Today we've got a side by side comparison of two great form builders - our very own Formidable Forms and Gravity Forms
When shopping around for an online form builder, you’ve no doubt got a lot of questions. Which one is best for me? Which one is better value?
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 aim to be as objective and fair as possible here. We’ll be talking about the pros and cons of both plugins and what to look for in a form builder. We want to simply help you make your mind up by providing you with accurate and fair information.
So, let’s take it from here.
What is Formidable Forms?
Formidable Forms is a complex form builder made easy with a drag-and-drop design. We want to make it easy for anyone to become a form building master. Formidable is designed around and focuses on what happens with data after it has been collected.
What is Gravity Forms?
Gravity Forms is also a simple drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress. It differs from Formidable in the sense that it's mostly designed around its 3rd party integrations.
Key things to look for in a form builder
- Ease of use
- Support
- Price
- Integrations and add-ons
Ease of use
Both plugins are designed to be 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 the process of building a form straightforward so that anyone can pick it up. With our 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 if you would rather not build a form yourself.
Gravity Forms has a simple design that allows you to choose exactly what you want to include in your forms. You can choose from a selection of pre-built form fields to build your form.
Please note though that both plugins do have some advanced features and will require a bit of a learning curve for new users.
Winner: Tie
Support
Support is incredibly important for any company who offers software as a service.
With Formidable Forms, we have an extensive log of support documentation and a growing support team to help our users navigate through any potential problems that occur. Our support is highly rated by our users.
Gravity offer a similar support documentation system and support ticket system like ourselves. They also have an online community where people can get help with add-ons from developers. Take a look at Gravity's ratings.
Winner: Formidable (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 we created a free version of Formidable.
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
On the other hand, 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: Prices range from free to $399
Gravity: Prices range from $49 to $259 (or $600+ for views and editing functionality)
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 our list of everything we support. Please note that many more integrations are available through Zapier.
Gravity also support a number of integrations, but with a larger selection than Formidable currently offers.
Winner: Gravity Forms
Why choose Formidable Forms?
Built-in views
Any data that's submitted in a Formidable form can be displayed on your WordPress site using our Views feature. 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 shortcode or a user's only entry.
Styling options
We want our forms to become exactly what you had in mind. That's why we've built in extensive styling options for you to customize your forms to your heart's content.
Custom post types
No one size fits all. Customization is important to us as it is to you. Users can create custom post types from the front-end of their site, as well as regular posts. Once you've created a custom post, they will show up in your form's 'Create Post' > 'Post Type' drop down.
Repeaters
If you need to add the details of multiple items in a form, our Repeaters feature lets 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.
Cascading lookup fields
This is handy if you need multiple forms to interact behind the scenes. Dynamically populate field options and values with data from other forms. You can automatically retrieve values and use in a dropdown, radio or checkbox field. This is really useful for fields like country/state/city or year/make/model. These available options are filtered by a value selected in a prior field. Lookup fields can also be used in place of complex calculations for price estimates or quotes. They can be simply filtered down to a price or final value once a user has selected particular options.
Dynamic relationship entry
This allows users to create dropdowns, checkboxes and radio buttons that are dynamically populated through submitted entries or categories. Dynamic fields can link entries together to allow users to make selections from data entered into other Formidable forms. Once linked, a parent-child relationship is created, allowing Views to show information from the linked entry, without duplicating any data.
Scale, slider and toggle fields
Change things up a bit with different types of form fields. With Formidable, 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
We want you to be able to customize your forms easily. With customizable HTML, you can take full control over how the form looks and what's visible to users or not. You can add a CSS class to your form or even move fields around how you wish.
Graphs and charts
Make use of submitted data by easily creating graphs or charts to display form entries on any page, post, View or widget. These will display live data and automatically update whenever a new entry is added or updated.
Why choose Gravity forms?
More integrations
Gravity has an extensive range of handy apps it can integrate with. More of these can be unlocked but will require upgrades from its basic version to their Pro or Elite versions.
Gravity Forms also enables more 3rd-party add-ons to improve usability and options for your business.
Pre-built payment fields
Gravity's method is to supply users with pre-built form fields to make form building simple. Of their selection of pre-built fields, you can choose a payment field which makes adding in payment options quick and easy.
Conclusion
Overall, if you're looking for free contact forms or advanced applications where lots of features are needed, we would recommend Formidable Forms.
However, if you must have direct integrations and Zapier isn't an option for you, then we'd suggest Gravity Forms for their greater range of integrations.
We hope this breakdown has helped clear up any questions you had about either plugin. Whichever plugin you choose is entirely up to you and your own personal preferences and business needs.
If you’re interested in giving Formidable a go, take a look at our fantastic range of features for more information.
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.
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.