A website without a call-to-action is like a river without a current. It may look beautiful, but it lacks direction and flow. If your business offers products or services, you likely want users to take action on your site. And if that action is digital, you’ll need a reliable form builder.
For WordPress form development, one plugin stands out for both developers and website owners alike: Gravity Forms. As a digital marketing agency, we’ve worked with various form plugins over the years and can confidently say that Gravity Forms offers unmatched flexibility and a robust set of features that truly set it apart from its competitors.
What Is Gravity Forms
Gravity Forms is a versatile solution for creating forms on WordPress websites. Their forms can be customized to capture leads, collect payments, and automate workflows. With their services, you can build forms of any kind, from simple contact forms to surveys and event registrations.
Benefits of Gravity Forms
With its intuitive interface, extensive customization options, and seamless integrations, Gravity Forms stands out as one of the best form plugins, making it easy to capture and manage user submissions with precision and ease. We asked Jeremy Anderson, our Senior Developer here at Square 205, to share why he prefers using Gravity Forms over other form builders he has worked with in the past
Flexibility and Feature-Rich
“I’ve worked with Ninja Forms, Contact Form 7, WP Forms, and the form elements in different page builders, and nothing has offered the flexibility and variety of features that Gravity Forms does,” says Anderson. This sentiment is shared by many developers in the WordPress community. Gravity Forms’ adaptability makes it the ideal tool for creating forms of all shapes and sizes, from simple contact forms to complex multi-step forms with custom integrations.
A Vast Ecosystem of Plugins
One reason Gravity Forms is so widely used is its vast ecosystem of plugins. Because it is well-known, there is an extensive range of add-ons available to enhance its functionality. Whether you need to integrate with popular CRMs like Mailchimp or Lasso, add payment gateways, or connect to marketing automation tools, there is almost always a plugin to simplify the process.
If you can’t find the exact plugin you need, Gravity Forms offers a robust library of action and filter hooks, making it easy to customize or extend the functionality yourself. “Even if no plugin does exactly what I need, the library of action and filter hooks is robust, and adding custom behavior or integrations isn’t too much trouble,” Anderson explained.
Elegant and User-Friendly Dashboard
Another feature that makes Gravity Forms a standout is its user interface. As someone who has worked with several other form plugins, Anderson can attest that Gravity Forms offers one of the most intuitive admin dashboards in the business. It blends seamlessly with the WordPress dashboard, making it easy for even novice users to create and manage forms. The layout is clean and simple, with options that make sense, so developers and site admins can focus on what matters most: building functional, user-friendly forms.
Constant Improvement and Innovation
The development team behind Gravity Forms is constantly improving and evolving the plugin. “One of the biggest changes I witnessed was a complete overhaul of their drag-and-drop form builder so that it no longer required special CSS classes to control the majority of layout configurations, such as the number of columns fields are displayed in,” Anderson noted. This change made building custom layouts even easier without diving deep into code.
Streamlined Customizations and Automation
Many clients do not require complex customizations. “The vast majority of clients don’t need any customizations or automation. Simply install the plugin, add a pair of reCaptcha keys, create a form, toggle on the form honeypot- an additional layer of protection against spam bots- and you’re mostly done,” Anderson said. While it can be incredibly simple, Gravity Forms can accommodate more advanced needs when needed.
Advanced Features and Add-Ons
Gravity Forms is more than just a basic form plugin; it provides various advanced features essential for developers. It offers an extensive array of hooks for deeper customization. From pre-submission actions to after-submission processes, the possibilities are endless. “The gform_pre_submission, gform_after_submission actions, and gform_pre_render and gform_pre_validation filters are hooks that I frequently use,” Anderson added. These hooks help automate workflows, validate form fields, and store additional data, making Gravity Forms a powerful tool for creating complex, automated workflows.
Real-World Examples of Customization
Gravity Forms isn’t just for simple forms. It can handle complex, highly customized implementations as well. For example, on a recent project for Neuline, we created a multi-page “Request a Consultation” form. The project required significant customization to meet the design requirements, including an integration with Calendly. “We were able to make use of the Gravity Forms Image Choices plugin to add images to the options easily, and the Gravity Forms Partial Entries Add-On plugin to capture entries as soon as form fields start to be filled out,” Anderson explained. These advanced features helped streamline the form and improve user experience.
Another example is the booking form for Torrey Pines, a golf course website. “Though I did not create this form, it was one of the first complex Gravity Form implementations that I got to maintain and modify,” Anderson shared. The form connects to a Golf Course booking engine, allowing it to populate real-time data as the user fills it out, showcasing Gravity Forms’ ability to integrate with external systems.
“More recently, a client needed their contact form to generate leads in a CRM called Lasso,” Anderson recalled. Fortunately, Lasso had developed its own plugin hosted on GitHub for seamless Gravity Forms integration. This plugin helped streamline the process, saving us time and ensuring the form was both functional and efficient.
Implement Gravity Forms on Your Website
Gravity Forms continues to be one of the most powerful and flexible form plugins for WordPress. From its intuitive user interface to its vast library of plugins and powerful hooks for customization, it’s no wonder developers, like those at Square 205, rely on it for even the most complex form implementations. Whether you’re building a simple contact form or a multi-step, data-integrated form, Gravity Forms is a tool you can trust to get the job done.
If your website needs a way to capture information or automate a workflow, our development team has the experience and expertise to implement a Gravity Form on your site. We can work with your existing website or integrate it into a new site that our designers carefully craft to showcase your brand. Contact Square 205 today to discuss your project.
