Manage Contact Form 7 Leads in LeadCentre
LeadCentre works with Contact Form 7 through CF7 to Webhook, a free plugin that posts each submission to your LeadCentre webhook URL as JSON. Every submission becomes a lead in your account, a push notification goes to the people switched on for new lead alerts, and you call, text or email from the lead and track it to won or lost. Contact Form 7 keeps sending its own emails as long as you tick one box in the plugin's settings.
Via Webhook: The platform posts each lead to your LeadCentre webhook URL.
- Free to connect: Contact Form 7 and CF7 to Webhook cost nothing, and the webhook is on every LeadCentre plan.
- A record of every enquiry. Contact Form 7 doesn't store submissions itself, and each one becomes a lead you can find again.
- A push alert on your phone, then Call, Text, WhatsApp and Email buttons on the lead.
What this does
Contact Form 7 builds the form and sends its emails. CF7 to Webhook adds a Webhook tab to each form in the editor. Once a visitor's message has gone through, the plugin posts the answers from your web server to LeadCentre. You match the fields once, and every later submission arrives as a lead with the details in the right places.
Your tag names are the field names
Contact Form 7 names each field by its form-tag, such as your-name in [text* your-name]. That name is what LeadCentre sees. Smart Match recognises the defaults, so your-name, your-email and your-message are suggested as Full name, Email and Enquiry / Message. A tag called text-123 is harder to match. Rename it, or add a webhook option, as in [text text-123 webhook:postcode], which changes the name sent without touching the tag.
Your emails and the webhook
The plugin's Send Mail setting decides whether Contact Form 7 still sends its emails once the webhook is on. It starts unticked, and while it's unticked your form's emails are skipped. Tick "Send CF7 mail as usually" to keep them.
With it ticked, the plugin posts to LeadCentre after Contact Form 7 has sent its email. If that email fails, Contact Form 7 shows the visitor an error and the post isn't sent either, so a working mail setup matters for both.
What happens when someone submits your form?
Step 1
A visitor sends your form
Contact Form 7 checks the answers, sends its emails if you've kept them on and shows its thank-you message.
Step 2
CF7 to Webhook posts it
Your web server sends the fields to your LeadCentre webhook URL as JSON, named after your form-tags.
Step 3
A lead arrives in LeadCentre
Your saved field matching puts each answer in its place, and the key's name shows as the source.
Step 4
Your phone gets the alert
A push notification goes to the people switched on for New lead alerts on the Team page.
Step 5
You make contact and follow up
Tap Call, Text, WhatsApp or Email, set the status, and add a follow-up if you need to try again.
What you can do with Contact Form 7 leads
Everything here is on every LeadCentre plan, apart from the last item, which is the Respond add-on.
- Get a push notification on iPhone or Android for each new enquiry, sent to the people switched on for New lead alerts.
- Contact them from the lead. The Call, Text, WhatsApp and Email buttons open with your own template wording, using placeholders such as {first_name} and {service}, with separate wording in and out of business hours.
- Track progress with six statuses: New, Contacted, Quoted, Booked, Won and Lost. Marking a lead Won asks what the job was worth.
- Schedule follow-ups with a date, time and note, and get a reminder on your phone when one is due.
- Share the work. Assign a lead to someone on your team, file it in a folder or archive it.
- Keep every answer. Questions beyond name, email and phone can fill custom lead fields.
- Email the enquirer automatically with Instant Replies, with different wording in and out of hours.
- Text the enquirer automatically, with the Respond add-on. Respond adds a dedicated UK business number for two-way SMS, automatic text replies to new leads, and Lead Rescue follow-ups for leads still at New or Contacted who haven't replied.
An alert for you, a reply for them
The push notification is for you and your team: it tells you an enquiry has come in. A reply goes to the person who filled in the form. Instant Replies sends that reply by email on every plan, at most once a day to the same address. With Respond, it can go as a text to anyone who gave a mobile number.
How to connect Contact Form 7 to LeadCentre
You'll need:
- Contact Form 7 on your WordPress site, and access to edit the form.
- CF7 to Webhook, a free plugin from a third-party developer that posts each submission as JSON. It used to be called CF7 to Zapier, which is why its WordPress.org address still says so.
- A LeadCentre login with the Admin role, to create a key and match the fields.
Contact Form 7's own guides explain the parts used below: hidden fields, default values from the page address and special mail-tags.
- 1
Create a key for the form
In LeadCentre, go to Settings > Connections. Under "Add another key", type a name such as Contact form and press "Create". The name becomes the lead's source, so use one you'll recognise. Press "Copy" and keep the URL somewhere safe, because LeadCentre shows it only this once.
- 2
Install CF7 to Webhook
In WordPress, install and activate CF7 to Webhook from the Plugins screen. Contact Form 7 needs to be active already.
- 3
Check your tag names
Open the form in Contact Form 7. Keep the default tags your-name, your-email and your-message, and give any others a clear name, such as your-phone or your-postcode. If you rename a tag, update it in the Mail tab too. To send a different name without renaming, add a webhook option, as in
[tel* tel-512 webhook:phone]. - 4
Turn on the webhook
Open the Webhook tab the plugin adds to the form editor (older versions call it Zapier). Tick Send to Webhook and paste your LeadCentre URL into Webhook URL. Under Send Mail, tick "Send CF7 mail as usually", or your form stops sending its emails. Leave Method on POST and the Body box empty.
- 5
Add the page and form name
In the same tab, open Special Mail Tags and add
[_url landing_page_url]to send the page the form was on. If several forms share this key, add[_contact_form_title lead_source]as well, so each lead shows which form it came from. Save the form. - 6
Listen, then send a test
In LeadCentre, follow "Next: test and match fields" and press "Listen for test data". It lasts 15 minutes. Fill in every field on your live form and send it, because empty fields aren't shown on the matching screen. Your fields should appear under "2. Match the fields" a few seconds later.
- 7
Match, save and stop listening
Check Smart Match's suggestions, choose a field for each row you want or leave it on Do not use, then press "Save field matching". Press "Stop listening", because a real enquiry sent while listening counts as test data. Send one more message and check it reaches your Leads list and your phone.
What form data can you send?
CF7 to Webhook sends every form-tag on the form under its tag name, or the name in its webhook option. Smart Match suggests the common ones, and anything else can go into a custom field, which you can create on the matching screen.
Checkboxes arrive as a numbered list, such as services.0 and services.1, one per ticked box. A drop-down or radio buttons arrive as one value, which is easier to match to Enquiry type.
Tracking data needs adding to the form. Contact Form 7 sends the page address and campaign tags only when you ask for them:
- Page address:
[_url landing_page_url]under Special Mail Tags. If the visitor sent the form from the page they arrived on, LeadCentre also reads any campaign tags in that address. - UTM tags and click IDs: add hidden form-tags with these exact names, such as
[hidden utm_source],[hidden utm_campaign]and[hidden gclid]. Fill them with LeadCentre's attribution script, which finds hidden fields by name and remembers a campaign across pages once the visitor agrees to cookies. Or use Contact Form 7's default:get option, as in[hidden utm_source default:get], which reads the page's own address. Use one or the other on a form.
Fields with those exact names are kept on the lead without being matched, and show under Attribution Details in the portal.
| Field sent | Usually matched to |
|---|---|
| your-name | Full name |
| your-email | |
| your-phone (a tel tag you add) | Phone (mobile or landline) |
| your-postcode | Postcode |
| your-subject, or a service drop-down | Enquiry type |
| your-message | Enquiry / Message |
| your-consent (an acceptance tag) | A custom field, such as Marketing consent |
| Any other tag, such as budget or property-type | A custom field |
| landing_page_url, from [_url landing_page_url] | Landing page URL (kept automatically) |
| lead_source, from [_contact_form_title lead_source] | Lead source |
| utm_source, utm_campaign, gclid and other hidden tags | Kept automatically |
Managing enquiries beyond email notifications
Contact Form 7 is built to send email. Its Mail tab sends each submission to the address you choose, and Mail (2) can send a second message, often a confirmation to the person who filled in the form. Contact Form 7's own guide says it doesn't store submitted messages, and suggests Flamingo, a free plugin from the same author, to save them in WordPress.
That tells you an enquiry arrived. The work starts after that: who's calling back, whether anyone did, and whether it became a job. LeadCentre covers that part:
- A phone alert to the people on call, not an email waiting in a shared inbox.
- One-tap contact from the lead, with your wording ready to send.
- A status for every enquiry, from New to Won or Lost, so an unanswered one stands out.
- Follow-up reminders for the people you couldn't reach first time.
- Won values, so you can see what your contact form has brought in.
Say a roofer gets three enquiries on a wet Monday while they're on a job. Each one buzzes their phone. They ring two between jobs, mark the third for a follow-up at 5pm, and the reminder arrives when it's due.
Keep your Contact Form 7 email on as a backup. If those emails go missing, check your site's mail setup with your host or an SMTP plugin, because the webhook waits for that email to send. If Mail (2) already sends a confirmation, choose between it and Instant Replies, so the enquirer doesn't get two.
For agencies managing client enquiries
Each client's Contact Form 7 site connects to that client's own LeadCentre account. Every account has its own webhook keys, so a form posting to one client's URL can only create leads in that client's account.
Say an agency looks after ten client sites, all on Contact Form 7:
- Set up the first client, then repeat. Create the key and field matching once, save that client as a snapshot, and apply it to the next. Key names and field matching carry over. Each new client has its own URL to paste into that site's Webhook tab.
- Use the same tag names on every site, and the saved matching fits each one.
- Alerts go to the client's people. New lead pushes reach whoever is switched on for New lead alerts on that client's Team page, never your agency staff.
- Clients work their own leads in the app and portal and see only their own account. You decide which features each client's people can use, such as Connections, so the key and matching you set up stay as they are.
- Staff see the clients they're given. Agency Admins can open any client. Agency Users reach only the clients assigned to them.
More on roles, snapshots and plans in agency accounts.
Pricing and requirements
What you need for this connection. Prices for each plan and the Respond add-on are on the pricing page.
- LeadCentre plan
Any plan. The webhook, field matching, the app and Instant Replies are on every plan.
- Respond add-on
Optional, paid per account. Adds a dedicated UK business number, two-way SMS, calls forwarded to your phone, automatic text replies to new leads and missed calls, Lead Rescue follow-ups, and AI replies that stay off until you switch them on. About Respond.
- Contact Form 7
Free, from WordPress.org.
- CF7 to Webhook
Free, from WordPress.org. A third-party plugin that posts each submission as JSON.
- Flamingo (optional)
Free, from the author of Contact Form 7. Saves a copy of each message in WordPress.
- Messaging usage
Respond comes with monthly allowances. If one runs out, you're told and can buy credits for extra usage. Your form's enquiries are still saved as leads.
Common problems
My Contact Form 7 emails stopped after I turned on the webhook
CF7 to Webhook's Send Mail box starts unticked, and while it's unticked the form's emails are skipped. Open the Webhook tab, tick "Send CF7 mail as usually" and save the form.
Visitors see an error and nothing reached LeadCentre
Contact Form 7 shows an error when its email fails, and with Send Mail ticked the plugin only posts once that email has gone. So a mail problem stops the lead too. Check your site's mail settings with your host or an SMTP plugin. Flamingo keeps a copy of each message in WordPress while you sort it out.
I sent a test and nothing appeared
Check Send to Webhook is ticked on this form and the URL was pasted whole, including the ?key= part. Then check LeadCentre: listening stops after 15 minutes, and each key has its own page. A message Contact Form 7 marks as spam isn't posted, so test with ordinary details. If it still doesn't arrive, a security plugin or your host may be blocking outgoing requests, so ask them to allow hooks.leadcentre.com.
I'm getting "Webhook Error on Form" emails
The plugin emails the addresses under Errors when LeadCentre answers with a code outside its Success Codes. A 401 means the URL is wrong or was replaced, so paste in the current one. A 413 means the post was over 64 KB, usually because Send content is ticked under Files, so untick it to send a link to the file. A 429 means more than 120 posts a minute to one key.
Fields arrive with names like text-123
Contact Form 7 sends each field under its tag name. Add a webhook option to the tag, such as [text text-123 webhook:postcode], save, send another test while listening and match the new name. Set the old row to Do not use, which also stops it being flagged again.
Checkbox answers land in numbered fields
Each ticked box arrives on its own, as services.0, services.1 and so on, in the order they appear on the form. So services.0 holds the first ticked box, whichever it is. For the question you match to Enquiry type, use a drop-down or radio buttons, which send one value.
Questions about this connection
How do I send Contact Form 7 submissions to LeadCentre?
Install the free CF7 to Webhook plugin, open your form's Webhook tab, tick Send to Webhook and paste your LeadCentre webhook URL. Send a test while LeadCentre is listening, match the fields once, and every submission after that becomes a lead.
Can I receive Contact Form 7 lead alerts on my phone?
Yes. Install the LeadCentre app on iPhone or Android and sign in with your portal login. Each new lead sends a push notification to the people switched on for New lead alerts on the Team page, outside business hours too.
Can I manage submissions from multiple forms or websites?
Yes. Give each form or site its own key in Settings > Connections, named after it, and its leads show that name as their source. Forms with the same tag names can share a key and its matching. They all land in one Leads list, with the same statuses and follow-ups.
Can I send SMS replies to Contact Form 7 leads?
Yes, with the Respond add-on. It sends an automatic text reply to new leads who gave a mobile number, from a dedicated UK business number, and you can carry on the conversation by text. On every plan, the Text button on a lead opens your phone's messaging app with your template ready to send.
Does this replace Contact Form 7 email notifications?
No. It runs alongside them, as long as "Send CF7 mail as usually" is ticked in the plugin's settings. Keep one email coming to you as a backup. LeadCentre adds a status for each enquiry, follow-up reminders and a record of which ones you won.
Can my clients manage their own enquiries?
Yes. On an agency plan, each client has its own LeadCentre account, with its own webhook URL for their site. The client's team works their leads in the app and portal, and you can open any client you manage. See agency accounts.
Does Contact Form 7 keep a copy of each submission?
Not by itself. Contact Form 7's guide recommends Flamingo, a free plugin from the same author, to save messages in WordPress. With the webhook on, each submission is also a lead in LeadCentre.
Related features and guides
- WordPress formsEvery form plugin compared, with licence notes
- Gravity Forms setupIf you want stored entries and feed conditions
- Instant lead notificationsWho gets the alert, and when
- Lead follow-upsReminders for the calls you couldn't make
- Custom lead fieldsSomewhere for every extra tag
- Respond to new leads fasterWhat to do once the alert arrives
Connect your lead sources
Set up your LeadCentre account and connect this source, and your next enquiry can arrive on your phone.