Formidable Forms vs Gravity Forms Showdown
An Epic Showdown Awaits
Most people when they think about online forms think of boring things like contact forms or surveys but when you see what the two apps mentioned here can do its like having your eyes open to new possibilities. Think user generated content and what would that can do for your online business? The next logical question is which app should I choose to create my forms if my website runs on WordPress? Well two of the best are Gravity Forms and Formidable Forms so let's dive right in.
Testing Criteria
When testing forms against each other there are four main ingredients I look at.
Gravity Forms, the king of integrations
One thing that every user agrees when it comes to Gravity Forms is how much you can do with it and how well it plays with other third party apps. It's the original app for WordPress forms and thus has the largest developer base building for it which is a massive Pro in our books.Â
Formidable Forms, the jack of all trades and master of most
Formidable Forms are a real contender when it comes to the title of King WordPress Form Builder because of how much is included as part of the deal. Where Gravity Forms shines because of its third party developers, Formidable Forms shines with features like “Views” included.
Ease of Use:
Gravity Forms is easy enough to use when creating simple forms such as contact forms but so is Formidable Forms and they designed these two plugins to do so much more.
Both are drag and drop allowing you to drag a field like “Name, Email, Website or Custom Fields” into the design layout of your form. Both have excellent documentation for power users to get the most from their purchase.
Formidable Forms pull a slight lead here over Gravity Forms because of their styling options which means you get a nicer-looking form without too much CSS fiddling. Gravity Forms can often look terrible on the front end and require CSS knowledge to get the exact look and feel you want.Â
Formidable Forms also now have templates where with one click you can literally have a job application form setup in minutes as an example.
Showdown Winner:Â Formidable Forms
Ultimate Winner:Â WPForms
Features
Both plugins claim to be the most advanced form builder for WordPress, but only one can be and to decide the winner here is difficult. My first point applies to both plugins where new users will have to go through a steep learning curve to tap the full power of either plugin. Thankfully through documentation, support and integrations no matter your level of experience you can get to the goal you have set for your forms.
Both plugins offer numerous form fields with both having over 30 as of now. Both have conditional logic, file uploads, dynamic post creation, calculations, multi-page forms, “Save and continue”, spam protection and most importantly integrations galore.
Now if we were just rating Formidable Forms vs GRavity Forms without taking integrations into account, then Formidable Forms would be the winner as it has novel extra features like front end editing, import/export forms with views and can also dynamically populate one form's data into the form of another. Slick stuff but the true winner of features has to go to Gravity Forms because of all their third party integrations.Â
This has to do with the fact they have been around far longer than Formidable Forms and their developer community is more established. Not that Formidable Forms won't catch up but for now this award goes to Gravity Forms.
Ultimate Winner: Gravity Forms
Pricing
The first point that Formidable Forms wins on here is that they have a free version which is very generous in what it offers you. Gravity Forms only provide a demo account.
For the Pro Versions they both use a model of having to pay more to get access to all features.
With Formidable Forms the price range is free to $399 per year.
With Gravity Forms you will pay between $59 to $259 per year but if you want to add a views extension (which Formidable Forms has built in) this price will increase more near $600+ per year. If you are not sure what views are and why this is arguably the most important extension, get click here to see GravityView.
Ultimate Winner: Formidable Forms
Support
Support and help documentation is important when buying an app or plugin and both Gravity Forms and Formidable Forms have excellent documentation, ticketing system. Gravity Forms take this one step further in that they have an online community forum where people can share case studies and get help from third-party developers.Â
However, there are a few cases where people seem to rate the level of support they got from Formidable Forms staff as better than Gravity Forms. This is naturally subjective and will vary each day depending on who you talk to and whether the sun is shining đŸ™‚
This result is a tie.
Gravity Forms & Formidable Forms Pros
The table below compares the top tier plans of each plugin.
Conclusion
Its a tie!
Yep, there really is nothing between these two form builders and ultimately it will come down to the price for the features and add-ons you need for your form. My suggestion would be to contact the pre-sales team of both companies so you know what extensions or custom coding work you will need and then make your decision. If you are just looking for a simple form, then go for Formidable Forms.
