Gravity forms

Gravity forms has a very intutive drag and drop form builder in its backend.
There is a list of input types on the right hand side which you can drag and drop it on the left to create your form.

In the  dashboard, you can manage all your forms and quickly disable/enable them via a toggle.

One thing I like about the plugin is that overall it follows the style conventions of WordPress instead of creating its own custom style in the backend like Yoast.

The crazy thing about Gravity forms is that you can install plugins(Called Add-Ons) specific for Gravity forms from the sidebar itself. Most of these plugins enable forms to be automatically submitted to a CRM software of your choice. Take a look at the Add-Ons(They can be fairly pricey)

This is a bit of a mixed bag. Gravity forms have heaps of filters available to override default functionality. Some of the common things you can do using the filters provided:

• Pre populate dropdown fields
• Use value of hidden fields to populate visible fields(Useful when using something like select2 or chosen)
• Automatically send an email when the form is submitted
• Make your own custom validation rules

However you can’t completely edit the html output of the forms. Basically, styling the frontend forms and changing the markup is still a pain-in-the-ass. This is the only thing stopping me from giving this plugin a 5 star review.

Having said that, Gravity forms does have an API of its own(Not to be confused with wp-api) via which you can create your own form in html and use gravity form’s validation.

Support is provided in the forms of a documentation page and support ticket system. For those with a developer version, they get priority support.

Their documentation page is pretty well organized and should cover most use cases. Take a look yourself. Every article has screenshots and if applicable, code samples provided.

Gravity forms comes in three flavours:

Other than the option to support more than 1 site, the pricier options give you more add-ons.

Honestly the basic license is a great deal at $59 considering the premium pricing of other plugins in this category.

These add-ons usually give you options to integrate Gravity forms with other 3rd party services like MailChimp, Dropbox, Stripe, etc. This page lists all the add-ons you can get.

One issue I have with this is that you cannot buy these add-ons separately. Say you need Stripe integration – you’ll need to fork out $259 for an Elite license just for that. Having said that, there are so many hooks and filters exposed via Gravity forms that you can easily integrate Stripe yourself if you have the technical chops.

Overall I would highly recommend Gravity forms. It is jam packed with features and the documentation provided is pretty good.

However if you’re just looking for a simple plugin to add some forms in your website, take a look at Contact form 7.