  • Zapier or Make in between — flexible, but another subscription, another login, and another place for a break to hide.
  • A form plugin that talks to Mailchimp's API — one form, one entry, saved on your site and sent on to your audience.

How Mailbag Pro does it

Mailbag Pro is the paid add-on to the free Mailbag Contact Form. You paste a Mailchimp API key from your own account — no app of ours in between — and choose, for each form, the audience, which form field fills which Mailchimp field, any tags, and whether to send only when the consent box is ticked.

Pro adds or updates the contact by email address, so a returning visitor doesn't create a duplicate. New contacts can be added as pending, which makes Mailchimp send its own double opt-in confirmation.

When Mailchimp says no

  • A key that stops working — revoked, or the account's changed. Pro keeps the entries, marks the connection as failing, emails you once, and sends them after you fix it.
  • An address Mailchimp refuses — invalid, or someone who unsubscribed. That's a permanent answer: Pro doesn't retry it, and shows Mailchimp's reason on the entry.
  • An outage — Pro tries again after 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours, 12 hours and then daily, for up to 7 days.

Your entries are always saved in WordPress first, by the free plugin. Mailchimp is where they go next, not the only place they exist.

Mailbag Pro isn't on sale yet — see pricing for what it will cost and what happens if you stop paying.

This is Mailbag Pro, the paid add-on to the free Mailbag Contact Form plugin. See what it costs, and what happens if you ever stop paying.

Mailbag Pro and pricing