Gravity Forms Review: The Best WordPress Forms Plugin in 2021?

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gravity forms review

This Gravity Forms review will break down everything you need to know about the platform, why it's amazing, and how to use it.

It’s important to capture the attention of your website visitors as soon as they land on your page, but it’s also vital that you capture relevant information and data before they navigate away. 

Doing so can help you to follow up with leads as well as increase conversion rates. If you have a WordPress site, you may be looking for the best plugin to help you effectively get this user data. 

While there are a few different plugins available, one of the most talked about and well-respected is without a doubt Gravity Forms. It’s certainly considered to be the most seamless and powerful forms plugin for wordPress.

With such a long standing reputation, does it still hold the top spot? That’s what we’re here to help you decide. 

There are other competitors in the arena of forms plugins for WordPress, notably the plugins WPForms and Ninja Forms. With other options available, it’s important to understand what Gravity Forms offers.

In order to make a decision about whether or not Gravity Forms is the best WordPress forms plugin available for your website, we’ll explore a variety of different elements in this article, including: 

  • Gravity Forms features
  • Gravity Forms user experience 
  • Gravity Forms pricing information
  • Gravity Forms FAQ 

We’ll examine all of these sections in detail. Let’s get started! 

Gravity Forms Features

While Gravity Forms is a straightforward and easy-to-use forms plugin for WordPress, it offers a surprising number of features that will take you much further than a basic forms plugin. 

gravity forms features

One great benefit to Gravity Forms is the amount of options you have— you can create virtually any type of form for your site, including questionnaires, online orders, quizzes, surveys, polls, support requests, file upload forms, and more. 

You also have a substantial amount of control in many areas, including how form entries are dealt with and how users are able to interact with your forms. This also addresses who receives what type of form notifications, setting forms based on date, role of user, number of entries received, and that’s not all. 

The power of Gravity Forms really is quite impressive. How does it offer such a powerful solution for WordPress forms? 

The key is the conditional logic feature. This basically makes them “smart forms,” able to decide which form fields should be shown to a user in accordance with their previous field entries. 

When conditional logic is used, you’ll be able to use advanced form entry routing as well, ensuring that the right form information gets seen by the right people. 

We’ll discuss more about the user experience in the next section, but first we’re going to dive into the details about the specific offerings of Gravity Form in terms of features. 

On the whole, notable features of Gravity Forms include: 

  • Drag-and-drop form builder 
  • Ability to create multi-page forms and save progress in the process
  • 33 different form fields 
  • Ability to control form availability based on date of number of entries
  • Ability to create multiple form entry notifications
  • Use of conditional logic to control who sees what forms and when 
  • Routing options that allow you to send specific forms to different emails based on content
  • Front-end WYSIWYG-enabled forms that allow for WordPress post submissions
  • Form optimization on mobile devices
  • A variety of add-ons, both official and third party
  • Anti-spam configuration to reduce spam forms
  • The ability to create user account registration forms for your WordPress site

We’re going to look at some of these key features in greater detail before moving on to the much-discussed Gravity Forms user experience. 

Gravity Forms Field Types

You’ll have four main categories for Gravity Forms fields— Standard, Advanced, Post, and Pricing. 

gravity forms field types

Having these preset categories allows you to easily create the form you need, whether it’s a simple contact form, create service or quote request forms, or even begin accepting orders through your website. 

You’ll have no issue building any type of form you need with the intuitive field categorization on Gravity Forms. 

gravity forms example

Not only that, you can streamline the submission of blog content through the Post categories, allowing you to create a submission form for guest posting on the front end, making it very straightforward and convenient. 

Form Field Settings and Options

One of the best things about Gravity Forms is the level of customization it offers. You will be able to make many vital decisions and configure your forms in numerous ways. 

form field settings and options

Depending on field type,  you’ll be able to determine if the field is required, where to use placeholder text, field size, field visibility, prepopulated data options, among many other customizations. 

This ability to customize and tailor your forms to your specific needs is one feature that truly sets Gravity Forms apart from other plugins for WordPress forms. 

Controlling Form Availability

When you want to create certain limits for form acceptance based on the number of entries received or form availability for only specific date ranges, Gravity Forms provides simple solutions. 

form availability

You have restriction settings that will allow you to define these limitations as well as transmit messages to users about the status of the form. 

Form Entry Notifications and Delivery Options

As you may have gathered by now, Gravity Forms functionality is heavily guided by conditional logic, especially when it comes to form entry routing. 

form entry notifications and delivery options

You can send relevant forms to specific email addresses using these features, and you can easily do this by adding a drop-down list that requires users to select the category or content of their message. 

That way, you can use their selection to route their form entry to the appropriate team member or department. 

Basic Gravity Forms Add-ons

Gravity Forms allows you even more options through the potential to add on different services and integrations with third party systems. 

If you want to integrate your email marketing service with Gravity Forms, for instance, you can do so through the use of a basic add-on. 

gravity forms add ons

Principal marketing services such as ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, GetResponse, AWeber, and others can easily be integrated with Gravity Forms.

You’ll need to upgrade to the Pro license or above in order to take advantage of this integration; however, if you want visitors to be added to email lists or grow your newsletter subscriptions, this is a good investment. 

There are some email marketing services though, like ConvertKit, which will be integrated with free plugins. Check yours out to see which path to take. 

Advanced Gravity Forms Add-ons

Simple email marketing integration is not the only possibility for Gravity Forms add-ons. You can also integrate other third party services, including but not limited to Dropbox, Slack, PayPal, FreshBooks, and many more. 

In addition, there’s an advanced Gravity Forms add-on that allows user registration to take place on your WordPress website via custom forms. With so many integration options, you’ll have incredible freedom with Gravity Forms. 

If you aren’t interested in any third party integrations, the basic license for Gravity Forms will be sufficient for your needs, most likely. We’ll discuss more about the specific benefits of other licences in the pricing section. 

Third-Party Gravity Forms Add-ons

While most of these integrations happen directly through official Gravity Forms add-ons, there are still third party options as well. 

Here are three that stand out: 

  • Gravity Perks: Find pieces of code that will enhance the plugin 
  • GravityView: Allow form entries to be published directly to your WordPress website (great for guest posts or testimonials). 
  • ForGravity: create PDFs from Gravity Forms

These are by no means the only options, and the WordPress Plugin Directory is where you can find more free add-ons for Gravity Forms. 

Gravity Forms User Experience

It may seem a bit overwhelming at first due to the sheer amount of customization and flexibility that Gravity Form offers you. How can something with so many options be easy to use? 

While it may seem that Gravity Forms would be complicated, we’re going to discuss the seamlessness that is the Gravity Forms user experience.

Getting Started with Gravity Forms

The first thing to note is that Gravity Forms doesn’t include any form templates or pre-built forms, which means you’ll be creating everything. 

This may seem like a downside, but in fact, Gravity Forms is without a doubt one of the easiest options for adding forms to your WordPress website, even when compared to basic, simple form plugins. 

This section of our Gravity Forms review will guide you through the process of creating a form for your WordPress site on Gravity Forms as well as how to use some of the notable features of this plugin. 

Creating a Form for Your WordPress Site with Gravity Forms

Even if you have no experience with form creation whatsoever, Gravity Forms makes it approachable and straightforward. 

On your WordPress admin sidebar menu, you’ll see a new menu titled forms once you have Gravity Forms. This tab will give you a variety of menu options, allowing you to view form entries, configure the plugin as well as create a new form. 

adding a new gravity form

The first thing you’ll need to do is name your form; after that, add your first field to the form. 

naming gravity form

To do this, all you have to do is to click on one of the field buttons to add it to your form. Once that’s done, you can drag and drop the fields to change the position on the form.

Added fields can be customized by clicking on them; you can also change the label and enter a field via the General settings page. This is where you can set the field as required, too. 

You’ll see two other tabs available for your field settings: Appearance and Advanced. On the Appearance tab, you can add example placeholders for your fields as well as overwrite the default text if a field isn’t field correctly. 

gravity form field settings demo

In addition, you’ll be able to choose custom CSS to change the default form style as well as selecting field size from the drop-down menu. 

The final tab, Advanced, adds even more customization options. You can add things like a custom admin label, set a default value including dynamic values like user IP address or current date, as well as set field visibility. 

The conditional logic setting that is important to optimize your Gravity Forms performance is also enabled from the Advanced profile tab. 

conditional logic

When you enable conditional logic for a particular field, that field will only show based on the information that the user entered in other fields on the form, customizing how your users see and interact with your forms. 

After configuring the field to your satisfaction, you’ll then move on to the next one until your form is finished. You’ll have the option to preview your form at any moment of the creation process to see how it will appear to visitors. 

Configuring the Form

You have many different configuration options for how your Gravity Forms works due to the fact that it’s an advanced WordPress forms plugin. 

On the Form Settings section of the Gravity Forms builder, you’ll be able to customize form button text, control placement of form field labels, set form availability, and limit the acceptance of forms based on number of entries. 

form configuration

You’ll also be able to set a variety of restrictions for your forms in the Restrictions section. This is particularly useful for: 

  • Time-sensitive offers 
  • Promotions
  • Job opportunities
  • Post submissions 
  • And more 

Your visitors will have no doubt about the status of the form because you can add custom messages such as ‘available (date),’ ‘offer expired,’ ‘limit of applications reached,’ etc. Your visitor will have a better user experience with these types of messages. 

Form Entry Submission Confirmation Options

Gravity Forms includes a time-saving pre populated message that will be sent to your visitors after they complete and submit a form. This confirmation message allows users to know that they submitted successfully. 

This, unsurprisingly, can also be easily customized on the Confirmation section of the form settings page. 

gravity form entry confirmation

You will be able to enter dynamic data into the message content using placeholders including information types like user’s name or email address, current date, user IP, URL of the form's age, and more. 

Once your form entry has been submitted, you can also complete the redirect configuration to send users to a particular site or URL once they’re done. With conditional logic you can have different confirmation options that are used when appropriate. 

Setting up Gravity Forms Notifications

After you’ve got your form configured just how you want it, you can then move on to setting up the notifications for the entries as you desire. 

Gravity Forms offers you a number of notification options for entries, allowing you to create multiple notifications for one form if you so choose. 

setting up form notifications

You can also define who receives a notification once that particular form has been submitted and limit or change it depending on the particular content of the form. 

Examples of notifications include: confirmation emails sent to users, conditional logic allowing for re-routing of content, etc. That way, nothing gets missed and all form content is sent directly where it needs to go. 

Customizing Form Appearance

While you’ll still have options, the appearance and styling of your forms will be more limited in comparison with other elements available for categorizations. 

customizing form appearance

You are able to add your own CSS to the forms and the fields themselves, and you won’t have to worry too much about whether or not your form blends into your WordPress website, as most tend to blend in pretty seamlessly. You can also extend your control with a third party tool. 

Gravity Forms Styler, CSS Hero, among others are some examples for the apps that will boost the appearance of the forms.  

Publishing Your Forms

After your form is customized and edited to your liking, you’ll be able to place it into your content with easy to access links. It only takes a few clicks to get there and to embed the link on your site. 

If you’re embedding the link into your content, you can enable a feature that submits the form entry without having to refresh the page, also known as AJAX. This isn’t a required feature and with some knowledge of how it might work and some bugs it has had, you can decide if you want to use it. 

As with other WordPress plugins, Gravity Forms uses shortcodes so that your content can be embedded into your website. When you make changes of a published form, the changes are automatically applied to all live copies of that form on your WordPress site. 

What’s more, you can embed the forms into your theme files, allowing you to integrate advanced forms into your projects. Possibilities are endless with Gravity Forms. 

Viewing the Form Entries

In addition to sending out form entries to the appropriate person via email, you can also check and monitor your entries via your WordPress dashboard. This helps you to keep track of everything related to the forms. 

viewing form entries

All correspondence will be available to check on the entries section and you can also resend email notifications and/or add notes to your entry when looking at individual entries in the WordPress Dashboard.

The ability to add notes to a form entry is ultimately a very unique and useful feature offered by Gravity Forms. It’s especially useful when you have multiple people looking at the information about your forms and/or you want to send users a quick and speedy follow-up message. 

Gravity Forms Pricing Information

With so many different features and functionalities, you may wonder what the cost of Gravity Forms actually is. Since Gravity Forms is a premium forms plugin for WordPress, you’ll have to pay to have access. 

gravity form pricing

There are three main pricing plans available for Gravity Forms: 

  • Basic License: use on one site and access to basic add-ons, $59. 
  • Pro License: use on 3 sites and access to basic + pro add-ons, $159. 
  • Elite License: use on unlimited number of sites with access to all basic, pro, and elite add-ons, $259. 

If you’re looking for a simple forms plugin for WordPress and don’t need access to pro or elite add-ons, the base plan is a good choice especially if you’ve got a tight budget. 

In addition to all add-ons, buying the Elite license will also get you access to the priority ticket support channel, ensuring you get the help you need if something isn’t going your way. 

No matter which plan you choose, the Gravity Forms plans are valid for one year; once that time has lapsed, you’ll get the option to renew, usually with a discount code. 

Take a look at the Gravity Forms pricing information for more details. 

Gravity Forms FAQ

You may still have a few questions related to Gravity Forms and the process of getting things started. Here we’re going to examine the top 3 questions that people have about Gravity Forms before we let you go. 

FAQ 1: Is there a free version of Gravity Forms?

While you may find some other basic form plugins for WordPress that are free, Gravity Forms isn’t available without paying for a license. The investment is worth it, however, if you’re serious about aesthetically-pleasing and effective form building for WordPress. 


That said, you can access a demo via the Gravity Forms website, allowing you to test out all of their most powerful features before you make a decision to buy. 

FAQ 2: How do I download the Gravity Forms plugin? 

Downloading Gravity Forms is very straightforward. The first thing you need to make sure you have is an active Gravity Forms license key and support account. Once you have those things, you can then access the Downloads area. 

Once in the Downloads section, you’ll simply find the Gravity Forms line and click the download link. A zip file will be downloaded and saved on your computer and you can open it from there. 

FAQ 3: What is the latest version of Gravity Forms?

Gravity Forms updates every so often, and the latest version of Gravity forms is v2.4.20. You’ll want to keep your eye out for updates to make sure that you have the most recent version and that all of the potential issues or glitches are fixed on your plugin. 

It’s very common for plugins to consistently create updates, so keep an eye out to ensure you don’t get left in the dust with an outdated version. 

Final Thoughts: Gravity Forms Review 

With high levels of customization and virtually no limit to the type of forms that you can create, it’s easy to understand why Gravity Forms is considered to be the top WordPress forms plugin. Who doesn't want full control over how their forms work? 

You can expand that control through the use of integrations and third party apps as well. Gravity Forms packs a punch with many features and customizable options, but that doesn’t make it hard to use, especially not with the drag and drop builder. 

With no experience, you can still easily and effectively use Gravity Forms in a straightforward way. If you’re looking for an in-depth forms plugin for WordPress that gives you options and full control over how your visitors engage with your forms and how you manage their entries, Gravity Forms is definitely the top option out there that can work for you. 

Have you used Gravity Forms? Are you using it now? What do you think about it? Drop us a line in the comments. 

By notme

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10 Reviews

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