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Every WordPress website needs at least one form. A site might need contact forms, email opt-in forms, surveys, quizzes, registration forms, feedback forms, payment forms…and that’s not even the full list – there are a lot of different forms!
Forms are important for various reasons. On a lot of sites, a form might be how you find work, grow your email list, get paid, connect with peers, and more. If your forms aren’t optimized, that could mean big issues.
Basically, you want to do your site’s forms right – and that means choosing the best tool for the job.
When it comes to creating forms on WordPress, Gravity Forms is one of the biggest names in the space.
It’s especially popular with WordPress developers and site builders because you can use it for pretty much any type of form, but it’s still beginner-friendly enough for anyone to use and benefit from.
In our hands-on Gravity Forms review, we’re going to take a detailed look at this popular option.
You’ll learn how it works, what it does well, and where it may fall short. By the end, the goal is that you’ll be able to decide if Gravity Forms is the right tool for your site and use case.
What Does Gravity Forms Do?
Gravity Forms is a full-featured WordPress form plugin. That means it helps you create pretty much any type of form on your WordPress site.
While that includes creating a simple contact form, Gravity Forms can also help you create much more advanced types of forms, which is one of its strong points.
As you can see in the screenshot above, Gravity Forms positions itself as more than just a “form plugin” – it’s “powerful data capture”.
Here are some examples of the types of forms that you can create:
- Contact forms – create basic contact forms and send yourself notifications (as well as storing submissions in your WP Admin).
- Payment forms – create payment forms and accept payments directly from the form using processors like Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net, and more. You can even offer coupons.
- Lead generation forms – create lead generation forms that automatically add contacts to your customer relationship manager (CRM) or email marketing service.
- WordPress user registration forms – create custom registration forms to let people register on your site.
- Surveys – create short or long surveys and analyze responses from your WP Admin.
- Polls – create simple or advanced polls and display the results on your site.
- Quizzes – create quizzes including custom grading and quiz results.
- Customer feedback – create forms to gather customer feedback and ratings, including methods like NPS (Net Promoter Score), Likert surveys, and more.
- Frontend content submission forms – create frontend forms that let users submit content to your site. For example, if you have a job board, you could create a form to let people submit jobs.
Automations and Integrations
Beyond these advanced form types, another area where Gravity Forms excels is in integrating with other tools and setting up simple or advanced automations.
For example, let’s say you have a workflow like this:
- A person submits a form.
- Your site sends them a confirmation email.
- You add them to your CRM with a certain tag based on how they answered the form.
- You add a new task in your project management software.
With Gravity Forms, you can set it up so that all of that happens automatically, which can go a long way towards simplifying your workflows.
Gravity Forms offers dedicated integrations with a range of different services:
- CRMs – including HubSpot, Agile CRM, Zoho CRM, and more.
- Email marketing services – including Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, and lots more.
- Help desks – like Help Scout.
- Project management software – including Trello and Breeze.
- Accounting software – like Freshbooks.
For tools where Gravity Forms doesn’t offer a dedicated integration, Gravity Forms still integrates with Zapier and webhooks. This lets you connect to any app that’s available on Zapier (or that supports webhooks in general).
Many other WordPress plugins also offer their own Gravity Forms integrations. For example, Jetpack CRM will integrate with Gravity Forms to create custom lead generation forms that feed into Jetpack CRM.
Conditional Logic
With conditional logic, you can show different form fields or perform different actions based on how a user has filled out a form.
For example, you could start by asking a user a question that provides multiple options and then ask new questions based on the choices made.
Where this gets really powerful, though, is when you use conditional logic in your integrations and automations.
For example, you could send different notifications to different people based on how someone filled out a form. Or, you could apply a different tag in your CRM based on options a user chose.
While this does make planning the form’s flow a little more complicated, this type of conditional logic can help you further automate your workflows in some really useful ways.
Other Notable Features
Here are some other notable features in Gravity Forms:
- Accessible design – all of the forms that you create with Gravity Forms are accessible, which is essential for not just creating a website that’s accessible for all users, but also complying with regulations such as the USA’s ADA.
- Multi-page forms – create forms that span multiple pages and let people save their progress.
- Signature fields – collect real signatures from people who fill out the form.
- SMS notifications – integrate with Twilio to send SMS notifications upon form submission.
- Video recordings – using Pipe, you can let visitors record their own custom video as part of your form.
- Anti-spam features – Gravity Forms includes its own anti-spam features and you can also integrate with third-party solutions such as Akismet and reCAPTCHA.
Can You Use Gravity Forms on WordPress.com?
Yes! If you’re on the WordPress.com plugin-enabled plans, you can install Gravity Forms on your site (as well as pretty much any other WordPress plugin).
We’ll show you how to install Gravity Forms on WordPress.com later in this review.
Do You Need Gravity Forms on WordPress.com?
If you’re already a WordPress.com user, whether or not you’ll benefit from Gravity Forms really depends on the types of forms that you need to create.
If all you need is simple forms, you can just use the Form block that’s available to all WordPress.com sites.
You only need Gravity Forms if you want to create more advanced types of forms.
Here are some areas where Gravity Forms excels over the Form block:
- More form types including payment forms, quizzes, and so on.
- Automations to let you automate actions based on form submissions.
- Integrations with third-party services like your CRM or email marketing service.
- Advanced field types like a signature field or file uploads.
- Conditional logic to display different form fields or perform different automations based on how people answer your form.
How to Create a Form With Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms offers a drag-and-drop form builder, which makes it easy for anyone to create forms.
In this section, we’ll take you through how it works from beginning to end.
If you want to follow along, Gravity Forms offers full-featured demo sites that you can use to test the plugin – you can create one by going to this page.
1. Create a New Form
To create a new form, you can go to Forms → New Form in your WP Admin.
This will prompt you to add a title and description, which is mainly for your own internal use to remember what the form does (though you do have the option of displaying these on the front of your site):
2. Add Form Fields
Now, Gravity Forms will send you to the drag-and-drop builder.
Gravity Forms divides its form fields into four sections:
- Standard Fields
- Advanced Fields
- Post Fields
- Pricing Fields
To add a field to your form, all you need to do is drag it onto the live preview from the sidebar on the right:
You’ll then see it appear in the visual preview.
To customize an individual field, you can click on it to open its settings in the sidebar. This will let you configure details such as labels, validation, appearance, whether it’s required or not, and more:
You can repeat the process to add more fields. In addition to input fields, you can also add your own content to help people fill out the form.
Here’s an example of a full form (using the premade Advanced Contact Form template):
3. Configure Form Settings
Once you’re happy with how your form looks, you can click on the Settings tab to configure all of your form-wide settings.
In the Form Settings tabs, you can configure a bunch of general settings, with some of the most useful ones appearing further down the page.
For example, you can add restrictions to your form:
- Only allow a certain number of entries.
- Only let people submit the form on certain days or during certain times of day.
- Require users to be logged in to submit the form.
You can also set up anti-spam features.
4. Add Confirmation Messages
In the Confirmations tab, you can set up the confirmation messages that display on your site immediately after someone submits a form.
You can create unlimited confirmations and use conditional logic to control when to display a message.
You can also use merge tags to include information from the form in your message. For example, you could address someone by their name:
5. Set Up Notifications
In the Notifications tab, you can set up the email notifications that Gravity Forms will send to you, the form submitter, and/or anyone else to whom you want to send a notification.
As with confirmations, you can create unlimited notifications and use conditional logic to control when to send them.
You can also use merge tags to include information from the form in your emails:
6. Choose How to Handle Personal Data
The Personal Data tab lets you control how to process user data, which is helpful for complying with regulations such as Europe’s GDPR:
7. Set Up Integrations (Optional)
If you’ve installed the add-on for one of Gravity Forms’ many integrations, you’ll get additional options in the settings area to configure that connection.
For example, if you install the Mailchimp add-on, you’ll get a new Mailchimp tab.
While the exact settings will depend on the integration, you’ll generally be able to choose where to add the form data. If applicable, you’ll also be able to map data from the form fields to the relevant field in your destination tool
For example, you could map the “Name” field from your form to the “Name” field in your email marketing service.
As with all other parts of Gravity Forms, you can also create multiple rules and use conditional logic to control when to use each rule.
8. Embed Your Form
Once you’ve finished setting up your form, you can embed it anywhere on your site using a block or shortcode:
9. View Form Entries
Once people start submitting your form, you’ll receive email notifications (if you configured them).
Gravity Forms will also store the submissions in your WP Admin. You can view these by going to Forms → Entries:
You can click on an entry to view it in more detail and you can also export entries to a CSV file if needed.
Gravity Forms Pricing
Gravity Forms only comes in a premium version, which might be a downside if you’re on a tight budget.
There are three pricing plans. Higher-tier plans give you access to more features (via add-ons) and also let you activate the plugin on more WordPress sites:
- Basic – $59 per year for access to Basic Add-Ons and use on a single site.
- Pro – $159 per year for access to Basic and Pro Add-Ons and use on up to three sites.
- Elite – $259 per year for access to Basic, Pro, and Elite Add-Ons and use on unlimited sites.
Gravity Forms does not offer a free trial. However, they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can also test the plugin on a live demo site by going to this page.
Gravity Forms Review: Pros and Cons
As we get to the end of our Gravity Forms review, let’s recap some of the pros and cons of using Gravity Forms.
Pros:
- Rock-solid and reliable. Gravity Forms is a well-established plugin that has built a strong reputation when it comes to stability and reliability. This is very important in a form plugin as any issues or bugs that affect an important form could have major consequences.
- Flexible. You can use Gravity Forms to create pretty much any type of form, from basic contact forms all the way up to payment forms, quizzes, surveys, and more.
- Strong automations. The core Gravity Forms plugin is already strong at automating workflows. And if that’s not enough, you can find third-party plugins that give you even more flexibility.
- Dedicated integrations. While Gravity Forms does support Zapier and webhooks, one of its strong points is that it also offers dedicated integrations for a lot of services. This lets you avoid using a third-party intermediary in your integrations (and it might also save you some money because you won’t need to pay for Zapier).
- Huge third-party extension marketplace. While Gravity Forms is already packed with features, there’s also a massive marketplace of third-party extensions that can add even more features, automations, and more.
- Good at payments. Gravity Forms is very strong when it comes to payments. Some people even use it as a lightweight eCommerce solution, which can be helpful for very simple setups where you don’t need the full power of WooCommerce.
Cons:
- No free version. Because Gravity Forms only comes in a premium version, it might not be the best option if you’re on a really tight budget. This is especially true if you just need a simple contact form as there are free solutions to do that (such as the WordPress.com Form block).
- Limited templates. Gravity Forms doesn’t offer a built-in template library like many other form plugins. There is a limited template library on the website, but you need to manually import the templates. In contrast, Formidable Forms offers 170+ premade templates for all types of forms and you can insert them right from your WP Admin.
- No conversational forms (e.g. Typeform). Gravity Forms only handles “traditional” web forms. It can’t create more conversational types of forms like Typeform’s interface or a pseudo live chat interface. This is something that some other form plugins have started offering and it can be a more engaging way of collecting information from people. There are some third-party add-ons that can help you *kind of* achieve this, though, such as BeautyForm Styler or Gravity Forms Supercharge Add-On.
How to Install Gravity Forms on WordPress.com
If you want to use Gravity Forms on your WordPress.com site, you’ll need to be on the plugin-enabled plans so that you have the ability to install your own plugins.
If you’re not already on one of those plans, you can upgrade your WordPress.com plan with just a few clicks. Or, if you’re not quite ready to upgrade yet, you can still create forms using the built-in Form block that WordPress.com offers.
Once you’ve verified that you’re on the WordPress.com plugin-enabled plans, here’s how to install Gravity Forms…
To begin, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve purchased Gravity Forms. Once you make your purchase, you can download the main plugin from the Gravity Forms dashboard. It should be a single file with the .zip extension.
Next, go to Plugins → Add New in your WP Admin and click the Upload button:
On the next screen, drag the Gravity Forms zip file from your computer into the upload field to install it on your site:
Now, you’ll wait for a few seconds while WordPress.com uploads and installs the plugin. Once it finishes, you should see a success screen:
Gravity Forms uses an add-on model, which means that it contains many of its features in separate add-on plugins. This helps you keep your site lightweight by picking and choosing only the exact features that you want to use.
To simplify installing these add-ons, Gravity Forms offers its own add-on installer. You can find this by going to Forms → Add-Ons in your WP Admin. You can also manually install Gravity Forms add-on plugins just like you did the main Gravity Forms plugin.
Is Gravity Forms the Best WordPress Form Plugin?
At this point, you probably have a pretty good idea of whether or not Gravity Forms is right for you. But if not, here’s a basic summary of when and when not to use Gravity Forms.
Let’s start with the “not” part.
If you just need a simple contact form that sends you an email when there’s a new submission, Gravity Forms is probably not the best option for your needs. Of course, Gravity Forms is quite capable of handling this use case – Gravity Forms is very reliable for all types of forms, including contact forms.
However, some great free solutions already exist for creating contact forms, so there’s not really much benefit in spending the money for Gravity Forms.
If you’re using WordPress.com, you can use the built-in Form block. If you have a self-hosted WordPress site, you can use the Form block in Jetpack or one of the many free form plugins listed at WordPress.org.
Where Gravity Forms excels is if you need to create more complex forms beyond basic contact forms. Here are some examples:
- Automations – maybe you want to automatically create a task in your project management software when someone submits a form.
- Advanced form types – maybe you want to create a payment form, a survey, a frontend content submission form that lets people submit guest posts to your site, and so on.
- Integrations – maybe you want to automatically add people to your CRM or email marketing service.
- Conditional logic – maybe you want to display different fields or perform different automations depending on how people answered your form.
For those more advanced use cases, Gravity Forms is absolutely one of the best plugins that you’ll find, which is why it’s such a popular option with experienced WordPress developers and implementers.
Its vibrant third-party extension marketplace also gives you a lot of flexibility for adding even more functionality.
For example, GravityView lets you display form submissions on the frontend of your site and Gravity Flow lets you create even more advanced automation workflows.
If you dig around, you can probably find a Gravity Forms add-on that can help you do pretty much anything, which, on top of the core functionality, is a big part of why Gravity Forms is so successful.
