WPForms vs Ninja Forms (2024) Side–by–Side Review

Previously I had shared comparison articles between WPForms and two other popular WordPress form plugins – WPForms vs Typeform and WPForms vs Gravity Forms. Now, we are going to see how it fares when compared with another popular WordPress form builder plugin, the famous Ninja Forms WordPress plugin which is quite similar to WPForms in many aspects. When you are done with this article, you’ll be surprised to find how WPForms is a very good alternative for the Ninja Forms plugin.

In this WPForms vs Ninja Forms comparison, I will compare the ease of installation & use, available integrations, features, support, documentation, and pricing of the two WordPress plugins and let you know which is the best form builder plugin for WordPress.

What is WPForms

WPForms is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to easily create simple to complex forms on WordPress. Their free WPForms Lite WordPress plugin is active on more than two million WordPress sites. You can use this plugin to create simple contact forms, newsletter subscription forms, and suggestion forms in no time. The premium version of this WordPress form builder comes with many advanced features and popular integrations.

Check Out WPForms

It is also rated as the number one form builder plugin on the WordPress plugin repository. Here is a short overview of WPForms –

Now, let’s jump on to Ninja Forms and see who they are and what they are offering.

What is Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is another free WordPress form builder plugin that is somewhat popular among WordPress users apart from the usual pros – WPForms and Gravity Forms. The Ninja Forms Lite plugin has got more than one million active installations. Even though it doesn’t come to as close as WPForms’ popularity, this is no ordinary feat.

Check Out Ninja Forms

The user interface of Ninja Forms is elegant and offers users with a good WordPress form building experience. Here is a sample overview of Ninja Forms –

But is Ninja Forms plugin the right choice for you? Let’s find out from this WPForms vs Ninja Forms comparison.

Installation and Ease of Use

The process of creating forms should be as simple and straightforward as possible. This must be the goal of all WordPress form maker plugins. The user interface must be intuitive and the user must know what to do without going through hordes of documentation just for creating a simple contact form on their site.

The whole process of creating a form and embedding it onto a page should be as simple as possible. It would be even better if the forms plugin offers a drag and drop form builder for the user. Now, let us see how easy or hard it is to install these plugins and create forms using their respective form builder wizards.

WPForms

Here’s a video tutorial demonstrating how to create and embed a form using WPForms in WordPress –

If you don’t prefer watching the WPForms video tutorial above, you can continue reading below to learn how to use WPForms.

Step 1 – Go to the ‘Add New’ plugins section and search for WPForms. You will find the WPForms Lite plugin on the page (Contact Form by WPForms – Drag & Drop Form Builder for WordPress). Click on the ‘Install Now’ button to install the plugin on your site.

Step 2 – Once the plugin is installed on your WordPress site, activate it by clicking on the ‘Activate’ button.

Step 3 – Now, find WPForms on your WordPress admin menu and click on it to access WPForms dashboard. It will directly take you to the Forms Overview section. Go ahead and click on the ‘Add New’ button to create a new form.

Step 4 – Name your form and choose a template. Using this free version of the plugin, you can easily create a contact form, suggestion form, or a newsletter form by choosing from one of the pre-designed templates. Let’s just create a contact form for this WPForms tutorial.

Step 5 – You will now be redirected to the WPForms form builder wizard. The form builder wizard is pretty simple to use and looks good. On the left-hand side, you can find elements (form fields) to add to your form. If you want to add them to your form, just drag the desired form field and drop it on to the right-hand side where your form is.

The live preview mode allows you to see what your form will look like. Once you have fully designed your form, don’t forget to hit on the ‘Save’ button to save your changes.

Step 6 – Now, go to the page on which you need to embed the contact form and you can find a new ‘Add Form’ button in your WordPress editor. Click on it.

Step 7 – Choose your desired form from the drop-down and add it to the page by clicking on the ‘Add Form’ button.

Step 8 – You can now see that a new WPForms shortcode has been added to your page. Simply publish the new page or update it if it’s an existing one.

Step 9 – Check if the contact form is looking good from the front end and test if it’s working as intended.

That’s it, you have successfully created and inserted a simple form using WPForms on WordPress. It was simple, isn’t it?

Ninja Forms

Now that we have seen how to install and create a new contact form on WordPress using WPForms, let’s see how you can do the same using Ninja Forms.

Step 1 – Since Ninja Forms is also available to download for free from the WordPress plugin repository, it can also be installed the same way we did for WPForms from the ‘Add New’ plugin section. Just search for Ninja Forms and you will be able to find it.

Step 2 – After installing Ninja Forms, click on the ‘Activate’ button to activate Ninja Forms on your site.

Step 3 – Click on the Ninja Forms option on your WordPress admin menu to access its dashboard where you can find a sample contact form.

Step 4 – Click on the ‘Add New’ button to create a new form for your site.

Step 5 – Choose the type of form you would like to create to get started.

Step 6 – For the sake of this Ninja Forms tutorial, let’s choose ‘Contact Us’ to create a contact form. Once you have selected the form type, a matching template will be imported into the form builder wizard.

Step 7 – For a sample contact form, these fields are enough. So, go ahead and publish the form.

Step 8 – Once you have published the form, go to the page where you need to insert this form and click on the ‘Add Form’ button from the WordPress editor screen. Now, choose the form you need to add and insert it to your page.

Step 9 – Now, update or publish the page with the Ninja Forms shortcode on it.

Step 10 – Check the form from your web site’s front end and test if it’s working properly.

You have now successfully created and embedded a simple contact form using the Ninja Forms plugin on WordPress. Both plugins offer simple form building experience with live preview support and it’s very easy for anyone to create forms on WordPress no matter what their experience level is.

Winner: Tie

NOTE: If you have purchased the premium version of any of the above two WP forms plugin, you cannot install it directly from the WordPress plugins repository. You will have to manually log in to your respective forms account, download the latest version of the plugin, and upload it to your WordPress site.

Once you activated the plugin on your site, you will have to verify the license key to get automatic updates from the official plugin author.

Features

When it comes to comparing any two plugins on WordPress which does the same, looking at both the plugin’s features is an important factor in deciding which one is the best. Some features can help take your forms to the next level while some features are very basic and downright dumb. Now, let’s see the major features of the WPForms and Ninja Forms WordPress plugins.

WPForms Features

WPForms got some cool features in the form maker industry. Some of the best ones are –

• Drag and drop form builder
• Form templates
• Responsive
• Mobile friendly
• Smart conditional logic
• Instant notifications
• Entry management
• Multi-page forms
• File uploads
• User registration
• Spam protection
• Custom CAPTCHA
• Geolocation data
• Post submissions addon
• Surveys and polls addon
• Signature addon
• Form pages addon
• Form abandonment addon
• Offline forms addon
• Form locker addon
• Conversational forms addon
• Form templates pack addon

See All WPForms Features

Ninja Forms Features

Now, let’s see the top features of Ninja Forms plugin.

• Drag and drop form builder
• Inherits theme styles
• Responsive
• Mobile friendly
• 30+ available field types
• Form templates
• Submission management
• Spam protection
• Export and import forms
• Customizable field templates
• Multi-part forms
• Conditional logic
• File uploads
• PDF form submissions
• Webhooks

WPForms definitely has got an edge over Ninja Forms when it comes to core features.

See All Ninja Forms Features

Winner: WPForms

Available integrations

Form integrations allow you to extend the functionality of WordPress forms and helps you create more than just contact forms. Using form integrations you can create email subscription forms which collect email addresses and adds them to your email marketing list of subscribers, collect payment from someone once they have filled in the required card details, save a copy of the collected data in Google Sheets, etc. These are just some of the many possibilities.

Integrating your forms with third-party applications can save you lots of time and automate your efforts. List building is essential when you run a business, no matter how small or large it is. The thing is, you must build an email list to keep generating more leads. Now, let’s see all the integrations offered by both WPForms and Ninja Forms.

WPForms integrations

WPForms integrates fully with some of the most popular email marketing and payment processing solutions. Along with that, you can use Zapier to further connect WPForms with 600+ third-party applications to automate your work and improve your productivity. Some of the major available integrations are –

• PayPal
• Stripe
• MailChimp
• GetResponse
• ConvertKit
• Constant Contact
• AWeber
• Campaign Monitor
• Zapier
• Drip

Ninja Forms integrations

Ninja Forms integrates directly with a whole lot of applications and services than WPForms and many of them are related to businesses and customer relationship management (CRM) software. If you aren’t a power user, you won’t be necessarily using all of the below integrations. But if you are someone who migrates from one CRM to another often, you might prefer Ninja Forms over WPForms.

• MailChimp
• Campaign Monitor
• Constant Contact
• AWeber
• PayPal Express
• Zoho CRM
• Capsule CRM
• Stripe
• Insightly CRM
• Sendy
• Trello
• Elavon
• Zapier
• Salesforce CRM
• Slack
• CleverReach
• Microsoft Excel
• WebMerge
• Help Scout
• Emma
• ClickSend SMS
• Twilio SMS
• Recurly
• EmailOctopus
• PipelineDeals CRM
• Highrise CRM
• ConvertKit
• IntelligenceWP
• OnePage CRM
• ActiveCampaign

NOTE: All Ninja Forms extensions can be purchased separately or you can get them all by purchasing the Agency Membership. Each plan comes with a few add-ons bundled with it by default.

Winner: Ninja Forms

Support and documentation

There are some companies which don’t offer a free plan at all or some which offer a free plan but don’t support them. That is, only the premium users will get support. But WPForms and Ninja Forms both provide support to free and premium users alike. Now, let’s have a look at the methods using which the customers can get support from both the plugin developers.

If you are using the free versions of both the WordPress plugins on your blog, you can get support from the respective plugin developers on their respective WordPress support forum pages. Both plugins are active on the forum and you will get quick support. At the time of writing this WPForms vs Ninja Forms comparison, both the plugins have a good track record of resolving issues in the last two months.

• WPForms Lite – 68 issues resolved out of 78
• Ninja Forms Lite – 50 issues resolved out of 53

If you have paid for the premium version of either of the plugins, you needn’t wait for long to get support. You will be given a higher priority over free users and given timely support.

WPForms support

For most of the issues you could face using WPForms, you can find the solution by going through their documentation section. But if you still need support, you can raise a support ticket by logging in to your WPForms account and get support within 24 business hours.

You can also contact them regarding any pre-sale question, bug reporting and issues with their documentation.

Ninja Forms support

Ninja Forms premium users can get support within 8 business hours. All you need to do is log in to your account to raise a support ticket. Free version users can also get support by filling a simple form but as you can understand it can take up to 24 hours for them to get back to you.

WPForms documentation

The documentation section of WPForms is pretty good and they have covered everything about –

• Getting Started
• Functionality
• Styling
• Extending
• Add-ons
• Account Management

They have got more than 100 well-written articles for you in their documentation. On top of that, you can get personal support by raising tickets.

Ninja Forms documentation

Ninja Forms has also got a dedicated documentation section and the articles are categorized under –

• Getting Started
• Using The Builder
• Settings
• Add-on Actions
• Troubleshooting
• Emails and Actions
• Frequently Asked Questions
• CRM Integrations
• Payment Gateways
• Email Marketing add-ons
• Installation and Updates
• Changing the Form’s Appearance

These guides are beginner friendly and if you face any difficulty configuring the form, you can simply follow the proper guide to sort it out. But if you need more help, you can always contact their support team for more support.

Winner: Tie

Pricing

Pricing is another important factor you should consider when purchasing a WordPress plugin. Even though we choose the most affordable choice subconsciously we should check if it really provides a good value for your hard earned money. Remember, affordable solutions aren’t always bad and costlier solutions aren’t always good.

WPForms pricing

WPForms offers four different plans depending on what features you need and how many sites your license can be used on –

• Basic – $39.50/year – one site usage
• Plus – $99.50/year – three websites usage
• Pro – $199.50/year – 20 websites usage
• Elite – $299.50/year – unlimited websites usage

As you can see, WPForms plans are quite affordable. If you are managing just one website, their Basic plan should be good enough for you although I recommend buying the Pro plan for most users. If you are a business, you should definitely go for their Pro plan.

Get WPForms

Ninja Forms pricing

Ninja Forms offers three different plans depending on how many sites you want the license to work –

• Personal – $99/year – one website usage
• Professional – $199/year – 20 websites usage
• Agency – $499/year – unlimited websites usage

NOTE: Ninja Forms Personal and Professional plans come with only the basic features (Builder Pro Pack) with a discount to buy their other add-ons individually. Even if you’d like to integrate it with the most common email marketing service providers like AWeber, GetResponse or MailChimp, you will have to purchase the respective add-ons separately.

Get Ninja Forms

Winner: WPForms

Conclusion

As you can see from the above WPForms vs Ninja Forms comparison, WPForms performs better than Ninja Forms. WPForms is pretty affordable on the whole without forcing us to purchase separate add-ons for each service we would like to integrate with. Moreover, it offers great features, add-ons, and security for their clients. So I highly recommend the WPForms plugin for building forms on your WordPress site.

If you are a beginner, you can take the WPForms Lite plugin for a test ride before deciding whether to purchase a premium plan or not. If you need advanced features and more extensions to improve the form actions, you might want to consider upgrading to their Pro plan.

Get Started With WPForms

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