Zapier is an automation platform that connects the apps in your marketing and operations stack without requiring custom code. In the WordPress context, it serves as the connector between your website (where leads, form submissions, and user actions happen) and everything downstream: your CRM, email platform, Slack, Google Sheets, project management tools, and more.
This post covers the practical ways to integrate WordPress and Zapier — what triggers are available, how to connect your WordPress data to the tools that need it, and where attribution fits in the picture.
How WordPress and Zapier Connect
Zapier connects to WordPress through two main paths:
The Official WordPress Plugin
Zapier’s official WordPress app (available at zapier.com, under Apps > WordPress) connects to your WordPress site via the WordPress.com REST API — but importantly, this works for self-hosted WordPress.org sites through the Jetpack plugin, which bridges the two. If you have Jetpack installed, Zapier can trigger on new posts, new comments, and a few other core WordPress events.
Limitations of the native Zapier WordPress connection: it’s primarily built around post publishing events (useful for content automation) rather than form submissions, lead capture, or WooCommerce events. For most marketing automation use cases, you’ll use a different path.
Form Plugins With Direct Zapier Integration
This is where Zapier becomes powerful for WordPress marketing. Most major WordPress form plugins have built-in Zapier integrations that trigger on new form submissions:
- Gravity Forms — Gravity Forms’ Zapier add-on (part of the developer license) triggers on any form submission and passes all form field data to Zapier. This is the most flexible option for complex forms.
- WPForms — WPForms Elite includes a Zapier integration that triggers on form submission and passes field data. Works with any WPForms form type.
- Elementor Forms — Elementor’s form widget includes a Zapier action that fires on submission.
- Contact Form 7 — CF7 does not have a native Zapier integration, but the CF7-to-Zapier plugin adds one. For CF7 users, this is the most common connection method.
- Formidable Forms — includes a Zapier integration in its Business plan.
When a form submits in WordPress, Zapier receives the submission data (all the fields the user filled in) and can pass it to any app in Zapier’s catalog.
WooCommerce via Zapier
WooCommerce has multiple Zapier integrations. The most reliable is through Uncanny Automator (a WordPress plugin that provides triggers for WooCommerce events and pushes them to Zapier) or through the WooCommerce Zapier official plugin. Events available include: new order placed, order status changed, new customer, product purchased, subscription created, and more.
With WooCommerce connected to Zapier, you can pass order data to any downstream app: create a row in Google Sheets for every order, add the customer to a CRM, send a Slack notification to your team for high-value orders, or trigger a post-purchase email sequence in a platform not natively integrated with WooCommerce.
High-Value WordPress-to-Zapier Automations
Form Submission to CRM
The most common WordPress + Zapier automation: a form submission on your WordPress site creates a new lead or contact in your CRM. This applies to contact forms, quote requests, demo requests, consultation bookings, and any other form where you want the data in your CRM immediately without manual entry.
Trigger: New form submission in Gravity Forms (or WPForms, Elementor Forms, etc.)
Action: Create contact in HubSpot / Pipedrive / Zoho CRM / Salesforce / whatever CRM you use
For this zap to be truly useful, the form should capture the fields your CRM needs: first name, last name, email, phone, and any relevant qualification fields (budget, company size, project type). Fields that go through Zapier are mapped one-to-one to CRM properties.
Form Submission to Email Marketing Platform
Form submitters who opt in to email marketing should be added to your email platform’s list immediately. While most major email platforms (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, etc.) have native WordPress plugins, Zapier is often more flexible — you can pass any field, tag the subscriber based on which form they submitted, and trigger different list additions or automations based on the form’s source.
Trigger: New form submission in WPForms
Action: Add subscriber to ActiveCampaign with tag = “Lead Magnet A”
Lead Notification to Slack
For teams that need to respond to leads quickly, a Zapier zap that posts a message to a Slack channel for every new form submission means your team sees new leads the moment they come in — without logging into your CRM or email platform to check.
Trigger: New form submission
Action: Send message to #leads Slack channel with the submitter’s name, email, and the message they sent
New WooCommerce Order to Google Sheets
For stores that want order data in a spreadsheet for analysis, reporting, or sharing with a team that doesn’t have WooCommerce access, a zap that appends a new row to Google Sheets for every order keeps your data in a format anyone can work with.
New Blog Post Published to Social or Email
Zapier’s WordPress trigger for “new post published” can automatically post to social platforms or trigger an email notification to subscribers when new content goes live. This works through the Jetpack connection and is a lightweight alternative to dedicated social scheduling tools for teams that publish infrequently.
Where Attribution Gets Complicated With Zapier
Here’s the attribution gap that Zapier doesn’t solve on its own: Zapier passes the form submission data to your CRM, but it doesn’t pass the lead source (what marketing channel brought that person to your site) unless you explicitly capture it and include it in the form submission.
A lead arrives at your WordPress site from a Google ad, fills out your contact form, and the Zapier zap creates a contact in your CRM. The CRM contact has their name, email, and message — but not the fact that they came from a Google ad. When you look at your CRM, all leads look the same regardless of whether they came from organic search, paid ads, email campaigns, or referrals.
The fix: capture lead source on WordPress and include it in the form submission data before Zapier picks it up.
Hidden Fields for UTM Pass-Through
The standard approach: add hidden fields to your WordPress forms that capture UTM parameters from the visitor’s session. When the form is submitted, these hidden fields are included in the submission data that Zapier receives and passes to your CRM.
Implementation requires two pieces:
- JavaScript that captures UTM parameters on page load and stores them (in session storage or a cookie).
- A mechanism to populate the hidden form fields from that stored data before the form submits. Many form plugins (Gravity Forms, WPForms) support dynamic field population from query string parameters; others require a JavaScript snippet that fills the hidden fields from stored values.
Once implemented, every form submission includes utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, and any other UTM fields you captured. Zapier passes these to your CRM as contact properties, and your CRM gains lead source data for every contact.
First-Party Attribution Tools
A more robust approach is to use a dedicated first-party attribution tool like Sales Provenance that handles the UTM capture, session persistence, and form field population automatically — without requiring you to build and maintain the custom JavaScript implementation. The tool also handles the case where a visitor’s original source (from a different session or after clicking through multiple pages) needs to be tied to their eventual conversion, rather than just capturing whatever UTM is in the URL at the moment of form submit.
The Zapier integration continues to work as the transport layer (form submission to CRM), while the attribution tool ensures the lead source data is accurate and complete in the form fields that Zapier picks up.
Zapier vs. Native Integrations for WordPress
Many WordPress plugins have native integrations with major tools (Gravity Forms connects directly to HubSpot, WPForms connects to Mailchimp, WooCommerce connects to Klaviyo) without needing Zapier in the middle. When should you use Zapier instead of a native integration?
- When no native integration exists for the specific tool combination you need. Zapier’s catalog covers thousands of apps; if your CRM or email platform isn’t natively supported by your form plugin, Zapier bridges the gap.
- When you need logic and filtering — Zapier’s “Paths” feature lets you route different form submissions to different destinations based on field values. If a form has a “budget” field and you want small-budget leads to go to one CRM pipeline and large-budget leads to another, Zapier handles that routing where native integrations typically don’t.
- When you need to trigger multiple actions from one event — a single form submission can trigger a CRM contact creation, a Slack notification, and a Google Sheets row append simultaneously through one Zapier zap (or multi-step zap).
- When you need a lightweight solution without plugin overhead — adding yet another plugin for each native integration versus one Zapier connection that handles multiple destinations.
For most WordPress marketing stacks, Zapier and native integrations coexist: native for the most critical paths (form-to-CRM, WooCommerce-to-email) where reliability is paramount, Zapier for secondary routing, notification, and edge cases.
If you want help setting up WordPress-to-Zapier automation with proper lead source attribution included from the start, Sales Provenance is built for this.