Nowadays, there are many popular WordPress form builder plugins available out there and it’s pretty hard to choose the best one for your website. If you go through my posts, you can find me talking about one three form maker plugins and Formidable Forms is one of them. Formidable Forms is already one of the best contact form plugins for WordPress, but now with their revamped interface, they’re taking the competition to the next level. Since I have already covered most of their features in my Formidable Forms review, I won’t be going through all their features in this complete guide.
In this complete guide of formidable forms, I will be talking only about Formidable Forms in general, the new form builder, and some of their new features.
Table of Contents
What is Formidable Forms
Formidable Forms is one of the best form builder plugins available for creating forms on WordPress. Using Formidable Forms, you can create simple contact forms, user registration forms, surveys, and quizzes. You can also use it to collect payments by integrating it with a payment gateway solution.
Compared to other popular WordPress form builder plugins, Formidable Forms is more affordable, powerful, and beginner-friendly.
Does it have a free version
Yes, Formidable Forms has got a free lite version of the premium plugin and you can download Formidable Forms Lite from the WordPress plugin repository.
It has got a rating of 4.5 out 5 of the plugin repository and is active on more than 200,000 sites. Also, they have resolved all the issues submitted to their support forum in the last two months. This leads to only one conclusion and that is – this plugin is highly reliable and trustworthy.
Here’s a short video introduction of the Formidable Forms plugin. Do watch it!
Now that we have seen what Formidable Forms is, let’s see what’s new with their updated interface (4.0 and above).
Welcome to Formidable Forms 4.0
With version 4.0, Formidable Forms has introduced a new form-building experience. This new interface looks good and is more intuitive. But it doesn’t mean that their old UI was bad, it’s just that this one is even easier to use and looks modern.
A brand new editor
It doesn’t matter whether you are on the free version or using their premium plugin, you can get your hands on the new interface by updating it to the latest version (4.0 and above).
Now, everything looks better and beginner friendly. You can easily drag field elements from the collection on the left-hand side and drop it right into the form builder screen to add those fields. But in the free version, you can only access the basic fields. To unlock the full potential of Formidable Forms, you need to upgrade to one of their premium plans. And, it’s definitely worth it.
With this new updated interface, Formidable Forms has redefined the meaning of distraction-free form building experience.
Install add-ons right from the form builder page
You can now install Formidable Forms add-ons right when you need them directly from the form builder wizard. Earlier, you can only install the add-ons from their dedicated add-ons page but with this update, they have totally eliminated this step. This can save you lots of time in the long run and help you work more efficiently.
Improvements to multi-page forms
Making people fill long forms can be a tiring experience. Displaying a long form can easily put them off and they will abandon your site without filling the form. To overcome this problem and prevent users from leaving your site without filling the form, Formidable Forms introduced the multi-page forms feature. This allows you to split long forms into separate pages with a simple bar to track the progress. This provides users with better user experience and they won’t think twice before filling it.
Even though this worked as intended on the front-end, you would still have to scroll through the all the fields in your form to edit it This can easily become a nightmare if your browser hangs up often and you don’t remember which field to edit.
This has now been fixed with this major Formidable Forms 4.0 update.
How to create a form using Formidable Forms
Creating forms using the brand new Formidable Forms builder is pretty easy. Let see how to create one using the new form builder wizard.
Total Time: 15 minutes
Install Formidable Forms
Go to the ‘Add New’ plugins section, search for ‘Formidable Forms’ and install it.
Activate Formidable Forms
Once you have installed the plugin, activate it.
Open Formidable Forms Dashboard
Once the plugin is active, open the Formidable Forms dashboard.
Create a new form
Click on the add new button to create a new form.
Choose form template
Now, choose a form template. In the free version of the plugin, you can only start with a blank form, create and use a custom template or go with the pre-made contact form template.
Choose the contact form template
For the sake of demonstrating how the plugin works, I’m choosing the pre-made contact form template.
Name your form
Give your form a name and hit the ‘Create Form’ button.
Add or remove form fields
You will now be redirected to the form building wizard where you can see the live preview of your form. You can add new fields or remove the existing ones to customize your form as per your needs.
Update the form
Once you have designed your form completely, update the form to save your changes.
Embed the form
You have now successfully created a form using Formidable Forms. Now, you have to insert it on the page where you need to display the form. Go to the page where you need to insert the form and search for the Formidable Forms block.
Choose your form
Once you have inserted the Formidable Forms block, you need to choose the form which you just created to embed it.
Publish or update the page.
Now, simply publish or update the page to complete the final step.
You can now see that the proper contact form is being displayed in the front-end. Go ahead and play with it by sending yourself a message.
It was simple and straightforward, right?
Formidable Form features
Using Formidable Forms, you can create any number of forms which can easily be managed from the dashboard.
You can manage all form entries in the Formidable Forms entry management page.
If you don’t like the existing styles for your WordPress forms, you can use custom CSS to alter them. Under the plugin settings menu, you can find the Styles option. Just click on it to start customizing your form’s styling.
From the Import/Export area, you can easily import or export your Formidable Forms’ forms, entries, views, and styles and use them on your other site.
Apart from that, you can also export your form entries as a CSV file and import it into any application which supports that file format.
Under the Global Settings page, you can find options to configure your license key, loading of form stylesheets (on all pages or only on pages where required), default messages, form permissions, reCaptcha, GDPR compliance, and white labeling.
Under the Add-Ons page, you can see all available Formidable Forms add-ons and integrations. If you are using the free version of the plugin (Formidable Forms Lite), you won’t be able to integrate your forms with these apps and services as it requires you to upgrade to Formidable Forms Pro.
See All Formidable Forms Features
Integrations
Ready to integrate your forms with third-party apps and services like email marketing platforms, payment gateways, and CRM software? Formidable Forms supports most of the popular third-party services out there which you might need for your everyday business activities.
Integrating Formidable Forms with other tools can help you build better forms, improve the user experience on your site, and save you a lot of time.
You can use the Polylang add-on to create multilingual forms, Quiz Maker add-on to create automated quizzes, and GetResponse add-on to add leads from your forms into your email lists.
Here are a few other integrations offered by Formidable Forms –
- Active Campaign
- Authorize.net AIM
- AWeber
- Bootstrap
- Campaign Monitor
- Constant Contact
- Form Action Automation
- Formidable API
- Highrise CRM
- HubSpot
- Twilio
- WooCommerce
- WP Multilingual
- Zapier
Integrating your forms with these services can help you automate most of your tasks and run your business more efficiently.
Pricing
You can get Formidable Forms Lite version for free from the WordPress plugin repository. Even though it is fully functional, it doesn’t come packed with powerful features. To unlock the full potential of Formidable Forms, I highly recommend you to choose Formidable Forms Pro.
At the time of writing this article, Formidable Forms offers four premium plans –
- Personal – $49 per year for one website
- Creator – $99 per year for three websites
- Business – $199 per year for fifteen websites
- Elite – $399 per year for unlimited websites
Compared to other premium form builder plugins, Formidable Forms is more affordable. The Personal plan is good for bloggers while small and medium-sized business owners can go for the Creator plan. Large businesses and web design agencies can go with the Business or Elite plans.
If you are running an online business powered by WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads plugin, you should definitely consider upgrading to the Business or Elite plan. It’s worth it.
Money-back guarantee
By the way, the Formidable Forms team offers a no questions asked 14-days money back guarantee on all their premium plans. If you are not happy with your purchase, you can simply request a refund and get your money back.
Get started with Formidable Forms
Click on the below button to get started with Formidable Forms and take your form building experience to the next level.
Thus I hope you found this complete guide for Formidable Forms interesting and enjoyed the read. If you did, please consider sharing this post with your friends and fellow bloggers on social media so that they can also discover one of the best form builder plugins for WordPress.