WordPress Plugin · v1.0.0 · Coming soon
Form Flight Recorder
Reconciles every form submission against the notification it should have produced — and raises the alarm when a form goes silent.
- WordPress 6.2+
- PHP 7.4+
- GPLv2+
- CF7 · WPForms · GF · Ninja · Fluent
Free core coming to the WordPress.org plugin directory. This page is the plugin’s official home.
The lead came in. The email never existed. Your mail logger has nothing to show you.
Two form failures cost real money, and no mail logger can see either. The first: someone submits, the form plugin should generate a notification, and — because of a broken setting, a conflicting plugin, an update — it never does. There is no email to log, no error, nothing. The second is quieter still: the form itself breaks, submissions stop existing, and the first sign is a client asking why the leads dried up. Form Flight Recorder watches both ends of the contract: every submission matched to the notification it owed, and every form’s pulse watched for the day it flatlines.
How it works
It reconciles the contract every form makes.
Job one · Reconciliation
Match every submission to the email it owed you
When someone submits a form, the plugin knows a notification is now owed — to you, to the customer, to both. Form Flight Recorder records the submission, waits out a grace period, and checks the notification actually got generated. Not delivered — generated. Because the failure no mail logger can see is the email that never existed in the first place.
- Adapters for Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms and Fluent Forms — each speaking its plugin’s own protocol.
- Expectations derived from each form’s real settings: notifications disabled means nothing is owed, no false alarm.
- Missing notifications created as findings after the grace period, deduplicated, with the evidence attached.
1 missing notification · 1 form gone silent
5 forms watched across 3 plugins · 214 submissions reconciled this month. Recipients stored masked; field contents never stored.
Recent reconciliation
| Contact · CF7 | Submission → notification generated to sa•••@… | |
| Request a quote · WPForms | Submission → notification MISSING owed 2, generated 1 | |
| Careers · Gravity Forms | Submission → notification generated gform event captured | |
| Newsletter · Fluent Forms | Notifications disabled — nothing owed informational |
Job two · The heartbeat
Notice when a form stops submitting at all
The nastier failure is upstream: a broken script, a captcha misfire, an update that ate the submit button. Submissions do not fail — they stop existing. Form Flight Recorder baselines each form’s normal rhythm and raises the alarm when a form that used to submit goes quiet, before a week of dead leads teaches you the hard way.
- Per-form baselines — a form with no history is never flagged, so new forms cannot cry wolf.
- Silence findings deduplicated for 48 hours: one alarm, not forty.
- Instant email alerts with the failing form named in the subject, throttled per form per day.
Form pulse · baselined
| Contact | ~3.2/day · last submission 2 hours ago |
| Request a quote | silent ~1.8/day baseline · nothing for 4 days |
| Warranty claim (new form) | No baseline yet — never flagged |
Silence is a finding
A broken form produces no errors, no entries and no emails. The only signal left is the rhythm — so that is what gets recorded.
Generated, not delivered
Mail loggers watch the pipe. Form Flight Recorder watches the obligation: submission in, notification owed, notification generated — or a finding. It is the only vantage point that catches an email that never existed.
Five plugins, one ledger
CF7’s sent-status, WPForms’ process-complete protocol, Gravity Forms’ notification events, Ninja’s dispatch filter, Fluent’s entry hooks — five different dialects reconciled into one ledger you can actually read.
Proven against the real plugins
The adapters were verified against the real form plugins with real submissions — CF7, WPForms, Ninja and Fluent live from WordPress.org — not simulated look-alikes.
In the free build
Complete for watching one site’s forms.
Nothing below is limited, metered, or unlocked by payment.
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Five adapters
Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Fluent Forms — detected automatically, no configuration.
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Submission ledger
Every submission recorded with its notification outcome and masked recipient — evidence, not guesswork.
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Missing-notification findings
The reconciler names every email that should have existed and does not, after a fair grace period.
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Zero-submission heartbeat
Baselined per form; a form that goes quiet gets a finding before the silence costs you a week of leads.
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Instant alerts
An email the moment a notification goes missing, with the form named in the subject — throttled per form per day.
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Daily digest
The silent forms and missing notifications of the last 24 hours, in one email.
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Site Health integration
Form-pipeline status in WordPress’s own Site Health screen.
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WP-CLI with JSON
The whole ledger as data, for scripts and fleet dashboards.
Free vs Pro
Pro is for when the leads belong to clients.
The free build already reconciles and alarms completely. Pro adds judgement and reach: weekend-aware thresholds, proof the form is still on its page, Slack, and a fleet endpoint.
| Capability | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| All five adapters with notification reconciliation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Zero-submission heartbeat with per-form baselines | ✓ | ✓ |
| Instant alerts + daily digest | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-form overrides and grace tuning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Site Health, WP-CLI with JSON | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sites your licence covers | One, complete | 5 · unlimited on Agency |
| Weekend-aware silence thresholds | — | ✓ |
| Page-presence check — the form is actually on the page it should be on | — | ✓ |
| Slack & webhook alerts | — | ✓ |
| REST endpoint + CSV export · 90-day retention | — | ✓ |
Pro · founder pricing
Pro
$99/yr
Agency
$249/yr
14-day trial, no card required. Annual, in US dollars. Pro is sold and licensed through Freemius, the merchant of record.
Questions people ask.
I already have a mail logger. Isn’t this the same thing?
No — a mail logger records emails that were handed to WordPress. Form Flight Recorder catches the two failures upstream of that: the notification that was never generated (nothing reaches the logger), and the form that stopped submitting entirely (there is no email and no entry). Loggers watch the pipe; this watches the obligation.
Which form plugins does it support?
Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms and Fluent Forms — free and paid tiers alike, detected automatically. Forms from other plugins are simply ignored; nothing breaks.
Will it false-alarm on forms with notifications turned off?
No. Expectations come from each form’s own settings. Notifications disabled means nothing is owed and nothing is flagged — the reconciler is only ever loud about an email the form was configured to send.
Will a brand-new form trigger the silence alarm?
No. The heartbeat only fires for forms with an established baseline. A form that has never submitted has no rhythm to fall out of.
Does it read my visitors’ submission contents?
It records that a submission happened and what notification it owed — recipients are stored masked, and the plugin never stores form field contents.
What does uninstalling remove?
Everything: the ledger table, options, baselines and schedules.
How many leads did the silent week cost?
Every agency has the story: the form broke on a Tuesday, and somebody noticed the following Thursday. Form Flight Recorder makes that story one alert long.