8+ Best WordPress Form Plugins: Simple & Advanced Builders

by Southie Williamson on Oct 4, 2024

When it comes to building forms on WordPress, we’ve tried just about every forms plugin available—from popular choices like WPForms to lesser-known options like Everest Forms. We’ve used these plugins to create everything from simple contact forms to complex, multi-step forms for lead generation and payment processing.

One thing we’ve learned through experience is that not all form plugins are created equal. While some excel in simplicity and ease of use, others offer the advanced customization and integration features that developers and large businesses need.

In this article, we’ll share the insights we’ve gained and our top choices after testing the best WordPress form plugins on the market. Whether you need a basic form for clients to get in touch with you or a highly customized form solution, we’ll help you find the right plugin to meet your needs.

How to Choose the Right WordPress Form Plugin

When selecting a WordPress form plugin, it’s essential to consider several factors to ensure it aligns with your website’s goals and user requirements. Here are some key considerations:

• Ease of Use: Look for a plugin that allows for effortless form creation and form management, even for non-technical users. The plugin should have an intuitive interface and a straightforward process for creating and editing forms.
• Customization Options: Customization options allow you to tailor forms to fit your needs and match your branding. Look for plugins that offer extensive form field options, conditional logic, and styling capabilities. That way, you can create dynamic forms that match your website design and adapt to your visitors’ inputs.
• Integration Capabilities: If you plan to connect your forms with third-party services like email marketing platforms, CRMs, or payment gateways, ensure the plugin seamlessly integrates with the tools you use. This will streamline your workflow and eliminate the need for manual data entry.
• Performance and Speed: Fast, optimized forms are essential for SEO and a smooth user experience. Slow loading times can lead to frustration and form abandonment, but you can prevent this by choosing a plugin that prioritizes lightweight code and efficient form rendering.
• Spam Protection: This is a must-have feature to safeguard your forms against malicious submissions and potential security threats. Look for plugins with built-in spam prevention measures, such as CAPTCHAs, honeypot fields, or integration with services like Akismet.

By considering these factors, you can select a plugin that meets your current needs and scales with your website’s growth.

Best WordPress Form Builder Plugins

	Best For	Free Version?
WPForms	Overall best WordPress form builder	✅
Gravity Forms	Building custom forms	❌
UserFeedback	Visitor feedback and customer surveys	✅
Formidable Forms	Advanced users and developers	❌
Thrive Quiz Builder	Online quizzes and surveys	❌
Ninja Forms	Drag-and-drop contact forms	✅
Fluent Forms	All-inclusive pricing and features	✅
Typeform	Conversational forms	✅

1. WPForms

With its flexibility, ease of use, and comprehensive feature set, WPForms is the best WordPress form plugin on the market. It strikes an excellent balance between power and simplicity, making it suitable for all skill levels. It has a drag-and-drop form builder with a user-friendly interface and over 1,900 templates to help you quickly create contact and booking forms, lead forms, multi-page forms with progress bars, conversational forms, form landing pages, payment forms, and more.

• AI-powered form building to speed up tedious tasks
• Drag-and-drop builder with 1,900+ form templates
• Advanced form fields like custom calculators, file uploads, signatures, polls, and more
• Form abandonment to capture partial form entries
• Integration with payment platforms like Stripe, Square, and Paypal
• Conditional logic for advanced form customization
• Security features like Google’s reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Custom Captcha, anti-spam filters, and integration with Cloudflare Turnstile and Akismet.
• User journey tracking to see the steps visitors take before submitting a form
• Automated workflows, webhooks, and extensive integration with page builders, Google Sheets, Zapier, email marketing services, and more
• And much more!

Why We Love WPForms: It’s a standout choice due to its beginner-friendly nature, making it easy for non-technical users to create forms quickly. At the same time, it offers powerful customization options and advanced features that cater to experienced users. Whether you’re creating contact forms, lead generation and opt-in forms, online order forms, or even complex multi-page forms with conditional logic, WPForms has the flexibility to accommodate various scenarios. We love the extensive library of templates, which includes pretty much every form type you can think of.

We’ve used WPForms for years, and the documentation and support is always top-notch—we’re not surprised they have a perfect 5 start rating on WordPress.org. It’s a perfect choice for websites and blogs that need a reliable form-building tool.

Potential Drawbacks: Although the Lite version is free, you’ll need to upgrade to Pro to access all features. WPForms prioritizes user-friendliness, which means it lacks some of the more complex, developer-focused features needed for highly technical projects.

Pricing: WPForms offers a free Lite version with basic functionality, while paid plans start at $49.50 / year and unlock advanced features like conditional logic, payment integrations, and access to addons.

2. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is one of the best WordPress form plugins for building highly customized forms. Its robust features and extensive options make it ideal for developers, designers, and power users who require advanced form-building capabilities.

• Visual drag-and-drop form editor for real-time customization
• Advanced conditional logic for dynamic form behavior
• Field calculations and complex form structures
• Addons for additional form types (quizzes, content submissions, web directories, etc.)
• Integration with popular third-party services and payment gateways
• API access for custom workflows and automation
• Robust entry management system with advanced filtering and export options
• Compatibility with third-party tools like HeroicKB to enhance site functionality by requiring users to search your knowledge base before submitting a support ticket

Why We Like Gravity Forms: The visual form editor allows you to drag and drop fields, customize field settings, and preview your form in real-time, which helps simplify the process of creating complex, custom forms. Gravity Forms also integrates seamlessly with a range of third-party services and payment gateways, making it a powerful tool for building payment forms, registration forms, and more complex workflows.

Potential Drawbacks: It does not offer a free version, and you may need to invest in third-party addons from developers like GravityKit and GravityWiz to access features like tables, views, and directories, which can drive up overall costs. The plugin also has a somewhat steeper learning curve, especially for beginners.

Pricing: Gravity Forms requires a paid license. While the base plan starts at $59 / year, businesses that need advanced functionality may need to purchase third-party addons.

3. UserFeedback

UserFeedback is a dedicated user feedback and survey plugin designed to help WordPress site owners gather valuable insights from their visitors using a simple widget that you can place anywhere on your website. It offers a range of features tailored specifically for collecting user feedback efficiently.

• Variety of question and answer formats, including text fields, radio buttons, star ratings, scales, email capture, and text fields
• Pre-built templates for common use cases and survey types like Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Effort Score, and more
• Smart targeting by page, device type, or a scheduled date and time
• Conditional logic for displaying relevant questions based on user responses
• Customization options to match the widget to your site design and branding
• Entry management and reporting tools to analyze feedback data

Why We Like UserFeedback: The plugin is focused exclusively on visitor feedback, which ensures a lightweight, streamlined, and efficient experience. I love the ability to place the widget anywhere on my site and use targeting to gather hyper-specific feedback on particular blog posts and product pages. Overall, I found UserFeedback extremely easy to use and didn’t feel intrusive for visitors. It also didn’t slow down page loading, and integration with Google Analytics is a nice touch for in-depth data analysis.

Potential Drawbacks: The plugin’s functionality is limited to user feedback and surveys, which isn’t ideal for those seeking a more versatile form plugin. Additionally, the free version provides basic functionality, but you’ll need to upgrade to access advanced features.

Pricing: UserFeedback offers a free version with basic features, but more advanced options like page-level targeting, survey redirects, and custom branding require a paid license starting at $49.50 / year.

4. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a versatile, powerhouse of a form builder that caters specifically to advanced users and developers. With its extensive set of features and customization options, it provides a robust platform for creating complex forms and data-driven web applications.

• Extensive customization options including custom HTML and CSS editing
• Advanced conditional logic and calculations for complex form-building
• Integrations with various third-party services and platforms
• API access for advanced users and developers
• Robust data management, reporting, and directory creation

Why We Like Formidable Forms: It can take a little while to get the hang of it, but the flexibility is undeniable. You can build highly customized forms with calculations, conditional logic, views tailored to specific users, and more. The extensive customization options in Formidable Forms are perfect for developers and advanced users who need to build complex solutions like custom directories, event management systems, and intricate eCommerce workflows. After trying it out, we particularly liked the summary feature as it lets uses preview data before submission, which is great for long, multi-step forms.

Potential Drawbacks: It does not offer a free version and is more expensive than some alternatives. It also has a steeper learning curve than other form builders like WPForms. The extensive feature set is probably overkill for most users, but it’s often a good value for developers and larger businesses that need a feature-rich forms plugin.

Pricing: Formidable Forms requires a paid license. Its base plan is already pretty robust and starts at $79.50 / year.

5. Thrive Quiz Builder

Thrive Quiz Builder was created by the Thrive Themes team, and it’s an excellent choice for creating engaging online quizzes and surveys. It comes offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to design visually appealing quizzes to collect customer feedback, get leads, make product recommendations, add a gamified element to your site, increase traffic from social media, and more without any coding knowledge.

• Drag-and-drop quiz builder with real-time previews
• Multiple templates, quiz types, and question formats
• Customizable quiz logic and branching scenarios
• Social sharing options
• Lead generation, email opt-in capabilities, and segmentation
• A/B testing to refine your questions, flows, and results
• Detailed quiz analytics and reports

Why We Like Thrive Quiz Builder: It’s beginner-friendly, offering a highly customizable platform with various design options for creating engaging quizzes. Its focus on lead generation, email opt-ins, and segmentation makes it perfect for businesses who want to leverage quiz forms in their marketing efforts. The multimedia support in Thrive Quiz Builder allowed me to create interactive quizzes using images and videos in no time! Plus, the integration with email marketing platforms and other plugins in the Thrive Suite plugins adds extra value for businesses focusing on conversions.

Potential Drawbacks: It does not offer a free version and is relatively expensive when purchased individually. Also, it’s somewhat limited in functionality since the focus is primarily on quizzes. However, it’s a great bang for your buck when purchased as part of the Thrive Suite bundle.

Pricing: Thrive Quiz Builder is available as a standalone plugin starting at $99 / year. Alternatively, it’s included in Thrive Suite, which starts at $299 / year and provides access to 9 premium plugins.

6. Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is an excellent choice for those seeking a simple and user-friendly drag-and-drop form builder. This plugin stands out for its intuitive interface, helping novices easily create and customize forms without any coding knowledge.

• Unlimited forms and submissions
• Drag-and-drop form builder with a visual editor
• Pre-built form templates for various use cases
• Anti-spam features to protect form entries
• GDPR Compliance tools for data protection
• Submission management and export options

Why We Like Ninja Forms: The drag-and-drop interface is very intuitive, even for complete beginners. The core Ninja Forms plugin offered plenty of functionality for basic form-building tools, making it a solid choice for small businesses and bloggers who want a straightforward, free plugin to create simple contact forms quickly.

Potential Drawbacks: While the core plugin is free, more advanced features like conditional logic, multi-step forms, and integration with email marketing platforms require a paid subscription, which is more expensive than many alternatives like WPForms. Ninja Forms also offers fewer customization options than premium competitors.

Pricing: The core Ninja Forms plugin is free and sufficient for creating basic forms. However, users who need more advanced features like conditional logic or email marketing integrations will need to upgrade to a paid plan starting at $99 / year.

7. Fluent Forms

Fluent Forms is a comprehensive form builder that aims to provide an all-in-one solution for WordPress users. It provides a user-friendly interface with a drag-and-drop form builder and a solid set of features and form fields.

• Conditional logic and advanced field validations
• Pre-built templates and conversational forms
• Automatic PDF generation for form submissions
• Spam protection tools to ensure secure forms
• Integration with payment gateways and popular third-party tools

Why We Like Fluent Forms: It offers a wide range of versatile features that cater to many form-building needs, making it an excellent choice for many businesses, agencies, and developers. Fluent Forms has an all-inclusive pricing model. This ensures that every paid plan includes all features, so users don’t have to worry about upgrading to unlock additional features.  

Potential Drawbacks: Fluent Forms is more complex than some form plugins, and setup was a bit more tedious than other options we tested. The Lite plugin is pretty limited, and the fact that there’s no option to purchase a lower-priced plan for only the specific features you need may be a drawback for users who don’t require the full range of functionality.

Pricing: Fluent Forms offers a free version with limited functionality. Paid plans have an all-inclusive pricing structure, with every plan including all features. Pricing is based on the number of site licenses needed, starting at $79 / year. Lifetime packages are also available.

8. Typeform

Typeform is a unique form builder that specializes in creating conversational forms with a modern and interactive design. It stands out from traditional form builders by offering a chat-like interface that guides users through questions one at a time, resulting in a more engaging and user-friendly experience.

• Conversational interface with one question per screen
• Customizable design with various themes and branding options
• Logic jumps for personalized question flows
• Integration with popular tools like Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and Hubspot
• GDPR compliance and data privacy features

Why We Like Typeform: The conversational interface creates a great user experience, especially for surveys and feedback forms, as it presents questions one at a time to simulate a chat. The initial setup was easy, and I had no problem getting a modern, visually appealing form up and running quickly. Although we didn’t test this feature ourselves, Typeform integrates with Linktree, which is handy for businesses that rely on social media. Another nice perk is the ability to use AI (artificial intelligence) to draft and optimize form questions.

Potential Drawbacks: Unlike many competitors, Typeform lacks an offline mode to collect responses without internet access and offers fewer form field options. The free version is extremely limited, and paid plans are quite a bit more expensive than other premium alternatives, especially since you’ll need to go a tier above the entry-level subscription to remove Typeform branding or add team members for collaboration.

Pricing: Typeform offers a free version, but it only allows you to collect 10 monthly responses. Paid plans start at $25 / month. However, most users will need at least the Plus plan to remove Typeform branding, add collaborators, and raise the limit to 1,000 responses a month, which starts at a whopping $50 / month.

Additional Form Builders for WordPress

After researching and testing many popular form plugins, we think the options above are the best for most WordPress users. However, a few other plugins deserve an honorable mention and may appeal to specific use cases.

• Elementor Form Builder: A visual form builder integrated into the Elementor Pro page builder.
• JetFormBuilder: A dynamic form builder with flexible block-based form creation for Gutenberg.
• Forminator: A free plugin packed with features like real-time polling and no-wrong-answer quizzes in the style of BuzzFeed. The Pro version includes access to 9 other WPMU Dev plugins.
• HubSpot Forms: A marketing-focused form builder with built-in CRM integration to help manage leads and customer interactions.
• Jetpack Forms: A lightweight option built into Jetpack that works well for simple contact forms and surveys.
• Happyforms: A lightweight, free form builder focused on easy use by providing 6 templates that integrate with the WordPress dashboard.
• Quill Forms: A lesser-know, much cheaper alternative to Typeform that’s strictly for conversational forms.
• WS Form: A developer-friendly, freemium contact form builder. It can output native HTML for Bootstrap and Foundation front-end frameworks, and the Pro version includes a built-in debug console for troubleshooting.
• FormStack: PCI and HIPAA compliant form builder for government agencies and healthcare, insurance, education, and financial businesses.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which plugin is best for forms in WordPress?

WPForms is widely regarded as the best plugin for creating forms in WordPress. With its beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder, pre-built templates, advanced form fields, and powerful customization options, WPForms allows users to create everything from simple contact forms to advanced, multi-step forms with conditional logic. Its seamless integration with popular page builders, marketing services, and payment platforms, along with a generous free version and affordable premium plans, makes it a versatile choice for many WordPress users.

Does WordPress have a form builder?

WordPress does not include a built-in form builder by default, but there are many popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, Gravity Forms, and Formidable Forms that can easily add form-building functionality to your website. These plugins offer drag-and-drop interfaces and customizable templates, making it simple to create forms for contact pages, surveys, and more.

Is Contact Form 7 any good?

Despite being the oldest and most downloaded contact form plugin in the WordPress directory, we don’t recommend Contact Form 7. It lacks many of the features found in modern form builders and requires third-party addons to extend its functionality. It’s an old name in the WordPress community, so many older sites still use it. However, there are much more user-friendly, feature-rich alternatives nowadays—even the free version of WPForms is significantly better than Contact Form 7.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress form plugin for your website!

While WPForms stands out as the best all-around choice, there are plenty of other great options available, each offering unique features to suit your specific needs. Do you have a favorite form builder? Let us know in the comments below!

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