WPForms Review 2024: Is It a Wise Investment?

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WPForms Is Definitely Popular, but Is It Really Worth Upgrading?

WPForms is one of the most popular form builders for WordPress – in fact, many premium WordPress themes automatically install and activate WPForms. It has more than 3 million active installations and is available in 14 languages (including English, Dutch, German, French, Russian, and Spanish).

It’s a WordPress-only form builder that you can install for free from the WordPress plugins repository, but the free version (known as WPForms Lite) is quite limited. To use the most valuable features, you’ll need to upgrade to one of the higher-priced plans.

If your WordPress theme came with WPForms pre-installed, should you stick with it or choose an alternative WordPress form builder, like NinjaForms or CaptainForm? Keep reading for an honest review of WPForms’ features – and find out whether the paid version is worth it.

Some Free Templates, but for More, You’ll Have to Pay

When you first install WPForms, you’ll find a few templates to get you started. With the free version, you get a simple contact form, a suggestion form, and a newsletter signup form. It’s a pretty underwhelming selection. For this review, I signed up for the Basic paid plan to see what templates you get when you pay.

Considering that the Basic plan costs more than my annual web hosting plan, I was expecting more than three additional templates. Yes, you read that right. Three additional templates – a “request a quote” form, a donation form, and a billing/order form – are included when you upgrade to the lowest-priced WPForms paid plan.

To get access to the “dozens more” form templates that WPForms advertises (109 templates, to be exact), you have to upgrade to the Pro plan or above – and these plans can get pricey. Before you upgrade, consider your options. Ninja Forms has a great selection of templates at a price that won’t break the bank.

If you do choose the WPForms Pro plan option, the form templates available include alumni donation, performance improvement plan, sponsorship request, and wedding invitation RSVP. The last one seems a little odd – I wouldn’t want to shell out hundreds of dollars just to have a wedding invitation form template.

WPForms templates are all mobile-responsive and completely customizable. You can add, remove, and rearrange form fields easily or start with a blank template to create the perfect form for your needs.

A Decent Set of Features, but Nothing Remarkable

WPForms offers a fairly standard set of form builder features. All the essential features, such as unlimited forms and unlimited form submissions, multi-page forms, spam protection, and dynamic form fields using conditional logic, are included in all paid plans. The free version has a limited number of form fields and is only really suitable for basic contact forms.

Smart Conditional Logic

Available on all paid plans, the smart conditional logic feature allows you to use dynamic forms – meaning, the fields/questions your visitors see depend on the selections they make. This creates a better experience for your visitors, as they don’t have to fill out fields that aren’t relevant to them. It also allows you to show specific information to customers who select certain options – good if you want to upsell.

Add-Ons

If you choose a paid WPForms plan, you get access to a variety of add-ons (although the Basic plan only includes the custom CAPTCHA add-on). The selection of add-ons available to you depends on the plan you choose, with payment processing add-ons, surveys, polls, signatures, and conversational forms (designed to boost conversions) only available on the Pro plan and above.

Import and Export

One useful feature is the option to import forms you’ve created with another form builder plugin into WPForms. This only works with forms created in ContactForm7, NinjaForms, and Pirate Forms, though. If you have more than one WordPress website using WPForms, you can also export forms from one website and import them into another.

Uncomplicated and Beginner-Friendly

One thing WPForms has right is its simplicity. It has an intuitive interface that means you can build a form and embed it on your website in minutes – even if you’ve never used a form builder before.

Drag-and-Drop Builder

WPForms uses a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder. This makes adding new fields or rearranging form fields simple. Drag the form fields where you want them and click on a field to edit its settings.

Easy Embed

With the WordPress Gutenberg editor, embedding your WPForms forms is easier than ever. There’s a WPForms content block that you can add to your WordPress pages or posts, meaning you just have to select the form you want to embed. There’s no need to copy and paste shortcodes, and if you want to place a form in your sidebar or footer, there’s a widget for that, too.

Simple Settings Management

WPForms’ settings are easy to access and manage. If you’re not sure what a setting does, click on the question mark next to the description to see a brief explanation.

Building a Form with WPForms

WPForms claims you can build a form in minutes – and after having one of my technologically challenged friends try it out, I can confirm that the claim is true. Even if you’ve never built a form before, you can have your first form ready to embed in five minutes. If you’re more experienced, then you’ll zip through WPForms’ easy interface in half that time.

Even more complex forms are relatively easy to build. The field settings are intuitive, too.

WPForms offers support via email, but this is only available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST Monday through Friday. You can access support even with the free plan, though if you opt for the Pro plan or above, you will get access to priority support (faster response times).

I utilized the support provided with my Basic plan subscription and promptly received a response to my inquiry within 24 hours. While not the lengthiest wait I have encountered, it also doesn’t qualify as swift.

In addition to email support, there’s also documentation for WPForms where you can find step-by-step guides to using the form builder plugin.

WPForms isn’t cheap, and its lowest-priced plans don’t give you a lot of features. There are four paid plans: Basic, Plus, Pro, and Elite. To really get the best out of WPForms, you’ll need to choose the Pro plan or above, which comes with a rather high price tag attached. You can pay annually via PayPal or any major credit card – there’s no option to pay monthly.

There is a 14-day money-back guarantee, however, which does give you a bit of time to decide whether the more advanced features of the Pro plan are worth the price. Unfortunately, the money-back guarantee still requires you to pay upfront, and when I requested a refund, it took over two weeks for the money to appear back in my bank account.

If you’d rather not pay, then I’m afraid you may find that WPForms Lite (the free version) is really limited. For example, you can only use the eight standard form fields (single-line text, paragraph text, name, email, numbers, checkbox, dropdown, and multiple choice). That’s fine if you only want to create a basic contact form or newsletter signup form, but if you want access to the full range of form fields, you’ll need to upgrade.