WPForms Lite vs Pro

WPForms Lite vs Pro: Is It Worth the Upgrade?

Editorial Note: We may earn a commission when you visit links on our website.

Do you want to compare the features in WPForms Lite vs Pro?

The Pro version adds tons of useful integrations and addons that’ll help you to grow your business or nonprofit.

In this article, we’ll run through a complete comparison of WPForms Lite and WPForms Pro so you can easily see what you’ll get when you upgrade.

Get WPForms Now

WPForms Lite vs Pro Explained

This article will help you decide if it’s time to upgrade to a premium version of WPForms. First, let’s look at the form builder and how it works.

Getting Started: WPForms Lite vs Pro

WPForms Lite and WPForms Pro share the same awesome drag and drop form builder that’s super easy for beginners. No matter which version you start with, the WPForms editor works in exactly the same way.

The WPForms Lite form builder

The WPForms user interface is easy to learn, too.

To add a field, you just drag it from left to right. To open the field options, click once on the field in the editor.

Adding a phone field to a contact form

You can easily make and publish a contact form in less than 5 minutes.

And our form builder is a little different from other form builders like Gravity Forms. Because with WPForms, you can expand the form builder so that it fills your entire monitor.

So it’s a WordPress plugin, but it works like a professional form builder platform!

Next, here’s another great tip. There are also no usage limits in WPForms Lite or WPForms Pro either:

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Unlimited forms
Unlimited responses
Unlimited views
Unlimited disk space

Keep in mind that your hosting company might have limits on things like disk space for files. But unlike hosted form builders such as JotForm, WPForms won’t impose limits of its own.

You definitely don’t want your form to be disabled right when your traffic is increasing!

Our free version has more than has 12+ thousand 5-star reviews on WordPress.org . And 6+ million customers like you are already using it!

Up next, we’ll look at the components you can use to make your forms. When you upgrade and buy a WPForms license, you get to use more fields and unlock way beyond what you get in WPForms Lite features. Let’s take a look.

Form Fields in WPForms Lite vs Pro

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:

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

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Phone
Address / Map
Date / Time
Website / URL
File Upload
Calculations
Password
Rich Text
Layout (Multi-Column Form)
Page Break
Section Divider
HTML
Content
Entry preview
Hidden Field
Custom CAPTCHAs
Signature
Survey fields (star ratings, Likert scale, Net Promoter Score)

These fields are super helpful when you want to:

  • Make longer forms easier to fill out: Splitting a form into sections and creating multi-page forms helps to make your visitors feel comfortable answering longer questions. It also avoids form abandonment because they won’t feel overwhelmed.
  • Make surveys and polls so you can conduct your own research and find out what makes your customers tick.
  • Get signed contracts, which is awesome for any business or freelancer who needs to get signed agreements.
  • Prevent spam with your own custom CAPTCHAs.

Setting up a custom question and answer captcha

There are a few fields in the Pro list that are especially handy, so let’s focus on those next.

First, here’s an example of the ‘smart’ phone field in action:

Smart phone field in WPForms

This field will automatically show the correct phone number input based on your visitor’s location.

This really helps to avoid confusion when you’re getting phone numbers for sales leads, especially if you have visitors from different countries.

Next up, we also wanted to show you how the address autocomplete works because it’s awesome!

Address autocomplete geolocation in WPForms

The Pro Geolocation addon connects to Google Maps or Mapbox and will automatically detect the address and complete it for your visitor. It’s a great way to add an interactive map to your address field too!

Next, let’s take a look at the Rich Text field. This allows visitors to format their entry with bold, italics, lists, colors, and more. And they can upload images too.

This is the perfect field if you want to allow users to submit blog posts through your forms.

Rich text editor for post submissions

And finally, let’s look at 1 more field that could make your workflow a lot more efficient.

Using the Signature addon, your visitor can draw their signature on any form you create.

A signature field in a form

You can use this to create your own:

But wait. Are you wondering if these fields will make your forms look too complicated?

Let’s take a look at how conditional logic can help with that.

Why Use Conditional Logic on Forms?

If you’re still on the fence about upgrading, conditional logic is one of the #1 benefits of upgrading to a WPForms paid license.

With conditional logic, you can set up specific fields to show or hide automatically.

conditional job application form

For example, you could show and hide fields based on previous answers.

Conditional logic can be used in other ways too. You can:

  • Process payments only if certain conditions are met
  • Filter your survey questions according to a demographic question
  • Get more control over when marketing integrations fire and when they don’t.

With WPForms Pro, you can hide all of the fields that aren’t immediately needed, then reveal them when necessary. That way, your visitor will never see tons of empty fields that don’t apply to them.

Notifications and Entry Storage: Lite vs Pro

Both WPForms Lite and WPForms Pro will send notification emails when your form is submitted. (If you don’t receive notifications, this guide on how to fix WPForms not sending email will show you the easy way to fix it.)

On top of that, WPForms Pro gives you more ways to send and manage your notifications.

Here’s a quick breakdown to give you an idea of the differences.

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Form notification emails
CC recipients on 1 notification
Confirmation message on form submission
Multiple notifications on a form
1-click notification cloning
Form abandonment notifications
Conditional notifications
With the Lite Connect feature, you can store all your form entries in the cloud. You can access those entries when you upgrade to Pro. For more details, check out this post: Where does WPForms Data Go?

If you want to have every form entry saved in your WordPress dashboard, WPForms Pro is the best choice.

You can search and filter your entries to find exactly what you need.

Search entries to delete under a Right to Erasure request

And you can even get notifications for forms that aren’t submitted.

In fact, WPForms Pro has the best entry storage features in any WordPress form builder plugin:

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Form entry storage in WordPress
Automatic entry export to Google Sheets
File uploads stored in Media Library (optional)
Survey and poll reporting
Show visitors’ location
Show user journey
Export to CSV, Excel, or print entries
Mark entry read/ unread and star entries
Get form entries offline

You might be wondering what some of these features look like, so let’s focus on a few awesome things you can do with Pro entry storage.

First up, we can’t talk about Pro without talking about the Surveys and Polls addon!

This addon turns WPForms into a full survey platform:

A survey form

Compared to professional survey tools, WPForms Pro has 3 huge advantages:

  • You can embed surveys and polls easily on your site, which makes them super easy to share and distribute. Every form has an Embed button right in the online form builder.
  • Your survey responses are all stored right in the WordPress dashboard. You don’t have to log in to different platforms to see your responses.
  • Survey charts are automatically generated in WordPress. It’s easy to download and reuse these charts any way you want.

Export survey pie chart

In fact, the surveys and polls tool makes the WPForms license well worth it. It has similar features to professional survey platforms.

We also want to show you the User Journey addon that you get with WPForms Pro. This is quickly becoming one of our most popular addons!

It lets you retrace your user’s steps through your website right up to the point that they submitted your form.

User Journey addon

Our users love the insights they get from this addon. It can help you to easily see which pages on your site are leading to form conversions.

Form Templates: WPForms Lite vs Pro

Both WPForms Lite and WPForms Pro come with 1,600+ WordPress form templates. You can access them right in the form builder.

WPForms templates

You can hover your mouse over any template to open up a preview or use it right away by clicking on Use Template.

Select WPForms template

The form builder will automatically prompt you to install the addons needed for the form to work. And if you need to upgrade your WPForms license to use the selected template, a message will pop up to explain what you need to do.

When you combine our form templates and addons, you can easily make advanced forms like:

WPForms calculations field

All of this extra functionality can help you:

Payments: WPForms Lite vs Pro

All license levels of WPForms enable you to create order forms and accept credit card payments via Stripe.

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Stripe
PayPal
Square
Authorize.net

We’ve partnered with Stripe to keep overall fees acceptably low so that all of our users enjoy taking credit card payments seamlessly.

For Lite, Basic, and Plus users, there’s a 3% fee per transaction on top of the regular Stripe fees.

Select Stripe in payments

However, you can remove the 3% additional fee by upgrading to WPForms Pro or Elite. In addition:

  • WPForms Pro unlocks the Stripe Pro addon, which gives you the ability to implement conditional logic for your Stripe payment processing. This is super useful when you want to let your customers choose between one-time payments or recurring payment options in your form.
  • Pro users get more payment gateways including PayPal and Square.

All versions of WPForms include a Payments screen that lets you track the payments you’ve collected via your forms.

Payments chart

The Payments screen gives you the convenient to monitor your sales over time right within your WordPress dashboard.

Ways to Publish Your Forms

WPForms has an awesome drag and drop form editor that makes it easy to create your forms.

And you can publish forms anywhere on your WordPress site.

With Pro, you can also use 3 additional pre-made layouts to display your forms:

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Embed forms in WordPress pages and posts using a wizard
Classic editor, shortcodes, and block editor support
Conversational forms
Landing page forms
Lead forms

Are you wondering what these extra layouts look like?

Conversational forms show questions one by one. When your visitor answers a question, the form automatically skips to the next one.

Conversational form in WPForms

This addon makes WPForms Pro the perfect TypeForm alternative.

Additionally, you can easily publish any form on its own landing page.

Finished webinar landing page in WordPress

Here’s the awesome thing about the form pages addon: you don’t need to write any code.

In fact, once you activate the addon, all the settings you need to create your page are right here in the form builder:

WPForms landing page in WordPress

It’s that easy! You can convert any form into a standalone landing page and convert it back whenever you want to.

Finally, here’s our favorite: Lead Forms.

Mortgage calculation lead form

Lead forms are similar to conversational forms, but they’re embedded. That means you get all the benefits and ease of use of a conversational layout, but you keep the visitor on your page.

The Lead Forms addon is the perfect partner to the Calculations addon. To see both in action, here’s an example of a mortgage lead generator form. (The calculations in this form really work! You can try it out in real time.)

Page Builder Integrations

If you’re using a page builder to create your site, WPForms Lite and WPForms Pro will both work great for that.

For example, there’s a native Elementor widget in both versions of the plugin. So WPForms is a great option if you want to make a free Elementor contact form!

The WPForms plugin also has integrations for Divi and SeedProd so you can easily embed your forms without shortcodes if you want to.

WPForms Lite SeedProd

Popular Email Marketing Integrations

Email marketing is one of the most powerful ways to get more leads from your WordPress site.

After creating a basic contact form, you could also create a newsletter signup form and use any WordPress email subscription plugins so people can subscribe to your email marketing list.

The Lite version lets you easily make a Constant Contact email subscription form.

Constant Contact and WPForms Lite

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

Don’t forget: ActiveCampaign integration is also available with the Elite license!

Connecting your email marketing service is easy.

If you don’t see your email marketing provider here, don’t worry. You can easily integrate it using another integration method. We’ll look at that next.

Bonus Integrations

Sometimes, you might want to connect your forms to services that don’t have an addon.

If you’re ready to do that, WPForms Pro is a great choice. There are 2 easy ways to make your own bonus integrations. Lite supports one of them, while Pro supports both:

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
Uncanny Automator
Zapier

Want to see how they work?

Uncanny Automator is one of our favorite WPForms integrations. It lets you easily send WPForms submissions to other plugins automatically.

Set trigger for WPForms in Uncanny Automator

If you’d like to see Uncanny Automator and WPForms in action, check out this tutorial on how to integrate WPForms and MailPoet.

The Zapier addon also lets you create your own custom connections from WPForms Pro to 6,000+ 3rd party services.

With this Pro addon, you can:

Example Zapier Zaps in WPForms

If you want even more control, keep in mind that Elite license holders get Salesforce integration, HubSpot CRM integration, and our powerful webhooks addon too.

Support in WPForms Lite vs Pro

Support is definitely one area where the Lite version and the Pro version are different. If you want the best possible experience, Pro is worth it.

WPForms Lite WPForms Pro
WordPress.org support
Ticket support
Typical response time 1-3 business days ~1 business day

As a Lite customer, you’ll always get support in the WordPress.org form for the WPForms Lite plugin.

But with Pro, you can get help even faster.

Once you’re a Pro customer, you’ll also be able to open a support ticket right from your WPForms account.

WPForms support ticket for paid licenses

So Pro gives you access to a team of WPForms experts who are standing by to help from 9 am–5 pm EST every weekday.

Find out more about WPForms support resources in our detailed WPForms review.

How Much Does WPForms Pro Cost?

Ready to upgrade WPForms?

While WPForms Lite features are very useful, the paid plans unlock a whole new variety of features that can make form building extremely easy for you.

All WPForms plans have affordable pricing, especially for the features you get.

WPForms Pricing

Get WPForms Now

The Pro license unlocks almost all of the features and addons in the plugin. Pricing starts at $199.50/yr, and you can use your license on 5 sites.

With Pro, you can easily create:

Conclusion: Which Version of WPForms Is Best?

Now you have the full lowdown on WPForms Lite and WPForms Pro, you can see that WPForms Pro is definitely worth the investment and at very affordable pricing!

If you’re creating different types of WordPress forms for a business, or you want to drive donations for your nonprofit, the Pro license unlocks all of the tools and addons you’ll need.

Compared to Lite, Pro gives you:

  • All fields
  • 1,600+  templates
  • Almost all addons and integrations
  • Extra ways to publish and display your forms
  • Full survey functionality
  • Payment fields for one-off or recurring charges
  • Awesome visitor insights
  • And tons of ways to make forms smarter and easier to use!

Even better, WPForms Pro comes with a fuss-free 14-day money-back guarantee.

If it’s not the right fit for your website, you can get a refund for any reason—or no reason! Our support team is here to help with any billing or technical query you have.

WPForms money-back guarantee

Ready to upgrade? Buy WPForms Pro today! In just a few minutes, you’ll unlock access to almost every addon, field, and integration we’ve talked about in this review.

Get WPForms Now

FAQ on WPForms Pro vs. Lite

Here are some common questions regarding the two versions of the WPForms plugin.

Does WordPress Have a Form Builder?

No, WordPress doesn’t have its own form builder. You’ll need to install WPForms to publish a contact form on your site.

Is WPForms Free?

Yes, the Lite version is 100% free forever!

How Do I Use WPForms Lite in WordPress?

WPForms Lite provides much of the same functionality as WPForms Pro.

To use it and create forms, simply click on WPForms » Add New. This will open the form builder view where you can select a template and edit it by adding or removing fields using simple drag and drop functionality.

Where Does WPForms’ Data Go?

WPForms sends entries by email in the Pro and Lite versions. In the Pro version, it also stores your entries in WordPress. For a more detailed explanation, check out our guide: where does WPForms data go?

How Do I Style My Forms?

WPForms makes it easy to style forms without CSS. We have a guide on how to style your forms in WordPress to explain how it works.

What Is the Best Form Plugin for WordPress?

WPForms is the best WordPress form plugin for WordPress, having over 6 million active installations across WordPress sites on the web.

What’s more, many of the core features and functionalities are available for free if you use WPForms Lite. And if you want an upgrade to get some of WPForm’s exclusive features, you can do so at reasonable pricing.

For these reasons, WPForms WordPress form plugin of choice for businesses both big and small.

Is WPForms Secure?

Yes, WPForms sends notifications via email in the Lite version. In the Pro version, it stores them in your WordPress database. As long as you maintain your WordPress site and keep it secure, your form entries are only visible to you.

Next, Check Out These Caldera Form Alternatives

Still undecided? We have tons more form builder reviews for you to check out. Start with these Caldera Forms alternatives.

If this article helped you out, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more free WordPress tutorials and guides.

Using WordPress and want to get WPForms for free?

Enter the URL to your WordPress website to install.

Comments

  1. I would like to uninstall the plugin from my web but I can´t. I would like to know how to proceed because the plugin is still stuck on my wordpress dashboard, no matter how many times I click on delete. Could somebody help me with this issue?

  2. I’m new to WordPress and wpforms.
    Can I build a form that has an approval function with Lite?
    Should I use Pro to do that?

    1. Hey Yoga – I apologize, we currently don’t have approval function in the WPForms lite. We do have User Registration addon that comes with Pro and above license that you can consider which offers similar features. You can also consider taking a look at the Form Locker addon allows you to lock your WordPress forms with various permissions and access control rules including passwords, members-only, specific date / time, max entry limit, and more.

  3. Good afternoon,

    I have installed WP Forms Lite on my WordPress site. The Lite version states that you can receive unlimited message via a contact form on your website. Strange to see that I have now received a few messages via the contact form, but all are hidden until I buy the Pro version… what have I done wrong with the Lite version?

    The form is in use at my website http://www.vanlifefever.com

Add a Comment

We're glad you have chosen to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our privacy policy, and all links are nofollow. Do NOT use keywords in the name field. Let's have a personal and meaningful conversation.

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.