If you want a great form builder that will help you get the job done, then we have two for your consideration.
You're in a tough spot. You've been using Gravity Forms for years, but it's not quite meeting your needs anymore and you can't find anyone to help with the transition. Never fear!
Form builders are an integral part of your WordPress website, whether you're adding a contact form or creating eCommerce checkout systems. The best option will depend on what features and functionality they offer, as well as how easy to use they are! Let's take a look at two great options: Gravity Forms and Formidable Forms.
What's the Best Gravity Forms alternative?
It’s a big decision to make if you rely heavily on the use of forms for your website. So, today we’ve put together a side by side comparison of our own software and another popular form builder: Gravity Forms. If you've heard of Gravity Forms, you may be wondering if there's an alternative form builder or vice versa.
We’ll talk about the pros and cons of both plugins and what to look for in a form builder. We want to help you make your mind up by providing you with accurate and fair information.
👉 Read more: Best Free WordPress Form Plugins
What is Formidable Forms?
Formidable Forms is a complex form builder made easy with a drag-and-drop design. Formidable Forms focuses on what happens with data after it has been collected.
🥰 Want to make the switch to Formidable Forms?
Use our free Gravity Forms importer and transfer all your data to Formidable in just a few clicks! Migrating to a new form builder has never been so easy.
What is Gravity Forms?
Gravity Forms is also a simple drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress. It differs from Formidable Forms in the sense that mostly of the extensions are provide by 3rd party developers.
Key things to look for in a form builder
- Ease of use
- Support
- Price
- Integrations and add-ons
Ease of use
Both plugins are easy to use with drag-and-drop functionality and have documentation to help you get the most out of the plugins.
Formidable Forms is designed to make building a form straightforward so anyone can pick it up. With a beautiful UI and styling options, you can truly make each form your own with minimal effort.
If you would rather use a template, we have a range of great form templates for you to easily download and use on your website. This saves you a lot of time when you would rather not build a form yourself.
Gravity Forms has a simple design that allows you to choose exactly what to include in your forms. You can choose from a selection of pre-built form fields to build your form.
Please note that both plugins have some advanced features and will require a bit of a learning curve for new users.
Winner: Tie
Support
Formidable Forms has extensive support documentation and a highly rated support team. The Slack Community is also great for getting help.
Gravity Forms offers a similar documentation system and support ticket system. They also have an online community where people can get help with add-ons from developers. Take a look at Gravity Forms ratings.
Winner: Formidable Forms (support is typically rated higher)
Pricing
Formidable Forms - Freemium
We know not everyone has the cash to invest in WordPress plugins, particularly new businesses. So Formidable Forms offers a free version too.
Formidable Forms is a freemium product, which means there is a free version and a premium version and it's totally up to you which one you choose.
Gravity Forms - Premium
You may be asking: "is there a free version of Gravity Forms?". Unfortunately, Gravity Forms is a premium plugin and doesn't currently offer a free version so you'd need to invest straight away.
Price comparison
Formidable Forms: Prices start at free to $399
Gravity Forms: Prices range from $59 to $259 (or $600+ for views and editing functionality)
Here's an example of what you might pay to use Gravity Forms to create polls and surveys:
| Create survey forms | $259 (Gravity Forms Elite) |
|---|---|
| Radio button images | $49 (Gravity Image Choices) |
| Graphs and charts | $199 (GFChart) |
| Gravity Forms Total | $507 / year |
With Formidable, you get all that for only $199 for the first year.
Or, if you want to build an application like a directory:
| Create custom posts and forms with chained select | $259 (Gravity Forms Elite) |
|---|---|
| Display tables and lists and front-end editing | $159 (Gravity Views) |
| Graphs and charts | $199 (GFChart) |
| Scheduled listing removal | $129 (ForGravity Entry Automation) |
| Limit number of listings per user & Preview listings | $149 (Gravity Wiz) |
| Gravity Forms Total | $895 / year |
In this case, you'd get all this in the Formidable Business+Views plan starting at $299.
Winner: Formidable Forms (for most cases)
Integrations and add-ons
Formidable Forms supports a number of integrations with your favorite apps. Take a look at the list of everything we support. Also, many more integrations are available through Zapier.
Gravity Forms also supports a number of integrations, with a larger selection than Formidable Forms currently offers.
Winner: Gravity Forms
Why choose Formidable Forms?
If you are looking for a Gravity forms alternative, Formidable Forms could be your best option. Formidable matches Gravity Forms on most features without the need for expensive third-party plugins.
What's more, we have many more built-in features that you just can't find in Gravity Forms. To make things even easier, you can make the switch to Formidable with the handy Gravity Forms importer.
With the free Gravity importer plugin, you can migrate your forms and data in a few clicks. Then you'll be able to take advantage of all these great Formidable features:
Built-in views
Any data that's submitted in a Formidable form can be displayed on your WordPress site using Views in Formidable Forms Pro. This displays a list of all submitted entries and is useful for things like real estate listings, job boards, event calendars - the options are virtually limitless here.
Front-end editing
Users can update form submissions from the front-end of your site when logged in. You can decide exactly what submissions are editable for your users. It could be a View, a list of clickable entries with a shortcode or a user's only entry.
Styling options
You should have complete control over the way your forms look. That's why the extensive styling options are included so you can customize your forms to your heart's content.
Import entries
Do you need to use your entries? Or maybe you have leads on another service and would like them all in one spot? No problem. (Gravity importing is available in the Gravity View plugin.)
Repeaters
If you need to add the details of multiple items in a form, Repeaters let you do that. Users can add a group of fields any number of times. For example, you could use this for listing the number of individuals living in a home, adding different contact methods, or listing qualifications on a job application form.
Read more: Gravity Forms repeaters
Dynamic relationship entry
This advanced feature is similar to chained selects. It allows you to create dropdowns, checkboxes, and radio buttons that are dynamically populated through submitted entries or categories. Dynamic fields can link together data from forms so users can make selections without duplicating any information. This also creates a parent-child relationship which Views will use to show form data on other pages of the site.
Scale, slider, and toggle fields
Change things up a bit with different types of form fields. With Formidable Forms, you can use a scale, slider, or toggle in your forms for entries. These fields give users the option to display and use different types of submissions to give your forms some variety.
Customizable form HTML
With customizable HTML, you can take full control over how your form fields look. You can add a CSS class to your form or even move fields around how you wish.
Graphs and charts
Easily create graphs and charts to display form entries on your WordPress site. These will display live data and automatically update whenever a new entry is added or updated.
Why choose Gravity forms?
More integrations
Gravity Forms has an extensive range of apps it can integrate with. More of these can be unlocked but will require upgrades from the basic version to Pro or Elite.
Gravity Forms also has a network with more 3rd-party add-ons to extend the options for your business.
Is Formidable Forms the best Gravity Forms alternative?
Both Formidable Forms and Gravity Forms include vital features for advanced forms like file uploads, conditional logic, ReCAPTCHA, ajax submit, subscription forms, and user registration. Although some of the following are third-party Gravity Forms add-ons, both form builders offer WooCommerce, Salesforce, Constant Contact, Authorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, Hubspot, and MailChimp integration, plus others.
Overall, if you're looking for free contact forms or advanced applications where lots of features are needed, Formidable Forms will be better than Gravity Forms for you.
However, if you need more direct integrations and Zapier isn't an option for you, then we'd suggest Gravity Forms for their greater range of integrations.
Whichever plugin you choose is up to you and your own personal preferences and business needs. We've compared a few other WordPress form builder plugins if you're still looking for more information.
If you're using Gravity Forms and are ready to make the switch to Formidable, our Gravity Forms importer plugin can help with a quick transition.
Ready to get started with Formidable Forms? Take a look at our fantastic range of form builder features for more information.
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I have been using Formidable Forms for many years on my clients' sites and recommend it often for member profiles and directories. The advantage that Formidable Forms has over Gravity Forms is the ability to limit a user to one submission which is useful for profiles and member directories.
You can limit submissions in Gravity too.
I used to use Gravity Forms and got frustrated with their support staff. They were downright hostile toward me even though the problem they said was with me ended up being with them. They NEVER apologized or tried to make it right so I left and tried Formidable and have been recommended Formidable Pro for many years now!
To the "Why choose Formidable Forms or Gravity Forms?" 9 Reasons for FF and only 2 for GF it sounds a bit biased, doesn't it?
I have used both.
It is true that thanks to the immense amount of 3rd party add-ons, with GF you can do almost anything, but the problem with that approach could be that you depend on plugins made by different developers / companies on the same site and when you get an issue getting support can be a bit frustrating sometimes, besides that every extra plugin is also an extra cost.
As a rule of thumb, if you can achieve with FF all what your project needs, go for FF, it is an integrated solution with excellent customer support.
If your project needs very special requirements which FF and their add-ons do not fullfil and you do not want to invest in custom development but it can be achieved with GF (or any other tool like Toolset, Jet Engine, Metabox.io, Caldera, WPForms or similar) plus any of their 3rd party add-ons, then go with one of those tools.
If your project is something you cannot not even achieve with WordPress itself (nevertheless it is still a CMS) then you can go with tools like Bubble.is, knack, Zoho Creator or similar which are also oriented to non developers and if you know a bit of code there are tools like anvil.works or similar.
Havent tried GF yet. FF has everything I need. The only other form builder I used is the VFB (and VFB pro) by Matthew Muro.
It has all the basic features that I need. But when I found FF, Im damn impressed. It's the last form builder I bought and never looked back.
I've been comparing it with GF a long time ago, but whenever I google something I need to be done in a form, FF documentation and support forums always come first in the search results. 😄👍
And Steph Wells is very active in the help forum as welk. I didn't actually know that she's the FF founder until recently. I thought she's just one of the very diligent support staff. Founders usually just chill at home and let their employees do the work. But Steph is different. She's very helpful and supportive and never gets tired of innovating an already impressive product. That's what I love about Formidable Forms. Like 1+, they never settle. 😍
Hi,
Nice comparison... I tried GF early on, it was nice but the addons that I need got to be super expensive. A views addon for GF is $89 which is in included in FF... Having many addons from multiple places can be a hassle... I have used FF for years and it just gets better and better!
🙂
I've been a Gravity Forms user for years and love it, but am impressed with Formidable Forms and appreciate this comparison. Considering it was written by FF, it's pretty even handed. Thanks for the info!
I am a customer of formidable pro since 2013. I was remembering at that time I was looking for a plugin form that enabled me to show entries in the front end with ease, Jamie was helping me very enthusiastically. And I found formidable pro with its built-in view features, it was perfectly fit my project requirements. Until now I am still using formidable pro and my favourite views features. Thanks