When talking about WordPress form builders, two names usually come to mind: Formidable Forms vs WPForms.
These two plugins have been running neck and neck in the CSS & JS fields for some time now. They are of top quality and allow you to create a whole range of custom forms for your website.
This means they both have a lot of similar features and offer a very similar user experience. Of course, there are also some important differences between them. Both have their pros and cons.
We’ll have an in-depth comparison of what actually did these two plugins offered. If you can’t decide which is best for you, this article should be useful when making your decision.
WordPress Form
Read more: Best Free WordPress Form Plugins
A Quick Comparison between Formidable Forms vs WPForms
If you don’t want to go through the whole page. Well, let’s have a quick look at the comparison between Formidable Forms vs WPForms to see which one has more desirable features.
| Feature | Formidable Forms | WPForms |
|---|---|---|
| Anti-spam form tokens | No | Yes |
| Custom CAPTCHA | No | Yes |
| hCaptcha | No | Yes |
| Customize form HTML | Yes | No |
| Calculator forms | Yes | No |
| Front-end entry editing | Yes | No |
| Offline form saving | No | Yes |
| Form abandonment partial entries | No | Yes |
| WooCommerce integration | Yes | No |
| Quizzes | Yes | No |
| Style forms | Yes | No |
| Surveys & Polls | Yes | Yes |
| Conversational forms | Yes | Yes |
Criteria for selection of WordPress form builder?
Choosing a good form builder may be hard for some people. There are many criteria to consider, and all those criteria can be personal — there’s no one right answer.
First, we’ll look at how easy a tool is to use, how much support it provides and whether you can afford it — and how many features and integration do they have.
In short, we’ll consider 5 key areas
- Ease of use
- Support
- Pricing
- Features, and
- Integrations
Ease of use between Formidable Forms vs WPForms
Both Formidable Forms and WPForms are relatively easy to use and have user-friendly interfaces. Irrespective of whether you are a beginner or expert, you may find them easy to set up the forms.
You can build a simple contact form using either of the plugins in just minutes. However, we recommend WPForms if you’re a complete beginner and looking for an easy-to-use form creator.
It is friendly for beginners because of its clean layout and simple UI. It is the perfect form plugin for beginners in particular. This doesn’t necessarily imply that the Formidable form is difficult to use and it’s only for developers.
But there’s a limitation on using the free version of WPForms – you are restricted to get access to the form entries unless you upgrade to the Pro version.
The Formidable form builder, on the other hand, also has a clean layout that is easy for both site owners and developers alike. They tried their best to maintain simplicity without sacrificing power and flexibility.
However, there are more people who find WPForms much easier to use when compared to Formidable Forms
Support
Formidable Forms documentation is very thorough and will help you get the most out of all the features and integrations.
Their tiered ticket system means response time is based on whatever plan you’re on, which results in fast answers to your questions.
If you have a question about Formidable, they have a dedicated support team that responds to bug reports and free-level users within 24 hours. Take a look at the reviews on WordPress.org and also for more about support.
There’s one thing that sets Formidable Forms apart from all other forms plugins – the Slack community. Just reach out to their Slack instant messaging community for user-provided support, advice, and development help.
On the other hand, the WPForms support team is also dedicated to helping their users by running a similar tiered ticketing system to that of Formidable Forms.
Their support team helps WPForms users with faster response times, so you’re not left in the dark wondering if anyone is even reading your support tickets.
Not only do they give you free support but also have extensive documentation to help you learn more about the plugin, accessibility, localhost install, networking WordPress, WordPress themes, how to improve your forms, and much more.
You can check out the reviews on WordPress.org
Pricing of Formidable Forms vs WPForms
Formidable Forms Pricing
Let’s first look at the Formidable Forms Plugin. The Formidable plugin is a freemium WordPress plugin that you can use for free.
The lite version of Formidable is for you if you’re just getting started with form creation and collection.
But in case you feel like you need advanced features, you can simply upgrade to one of the premium plans. There are 4 premium plans:
- Elite,
- Business,
- Plus, and
- Basic.
- Basic: This plan will cost you $39.50 per annum. You can use it in only 1 site; get 10+ form templates; conditional logic and multi-step forms.
- Plus: This plan will cost you $99.50 /year. You can use it on 3 sites; Mailchimp and MailPoet integration; and Surveys and Polls.
- Business: This plan will cost you $199.50 per annum. You can use it on 5 sites; get 80+ form templates, and Polylang and WPML Integration.
- Elite: This plan will cost you $299.50 /year. You can use it on unlimited sites; get 150+ form templates and CRM integration like email marketing services, Zapier, and Salesforce.
Get Started With Formidable Forms!
WPForms Pricing
Similar to Formidable Forms, WPForms has also offered 4 premium plans. They are
- Basic.
- Plus,
- Pro, and
- Elite.
- Basic: The basic plan will cost you $39.50 per annum which supports 1 site. It includes spam protection, conditional logic, templates file uploads, multi-page forms, and custom thank you pages.
- Plus: The Plus plan will cost you $99.50 per annum which supports 3 sites. You get more ready-made form templates and add support for popular mailing list providers like Mailchimp.
- Pro: This plan costs $199.50 per annum and supports up to 5 sites. It includes add-ons to create surveys and polls, conversational forms, and more advanced features and functionalities.
- Elite: This is the highest plan among all the four premium plans. It costs $299.50 per annum and Supports unlimited sites. You get premium integrations like Salesforce and Webhooks.
You can go for a trial as they offer a 14-day money-back guarantee which is enough time to find out all the features and see whether you are satisfied with the plan or not.
Get WPForms Features and Add-Ons
You can come back and claim a refund in case your expectations from the trial weren’t met.
Between Formidable Forms vs WPForms, Which one Is the Best Anti-Spam Plugin for WordPress?
It is important to ensure whether your form builder plugin has an anti-spam feature or not before you actually use it. Why?
Implementation of an anti-spam tool is necessary to control the number of spam entries.
Having an anti-spam tool will increase your conversion rate and make your website safe for real users. Not only that but it is also required to stop spam and fake registration as well.
There are different types of anti-spam features that can be included in the form builder software. Let’s find out the list of anti-spam tools for Formidable Forms and WPForms.
| Anti-Spam | WPForms | Formidable Forms |
|---|---|---|
| Anti-spam form tokens | Yes | No |
| hCaptcha | Yes | No |
| Honeypot CAPTCHA | Yes | Yes |
| Email Address Allowlist/ Denylist | Yes | Yes |
| Google reCAPTCHA | v2, v2 invisible, v3 | v2, v2 invisible, v3 |
| Custom CAPTCHA | Yes | No |
Thus, it can be clearly seen that in terms of security and safety of online form, WPForms has indeed the upper hand.
However, this doesn’t mean WPForms is superior in all angles as we still have other fields to compare.
What are Formidable Forms?
If you’re looking for a platform to create forms on WordPress, Formidable Forms may be the solution you’ve been looking for. It is considered the most advanced open source drag and drop form builder.
In the past, if you wanted to collect data from a form on your WordPress site, you would have to use a plugin like Contact Form 7. This plugin worked perfectly for the traditional contact form.
But what about more advanced forms? If you wanted to create a lead capture form with fields for name, e-mail, and other fields.
Or even ask your visitor’s what their favorite ice cream flavor was. That’s where Formidable Forms come in to save you.
What makes Formidable Forms different from the other form builders? Formidable Forms is the most flexible, user-friendly, and versatile form-building plugin on the market.
Not only does it allow you to create wonderfully designed forms, but also allows you to use collected form data in any way you wish.
The Formidable Forms plugin has become an online favorite for allowing users to build custom forms for their WordPress websites.
In a nutshell, it allows you to start building your WordPress forms right away without having to learn HTML or CSS.
What is WPForms?
WPForms is an affordable, easy-to-use, and intuitive form-building platform for WordPress. With the drag and drop form builder, you can create forms within minutes for a variety of purposes.
It has been downloaded over 500K times and is currently installed on over 50k sites. WPForms is considered one of the most popular free software in its niche.
WPForms is an interesting name as it stands for WordPress Forms. It is the best alternative to Formidable Forms as it has many of the same features.
It is an actively developed plugin with regular updates and new features being added with each release.
WPForms’ claim to fame is that it generates code snippets for your developers. This means that you, as a user, don’t have to be a developer yourself and can easily create forms using WPForms.
WPForms is an all-in-one contact form plugin for WordPress. It’s easy to learn and navigate because of its clean layout and emphasis on the user experience. This makes WPForms a great choice for those who don’t feel they have the time to commit to coding and website development.
WPForms might just be the world’s easiest way to build and manage any type of form for WordPress. Whether you need to add a contact form, an ebook signup form, or any other kind of highly customizable form to your site — WPForms is sure to inspire you.
But comparing Formidable Forms vs WP Forms, the former is designed for more experienced users while the latter is designed for complete beginners.
Does WPForms Offer a Free Version?
If your theme doesn’t have a built-in contact form, you can still use the standard WordPress contact form. However, with the WPForms plugin, you can create a variety of contact forms within minutes.
You’ll find plenty of powerful features on WPForms that can help your business grow. The plugin’s lite version is completely free so anyone can start using it right away.
It is easy to use and does not even require coding knowledge to set up, which means you can build the forms in no time. The long list of features makes it one of the best WordPress form plugins.
The Lite version is free where you can create contact forms. We’ll later see the features you can enjoy with this version.
Overall, WPForms is the best WordPress form builder. Their drag & drop online form builder allows you to create powerful WordPress forms in minutes, not hours.
Is There a Free Version of Formidable Forms?
Yes, similar to WPForms, Formidable also has offer both free plans as well. You can create a basic functioning contact form using the Formidable Forms WordPress plugin, which comes with both free and paid plans.
Download their free Contact Form plugin and you’ll be up and running in just minutes. Converting leads into subscribers, customers, and repeat buyers.
The free version is great for small business owners looking to set up forms quickly. If you’re a developer looking to create custom forms, you can upgrade to the higher-paid plans for more advanced customizations.
Now that you’ve got an idea of what Formidable Forms does, if it looks like a tool to help with your business, you can take a closer look at the plans which will be shown in the latter part of this article.
Get Formidable Forms For Free!
Now let’s take a closer look at the key features and integrations of WPForms Lite.
Key features of WPForms:
WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin. Following are the core features that make WPForms the most powerful yet user-friendly WordPress form builder available in the market today.
Instant Drag & Drop Form Builder – Using their drag & drop WordPress form builder, you can easily create contact forms, email subscription forms, order forms, payment forms, and other types of online forms.
Responsive Mobile Friendly Forms – All of their forms are mobile-friendly and responsive on any device including iPhones and Android phones. You can even customize the design of your form to fit your brand’s style.
GDPR Compliance – With just a few clicks you can make your contact form GDPR compatibility.
Spam Protection – Nothing to worry about safety as you are provided with smart anti-spam protection out-of-the-box. Also, get direct integrations with Google reCAPTCHA and hCaptcha.
Form Confirmation – You can either redirect users to a custom thank you page or simply show a custom success message as confirmation.
Pre-Built Form Templates – Save even more time by choosing from their library of ready-to-use form templates. Simply choose your desired template, add fields, configure your options, and embed it anywhere on your site using the built-in embed tools. That’s it!
Smart Conditional Logic – Smart conditional logic lets you show or hide fields, sections, and even submit buttons based on user selections. This lets you create smart online forms that feel like a conversation with your users instead of an interrogation.
Other key features
Instant Notifications – Get instant notifications via email when someone submits your WordPress form so you can follow up quickly and close more deals.
Registration Forms – Users can easily create custom login forms and custom user registration forms in WordPress.
Surveys and Polls – You can create surveys forms, conduct poll surveys, and analyze the data with the reports without any hassle.
Webhooks – This allows you to send form entry data to secondary tools and external services. There’s no need for a third-party connector and also no coding knowledge is required.
Post Submissions – You can collect user-submitted content in WordPress with their front-end post submission form. It is great for a business directory, listings, testimonials, guest posts, etc.
And there are many more! We can go further, especially if you upgrade to the pro version, you’ll get everything you need. Let’s see again its integration.
Integration
Authorize.Net Forms – You can start collecting online payments, online orders, or even donations after you connect your site with Authorize.Net
PayPal Payment Forms – Not only Authorize.Net forms but also you can do the same (payments, etc) with PayPal forms after integration – meaning you can choose either of them or both.
GetResponse Forms – You can create newsletter signup forms in WordPress using GetResponse and connect with your contact form to grow your email list. GetResponse is considered the professionals choice.
Surprisingly, they offer a free plan including a website builder recently. Besides its free version, the paid plan is also one of the cheapest prices among all email service providers.
AWeber Forms – You can create newsletter signup forms in WordPress using AWeber and connect with your contact form to grow your email list.
Drip Forms – Create newsletter signup forms in WordPress using Drip to connect with your contact form
Zapier Addon – Through integration with Zapier, users can connect their WordPress forms with over one thousand apps. Your contact form data also be routed to your favorite email marketing service, CRM, etc.
Salesforce Add-on – This add-on allows you to send your contacts and leads to your Salesforce Customer Relationship Management (popularly known as CRM) account without any problem at all.
Story Behind WPForms
You may probably be convinced by now that WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress on the market.
If so, why not give WPForms a try. Syed Balkhi, the founder of WPBeginner, which is the largest WordPress resource site for beginners, created an easy-to-use online form builder.
His concern for beginner bloggers was born from his own struggles during his early blogging days.
So, if you’re a beginner or new to web development, you might want to check out the free version of WPForms before buying a paid plugin. The free version of WPForms also comes with plenty of great features and is easy to use.
You can go for the paid plan when you feel you needed most. There are over 5 million active downloads and scored an average of 4.9 out of 5 stars in the review as per WordPress.org.
What are you waiting for? Sign up today itself.
Key Features of Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is an all-in-one platform for building beautiful, mobile-friendly forms. Like WPForms, Formidable also supports payment options like PayPal and Stripe and CRM systems such as Salesforce.
You can also integrate with eCommerce tools, content management systems, and other third-party services through its wide range of integrations and add-ons.
The more form-building capabilities your software has, the better it is. At Formidable Forms, interactivity and functionality are blended to create a powerful solution.
It’s an automated tool that replaces several other business tools and streamlines your business from one place.
Formidable Forms isn’t confined to just a form building platform, you take your business to an entirely new level with cutting-edge functionality and innovative technology.
You can also integrate with payment processors, CRM systems, email marketing services, and more.
Most of the features found in WPForms are also available in the Formidable Forms plugin as well.
Therefore, it’s hard to decide which one will have the upper hand as they both offer great integration options.
Additional Features Comparison
Free fields
As you can see from the image above, there are some extra fields that are not available in the free version of WPForms but are found in Formidable. They are HTML, website/URL, User ID, phone, and a hidden field.
So, except for the User ID field which is unique to Formidable, these are all paid fields in WPForms.
But the free version of WPForms includes a number slider and a prebuilt checkbox for GDPR agreement again.
Premium fields
Again, there are a few fields that are available only in the paid version of Formidable Forms plugin but not in WPForms plugin. They are
- dynamic relationships,
- quiz score a rich text field,
- scale,
- toggle,
- lookup,
- repeater fields,
- embedded/nested form, and
- tags.
I want to explain the functions and importance of two fields mentioned above. (i.e. repeater fields and lookup)
Repeater Fields
Don’t want to type the same info over and over?
Add many rows in a field with the repeat control which sets a limit for the number of rows it can contain. New users and experts alike love their formidable forms because of this feature.
Repeater fields give your users the flexibility to input all the details they need when they need them. Just add a repeater field and as many rows as you need and voila!
Since Repeaters are a great way for your users to add details about several things at once, you don’t need to worry about an application form or a registration form, for example.
Look up data from other forms
When you have multiple forms that need to share data, cascading Lookup Fields can be a great solution. With Lookup Fields, you can auto-populate fields with values from different sources.
Or if you need to pull in other data from additional forms, cascading Lookup fields can help. It’s easy to fill out forms on one form and have that information automatically appear in other places.
Let’s say you want to automatically pull data from another form into a dropdown, checkbox, or radio field in your form, then this can be done with cascading Lookup fields.
Why would you choose WPForms Plugin?
Formidable Forms vs WPForms. Which form of the plugin is right for you? Formidable gives you more control over your form submissions while WPForms has great integrations with other WordPress plugins.
WPForms Lite is a free WordPress contact form plugin that’s easy to use for beginners, yet powerful enough for developers.
It is the best WordPress forms plugin, trusted by over 5 million users. You won’t take hours to create beautiful WordPress forms even if you’re a beginner.
Whether it’s a simple contact form or a multi-page questionnaire, WPForms plugin allows you to build forms within minutes using a simple drag & drop interface.
WPForms plugin makes online form building easy. Drag and drop form fields, add your own branding, integrate with third-party services like GetResponse, AWeber, and Zapier, and capture submissions from your WordPress site with ease.
WPForms plugin will be your best friend when it comes to WordPress forms. They have got you covered with different types of WordPress forms such as contact forms, feedback forms, email subscription forms, user registration forms, payment forms, surveys, and polls.
The easiest way to get started with online forms on your website is WPForms Lite. Besides being beginner-friendly, it also works with all popular WordPress themes.
For those of you who need more features like payments and advanced fields, then the Pro version is available to rescue you.
Let’s see a few advantages of WPForms plugin over Formidable Forms plugin:
1. Offline form saving and submission
With WPForms, you’ll never experience another moment of panic when you try to submit a form and the internet connection suddenly goes off.
This is because their offline form submission add-on allows your users to save their forms’ progress and then submit them when the internet connection is restored.
2. Form abandonment add-on
Many bloggers who had built forms on their website would experience form abandonment and also know how frustrating it was when they get abandoned.
If you’re struggling with form abandonment chances are that you could be losing out on valuable leads.
Fortunately, WPForms has an add-on that helps you save and follow up with visitors who haven’t finished the form.
This form abandonment add-on helps you improve your leads and traffic on your website by closing more sales within the landing page.
Why would you choose Formidable Forms?
Formidable Forms is a completely free and cloud-based web form builder. The unique feature that makes Formidable Forms stand out the most amongst the competition is the Formidable Views.
You will love the Formidable Forms feature that allows you to display data you’ve collected through forms in several ways.
They allow you to display data you’ve collected through forms in many ways like event calendars, job boards, and real estate listings.
Formidable Forms makes it easy to visualize your data with charts and graphs, without having to build a plugin. It’s great for anyone who wants to display recent entries on a blog or website.
The Formidable Forms plugin also helps you do more with collected data. They’ve made it easy to display your form submission data in graphs or charts on any page, post, widget, or View.
These charts work with live data so it automatically updates as soon as new entries are received. Further, you are given the option to allow your users to update their form submissions.
Making this easy for them can save you time and trouble, not to mention the frustration of trying to resolve the issue with an unresponsive user. Let’s now see a few advantages of Formidable Forms plugin over WPForms plugin:
1. Form HTML Customization
Formidable allows you to customize your form HTML. This function is good, especially for developers who love coding.
If you’re adding a custom CSS class, moving a description tag around, or writing custom javascript code, you can go ahead and play around.
Feel free to you customize your forms to look how you want and function exactly the way you need.
2. Powerful form calculations
Make setting up calculations in your forms easy with Formidable Forms. All of your data is stored in a clean, clear manner. In no time at all, you’ll have powerful form calculations set up and ready to go.
Their powerful forms with form calculations let you quickly set up basic and advanced calculations.
Form calculations are great for online businesses that sell products or services, making it easier to run calculations based on form selections.
To make the buying process even faster, you can even connect the payment forms.
Pre-Built Form Templates?
Comparing Formidable Forms vs WPForms, both provide users with prebuilt form templates that can be used as a starting point.
WPForms offers more than 300 form templates, which can be customized to meet your needs, while Formidable Forms offers more than 175 sophisticated form templates.
The days of starting from scratch are over with their newest pre-built form templates. They give you a head start on your next form project, saving you time and effort in the process.
Each one has been designed for specific use-cases, so whatever type of form you need to create, there’s bound to be a template that will work for you.
And don’t worry about the templates not fitting in with your site—they’re highly customizable and easy to modify.
(i) Formidable Forms Templates
With the premium plan of Formidable Forms plugin, you can access over 170 pre-built form templates which are customizable to fit your needs. Some of them are:
- B2B Leads Form
- Complaint Form
- Testimonial Forms
- Contact Form to SMS
- Simple User Registration Form Template
- Create WordPress Post Form
- Contact Us Form
- Edit User Profile Form
- Customer Feedback Forms
- Newsletter Signup Form
- Calculator forms
- PayPal Donation Form
- And 162 more other templates.
(ii) WPForms Templates
Similarly, with WPForms Pro, you get access to over 300 pre-built sets of templates that are customizable according to your specific needs. A few of them include:
- Order and billing template for cafes, pubs, etc.
- Simple Stripe Order Form Template
- Email Signup Form Template
- Surveys and Polls to conduct powerful online surveys
- Special Offer Sign Up Form Template
- Opt-In Form Template
- Subscribe to My List Form Template
- Address Autocomplete Contact Form Template
- Multi-Page Newsletter Signup Form Template
- Form Abandonment Contact Form Template
- Health and Wellness for hospitals and healthcare services
- Feedback form templates
- And 288 more other form templates.
You can learn how to set up WPForms plugin from the tutorial video below:
Which is right for you: Formidable Forms vs WPForms?
There are a lot of WordPress form plugins out there and choosing the right one can be tough. Both Formidable Forms and WPForms are among the most popular plugins, but how do you know which is best for you?
Based on my testing, the choice is a close call. They’re both excellent options to create forms with WordPress. They’re easy to use, they have a lot of features and they’re well supported.
Both solutions offer tons of integrations and third-party services they work with out of the box. You can send data from your forms via email or integrate with a 3rd party tool like Salesforce, AWeber, or Google Sheets.
The main difference between Formidable Forms and WPForms is that Formidable Forms is a more flexible solution with more advanced features.
Formidable Forms plugin is a full-featured form builder for WordPress. It’s our top pick for developers who want to build unique forms.
Some advanced features such as form calculations, Repeaters, and cascading lookup fields are not found in WPForms plugin.
But if you’re looking for a simple solution that lets you build any type of form quickly, WPForms plugin is your best bet.
Both plugins are strong in their respects, and we hope that they will help you make a better-informed decision in choosing your perfect plugins.
If you are satisfied with our Formidable Forms vs WPForms comparison, please don’t forget to share on your social media groups as that would make my day and also for any suggestions, feel free to share it in the comment section.
FAQ on WP Forms
What’s required to use WPForms plugin?
Since WPForms is a WordPress Plugin, a self-hosted WordPress site is required to use the plugin. If you don’t know if your site is self-hosted or not, that’s ok!
The easiest way to see if you have a self-hosted WordPress site is to log in and look at the bottom of your Dashboard. If it says “Powered by WordPress”, then congrats! You have a self-hosted WordPress site.
Who should use WPForms?
WPForms is the best WordPress forms plugin, trusted by over 5 million active users. WPForms is created for bloggers, small businesses, developers, designers, photographers, and basically whoever wants to use it.
You need to use it if you want to create a custom WordPress form. If you can point and click, then you can easily create a form with their WordPress form builder plugin in just a few minutes without writing any code.
This plugin is built to be both beginner-friendly and developer-friendly so that everyone can use it to create powerful WordPress forms.
WPForms was created by the same team behind the WPBeginner website and Syed Balkhi’s popular OptinMonster plugin.
Will WPForms slow down my website?
No, since WPForms is carefully built with performance in mind, it will not slow down your website at all. In order to ensure things run fast and smoothly, their team has developed the app with best practices and modern standards.
Does WPForms offer a free trial?
Unfortunately, there was no free trial offering for the paid plans. However, they assure you a 100% money-back Guarantee. How? In case, you are not satisfied after using it for a couple of weeks (i.e. 14days), you can still ask for a refund. They promised to refund 100% of your money with no question ask.
Does WPForms work on non-WordPress sites?
Unfortunately, WPForms will work only on sites that are self-hosted versions of WordPress. That means that WPForms will not work with WordPress.com (unless your account level is Business or eCommerce), as well as other website building platforms like Squarespace, Weebly, Shopify, and Blogger.
With that, our Formidable Forms vs WPForms comparison comes up short. Both plugins are strong in their own respects, and we hope that you can take away new information about both plugins to help you in your WordPress form builder decision.
Finally, we hope this Formidable Forms vs WPForms comparison will help you make an informed decision to choosing your desired plugin.
Best of luck in your search! Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest updates and valuable guidebooks from time to time.
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