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Overview
When it comes to adding forms to a web page, WordPress users are spoiled with choices. However, many of the more powerful options are, unfortunately, too complicated for beginners to easily start, to grips with, or simply not available on one single plugin. That was, at least, until the development of one of the most recent additions to the WordPress forms plugin family . — ( read on for more on the competition and the “way” WPForms stacks up ).
However, with such a big amount of WordPress form plugins already on the market — from free and easy options like “Form Maker” to more advanced premium products like “Ninja” and “Gravity Forms” — how are you able to tell if WPForms is actually the right choice for your site?
Let’s take a glance at what WPForms do offer, and why this form builder is, we believe so far, the best form builder out there.
WPForms VS The Competition.
The aim of WPForms is to faciliate the process of adding forms to a WordPress website, and make it as easy as possible, while still catering to power users with more advanced needs. The free “Contact Form 7” plugin already does a good job of allowing WordPress users to feature a basic contact form inside their website. To be fare, WPForms is up against some well-established competition out there.
There is also the effective and free “morpheme Maker plugin” to think off, which has five pre-built form templates, a drag-and-drop form builder interface, a wealth of form fields, and a library of premium add-ons. While “Form Maker” might not be as polished as WPForms, its list of features available is difficult to dismiss.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, you have got the a well known plugin, “Gravity Forms plugin”. This commercial plugin gives WordPress users, a way to feature almost any type of forms inside their website. Other options out there, include the free “Ninja Forms”, with its commercial and add-on system, as well as “Visual Form Builder”.
However, from versatility supported features, user experience, and feedback from audience surveys, could possibly be some of the reasons behind the motivation that drove the development of yet another form builder.
The team behind WPForms felt there was a true demand for a user-friendly form plugin. That might meet the requirements of the latest WordPress users while also offering upgrade options for more advanced projects.
To help you get a higher understanding of how easy this plugin is to be used, we’ll walk you thru some of its features from the lite version. Before exploring the features of the paid versions in greater depth.
We hope this will make it easier for you to make your mind, and decide if WPForms is the right and best option for your project. Whether the free version will suffice or if you’ll have to upgrade to at least one of the premium licenses to responses to your form requirements.
WPForms Lite.
With the lite version, available without any cost from the WordPress Plugin Directory, WordPress WPForms makes use of the free-mium pricing model. As your needs grow, you'll be able to upgrade and make a choice from the four different WPForms license options. Each with their own set of features. Nevertheless, the free version aims to supply enough functionality to permit you to feature attractive contact forms to your WordPress website in only few clicks & a couple of drag and drop.
WPForms Lite Features.
The free version, also named the “lite” version of WPForms, contains several great and not so basic form fields. Backed up with a pre-built contact form template available. This template is prepared for customization, easily personalized with the drag-and-drop form builder we mentioned above.
Although those who are seeking a typical & straightforward contact form can save their form and publish it on their website with no customization necessary.
A combination of two perfect templates within the free version of WPForms Lite, as well as a ‘newsletter signup’ form and ‘proposals’ form, is enough to start collecting leads and building a well designed website forms.
The forms are all fully mobile responsive. This ensure they appear great on any device. They are built to load as quickly as possible to avoid slowing down your website and impacting SEO or user experience. There’s also honeypot protection and optional captcha fields to assist prevent spam form submissions.
WPForms Premium Features.
We’ll highlight some features included with the WPForms licenses during this review. You'll certainly have a better details of all the features display in grid on the official pricing page of the plugin. A complete breakdown of what’s currently available with each purchase option.
The premium WPForms plugin is available in four different and simple pricing schemes. Basic, Plus, Pro, and Elite — and each license level has its own set of characteristics and benefits. A combination of Previous features, included with features of current price plan selected. However, before we get to some of the differences, these are the shared features available. This features are shared to free or payed users of the premium version of WPForms:
- Ability to use conditional logic to regulate field visibility.
- Ability to make multi-page forms.
- Form spam protection features.
- File upload field for obtain files via forms.
- Modern field types including date, information, and time fields.
- Ability to store, view, and manage form entries within the WordPress Dashboard.
- Multiple form entry submission confirmation options.
- Ability to send form entry emails to many and different recipients.
- Integration with Constant Contact email marketing service
- PayPal and Stripe integration for collecting and deposit online payments
- WordPress user registration and login fields
- Geo-location for detecting user’s location
Short Comparison.
So far, we did notice how the entry-level Basic license does include many of the premium features of the plugin. Indeed, choosing one in every of the opposite three licenses, like the Plus, Pro, or Elite options, unlocks plenty of new extra features. We’ll be covering those features, eventually, in a future in-depth article.
While in many cases the $79 entry-level premium version of WPForms should suffice, you'll eventually consider to pay extra, to benefit from the next tier of the premium functions. Either now or within a future. To be honest, it all comes down to your requirements, and what you are trying to achieve.
More advance tools could be necessary, precisely if you're going to run an eCommerce site. Tools such as payment forms via “Paypal” or “Stripe” are definitely a big plus. Available in the pro version. Combined with other types of form such as “abandonment form”, “user registration”, “survey and polls”, to name a few are just an infinite possibility of what can be done with what is provided with WPForms premium.
How about going one step even further? With the elite version, you can eventually implement “Authorize.Net”, connect with “ActiveCampaign”, build “Salesforce” combination and did we mention “web-hooks”? So many functionalities combined in one plugin! Which make us consider it, to be, the best form builder we have used so far.
User Experience.
One of the key features of WPForms is the user-friendly drag-and-drop feature packed inside this WordPress form builder. Both the lite and premium versions of WPForms share this interface for creating forms. Not forgetting that the paid does add more drag-a-ble items to extend features of your forms.
Adding, removing or even adjusting forms is very straightforward. Once the forms are ready, you can embed them, in practically any spot of your wordpress site. Like posts, widgets, pages, footer, as well as sidebars.
Upgrading from Lite to Pro.
Upgrading from the free WPForms Lite plugin to the premium version is incredibly straightforward. Once you have selected your favorite pricing plan, and purchased a license, you'll be able to upload the premium plugin to your WordPress dashboard ( see our article about how to install a plugin to WordPress). You can safely deactivation lite version. Turn on ( activate) the premium version to continue using any of the forms you created with the lite version.
Voila! You're now a pro user of this powerful form builder with all its pro features activated.
Our Conclusion.
If your aim is to feature a responsive, well built, contact form to your WordPress website, then the free WPForms Lite plugin comes highly recommended. Not only does this plugin make adding a contact form to your site very easy. But the intuitive drag-and-drop builder gives you a simple yet powerful tool to add additional fields to your forms. And reposition them however you would like it to be displayed to your visitors.
But, If you wish to have access to more fancy fields, like the URL insertion field, date and time picker, file upload, and addresses fields, then the $79 Basic license may be a relatively inexpensive price given all the befit the premium version give access to.
