Know when Contact Form 7 stops sending you enquiries.
Contact Form 7 does not keep a copy of each message. The email is the enquiry. When the email fails, the lead is gone, and nobody tells you.
Operanse works with Contact Form 7 to notice when its messages fail to send, and when the submissions a form normally gets stop getting through. Without reading a single message.
Form and email monitoring require Monitor ($39 USD/site/month) or Insight ($99). Your trial includes 14 days of Insight. Free Watch does not monitor forms or email.
Illustrative. One week of submissions to an enquiry form, drawn against the form’s own normal for each hour. On Tuesday morning the form goes quiet.
The visitor sees the error. You never do.
“There was an error trying to send your message.”
This is what Contact Form 7 shows a visitor when the site’s email fails. The visitor leaves. The usual causes are mail ones: SMTP login details changed, an email provider key revoked, the host blocking PHP mail, or a From address the provider refuses.
Real people rejected as spam
reCAPTCHA keys left on the old domain after a site move, Turnstile or Akismet misbehaving, or a spam setting tightened. Every visitor is told their message looks like spam.
The form breaks on the page
A plugin, theme, caching or JavaScript change stops the form submitting. Nothing reaches WordPress, so there is no error to find.
The form disappears
The page that held it is unpublished or rebuilt without it. The site still looks healthy.
Watch each form, and every message it tries to send
Failed sends are the main alert
Contact Form 7 tells WordPress exactly when a message was accepted by the form but its email did not go out. Operanse counts that as the form failing, judges it against the form’s normal and alerts you. The site’s email monitoring sees the same refusal with a reason, such as the SMTP login being refused or the mail server not answering.
Notice when a busy form goes quiet
Operanse learns how many messages each monitored form normally gets through at each hour of the week. If they stop arriving, whether the form is broken in the browser or real visitors are being rejected as spam, it raises an alert.
Rejections are counted apart
Spam, failed validation and an unticked acceptance box are counted separately from messages that went through. Bots failing your captcha do not cause alerts. A surge in rejections is visible, giving you a reason to check whether genuine visitors are being turned away.
Named by the page it sits on
Each form is shown by its page, such as “Contact” or “Get a quote”, with a link, found automatically from the form’s shortcode.
See what changed nearby
Plugin, theme and WordPress changes are tracked. An alert can show that your mail plugin, captcha plugin or theme was updated shortly before messages stopped. That is a place to start investigating, not proof of the cause.
An alert that tells you where to look
Illustrative example. Site name, counts and reason are examples.
The “Contact” form (page: Contact us) failed to send 4 of its last 4 messages.
Why: SMTP login refused (4, WP Mail SMTP).
Visitors were shown Contact Form 7’s error message. The enquiries were not emailed.
Receive alerts by email, Slack, SMS or WhatsApp. Insight also adds an AI review to every critical alert, with a likely cause and supporting evidence. 6 reviews per site per day are included.
Forms are found automatically. You choose what matters.
Operanse finds your Contact Form 7 forms and proposes the ones that look important. You confirm which to monitor and which are critical.
There is no tracking code to add to each form, and you do not need Flamingo or any other add-on that stores messages. Nothing is monitored until you confirm it.
Keep Contact Form 7. Add someone who hears the failure.
Contact Form 7 shows the visitor an error when sending fails. It has no way to tell you, because the channel it would use is the one that broke. Flamingo can store messages, but it does not alert anyone.
An uptime check sees the contact page load and misses all of this. Operanse watches what the form actually does, alongside email sending and the rest of your site’s operations. Agencies can see that activity across multiple client sites.
What this monitoring can, and cannot, tell you
Operanse does not fill in or test your forms. It watches real submissions.
A form receiving several enquiries an hour gives it evidence much sooner than one receiving a single enquiry a week. Quiet forms need more time before a lack of messages means something unusual. An unusual drop can also reflect fewer visitors, so an alert is a reason to investigate.
It sees whether each email was handed to your mail plugin or provider, not whether it reached the inbox. Bounces and spam folders are not seen.
Contact Form 7’s demo mode and skip-mail settings tell Contact Form 7 a message was sent when no email is attempted. Operanse does not flag those settings yet.
Operanse alerts you to what it sees. It does not repair forms, change settings or resend messages.
It never reads your messages
Operanse never records field values, message text or who sent a message. For forms, it sends the form’s number, the page it sits on, and counts of messages sent, failed and rejected.
For email monitoring, it never records email addresses, subjects, message bodies, headers or attachments. It sends counts, the mailer plugin’s name and a short failure category.
The agent is read-only. There is no capability for Operanse to change your site. Security
It won’t slow your forms down
Recording a submission means appending one line to a local file.
During a visitor’s page view, the agent makes no database query and no call to Operanse. Measured PHP overhead is about 0.02 ms per page view. Pages served from cache never load it. How it’s measured
If Operanse is unreachable, your site carries on as normal. Nothing waits on it.
Connect your site in four steps
Create an account at app.operanse.com and add your site.
In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New, search Operanse, and install Operanse Agent.
Paste the one-time pairing token into the agent’s settings page.
Operanse detects Contact Form 7 and finds your forms. Confirm which ones to monitor and which are critical.
Learning normal activity takes about 48 hours of data, so Operanse starts telling you what’s unusual from day three where there is enough activity. Allow about two weeks to learn a weekly pattern. Low-volume forms take longer to assess reliably.
Form monitoring from $39 a month
- Contact Form 7 monitoring
- Email sending, outside services, payments, background tasks, plugin and theme changes, and revenue estimates
- Alerts by email, Slack, SMS and WhatsApp
- Unlimited users and 30 days of history
- Ask Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor about your site over MCP
- Everything in Monitor, plus:
- An AI review with every critical alert, with 6 reviews per site per day included
- 90 days of history
- Higher SMS and WhatsApp limits
- Server resource monitoring
Prices are in USD per live site. Annual billing costs 10 times the monthly price: 2 months free. Organisations with 10 or more sites get 20% off every site. Staging and development copies are free on paid plans.
Your trial includes 14 days of Insight with no credit card. If you do not choose a paid plan, your account moves to free Watch. Form and email monitoring stop when the trial ends unless you choose Monitor or Insight. Pricing in full
Frequently asked questions
Will Operanse read my enquiries?
No. It records counts and outcomes, the form’s number and the page it sits on. It never reads field values, message text or who sent a message.
Do I need Flamingo?
No. Contact Form 7 reports each outcome to WordPress whether or not messages are stored.
What happens when the email fails?
That is the main alert. Each message the form accepted but could not email is counted as a failure, judged against the form’s normal, and alerted with the reason the mail was refused. Email monitoring
Does it work with reCAPTCHA and Turnstile?
Yes. Captcha and spam rejections are counted apart from messages that went through, so bots do not cause alerts. If real visitors start being rejected, the form’s successful messages fall below normal and that is noticed.
How quickly will it notice a broken form?
A failed send is counted as it happens. A form that has gone quiet takes longer: how long depends on the form’s usual activity and how much history Operanse has. Operanse watches real submissions; it does not run test submissions on a timer.
Does it work with other form plugins?
Yes. Operanse also works with Gravity Forms and WPForms. Custom forms can connect through six documented actions.
Which plan do I need?
Monitor or Insight. Both include form and email monitoring. The 14-day free trial includes Insight. Free Watch does not monitor forms or email.
Hear about the enquiry your site failed to send.
Let Operanse watch the forms your business relies on, count every failed send, and tell you when something needs attention.
Contact Form 7 is a trademark of its owner. Operanse is not affiliated with or endorsed by Contact Form 7.