Forminator vs. WPForms: Which Is Better for WordPress?

Do you want to compare Forminator vs. WPForms for your WordPress website?

Picking a form plugin sounds like a small decision, right up until you realize it shapes how you collect leads, take payments, and talk to the people who visit your site.

Forminator and WPForms are two of the most popular free form builders in the WordPress directory, and people ask me to compare them all the time.

So I installed both, built the same forms in each, and lined them up on setup, features, payments, analytics, and price. I work on the WPForms team, so I want to be upfront about that.

I’ve also spent enough time in Forminator to tell you where it genuinely beats us, because a comparison that pretends the other tool has no strengths isn’t worth reading.

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First Impressions: Forminator and WPForms

Both plugins do the same core job of letting you build forms without code and embed them in your posts, pages, and widgets, and both offer a free version alongside paid upgrades with a drag-and-drop builder.

The differences show up in the details, which is exactly what this comparison digs into. Forminator is made by WPMU DEV, and its free version is unusually generous.

WPForms is the plugin I work on, and it runs on more than 6+ million sites with a 4.8/5 rating from 13+ thousand 5-star reviews on WordPress.org, which makes it the most-installed form builder in the directory.

Forminator is the strong choice if you want the most capable free plan, while WPForms is the better long-term home if you want the easiest builder, built-in form analytics, AI form creation, and support you can actually reach.

The table below breaks down the two side by side.

	Forminator	WPForms
Builder	Modal-based, more clicking	Drag and drop with live preview
Free templates	A handful of presets	20+ free (2,100+ total)
Conditional logic (free)	Included free	Paid, starts at Basic
Payments (free)	Stripe and PayPal, no upgrade	Stripe and PayPal in Lite, small fee until Pro
Entry storage (free)	Stored in your database	Not in Lite, starts at Basic
Built-in form analytics	None native	Preview in Lite, full field-level in Pro
AI form builder	No	Yes, free in Lite
Surveys and polls	Free	Pro addon
Payment gateways	Stripe, PayPal	Stripe, PayPal Commerce, Square, Authorize.Net
Support	WPMU DEV membership support	Dedicated support, priority on Pro
Paid pricing	WPMU DEV membership from about $15/mo	Lite free, paid $49.50 to $299.50/year

Getting Started: Installation and Setup

Ease of setup is where I always start, because a plugin you enjoy using is a plugin you’ll actually keep. I built the same simple contact form in both to compare the flow.

Forminator

After installing the Forminator plugin, you can open the form builder and create a new form. After that, you’ll see template options.

As of this writing, there are 6 template options in the free account. You can also start from scratch using the blank form. For a quick contact form, I picked the contact template.

The template includes required first name and email address fields. It also includes optional phone number and message fields. You can customize these if you like.

To remove fields, click on the gear icon in the field you want to remove and you can delete it there. Similarly, you can add fields by clicking on the Insert Fields button, and you’ll see a menu of fields you can add.

Note that if you want to add multiples of the same field for any reason, you have to add the first one, then click out of the field editor, go back in, click it a second time, and so on.

You’ll see that Forminator is more of a “click-and-pick” system. You click on all of the fields you want all at one time. After you confirm them, they appear in a stacked column.

That lets you know what fields are there but doesn’t allow you to really know what the form will look like without previewing.

Once your fields are in place, don’t forget to check the form’s email settings to make sure you’ll receive notification of form submissions if you want them.

Once you’re happy with your form fields, you can click publish. However, bear in mind that publishing makes the form live inside Forminator, but not on your website.

You should see a message with the shortcode that you can copy and paste wherever you want the form to appear on your site.

From there, you open the post or page where you want the form, paste the shortcode, and publish the page. Only then is the form actually live for the people visiting your site.

WPForms

Now let’s go through that same process with WPForms. Getting started with WPForms is even easier. The first time you want to create a form with WPForms, it will show you a challenge that works like a great interactive tutorial.

Take the WPForms Challenge and a full wizard will show you around while helping you build your first form in less than 5 minutes.

Whether you decide to take the WPForms Challenge or not, the setup process is just as easy. If you decide to create a form without taking the challenge, open the WPForms plugin and click on the button to add a new form.

You’ll see 2,100+ form template options, more than 20 of which are available for free. Since we’re just looking to create a simple contact form, that’s what we’ll select.

Within the form builder, you can see exactly what the form will look like when it’s published. The drag-and-drop form builder makes it easy to drop other fields in if you want them or remove or reorder any existing fields in the template.

And that’s it. The form is complete. Before we publish this, let’s click over to the form settings quickly to be sure our email notifications are set up properly for when we have form entries.

If everything looks good, you’re ready to embed your form!

An excellent feature that WPForms has is the ability to embed the form right from the form builder. Of course, you can do it in other ways, such as using a shortcode or a widget.

The embed feature just makes this lightning-fast. Click the embed button at the top.

WPForms gives you the option to embed your form in an existing page or in a new one. If you choose to embed the form in a new page, a message prompts you to name your page.

This is great if you’re truly just getting started and want to create the page that will house your form. If you want to embed the form manually or use a shortcode, those links are available to you as well.

In this case, you can name the page something like Contact or Contact Us! Click on the Let’s Go button and the page will load with the form already embedded.

You can hit publish and then you’re ready to receive contact information from site visitors. Overall, the WPForms user interface is better and easier to use than Forminator.

The ability to drag and drop your form fields and see what your form will look like right away makes it more user-friendly than Forminator.

Free Versions: Forminator vs WPForms Lite

For a lot of readers, the real question is how far the free version gets you before you have to pay.

Forminator

This is where Forminator earns its reputation, so I want to be fair about it. Forminator’s free plan is one of the most generous in the form space.

On the free version you get conditional logic, file uploads, spam protection, quizzes, polls, and payment fields for both Stripe and PayPal with no upgrade required.

It also stores every submission in your WordPress database for free, so you can go back and read your entries without paying a cent.

WPForms

WPForms Lite takes a different approach, built to get you collecting responses fast. You get the full drag-and-drop builder, the AI form builder, more than 20 free templates, Square, Stripe and PayPal payments, and the Constant Contact integration.

Which free version is right for you comes down to priorities. If you want to squeeze the most out of a free plugin, especially conditional logic and free entry storage, Forminator gives you more on day one.

If you care more about the smoothest building experience and a clear path to payments, analytics, and support as you grow, WPForms Lite is the better starting point even though a couple of features wait behind the paid tiers.

The Core Stuff: Features and Functionality

Both plugins cover the basics well, so the interesting comparison is in how they handle the features you reach for once your forms get more serious. These are the ones that matter most.

Conditional Logic

In Forminator, you add a field. Let’s say you use checkboxes. A modal window opens so you can add your selection options, and your last option is “other.”

You close out of that modal window and click to add another field. This time, to go with the “other” field, we’ll use a text field and apply conditional logic.

After you’ve entered the text you want to appear on your text box, you have to click on the Visibility tab. Then you need to set up rules.

Forminator’s modal window, while visually appealing, actually slow the process down by requiring users to click in and out of every individual field.

This isn’t a big deal when you only need to set up conditional logic on one or two questions, but if you have a complex form with a lot of conditional logic, this will slow you down considerably.

WPForms is faster to apply conditional logic rules because it reduces the amount of clicking around that you have to do. All of your fields are visible as you’re editing.

You can apply advanced formatting and conditional logic while also being able to see the form you’re editing. To turn on conditional logic, click the Smart Logic tab.

After setting the toggle switch to Enable Conditional Logic, you can quickly and easily click to set up your rules. It’s done in seconds.

In WPForms, each field you click is already displayed, so you don’t have to close one modal window to open another as you do in Forminator. For this reason, setting up conditional logic in WPForms is faster and easier than it is with Forminator.

CSS Customization

Both plugins allow the user to customize using their own CSS to match their WordPress site.

File Upload

WPForms and Forminator both come with file upload fields so respondents can submit documents if need be. This is useful for job or scholarship application forms.

Spam Protection

WPForms and Forminator offer similar spam protection. Both offer hCaptcha, as well as reCAPTCHA v2 checkbox, v2 invisible, and v3. If you have the Akismet plugin installed, it will also integrate with both plugins. Forminator will also work with Honeypot.

A major difference is that WPForms also has an option for a Custom Captcha. This allows users to set up their own security questions or simple math problems to check that the form submission is coming from a human and not a bot. It’s a big plus in the WPForms column.

Payment Options

With Forminator, you can use PayPal for one-off payments, or you can connect Stripe for recurring payments. WPForms offers several options for your payment forms:

• PayPal Commerce addon
• PayPal Standard addon
• Square addon
• Stripe Pro addon
• Authorize.Net

The Square, Stripe, and PayPal integration is available for all users (both free and paid), so you don’t need the addon to enable it.

The addon only allows you to apply conditional logic to your Stripe payment field, which is a really handy feature for Pro and above users.

WPForms offers a lot more flexibility than Forminator when it comes to payment options. Connecting WPForms with your payment gateway is easy and straightforward.

Plus, the fact that you can use PayPal Commerce to offer both credit card and PayPal checkout options is a really powerful advantage with WPForms.

Form Templates

Forminator and WPForms both offer templates to help users get started quickly. At the time of this writing, Forminator has 6 free templates available, in addition to the blank form.

Their site says the Pro version includes expert, pre-made templates, but doesn’t say how many or share any examples.

WPForms has more than 20 free templates and 2,100+ form templates that come with paid licenses.

You can view all of the available templates on WPForms, even as a Lite user. They’ll be marked as Pro if you need to upgrade to use them.

Fields Availability

The form fields you can use are different in WPForms Lite and the Pro version. Let’s look at the similarities before we check out the differences:

	WPForms Lite	WPForms Pro
Name	✓	✓
Email	✓	✓
Text	✓	✓
Number	✓	✓
Number Slider	✓	✓
Dropdown	✓	✓
Multiple Choice	✓	✓
Checkbox	✓	✓
Payment fields (Items fields)	✓	✓
reCAPTCHA/ hCaptcha/Akismet/Turnstile	✓	✓
GDPR Agreement	✓	✓

These basic fields let you easily make forms for your business, hobby site, or nonprofit. With these fields, you can easily:

• Create a simple contact form
• Create an order form and accept credit card payments with Stripe
• Customize your form with dropdowns, radio buttons, and checkboxes
• Add spam protection to your forms with CAPTCHAs, email blocklists, and more
• Easily add a GDPR agreement to any form.

If you upgrade to Pro, you get access to the ‘fancy’ fields in the plugin too:

	WPForms Lite	WPForms Pro
Smart Phone (with country detection)		✓
Address / Map		✓
Date / Time		✓
Website / URL		✓
File Upload		✓
Calculations		✓
Password		✓
Rich Text		✓
Repeater		✓
Layout (multi-column form)		✓
Page Break		✓
Section Divider		✓
HTML		✓
Content		✓
Entry Preview		✓
Hidden Field		✓
Custom CAPTCHAs		✓
Signature		✓
Survey fields (star ratings, Likert scale, NPS)		✓

Surveys and Polls

Whether it’s just for fun or to get audience feedback, polls and surveys are a good way to boost engagement. Both plugins are pretty easy to use when it comes to setting up your poll.

Let’s look at Forminator first. After choosing a name for your poll, the plugin directs you to the builder page where you can set it up. For our purposes here, we just created a very basic poll.

After you’re finished adding all of your options, you can publish the poll and embed it on a page or post using the same steps we used to embed a form.

This is what your poll looks like once it’s live on your site and ready for voting.

After people have voted, you can view the results on the Forminator dashboard. Click on the gear on the form you want to review, then click View Submissions. You get a colorful chart that you can include in presentations or social media graphics.

Now let’s take a look at WPForms. To create a poll on WPForms, start by making sure you have the surveys and polls addon installed and activated. This is what will give you advanced survey form reporting.

Then you go ahead and add your questions. How you choose to do that is up to you. For example, you could use radio buttons or checkboxes for your poll. Our example here uses radio buttons (or the Multiple Choice field as it is known in WPForms).

After your form is set up, click on Surveys and Polls from the form settings.

Then simply click the toggle switch to enable survey reporting.

Though it seems like an extra step in the process, what this does is give you access to a greater variety of graphs and charts so that if you want to incorporate those in presentations, social media, or anywhere else in your survey reporting, you have more options.

The reporting updates in real-time. The default chart report is a bar graph. There’s also a vertical bar graph to give a slightly different look if that better fits your needs.

If you’re looking for more color, the pie chart option gives you vibrant colors. If you don’t like the particular color scheme, you can refresh to get another one. The colors are randomly generated.

There’s also a line graph option. Finally, below every visual representation of your poll data, you can find the percentages.

When it comes to creating surveys and polls, WPForms has a nicer user interface that lets you see your survey or poll as you’re working on it.

Additionally, the advanced survey reporting features for WPForms are more powerful than Forminator’s and allow you to visualize results in more ways.

Integrations: Marketing and More

Forminator connects to a solid list of third-party tools, including HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, Google Sheets, Trello, and Slack, plus webhooks and Zapier, Make, and n8n for everything else.

WPForms covers the popular email and marketing services too. The Lite version handles the most popular free option already. You can build a Constant Contact signup form right out of the box.

And WPForms Pro extends this with support for many popular email automation and marketing platforms:

	WPForms Lite	WPForms Pro
Constant Contact	✓	✓
Mailchimp		✓
AWeber		✓
GetResponse		✓
Drip		✓
Campaign Monitor		✓
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)		✓
MailerLite		✓
Kit (formerly ConvertKit)		✓
MailPoet		✓
Klaviyo		✓
SendGrid		✓

Plus also adds Slack, Notion, and Twilio integrations, which aren’t email marketing per se but show up in the same workflow space.

Slack is great for getting a real-time ping when someone submits a form. Notion lets you sync entries straight into a database. Twilio sends SMS or WhatsApp notifications on submission.

The Elite tier adds ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, and Airtable for the more enterprise integrations.

If your email tool isn’t on the list, don’t worry. There are still ways to connect, which we’ll cover next.

Cloud Storage and Productivity Integrations

Pro also unlocks deeper integrations with the cloud tools most people already use. These don’t get talked about as much as the email integrations, but they’re often the most useful in practice.

• Google Sheets auto-exports entries to a spreadsheet, with conditional filtering so you can route entries to different sheets based on form selections. This is the integration I end up setting up the most for clients tracking leads.
• Google Drive automatically uploads file uploads from forms into a Drive folder of your choice.
• Google Calendar creates calendar events from form submissions, which is incredibly handy for booking and scheduling forms.
• Dropbox does the same as Google Drive but for Dropbox folders.

If you’re working with cloud-first workflows, these alone make Pro pay for itself.

Upgrade to WPForms Pro Now! 🙂

Bonus Integrations

Sometimes you’ll want to connect WPForms to a service that doesn’t have a dedicated addon. Pro gives you four ways to bridge that gap, and Lite gives you one.

	WPForms Lite	WPForms Pro
Uncanny Automator	✓	✓
Zapier		✓
Make		✓
n8n		✓

Building Forms With AI

This is a newer area, and it’s one of the clearest gaps between the two, because Forminator doesn’t offer AI form creation at all.

WPForms builds it right into the builder, so with WPForms AI you can describe the form you want in plain language and get a working draft in seconds.

The AI Choices feature also helps when you’re filling out dropdowns and checkboxes, since it suggests choice values based on the field label.

You can even edit an existing form by chatting with it, asking the AI to adjust fields, build conditional logic, or write a calculation for you.

If that weren’t enough, WPForms also goes the extra mile by allowing AI assistants like Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to build forms for you.

If you like the idea of describing a form and having it built for you, WPForms is the only one of the two that does it today.

Form Analytics and Reporting

This is the comparison point I most wanted to test, because it’s where the two plugins are furthest apart. Once your forms are live, the next question is which ones are actually working, and that’s a reporting problem, not a building problem.

Forminator stores your submissions and lets you sort through them, which is useful for reading responses, but it doesn’t have native form analytics. There’s no built-in view that tells you how many people saw a form versus how many finished it, and no field-level data showing where people give up.

WPForms has built-in form analytics baked into the plugin. It automatically tracks every published form the moment it’s active, with no code and no Google Analytics setup required.

You get views, interactions, conversion rate, abandonments, and errors for each form, plus per-field data that shows exactly which field people stall on or leave.

That last part is the useful bit, because a low conversion rate is frustrating, but knowing that people bail on your phone field tells you what to fix.

The tracking is privacy-friendly, with no cookies, no personal data, and nothing sent to an outside service, so your data stays in your WordPress database.

Form previews and logged-in admin views are excluded, so your own testing doesn’t skew the numbers. And on Pro and Elite, you can ask WPForms AI about your analytics in plain language to get suggestions and compare time periods.

If you care about improving your forms and not just collecting from them, this is the single biggest reason I’d point someone toward WPForms.

Paid Plans and Pricing Compared

Price is where these two take very different paths, so it’s worth understanding what you’re actually buying. WPForms has a free version called Lite, then four paid tiers billed per year.

These are introductory prices, and they renew at the regular rate.

• Lite: Free, for anyone getting started
• Basic: $49.50 per year for one site, adds conditional logic, entry storage, and advanced fields
• Plus: $99.50 per year for three sites, adds marketing integrations
• Pro: $199.50 per year for five sites, adds payments, surveys, analytics, and conversion tools, and it’s the tier most people want
• Elite: $299.50 per year for unlimited sites, adds CRMs and multisite support

Forminator takes a different route, because the plugin itself is free but there’s no standalone Forminator Pro license. To get Forminator Pro, you subscribe to a WPMU DEV membership, which starts at around $15 a month, or roughly $180 a year, for a single site.

That membership bundles Forminator Pro with WPMU DEV’s other plugins for image optimization, caching, and security, plus their hosting tools.

That bundle is either a bonus or a mismatch depending on what you need. If you want the whole suite of tools, the membership can be good value.

If all you want is the form builder, you’re paying for a lot of plugins you won’t use. WPForms, by contrast, is a form builder you buy on its own, and the free Lite plan covers a genuine amount before you

My Final Take: WPForms vs Forminator

If you want the best WordPress forms and polls plugin, get WPForms. It provides superior functionality, pricing for different budgets and needs, and the best selection of form templates.

For users who are just getting started, you’ll find that it’s easy to create basic forms and publish them to your site within minutes.

Even if you’re looking to make more advanced forms with lots of conditional logic so that you’re only gathering the information you need, it’s super easy to do with WPForms.

More advanced users will love advanced WPForms features like enhanced reporting, 10,000+ Zapier integrations, and all of the marketing integrations that can connect directly to your WPForms account.

In fact, with all of the integrations available for WPForms, you’re certain to find other ways to strengthen your business or organization with all the different forms and polls you can create.

FAQs About Forminator vs. WPForms

Forminator vs. WPForms is a common comparison for anyone choosing a WordPress form builder. Here are quick answers to the questions I hear most often.

Is Forminator better than WPForms?

It depends on what you need. Forminator has the more generous free plan, with free conditional logic, entry storage, and payments. WPForms is easier to use and adds built-in analytics, AI form building, more payment gateways, and stronger support, which makes it the better fit for forms you plan to rely on and grow.

Is Forminator free?

Yes. Forminator has a free version on WordPress.org that includes forms, quizzes, polls, conditional logic, file uploads, and Stripe and PayPal payments. Forminator Pro is only available through a WPMU DEV membership.

Is WPForms free?

Yes. WPForms Lite is free and includes the drag-and-drop builder, the AI form builder, more than 20 templates, and Square, Stripe and PayPal payments. Conditional logic, entry storage, and advanced features like surveys and full analytics are part of the paid plans, starting at $49.50 per year.

Which is better for beginners?

WPForms’ drag-and-drop builder shows you the form as you build it, the setup Challenge walks you through your first form in a few minutes, and you can embed a form straight from the builder. Forminator’s click-and-pick approach and modal windows take a little more getting used to.

Can I switch from Forminator to WPForms?

Yes. You can install WPForms alongside Forminator, rebuild your forms, and place the new ones on your pages before removing the old shortcodes. Since WPForms lets you embed from the builder and offers matching templates, recreating a contact or payment form usually takes just a few minutes.

Next, See What Else You Can Do With WPForms

I’ve only scratched the surface of what WPForms can do. Once it’s installed, it’s worth exploring how much further it goes than a basic contact form. Here are a few ideas to try next.

• Create a lead magnet optin form
• Create a custom login page or user registration form
• Get Slack notifications
• Create multi-page forms

You might also be interested in seeing how WPForms stacks up against other form builders.

• Ninja Forms vs WPForms
• TypeForm vs Jotform vs WPForms
• Gravity Forms vs Google Forms vs WPForms

Create Your WordPress Form Now

Ready to build your form? Get started today with the easiest WordPress form builder plugin. WPForms Pro includes lots of free templates and offers a 14-day money-back guarantee.

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