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Your Guide to Form Actions in WordPress

Adding form actions in WordPress is indispensable. Just imagine yourself filling out an online form and after you submit it, there is no follow-up email, no confirmation message, and no activity at all. You would probably question whether or not the submission went through.

Form actions are the heart of your WordPress forms because they automatically trigger specific actions after the form submissions. This can include actions such as: sending notification emails, collecting payments, saving form submissions, or redirecting users to a different URL. The list goes on. 

Luckily, using our contact form plugin, you can easily create form actions, add multiple actions to your form, and even expand your form action options when paired with our integrations.

Form actions are more powerful than you think and they can make your forms do cool things. So without further ado, let’s find out together what power lies within this really awesome feature!

Table of Contents

  1. How to add form actions in your WordPress form
  2. Default form submission actions
  3. Form actions to comply with GDPR
  4. How to control form actions with conditional logic

How to add form actions in your WordPress form

Before we unleash the full power of form actions, let us show you where to find and how to use form actions in your WordPress form. Navigate to your Ninja Forms dashboard and open your form. You can view, modify, duplicate and rename your actions under the Emails & Actions tab.

form actions in wordpress

You can also add the form actions you don’t see under the Emails & Actions tab. Simply click the blue plus sign button (Number 2 on the picture above) and add the form action you need to your WordPress form.

In fact, you can add as many available actions as you like to your form by simply making a copy. Once you click on the gear icon, the copy and the delete button will show up.

duplicate form action in wordpress

After duplicating the action, you will see the Copy of the action. You can rename it as you like but make sure you give it a name you recognize.

Default form submission actions

Your default form submission actions under the Emails & Action tab might be different depending on the type of forms you create or the pre-built template you choose.

Email action (Send a WordPress email)

This form action lets you send an email notification to the admin of submissions or send an email confirmation to your user after form submission.

If you don’t see Email action but Email Notification and Email Confirmation are showing instead, don’t worry. They are the same as the Email action but renamed and created on your form by default. You’ll need to only set up the “To address” you want the email to go to. Check our tutorial for sending an email with Ninja Forms if you want to learn more about this essential form action!

Success Message action

Don’t leave your users hanging with no response, and set up a Success Message action to boost engagement. How does it work? After users successfully submit their form, they will see a message confirming the submission went through. For more information about success message action, take a look at this article.

Redirect action

Want to send your users to a different landing page after they complete your form? Maybe you want to redirect your visitors to a customized thank you page?

Redirect action allows you to send users to a specific URL or another form automatically after submission. The best part is, it won’t take you more than a minute and no code is necessary! See yourself here.

Form actions to comply with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

Our form plugin features form actions that will help make GDPR compliance easier with your WordPress forms. This includes the following:

Record Submission (Save submission)

This form action allows you to save your submissions in WordPress. If you don’t wish to collect submission data on your forms, you can disable the storage of personal data or set the submission data to expire.

record submission in wordpress gdpr

You can also select to save only certain form fields on submissions. Want to learn more about Submission management? This excellent tutorial will guide you through!

Export & Delete Data Request Action

Our GDPR features are only meant to facilitate compliance by reducing the steps you need to take to meet common standards under the GDPR. Please be advised that this is not legal counsel.

Delete Personal Data form action allows users to request their personally identifiable information (PII) be deleted in compliance with the EU’s GDPR.

delete data request form action gdpr compliant

Export Personal Data allows your users to request that their personally identifiable information (PII) in your possession be exported in compliance with the GDPR.

export data request form action

When a user submits the form, these requests will be stored in the Tools tab of the WordPress dashboard, under the Erase Personal Data, or Export Personal Data section. Looking for more resources on GDPR? Check our guide on GDPR compliance with Ninja Forms and GDPR Compliance and WordPress Forms!

How to control form actions with conditional logic

If you ever wanted to create conditional actions in WordPress based on form choices and control these form actions, you don’t need to do your search on what plugin supports WordPress form logic. Our Conditional Logic add-on does the hard work for you, and no coding skills are necessary.

Let’s take a look at the most popular form actions in WordPress you can use with conditional logic, starting with the most popular one, which is sending a conditional email.

Send conditional email in WordPress

Thinking about how can you get the right people notified when a form is submitted? The great news is, all you need is an Email Action that can be duplicated, and renamed as many times as you want. Add the Conditional Logic add-on, and you can start sending conditional emails based on what the user inputs on the forms.

You’ll always want to set up 1 email action for each person or department that may need to be notified. 1 Option = 1 Email action.

Depending on what you need, your form may be more or less complex but for our demonstration, we’ll use a very simple form with a Radio field. You can of course use almost any field type you like.

Here is an example:

In our form, we are asking the user to choose the service from 4 options. We use the Radio list field type where each option represents the department. Based on which option the user selects, the right department will be notified by email.

This is how you want to set up your Email action:

First, you create as many email actions as is the number of options by simply duplicating the Email action. As we have 4 different options in our form, we need to create four different email actions. Each email action has to have the “To address” set for the department that needs to receive the email if this option has been selected by the user.

That’s it! If you would like to dive deeper into sending conditional emails, you can check our additional resources: How to Send Conditional Email from WordPress, Send Conditional Email with Ninja Forms, or Getting the Right Notifications to the Right People: A Tutorial.

Showing a different success message to different customers

Even though the Success Message might seem like a tiny little detail, it is not. There is great potential in it, especially if you are using conditional logic. You can keep your users engaged with your page by showing them segmented content, offering a coupon code, or downloading a link to a free e-book/cheatsheet/guide.

Skip the boring “Thank you, we received your submission and will contact you shortly!” Customize your messages, and start offering different lead magnets to different users. The imagination knows no bounds!

Let’s take a look at our simple demonstration of how you can show different messages to different users based on the user’s input on the form. The steps are very much the same as the other actions.

You’ll always want to keep in mind 1 Success Message Action  = 1 User Selection. If you have two options in your select field, you would set up individual action for option 1 (Learn WordPress), and option 2 (Learn HTML Quickly).

Success Message Selection
If the customer chooses the option for the eBook Learn WordPress, this is how you’ll want to set it up:

Success Message Conditonal Logic

You can customize each Success Message action using the Summernote WYSIWYG editor integrated into Ninja Forms. You can insert images, links, tables, and merge tags for better personalization. If you would like to learn more about the editor, you can check our super easy tutorial How to Easily Customize Your Ninja Forms Email!

Sending users to a different URL or a form with Redirect Action

Take Redirect action to another level with our Conditional Logic! You can trigger an action that directs users to different landing pages based on the user’s specific entries on their WordPress form.

Just like you applied logic to using an email action, the Redirect action works the same way. For each select field option, you need to create an individual Redirect action.

Let’s say you are making a quiz asking users what is their preferred vacation spot. First, you set up a radio list to give them options between the mountains, beach, and city. Depending on the options you defined in your form and which option your users choose, you can send them to the page of their interest.

Once your form is ready, head out to the Emails & Actions tab and create a Redirect action for each option (mountains, beach, city). This is how your Redirect action will look like if your user selects the option Mountains:

Redirect Action

In the URL field,  you enter the website where you want to redirect your users. You can set up the other Redirect actions with the same logic as shown in the picture above. Most importantly, make sure your conditions match the proper actions.

Unleash the power of form actions in WordPress!

Congratulations! You’ve officially become form action royalty. You’ve learned where you can add form actions in your WordPress forms, how to duplicate form actions and how to unlock the full power of form actions using the Conditional Logic add-on.

This impressive integration lets you send conditional email notifications to specific people or departments, customize success messages by offering different lead magnets, or redirect your form visitors to different landing pages. It doesn’t stop there, you can use conditional logic functionality with our Ninja Forms integrations and expand the form actions functionality even more.

Are you intrigued? The good news is unlike our competitors, we offer all our integrations including the Conditional Logic add-on individually, so you don’t need to tie yourself into a membership plan. With a 14-day money-back guarantee, you have nothing to lose!