Online forms are among the most widely used tools in digital marketing. However, their utility extends far beyond that. Whether conducting a survey or hosting an event, web forms serve versatile purposes across various domains. They come in different formats and cater to diverse needs.
Today, hundreds of plugins make it easy to create functional online forms—many without requiring any coding. With user-friendly interfaces, robust drag-and-drop capabilities, third-party integrations, and GDPR compliance features, creating professional forms has never been simpler.
Among the many form builder plugins available, certain names stand out, and one of the most recognised is Gravity Forms. Known for its straightforward functionality and extensive integrations, Gravity Forms was once a dominant force in the form-building space. However, its popularity has waned as newer, more versatile plugins emerge.
Why is Gravity Forms so popular?
Gravity Forms gained a strong following due to its efficient, time-saving features. Users could quickly design and publish forms on their websites, easily configure options, and embed forms seamlessly. Its intuitive interface, styling options, and advanced features, such as smart conditional logic, made it a go-to choice.
Key features include routing form entries to specific email addresses based on content, a honeypot to prevent spam, and optimisation tools that excite even novice users. Gravity Forms has long been synonymous with powerful form-building functionality.
However, despite its strengths, the plugin faces stiff competition. New form builders offering innovative and versatile features at more competitive prices are challenging its position.
Why are some seeking an Alternatives?
While Gravity Forms remains a prominent name in the form-building industry, its absence of a free version makes it less accessible for new users. This high cost, combined with emerging plugins offering similar or superior features at better prices, has led many users—beginners and experts alike—to explore alternatives.
Gravity Forms does boast advanced functionalities like payment fields and integrations, but the lack of cost-effectiveness can deter users from sticking with it, especially when competitors offer more value for less.
So, what Makes a Good Gravity Forms Alternative?
An effective alternative to Gravity Forms must check the following boxes:
- User-Friendly Interface
- Feature-Rich Functionality
- Intuitive Drag-and-Drop Form Builder
- Comprehensive Third-Party Integrations
- Reliable Premium Support
- Cost-Effective Pricing
Below, I’ll explore some of the best Gravity Forms alternatives that users love for their balance of functionality, simplicity, and affordability.
1. Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms is a popular plugin for creating online forms, whether you’re new to form creation or have experience. With this plugin, users can easily create both simple forms, like subscriptions, or more complex ones, like payment forms, all without needing to write any code. It also includes features like hooks, field templates, and built-in filters, making it a solid alternative to Gravity Forms.
The plugin offers a powerful drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to quickly add input fields. The fields are flexible, and you can save your favorites for future use. You can also import or export forms and fields, providing further customization options.
Ninja Forms includes a custom input mask, useful for correcting data formatting or ensuring required fields are filled. It also supports sending submission confirmation messages and redirecting users to specific pages. Additionally, you can edit and export form entries and email the data to other administrators after processing. The plugin allows for payment collection through PayPal Express, Stripe, Elavon, or Recurly.
However, there are some drawbacks. While there is a free version, its features are limited. The pricing plans can be quite expensive, with the Personal plan starting at $99 for basic functionality. If you want to purchase individual features, the cost can quickly add up. The Agency license, for full access, costs $499, making Ninja Forms one of the pricier form builder plugins available.
2. WPForms
WPForms is a strong alternative to Gravity Forms, offering a user-friendly experience for creating elegant forms on your WordPress site. It allows you to easily design various forms, including contact forms, subscription forms, and product purchase forms.
This plugin is highly accessible for beginners, with plenty of prebuilt form templates that can be customized. Its intuitive drag-and-drop feature makes the design process smooth and efficient. One standout feature of WPForms is its web and server performance optimization, which helps make it one of the fastest form builder plugins available.
WPForms offers a wide range of input fields, enabling users to create versatile and functional online forms to collect the information they need. Additional features like section dividers, HTML blocks, and custom CSS enhance the form-building experience, giving users more control over their designs.
However, the free version has limited features, with more advanced capabilities like multi-page forms and conditional logic reserved for paid plans. These plans range from $79 to $599, making WPForms a relatively expensive choice, especially if you require these advanced features.
3. Fluent Forms
Fluent Forms is known as the fastest WordPress form builder plugin, offering a lightweight and intuitive experience. Its sleek user interface ensures a highly user-friendly form-building process. With 45+ input fields, creating forms is effortless, making Fluent Forms a strong alternative to Gravity Forms.
The plugin’s interface is designed to accommodate all users, providing comfort and ease of use. You can quickly add fields to your forms using a smart drag-and-drop feature. Additionally, Fluent Forms offers over 70 prebuilt form templates to help you create forms quickly. The plugin is also GDPR compliant, ensuring data privacy.
Fluent Forms integrates with 45+ third-party services, including MailChimp, SendFox, Webhooks, Moosend, Slack, and Zapier, allowing for seamless email marketing and task management. For example, Trello integration lets you add cards directly to your board from form submissions.
Other notable features include the ability to manage and sort form submissions on a single page and send customized confirmation emails using conditional logic. It also includes spam filtering options like honeypot and reCAPTCHA for added security. Fluent Forms provides thorough documentation and priority support from a dedicated team of support engineers.
What sets Fluent Forms apart is its affordable pricing. The Single Site License starts at $79 annually, while the Unlimited License allows for use on unlimited websites for $899, a one-time payment. However, as a newer plugin, it may lack some features found in more established competitors, but it still offers plenty of value.
4. Everest Forms
Everest Forms is another viable alternative to Gravity Forms, offering a fast and lightweight form-building experience. This plugin allows you to create mobile-responsive forms for your WordPress site, with many essential features available even in the free version, and more advanced options in the premium version.
The free version includes useful input fields, a drag-and-drop builder, and some prebuilt form templates. You can easily track form submissions directly from your dashboard and export them as CSV files. It also supports Smart Tags and reCAPTCHA for added security, and all forms created with Everest Forms are fully responsive.
With the premium version, you gain access to additional features such as the ability to create surveys, polls, and quizzes, along with a geolocation feature. The premium version also integrates with services like MailChimp, Stripe, PayPal Standard, and Zapier, expanding your form’s functionality.
While Everest Forms’ pricing plans are relatively affordable, the Personal License starts at $69, which may be considered steep for new users who only need basic form-building features. Additionally, the premium version offers a limited number of integrations—only four—compared to other form builder plugins that provide more than ten.
5. Contact Form 7
Contact Form 7 is a completely free plugin, which allows you to install and use it on as many websites as you want. This is a major advantage, especially for users looking for a cost-effective option. Additionally, there is a large ecosystem of addons available for Contact Form 7, making it easy to extend its functionality as needed.
However, despite its initial popularity, Contact Form 7 is now starting to lose its user base. Other form builder plugins offer more advanced features and a better overall experience. While Contact Form 7 helped introduce the concept of contact forms to many users, it has not evolved significantly and struggles to keep up with more modern alternatives. As a result, it has become an underperforming plugin with many limitations.
While you can create a basic contact form with Contact Form 7, the plugin lacks essential features found in other form builders. It doesn’t offer prebuilt form templates, and if you need more advanced input fields, you’ll have to rely on third-party addons. There are no built-in features for managing submissions, so you will need additional addons just to track form submissions. Furthermore, Contact Form 7 does not support conditional logic and offers only one integration. The user interface is also quite basic, and its documentation is not very user-friendly.
Although Contact Form 7 is free to use, its functionality is quite limited, requiring you to purchase multiple third-party addons for additional features. This can quickly become costly, and finding the right addons is often a hassle due to the lack of a centralized directory on the official website. From form templates to premium support, everything requires additional purchases.
6. WeForms
weForms is a straightforward and user-friendly form builder plugin that, while relatively new, is quickly gaining traction as a top contender in the field. By offering a robust set of features at a competitive price, it’s earning users’ trust and proving to be a solid alternative to Gravity Forms. Even the free version offers a variety of useful functionalities.
The free version includes a drag-and-drop builder, allowing for easy form creation. It also supports form export and import, making it simple to reuse forms across different projects. Users will receive notifications whenever a form is submitted, and reCAPTCHA integration ensures the security of your forms.
weForms offers a live preview feature, allowing users to see changes in real-time. Built-in modules enhance the functionality of your forms, and forms created with weForms can be imported into other form plugins like WPForms, Gravity Forms, and Ninja Forms. Additionally, you can collect payments via PayPal and Stripe with the appropriate addons.
The plugin provides a range of pricing plans with useful features, though some of the functionalities may be slightly overstated in their documentation. For example, weForms claims to have 30+ input fields, but several fields, such as the dropdown and multi-select, essentially serve the same function. Similarly, the “multiple product fields” is essentially a radio field under a different name.
7. Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms lives up to its name by offering some of the most advanced form-building features available. While creating a simple contact form is easy, you can also build complex forms that incorporate conditional logic, calculations, and more. One standout feature is the ability to present collected data visually through graphs and views, which makes it a solid alternative to Gravity Forms.
The plugin is well-equipped with a variety of useful input fields, including single-line text, email, URL, radio, dropdown, and more. You can also use HTML blocks and hidden fields to add additional functionality to your forms.
Formidable Forms allows you to manage all your form submissions directly from the dashboard and easily export leads as CSV files. With over 15 third-party integrations, including popular services, the plugin offers a broad range of possibilities. Additionally, it is GDPR compliant, ensuring your forms meet privacy regulations.
However, Formidable Forms has its drawbacks. The basic pricing plan starts at $49, which may be steep for beginners. Even for more experienced users, this price feels high for a plugin with only a few features. The integrations are somewhat limited, and you don’t receive priority support unless you opt for the Elite package, which costs $299—a hefty price for full access to all features.
8. Form Maker by 10Web
Form Maker is a user-friendly form builder plugin that makes creating efficient contact forms simple. With its intuitive drag-and-drop feature and smart input fields, Form Maker offers an easy way to design responsive forms. The plugin is accessible to all users, regardless of experience, thanks to its brilliant and straightforward interface.
Form Maker provides over 40 input fields, allowing users to collect detailed information with ease. The drag-and-drop feature makes adding these fields to your forms seamless. You can also enhance user experience by breaking long forms into smaller sections. Additionally, the plugin lets you easily embed forms into blog posts.
The plugin offers 15 fully customizable themes across all pricing plans. You can apply these themes to your forms or adjust them to meet your needs. Form Maker also includes swift conditional logic, which simplifies complex forms and improves the user interface.
Form Maker offers a well-structured pricing plan, starting at a reasonable $45 and going up to $100. This pricing is practical, but there’s a catch: these plans only include six months of updates and premium support. Even the Advanced plan, which costs more, provides just one year of updates and support. After this period, you’ll need to renew your license at an additional cost. Furthermore, the base plans only include PayPal integration, and to access other features, you’ll need to purchase the Plugins Bundle at an extra cost.