People like Swiss Army knives because they can help you do everything from cutting open a package to opening a bottle of wine or clipping your fingernails.
Why is that relevant to this WPForms review?
Because WPForms is the WordPress form equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.
Whether you want to create a simple contact form or get creative with payment forms, surveys, contract agreements, and a ton of other use cases, WPForms can do it…and do it well.
In general, there’s just a lot to like about this plugin.
If you’re a casual user, you’ll love how easily you can build a form. The pre-made templates and intuitive drag-and-drop builder will have you up and running in no time. And if you’re a power user, you’ll still have plenty of room to tinker, with lots of advanced features like conditional logic and Zapier integrations.
Keep reading for a quick overview of the features and then a hands-on look and some genuine thoughts on the plugin…
WPForms Review 2023: Build Any Type Of WordPress Form
I don’t want to rehash the marketing copy that you can find at WordPress.org or the WPForms website, but the quick version is that WPForms form builder can help you build pretty much any type of WordPress form.
It can handle:
- Contact forms
- Surveys and polls
- Payments
- Appointment booking
- User registration/login
- Email opt-in forms
- Front-end post submission
- …plus a whole lot more.
It also packs tons of features to help you automate those forms, like conditional logic or integrations with other tools.
Let’s get straight to the hands-on section and I’ll show you how all these features work!
WPForms Drag-And-Drop Builder: The Beginning Of Every Form
All your forms begin in the builder, so I think that’s the logical area to start the hands-on section of my WPForms review.
When you go to create a new form, the first thing that you’ll see is a list of pre-made templates. These are helpful because they let you start from a solid foundation, rather than having to add every single field from scratch (though you certainly can do that if you want):
For this first example, I’ll select a simple contact form.
Configuring Your Form Fields
Once you choose your template, WPForms drops you right into the builder. Here, you’ll see a live preview of your form on the right and a list of available form fields on the left.
To add a new field, you just drag it over:
You can also use drag-and-drop to rearrange existing fields as needed.
With the Pro version, you get access to a large variety of field types, including fields for:
- Date/time pickers
- Passwords
- File uploads
- Ratings
- Product selection
- Calculator fields to calculate the total price based on a user’s selection
If you want to customize how a field works, you just click on it. That opens the Field Options in the left sidebar, where you’re able to configure things like:
- Labels
- Whether or not a field is required
- Conditional logic (with the paid version)
For example, with conditional logic, you can say “only show this field if a visitor selected the ‘No’ checkbox above”:
Different fields also have different options.
For example, if you’re editing a checkbox field, you’ll be able to enter the options for visitors to choose from, including an option to use images instead of text, which is useful for more visual choices:
Configuring Form Settings
Once you finish setting up your form fields, you can jump to the Settings tab to control basic aspects of how your form functions.
In the General tab, you’re able to set up form basics, like the text for the submit button and anti-spam measures:
The Notifications tab lets you set up the email notifications that get sent after a user submits the form.
There are a few interesting features here…
First, you can create multiple email notifications in the premium version. For example, you could send one email to yourself and another to the form submitter.
Second, you can insert actual information from the form using the included Smart Tags:
Finally, the most interesting feature is the ability to use conditional logic to send notifications.
For example, maybe you want to send new form submissions to John if a user answered one way, but send them to Sally if the user answered a different way.
With conditional logic, you can do that:
This lets you automate your workflows on a deep level, which can boost your productivity and eliminate the need to manually direct form submissions to the right place.
Finally, the Confirmation tab lets you choose what happens after a user submits a form. You can:
- Show a message
- Show a page
- Redirect visitors to a certain URL
You can also create multiple different confirmations and use conditional logic to perform different actions based on how a visitor submits a form. Again, this helps you automate your workflows:
Displaying Your Form
Once you’re happy with your form, there are a few different ways that you can display it on your site.
First, you can click the Embed button to generate a shortcode that you can use:
Or, if you’re using the new WordPress block editor (dubbed “Gutenberg”), WPForms also adds a new WPForms block that you can use to add forms to your block editor designs:
Going Deeper: 9 WPForms Features That You’ll Love
Now that I’ve shown you the basics of the WPForms interface, let me single out some more specific features that help explain why WPForms is one of the most popular and best-rated WordPress form plugins out there.
1. Protect Your Forms From Spam
If you put a form on the Internet, people are going to try and spam it. That’s just the nature of the beast!
So unless you like sifting through spam notifications in your inbox, you want a form plugin that will stop spam in the first place.
WPForms gives you a few different ways to do that.
First, it adds a “honeypot field” by default. This is a hidden field that human visitors will never see, but that will trip up robots. In my experience, the honeypot field alone is all you need to combat most automated spam.
If you want to take things further, though, WPForms also supports the popular Google reCAPTCHA service (this is the one that asks visitors to check a box saying “I’m not a robot”) or the Invisible reCAPTCHA service. Or, you can even add your own custom CAPTCHA questions with the paid version.
2. Manage Form Submissions From Your WordPress Dashboard
Above, I showed you how you can set up your own email automation system for new form submissions. Don’t worry about missing emails, though, because all of your form submissions are also logged in your WordPress dashboard.
You can filter them as needed and even export them to a CSV if you want to work with them in another tool:
3. Create Order Forms And Accept Payments
With the premium version of WPForms, you can use your forms to accept payments via a variety of payment processors including PayPal, Stripe, and more.
This offers a more lightweight alternative to using a full-scale eCommerce plugin. You can use your forms to sell:
- Services
- Bookings
- Physical products
- Etc.
To create a payment form, you can make use of the dedicated Payment Fields field types, including a few different ways to let people select which items they want to purchase.
For example, with the Multiple Items field, you can let shoppers choose from a selection of radio boxes, each with a different price:
Then, you can use the Total field to tally up all the shopper’s selections into one final price.
To finish things out, you can use the Payments tab to configure where the money goes and what information you need to collect (e.g. the shopper’s address):
4. Run Powerful Surveys And Polls (And Analyze Results)
Want to know how your website’s visitors feel? Skip a dedicated poll plugin and just use WPForms’ built-in survey functionality.
With the premium version’s Surveys and Polls add-on, you’ll be able to create forms using dedicated fields for:
- Star rating
- Net Promoter Score (i.e. “how likely are you to recommend this product to a friend”)
- Likert Scale (i.e. “very unsatisfied – unsatisfied – neutral – satisfied – very satisfied”)
This lets you get beyond the superficial and use the same techniques that experts recommend to gauge your customer’s feelings.
Then, once you get some responses rolling in, WPForms also includes dedicated tools to help you analyze responses, which makes it easier for you to draw meaningful conclusions from your data:
5. Collect Digital Signatures on Online Forms with WPForms
While we live in a digital world, getting people to sign things is still an important step in many business transactions.
But having visitors print, sign, and fax a document every time you need a signature is a huge waste of time for both you and them.
And this is where even the best WordPress contact form plugins can backstab you.
To make it easier to collect signatures (and simplify your form submitters’ lives), WPForms has a dedicated Signatures add-on that adds a new Signature field type.
This field lets form submitters sign their documents using their mouse or touchscreen device. Here’s an example of the field in action:
With this functionality, you have a much more convenient way to handle:
- Contracts
- Service agreements
- Terms of service agreements
- Non-disclosure agreements
- Petitions
- Etc.
6. Restrict Who Can View And Submit Forms
For some situations, you might not want your forms to be publicly available for any anonymous visitor to fill out.
To give you some privacy when needed, WPForms’ Form Locker add-on lets you:
- Add a password to forms
- Restrict form access by date/time
- Limit the total number of submissions or the number of submissions per person
- Restrict access to registered members only
Once you activate the add-on, you can choose these restrictions from the Settings tab of any form:
7. Automate Your Workflows With Zapier
I’ve already highlighted a few ways that you can use WPForms’ functionality to save time and automate your workflows. But this one ups the ante even further…
In case you’re not familiar with Zapier, it’s a freemium service that lets you “connect” different apps together. Currently, it supports over 1,000 apps, including apps like:
- Google Sheets
- Gmail
- Slack
- MailChimp
- Etc.
With WPForms’ Zapier add-on, you’re able to connect your WordPress forms to any one of those 1,000+ apps.
The possibilities here are pretty endless. Some examples of things that you can do after someone submits a form are…
- Create a new lead in Salesforce or another CRM
- Add a new row to a Google Sheets document
- Create an invoice in FreshBooks
- Send a text message using Twilio
- Add a new card in Trello or create a task in Asana
- Connect to another plugin with a tool like Uncanny Automator
- …so much more.
8. Connect To Your Favorite Email Marketing Service(s)
Beyond the Zapier integration, WPForms also has a lot of dedicated integrations for popular email marketing services that you can use to add people to your list after they submit a form.
There are a lot of situations where this functionality can be useful.
Sure – the obvious one is a dedicated email opt-in form. But you can also get creative with giving people an option to sign up to your email list after:
- Registering
- Submitting a contact form
- Making a payment
- Etc.
Once you connect your email marketing service (like GetResponse or ConvertKit or anything that you use, you can map your existing form fields to information at your email marketing service:
You can also use conditional logic here. For example, you can only sign people up to a list if they select a checkbox for “I want to sign up to your email list”.
Here’s an example of how that would work:
With this conditional logic, you can add an option to join your email list to any form on your site and only sign people up if they give you their consent.
9. Create A Custom Login/Registration Page
Finally, if you’re running any type of site where you allow other people to register at your site, the User Registration add-on lets you use WPForms to create your own custom registration and login forms.
You can use any fields in these forms, which lets you get creative. For example, you could sign people up to your email list as part of the registration process. Or, you could require users to pay a fee to register by using the payment fields.
Then, you can use the Settings area to map form fields to the user profile fields in WordPress:
With this functionality, you could even create a lightweight membership-style site without the need for a dedicated membership plugin.
WPForms Examples
Looking for some cool WPForms examples? Here are a ton of examples and templates to get inspired and choose from:
- WPForms Contact Page: The contact form of WPForms official website is built with WPForms Pro where the contact form is hidden by default and only appears when users click on a button titled “complete a form”. It is a great way to keep away contact spam/
- WPForms Template Gallery: If you want to see WPForms examples for pages like buy me a coffee page, donation form template, support a request form template etc, then this page has a ton of them to get inspired and even use them directly as templates.
WPForms Pricing Review 2023: How Much Does WPForms Pro Cost?
The WPForms Pro account will cost you $39 to get started and goes all the way to $299 per year.
You can get started with WPForms for free with the version listed at WordPress.org. This free version makes a great option if you just want to create a simple contact form.
However, if you want the more advanced functionality that I detailed, you’ll probably need the premium version, which comes in a few different packages. Each package affects which add-ons you get access to.
Here’s a look at all of WPForms’ pricing plans:
WPForms Review 2023: Is WPForms Worth it?
To summarize, if you want a plugin that can accept payments, serve newsletter widgets, accept appointment bookings or even help with integrations with Trello, Twillio, GetResponse etc, then WPForms is totally worth it. However, if you want just a basic contact form for your website, it is kind of a overkill.
I’ve thrown a lot of functionality at you in this WPForms review. And I guess that’s kind of my point…
WPForms has a ton of functionality. It isn’t simply the best online contact form builder plugin for WordPress users.
You can use it to accept payments, survey your visitors, accept appointment bookings, build your email list, and – of course – just create a simple contact form.
But at the same time, that functionality never feels overwhelming. I think there are a couple of reasons for that:
- The interface is well-designed – whether you’re a WordPress beginner or a developer (or anywhere in between), you should find it easy to get work done in the WPForms interface.
- It’s modular – you can pick and choose exactly which features you want, so you’ll never be overwhelmed by lots of features that you don’t need.
Put all that together with the fact that WPForms does a great job of combating spam and has those nice-to-haves like form access restrictions and a signature field and…well, it’s easy to see why WPForms has grown so quickly.
Whether you just want a simple contact form or you want all that advanced functionality, you should definitely consider WPForms for your WordPress site.
WPForms Review
Summary
WPForms is one of the most feature-rich WordPress form builder plugin. It accepts payments, books appointments, newsletters and much more. If you need a simple contact form that is affordable and reliable, then you should try WPForms
Did you have a chance to use or review WPForms? Let me know your thoughts on WPForms in the comments below!
The biggest challenge is to stop spam messages. These days these things have been increased and thank a plugin like WPForms to make the life of bloggers easy. You have shared a very detailed review of WPForms. Thanks for this awesome post.
Hey Swadhin,
For WordPress, when it comes to adding forms to website generally most people choose WPForms for powerful option. It really makes website easy as possible and boost additional advanced needs. Generally, its main goal to create a form builder plugin that not only produced beautiful forms, but was powerful and user-friendly as well. It is rally well designed in response to the slow, buggy and complex form plugin that website owners had to pick from for their websites. This plugin is extremely easy to use and offers WordPress website owners a multitude of advanced features for the perfect form-building experience. Eventually, thanks for sharing your ideology in detail pertaining to this topic.
With best wishes,
Amar kumar
Hi Swadhin,
Excellent review. Love the features that WP forms has to offer. I think it’s great for freelancers, marketers and bloggers in general. The best part is you can easily sell a product on your blog with this plus it helps tackle spam.
P.S. You might want to check on that embedded video, its not showing up.
Hi Swadhin, great review, I like the fact that there’s an option for a one-time payment. I’m currently using Gravity Forms and pay around $199 each year to renew it. WPForms looks much simpler, so I might have to check it out after my Gravity Forms annual subscription expires. Thanks a bunch mate :)
I was using Contact Form 7, but the latest updated added some validator and messed it up for many, including me. So i was in hunt for a new contact for mand stumbled upon your post from Pinterest.
With such a good review, I am thinking this might just be the contact form I wanted.
These are great ways of receiving payments right from your website. However in my case since I am just selling few services, I just use the paypal merchant option. The problem with paypal is that you cannot customize well.
Hi Jonathan,
With WPForms, you can accept PayPal payments, customize it to send users to a landing page after they complete the process and to another if they click cancel. You can also ask their address for local shipping.
I think I didn’t need any more features. What did you specifically want?
Hello Swadhin,
Looks like a great plugin for forms, and PayPal integration is like butter on the bread. Nice written review. Keep writing such reviews to let us know about such great products.
Thank you bro. Glad you liked it :)
Hi Swadhin,
What a great review on WP Form. I like it because it is not only easy to do, but stops spam and has a nice template to choose from.
I can see what a time saver it is because it takes so much time to code. And with everything we have to do in one day, time is precious.
I thank you for introducing me to this and will spread the news!
-Donna
Hello ma’am,
Thank you so much for the kind words.
Creating online forms is a pain, it takes way too much time figuring out what to add and how to format. I had to create an online form for my Blog Management Services and I was stuck because I could not find the best form generator that had a built in template.
I then used Google forms and It took me a day to figure out and get things in the right place. i had been researching on a good solution since then and I got one.
I am so glad you liked it.
Have a great day maam.
-Swadhin
Hi Swadhin,
Informative post indeed :)
WPForms seem like to be great for bloggers, freelancers, and Internet marketers. To think of it, it does multiple tasks and facilitates convenience for the users as well. Coming from Syed, it’s got to be good. Will definitely consider it and give it a good read once I’m back from my little break.
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead :)
Hi maam,
Thanks for the appreciation. :)
Yes, it IS good. I have used it and am using it so I recommend it to everyone. :)
In fact, you can directly ask your clients to pay an upfront fee while filling the quote form only.
Plus it generates nice billing forms for use in selling something.
Definitely, a must have if you plan to sell a PDF or a product. Total hasle-free!
Have a great time with your break. I hope and wish it turns out the way you want it to. :)
You too have a great week ma’am.
-Swadhin
Hi Swadhin Bro,
Awesome review indeed :)
I am sure, WP Form also helps to stop spams as well. As I getting spammed messages through my contact form. So I disabled its.
I will think about it.
Naveen
Hi Naveen,
Welcome here after months! It’s always a good feeling to see you here.
Having a contact form is utmost necessary for bloggers. Disabling them, you are missing out your chances to connect and get more business.
You can easily stop spam on your online forms with various ways. Even if you are not prepared to invest in a premium plugin like WPForms, I would suggest you to use other form generators. I used https://wordpress.org/plugins/si-contact-form/ before. It was pretty good for a basic form builder. It has file upload facility for your readers in case they wanted you to se any media or doc.
Use that till you get WPForms. Or you can directly get WPForms here https://www.digitalgyd.com/wpforms
Thank you.
-Swadhin