The Gravity Forms Repeater Alternative - That Works!

Looking for a Gravity Forms repeater alternative for dynamically duplicating fields? Here's a form builder with all the repeater field options you need: Formidable Forms!

Approximate read-time: 5 minutes

Here's the thing about the Gravity Forms Repeater feature... you need to be a developer to use it! That's no exaggeration. This is a highly sought-after feature that is leaving many Gravity Forms users disappointed.

On their website, it states their repeater feature is "only intended for developers who can build their forms programmatically"... yikes! That means there are no UI components to help the average user build a form with repeaters.

Here's some good news: there is an alternative to Gravity Forms! It's our very own WordPress form builder, Formidable Forms. For those of you who don't know us, we've been in the WordPress forms game for 10+ years.

In this article, we'll compare the Formidable repeater field against the Gravity Forms Repeater.

What are Repeaters?

Repeater fields allow users to dynamically create "repeating" form fields within a form. Here's what they look like in Formidable Forms:

The main purpose of a repeater is to keep forms trim while giving users the option to enter more info as needed. Essentially, those using your forms can duplicate multiple fields, as many times as they need.

One simple example? A tour company could allow users to add multiple members of a tour group via one form. That sure beats filling out the same form multiple times!

Gravity Forms Repeater vs. Formidable

How does the Gform repeater stack up against the Formidable repeater field type? Let's compare the main features to see which forms' repeater field wins.

Unfortunately, it's not really a fair fight. Formidable's repeaters are a fully developed plugin feature. Gravity Forms has built a framework around a modified nested form setup, but you'll still need to program and design a form with multiple repeaters from top to bottom.

Still, let's take a closer look - lest we repeat ourselves further!

Importing & exporting data

With Formidable, users can export all data collected via repeater fields - as it should be. This is done directly within the Formidable import/export tool.

In October 2020, we expanded this feature to allow for CSV export. Although Formidable has allowed for CSV exporting for a while, repeater fields were limited to XML.

How about Gravity Forms? With Gravity repeater fields, there is no easy option to export data from repeater fields. Currently, their support doc suggests using conditional logic to filter out entries of a repeater's sub-fields. Sounds complicated!

Repeater layout

Every time a repeater adds itself to a form, the format and layout should be pre-defined. Formidable Forms handles this for you. Just choose your preferred layout from the dropdown menu.

As for Gravity Forms, since there is no UI for their repeater fields... well, you're on your own.

Repeater buttons

With repeater fields, there are two main buttons: the add button & the remove button.

And actually, you can crack into the form settings and change the text labels to whatever you want! It's all done within the form editor.

And you can even mix and match text links & icons. Keep both, or choose one.

With Gravity Forms, you would need to program all of this from scratch. Having a predefined custom CSS would make things somewhat easier at least.

Repeater limit

With the Repeat limit, you can set the maximum number of rows a user can add in a Repeater field. If no value is set, it will allow users to submit as many rows as they want.

Again, Gravity Forms has no such setting.

Setting up repeater fields

With Formidable's form builder, adding a repeater field is easy. Just click on the Repeater field in the fields panel of our drag and drop form builder.

From there, drop in the fields that you need into the repeater. Voila!

With Gravity Forms, this is another thing you would need to program yourself. If you are familiar with field inputs, field IDs, form IDs, and coding, this will be a lot easier! Although they do provide some sample code in their support docs, which is nice.

Repeater styling

Formidable Forms comes with some styling options built-in for our repeater fields. Again, Gravity Forms has no such options.

Would you choose the Gravity Forms repeater?

Gravity Forms has a very devoted user-base. For a premium-only plugin, that's a very strong accomplishment. Unfortunately, Gravity Forms repeaters have been in beta for months with no sign of a release in sight.

In fact, there's even more stuff that Formidable's repeater fields can handle. For example, users can:

• Get the total of the values of a Repeater field
• Calculate the number of rows in a repeater
• Use repeater form data to create custom Views
• Advanced developer hooks expand possibilities even further

So, would you choose Gravity Forms repeaters? It might be time to give Formidable Forms a try. Which, by the way, you can do risk-free for 14 days with our money-back guarantee. If you don't like Formidable, we'll refund you 100% of what you paid no questions asked.

Also, users switching from Gravity Forms to Formidable can import all their data the easy way by using our migrator plugin. This is a plugin that will import data from Gravity Forms to Formidable.

Don't hesitate to give our premium plans a look! Or, dip your toe in the water with our free WordPress plugin. Thanks for stopping by!