Gravity Forms Basic vs. Freemium WordPress Form Plugins (2024)

If you’re trying to decide between Gravity Forms and other form plugins, you’ve probably noticed one thing:

Gravity Forms only comes in a premium version, while some other popular form plugins have free versions that are available at WordPress.org.

So – in a world where those free form plugins exist, is it worth spending $59 for the Gravity Forms Basic license?

Well, as the makers of Gravity Forms, the self-centered answer here would be a 100% unequivocal YES!

But if we’re being honest, the real answer is more of an “it depends”.

For the $59 that the Gravity Forms Basic license costs, you do get a lot of useful features, such as in-dashboard entry management, conditional logic, calculations, integrations, and more, as well as direct support from the Gravity Forms team.

However, whether or not those improvements will make a meaningful difference to your website really depends on your specific use case.

To help you make the choice that’s best for your personal website, business, or agency, we’re going to honestly compare the $59 Gravity Forms Basic license versus some popular free form plugins.

Let’s get to it…

A Quick Look at the Gravity Forms Basic License

Before we get more in-depth with our comparison, we first want to start with a quick rundown of what the Gravity Forms Basic license actually offers.

That way, you’ll have some context for when we compare the Basic licese to the features in free form plugins.

Don’t worry, we’ll keep it brief!

Gravity Forms key features:

To start, the Basic license gives you access to all of the core Gravity Forms features:

• Visual, drag-and-drop form builder – build your forms without requiring any technical knowledge.
• 38+ form field types – use a variety of foundational and niche field types to set up your forms.
• Entry management – store and view form submissions right in your WordPress dashboard.
• Code-free form styling – if you don’t want to use custom CSS, you can easily style your forms right from the block editor using code-free settings.
• Conditional logic – use custom logic rules to show/hide certain fields based on how someone answered, send different email notifications, show different confirmation messages, and lots more.
• Calculations – set up your own mathematical formulas to calculate numbers based on users’ inputs. You can use this to build a quote request form, calculator tools, and lots more.

Gravity Forms builder:

Gravity Forms Add-Ons:

In addition to the core features, the Basic license also gives you access to 19+ official add-ons to extend your forms:

• CRM/email marketing service add-ons – connect your forms to popular email marketing services and customer relationship managers (CRM) like HubSpot, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and more. You can sync contact information, add tags, and more.
• Anti-spam add-ons – protect your forms from spam using services like Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, and Akismet.
• Transactional email service add-ons – make sure your forms’ email notifications make it to subscribers’ inboxes by setting up email sending services like SendGrid, Mailgun, and Postmark.

You can also install free or paid third-party add-ons to further extend the Gravity Forms Basic license. The Gravity Forms Certified Add-Ons program can help you use third-party add-ons with confidence, and there are also lots of great Community Add-Ons available at WordPress.org or directly from developers.

Beyond all of the features, you’re also benefiting from some other things:

• Dedicated support – you can get support directly from expert Gravity Forms support engineers. You won’t find this type of one-on-one support from free form plugins.
• Security – your forms will be secure, which helps you avoid any security issues (which could have a big effect on your business).
• Reliability – Gravity Forms has been around for well over a decade, so you can be confident that it will continue to receive support and updates.

With that introduction out of the way, let’s take a look at how all of those features compare to some of the most popular free form plugins at WordPress.org.

WPForms Lite

WPForms is one of the most popular free form plugins that’s available at WordPress.org. While a good part of that popularity comes from it being a quality option, it’s also benefited by having a very large marketing presence behind it.

While the premium version of WPForms packs a lot of features, WPForms Lite is missing some important features. Most notably, it doesn’t let you view form submissions from within your WordPress dashboard, so you’ll need to rely exclusively on email notifications to view form submission data.

You can learn more in our full WPForms vs Gravity Forms comparison.

WPForms Lite Builder

WPForms Lite comes with a visual, drag-and-drop builder that’s quite easy to use.

The faded-out fields require the premium version.

WPForms Lite vs Gravity Forms Basic Key Features

Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is another one of the most popular free form plugins that you’ll find at WordPress.org.

Comparing Gravity Forms vs Contact Form 7 is a bit tricky because the core Contact Form 7 plugin is fairly basic. However, you can also find a wide variety of third-party extensions that also have free versions at WordPress.org.

While relying on these third-party extensions to add fundamental features can be a very cheap way to create forms, it also adds some complexity to your setup, because you’ll be relying on third-party add-ons for very basic features like conditional logic.

With that being said, we’re going to focus exclusively on the core Contact Form 7 plugin for our comparison.

Contact Form 7 Builder

Contact Form 7 has one of the most dated form builders of any plugin on this list, with no visual or drag-and-drop functionality. While it’s functional enough, non-technical users will likely prefer a different plugin.

Contact Form 7 vs Gravity Forms Basic Key Features

*While Contact Form 7 itself doesn’t offer in-dashboard form entry management, the Contact Form 7 developer (Takayuki Miyoshi) does offer a free plugin named Flamingo that can add this functionality.

Again, you can find free third-party Contact Form 7 extensions to add a lot of these features. However, the core Contact Form 7 plugin itself is quite limited when compared to the Gravity Forms Basic license.

Formidable Forms Lite

While Formidable Forms has a fairly popular free version at WordPress.org, it’s probably best known for its premium version.

But while the premium version offers advanced features like a frontend view builder and REST API support, the free version of Formidable Forms – Formidable Lite – is more suited to basic contact forms.

Formidable Lite is generous in some ways. For example, it offers a code-free style manager in the free version. But at the same time, it’s also restrictive in some ways. For example, the free version doesn’t even let you add a date picker field to your forms, which is a fairly basic feature.

Overall, most of the unique features that Formidable Forms offers are only available with the premium version, which is more expensive than Gravity Forms. You can learn more in our full Gravity Forms vs Formidable Forms comparison.

Formidable Forms Lite Builder

Formidable Forms Lite offers a visual, drag-and-drop form builder that’s quite easy to use.

Formidable Forms Lite vs Gravity Forms Basic Key Features

Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is a well-known form plugin that uses a freemium add-on model. The core Ninja Forms plugin is available for free at WordPress.org and then you can access more advanced features using premium add-ons, which you can purchase individually or as a bundle.

Ninja Forms Builder

Ninja Forms offers a visual, drag-and-drop builder that makes it easy to set up your forms.

Ninja Forms Free vs Gravity Forms Basic Key Features

Forminator

Forminator is a freemium form plugin from WPMU DEV.

While Forminator’s form builder is a little dated when compared to many of the other plugins on this list, Forminator is one of the more generous form plugins when it comes to giving you some advanced features in its free version.

If you’re on a tight budget and you’re willing to put up with a less intuitive form-building experience, it can be a good budget-friendly option.

Forminator Builder

Forminator does not offer a visual builder like Gravity Forms. However, it does still offer a simple interface that lets you control the order of fields using drag and drop. You’ll just get abstract views of the fields instead of a live preview.

Forminator vs Gravity Forms Basic Key Features

WS Form Lite

WS Form Lite isn’t quite as popular as most of the other options on this list, but it’s still another solid option worth considering.

A lot of its most unique features are only available in the premium version, but WS Form Lite is still a capable enough tool in its own right.

WS Form Lite Builder

Like Forminator, WS Form Lite doesn’t offer a visual builder when setting up your forms. However, you can still use drag and drop to arrange things, which makes it pretty easy to use.

WS Form Lite vs Gravity Forms Basic Key Features

How to Make the Right Choice for Your Situation

As we mentioned at the beginning, there’s no single correct choice when it comes to comparing the Gravity Forms Basic license vs free form plugins.

If literally all you need to build is a simple contact form with three fields for “Name”, “Email”, and “Message” and no integrations, you will probably be fine with a free form plugin from WordPress.org. We would just recommend choosing one of the free form plugins that will also let you view/store form entries in your WordPress dashboard.

However, a lot of people can benefit from the extra features that the Gravity Forms Basic license offers, even if you’re just creating simple forms.

For just $59 per year, you can access a lot of features to enhance your contact forms, as well as build more advanced types of forms.

• More field types – access more field types than the free plugins, including essential field types that many free plugins don’t offer such as date pickers, file uploads, and more.
• Code-free form styling – easily style your forms using simple settings in the WordPress editor, rather than needing to resort to custom CSS (though you can do that if you want to). Some free form plugins require you to use custom CSS for everything.
• In-dashboard entry management/storage – view and manage form entries right from your WordPress dashboard. WPForms, one of the most popular free plugins, doesn’t offer this feature, which means that you could lose important form entries.
• Conditional logic – optimize and personalize your forms by showing/hiding fields or performing different actions based on how someone answered the form. Most free form plugins don’t offer this feature, but it’s super valuable for personalizing your forms and creating better user experiences.
• Calculations – perform calculations on field values that you can use in your form, your notification emails, and/or your confirmation messages. Using calculations opens up a lot of automation opportunities, but most free form plugins don’t offer this feature.
• Email marketing and CRM integrations – connect your forms to your favorite email marketing service and/or CRM. Most free form plugins don’t have any integrations.
• More anti-spam options – protect your forms from spam with additional anti-spam features like Cloudflare Turnstile and Google reCAPTCHA.

These features not only help you build better forms now, but they also mean that you can more easily scale as your business needs grow and change.

Beyond all those built-in features and official add-ons, you’ll also be able to access a huge library of free and paid Gravity Forms add-ons from third-party developers, which give you even more flexibility for scaling your forms.

Plus, you’ll also get dedicated one-on-one support from Gravity Forms engineers. If you use a free form plugin, you’ll typically need to take what you can get in the WordPress.org support forums.

And on top of that, you’re also getting the reliability of Gravity Forms, which has been around for 15+ years now.

If you want to try out Gravity Forms to see how it compares, you can create a free, fully functioning demo site here.

If you’re ready to get started, you can purchase the Gravity Forms Basic license here. All purchases are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Plus, if you ever decide that you want access to the features on the Gravity Forms Pro or Elite licenses, you can also easily upgrade your Basic license and only pay the prorated difference.