Qualify Contact Form 7 leads with Gemini, HubSpot and Slack

Every Contact Form 7 submission goes to one n8n webhook the moment it passes the spam check. In n8n, Gemini sorts it into lead, support or spam and scores leads from 1 to 5. Leads are saved to HubSpot with a note and posted to your sales channel, support requests go to their own Slack channel, and spam stops there.

Why it goes through n8n

Contact Form 7 saves nothing to the database. Without a webhook, the notification email is the only copy of a lead, and a broken mail setup loses it without a trace. This build sends the submission out before the email, so HubSpot and Slack get the lead whether or not the email arrives.

n8n holds the Gemini, HubSpot and Slack connections, so WordPress only ever talks to one URL. Change the categories, swap the model or send support requests to a help desk later, and nothing changes in WordPress.

What you need first

1. In n8n, import the template Qualify WordPress Contact Form 7 leads with Gemini, HubSpot and Slack. In its Settings node, describe your business in one sentence (Gemini scores leads against it), pick your sales and support channels, and check the field names match your form (the defaults match the stock Contact Form 7 form).
2. Connect Gemini (an API key from Google AI Studio), HubSpot (a private app token with the contacts read and write scopes) and Slack (a bot token with chat:write, invited to both channels) inside n8n.
3. Open the New Lead Webhook node, add a Header Auth credential with the name X-Webhook-Token and a long random token as the value, and copy the node's production URL.
4. Import this build. The webhook arrives disabled: replace its endpoint URL with that production URL, give the import the same token when it asks for the credential, then enable it. The token lives in the Credentials Vault and is never part of a shared build.

What gets sent

{
  "your-name": "Ada Lovelace",
  "your-email": "[email protected]",
  "your-message": "Hi, I'd like a quote.",
  "form_title": "Contact form 1",
  "page_url": "https://example.com/contact/"
}

wpcf7_before_send_mail hands over the form, an abort flag and the submission. args.2.fields.your-name, args.2.fields.your-email and args.2.fields.your-message keep their names, args.0.title becomes form_title and args.2.meta.url becomes page_url. Nothing else travels, because unmapped fields are dropped.

If your form has more fields (phone, subject, a consent box), map args.2.fields.your-phone (or whatever the field is called) to the same name. The template shows every extra field to Gemini and puts it into the alert and the HubSpot note on its own, so there is nothing to change in n8n.

Why this hook

Contact Form 7 validates the fields and runs its spam check first, then fires wpcf7_before_send_mail, and only then sends the email. Bot spam never leaves WordPress, Gemini catches the human-written pitches that get past it, and a failed email no longer means a lost lead.

If a delivery fails

Delivery is asynchronous, so the visitor never waits on n8n. A failed POST is retried 5 times (1m, 2m, 4m, 8m) and every attempt is kept in the delivery log with the full request, which means the lead itself. If n8n was down for the whole ladder, hit Replay once it's back.

A 200 from the webhook node only means n8n accepted the submission. Check n8n's own execution list to see how each submission was sorted. If Gemini is down, the lead still goes to sales unscored, and if HubSpot rejects a lead, the Slack alert says why.