Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms Compared [2024]

Are you trying to compare Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms?

Choosing a form builder plugin can be tricky when there are so many addons and features to consider.

In this article, we’ll dive deep to find the important differences between Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms so you can figure out which one works best for your site.

Comparison Table – Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms

Here’s a quick summary of our findings:

	Ninja Forms	Gravity Forms	WPForms
Free version available	Yes	No	Yes – WPForms Lite
Pricing	$99+/yr	$59+/yr	$99+/yr
Live form preview	Yes	No	Yes
Templates included	17+	15+	2,000+
Form import tool	Yes – Ninja Forms only	Yes – Gravity Forms only	Yes – Ninja Forms, Pirate Forms, WPForms, Contact Form 7

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Make sure to read the full article to see a detailed comparison of features between the three form builders.

Is There a Free Version of Gravity Forms?

No, there’s no free version of Gravity Forms. The company also discontinued the Gravity Forms lifetime license that they previously offered. However, you can get fully functional, free versions of Ninja Forms and WPForms.

If your site is new, or you only need to make a basic form, starting with a free form builder makes more sense than paying for something too complicated right away.

You can start out with WPForms Lite today. It’s a free plugin that lets you make totally custom forms. WPForms has been downloaded 225+ million times and has 13+ thousand 5-star reviews on WordPress.org!

WPForms Lite also includes an integration with Stripe so you can create payment forms without having to pay for an addon.

Then, as your WordPress site grows, you can upgrade to the premium version to make:

• Contact forms with advanced fields
• Multi-column forms
• Forms for popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, MailerLite, and more
• Multi-step forms
• Payment forms with Square, PayPal, and Authorize.Net
• Surveys
• Conversational forms
• …and more.

Plus, if you turn on the Lite Connect feature, you’ll be able to save your entries from the free plugin and unlock them after you upgrade to WPForms Pro.

Now we know a little bit more about form builders, let’s look at these 3 WordPress form builder plugins in detail.

Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms: Which Is the Best Form Builder?

Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms both let you create advanced forms and have many similar features. But Ninja Forms has an edge because it’s easier to customize and includes a decent free version as well. Gravity Forms lacks a free version and isn’t as intuitive.

In this review, we’re going to look at each WordPress form plugin on features, ease of use, support, and pricing.

Keep reading to find out how they measure up.

Features

When it comes to Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms, both plugins have a good range of useful features. However, WPForms goes the extra mile and brings some unique features of its own, as we’ll see below.

Gravity Forms Features

If you want to try out Gravity Forms, there’s a demo on its website. This isn’t the best way to try out a plugin because you can’t see how it works with your layout, theme, or existing plugins. The demo just lets you play around with the form builder interface.

With the Gravity Forms Basic license, you can use conditional logic, multi-page forms, and the Basic addons.

The Basic license also gives you most of the same fields that you’ll find in WPForms and Ninja Forms, with a few differences. For example, Gravity Forms is missing the star rating field that WPForms has.

This field is handy if you want to collect testimonials from customers.

The form builder in Gravity Forms doesn’t have a live preview in the form builder. The interface started to look a little dated compared to the other 2 form builders in this review.

Gravity Forms and Ninja Forms both have basic spam protection, email notifications, and entry storage. If you’re having difficulty receiving the notifications, you can check out this tutorial on how to fix Gravity Forms not sending email.

If you want to go directly to Gravity Forms Pro, note that the features are more or less the same as Basic. The main difference is in the addons. If you want to use the payment fields, coupon fields, or create surveys, you’ll need to pay for Gravity Forms Elite.

Ninja Forms Features

The Ninja Form form builder shows you what your finished form will look like as you work. All form fields are available in the free version of Ninja Forms, so the paid licenses generally unlock addons and integrations.

It’s also worth checking that the fields work the way you expect. For example, the address field is primarily designed for US addresses. You can customize this manually. But there’s no way to quickly change the address scheme.

You can add spam protection to your forms. Ninja Forms supports some types of Google reCaptcha, but not the latest reCaptcha v3. It’s also missing advanced features for surveys and polls, which both of the other contact form plugins have.

If you want to change the layout of your fields, you will need to write your own CSS, or pay for a $49 addon.

WPForms Features

WPForms Pro is the best value form builder plugin. It’s super easy for beginners to use, has tons of advanced form features, and it lets you build any type of WordPress form.

With WPForms Pro, you get all of these great features:

• Unlimited forms
• Unlimited entries
• Conditional logic
• 2,000+ form templates
• PayPal, Stripe, and Square payment gateways
• Spam protection
• Save and resume functionality
• Form location tracker
• User submitted posts
• File uploads for users to submit images and documents
• Offline forms
• 1-click geolocation
• Entry storage
• CAPTCHA Support for reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, and hCaptcha
• …and more.

There are also tons of easy ways to customize your forms. For example, you can quickly choose a field size using a dropdown in the form builder.

The Layout field makes it easy to position fields in columns without writing code.

When you’re done, you can embed your forms anywhere on your website using a block or shortcode.

You can place your forms in 4 places:

• On a page
• In a post
• In the sidebar
• In the footer.

Just click the Embed button to add your form to any page on your site.

You can keep track of where you’ve published each of your forms by checking the locations on the All Forms page.

WPForms is the only form builder in our list that has:

• A native Elementor module, so you can embed forms easily in Elementor using drag and drop
• A native Divi module
• Integration with the SeedProd landing page builder.

That makes WPForms worth it if you’re using a page builder to make your site layout.

Form Submissions

WPForms has by far the best features for managing form submissions.

Any paid version stores entries in the WordPress dashboard. And from this screen, you get a lot of control over your form submissions.

You can star entries, mark them unread or read, export them, and even filter entries to get a better overview.

Clicking on an entry opens up a more detailed view.

Here’s a simple contact form entry:

And if you turn on survey reporting, the backend turns into a full survey platform.

This is the most user-friendly way to review your submissions easily in 1 place.

Ease of Use

All of these form builders use a browser interface to build a form. However, the form builders are slightly different in the way they work. Let’s check out the user interface in each plugin.

Gravity Forms Ease of Use

The Gravity Forms builder opens inside the WordPress interface. This means that you have less space to work in Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms or WPForms.

The way you edit form fields in Gravity Forms is also different. When you click the field, all of the options dropdown below it, not to the side.

You’ll need to scroll up and down a lot while customizing the fields and working on your form. That makes it feel quite awkward.

If you have a small monitor, be sure to check out the Gravity Forms demo to see if this layout works for you.

There’s also no live preview in this form builder. You’ll have to preview the form by clicking the Preview button, which opens up a separate window. This doesn’t usually inherit the styling of your main site, so it’s challenging to actually see what your finished form will look like on your WordPress website.

Ninja Forms Ease of Use

Ninja Forms features a minimal and intuitive interface, unlike Gravity Forms’ cluttered form editor. You can quickly locate different settings in Ninja Forms, whereas Gravity Forms requires too many clicks to access some settings.

When working in Ninja Forms, you need to click the plus (+) icon to add fields.

You can drag the field onto your form and customize it. When you’re finished, click the Done button, and the right-hand pane closes. You can then click the plus icon again to add your next field.

If you’re building a long form, this process adds a lot of extra clicks because you have to repeatedly open and close the fields to drag them. WPForms lets you see the form and the fields at the same time.

By default, most customizations are hidden until you turn on Dev Mode in the settings. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to access the most important settings.

WPForms Ease of Use

WPForms is the easiest form builder for beginners designed to provide the best user experience.

To build a form, you can pick a template and then customize it, which really helps to speed things up.

The WPForms builder pops out into a fullscreen window, so you have tons of space to work in. Even on a small monitor, you can see your form preview all the time without opening up a separate preview page.

Creating forms with WPForms is super easy. To build a form, just drag and drop fields from the left-hand pane to the right-hand pane. Click on the field to customize it.

Check out how easy it is to add a payment field:

You can use the left-hand pane to set up your defaults, placeholders, or your matrix question answer choices.

When you’re done, it’s really easy to embed your form on your website without using any code. If you’d like help creating your first form in WPForms, check out this article on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

Support: Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms & WPForms

Support is vital when your form isn’t working the way you expect. But when we compare Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms, which support will suit you best?

Gravity Forms Support

Gravity Forms has an FAQ page on its website along with documentation for all fields, addons, and features.

It provides support via tickets to paying customers Monday-Friday, 9 am to 6 pm EST. Elite license holders get priority support.

The team doesn’t support 3rd party templates or addons. There are 9 official templates that you can download as individual .json files and import manually.

If you’re having difficulty with Gravity Form notifications, we have some easy solutions in this article on Gravity Forms not sending email.

Ninja Forms Support

Ninja Forms offers support within 24 hours for free users or priority support for paying customers.

It has documentation covering all features in the plugin. Information about tools in Dev Mode is hidden behind dropdowns on the documentation pages.

Check out our email delivery tips if Ninja Forms is not sending email.

WPForms Support

WPForms has 3 online help resources:

• A troubleshooting guide
• Documentation for all features, fields, and addons available in the plugin
• Separate Developer Documentation for advanced users.

WPForms Lite users get free customer support in the WPForms Lite forum.

Users for any paid version of WPForms can send a support ticket to get help. Support tickets are answered Monday-Friday, 9 am-5 pm EST. The team usually responds to all tickets within 24 hours.

WPForms also has a helpful user community on Facebook called the VIP Circle and tons of helpful tutorials on YouTube.

Pricing: Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms

You can spend up to $499 on a form builder plugin, depending on what you need to do.

Let’s look at some typical forms you might want to make along with a typical price.

	Ninja Forms	Gravity Forms	WPForms
Contact form	Free	$59/ yr	Free
Constant Contact signup form	$99/yr	$59/yr	Free
Mailchimp signup form	$99/yr	$59/yr	$99/yr
Drip lead capture form	$199/yr plus Zapier subscription	$159/yr plus Zapier subscription	$199/yr

To understand this better, we need to look at how pricing works for each plugin.

Gravity Forms Pricing

There’s no free version of Gravity Forms, but there is a demo you can use to try out all of the functionality before you buy. You can’t install it and try it out on your own server.

To install Gravity Forms on your website, you’ll need to pay for an annual subscription:

• The Basic license is suitable for 1 website and costs $49/ year. This gives you all fields and most of the mailing list addons.
• The Pro license costs $159 a year for 3 sites. It adds integrations for services like Zapier, Slack, and FreshBooks.
• An Elite license costs $259 a year for unlimited sites. It adds Stripe fields, polls, and user registration forms.

The Elite license also has survey tools similar to SurveyMonkey. You can create different types of surveys easily and display the results in the dashboard.

Ninja Forms Pricing

The Ninja Forms plugin has the most complicated pricing of all 3 plugins.

You can pay for individual addons annually or buy an annual membership.

There are up to 3 different prices for each addon, depending on the number of sites you have. There are also 3 different annual licenses priced at $99-$499.

Ninja Forms Addon	1 site	5 sites	20 sites	Included in plan?
Conditional logic	$49	$72	$99	Personal, Professional, Agency
Multi-step forms	$49	$72	$99	Personal, Professional, Agency
File upload fields	$49	$72	$99	Personal, Professional, Agency
Export to Excel	$18	$28	$46	Agency
PayPal	$49	$79	$129	Personal, Professional, Agency
Stripe	$49	$79	$129	Professional, Agency
Constant Contact	$18	$28	$46	Personal, Professional, Agency
User submitted posts	$39	$62	$99	Professional, Agency

If you just need 1 addon, this pricing will make sense for you. If you need more than 1, you’ll want to sit down and figure out the best plan that includes all (or most) of the addons you need.

WPForms Pricing

There are 4 paid WPForms licenses:

• Basic, which gives you templates, multi-page forms, file uploads, and conditional logic
• Plus, which adds support for most marketing services like Mailchimp and Aweber, plus 100s more templates
• Pro, which adds almost all of the other features and addons
• Elite, which adds specialized features like webhooks, and usage on unlimited sites.

If you want to see exactly what is included, check out this comparison chart of WPForms features.

In the free version, you can:

• Try all of the basic fields
• Use form templates
• Protect your forms from spam
• Get entries by email.

It’s really easy to start with WPForms Lite. You can easily upgrade to WPForms Pro later when you need more features.

Remember! When you buy any WPForms license, it comes with an unconditional 14-day money-back guarantee. You can try it out and see if it’s right for you. If it’s not, just ask for a refund. You don’t even need to give a reason.

Which Is the Best Form Builder? Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms

WPForms is the best form builder for WordPress.

Here’s why:

• The fullscreen form editor makes it really easy to make and publish any type of form
• There are 2,000+ form templates that can be installed with 1 click
• You can preview forms as you make them
• You can publish forms on your website without using any code
• It’s easy to connect your forms to other of services using WPForms addons
• There’s tons of free help available via YouTube, Facebook, and the WPForms website.

Don’t forget: WPForms is the only form plugin we looked at that can import forms from other plugins, including Ninja Forms.

And that’s it! Now you know the pros and cons of Gravity Forms vs Ninja Forms vs WPForms.

Create Your WordPress Form Now

Next, Compare More Form Builder Plugins

If you’re still undecided, read our comparisons of:

• WPForms vs Ninja Forms
• Gravity Forms vs Typeform vs WPForms
• Gravity Forms vs Contact Form 7 vs WPForms
• WPForms Lite vs Contact Form 7

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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