WordPress doesn’t come by default with the possibility of adding contact forms to a website. The good news is that you can easily add this functionality by using a plugin. There are many contact form plugins available. Some of them are free, others are not. One of the most popular plugins that enables adding contact forms to WordPress websites is Gravity Forms. We are going to see next what makes it so popular.
Gravity Forms allows you to define multiple forms and give them names that are easy to recognize. You can have a contact form, an order form, a service request form and any other form you might need, no matter how complex.
Each form can be individually edited. You can edit current fields or add new ones. You can set up notification email addresses, so you or anybody else in your team get notified when a new message comes. If you use external email marketing services such as Aweber or MailChimp, you can connect your forms to these services, so you can automatically have new users added to your mailing lists.
One cool feature which makes Gravity Forms stand out from the crowd of contact form plugins is the possibility to define a limited time frame during which your form will show. Why is this so amazing? Well, if you organize a blog contest, for instance, you’ll ask participants to send you their entries between such and such date. You can schedule your form in advance to show only between those dates. This is how you can manage your blog contest with minimum amount of effort.
Gravity Forms allow inclusion of hidden fields that transmit useful data such as the IP address of the sender. This may be useful in some circumstances.
Another interesting feature is the possibility of using conditional form fields. These fields will be displayed only if the preceding fields contain certain values. For instance, you can ask people to answer with yes or no to the question “do you have a dog?”. In case the answer is Yes, the form will display the field “You dog’s name”. If the answer is No, this field will remain hidden.
Gravity Forms for WordPress is probably the best plugin which enables you to create opinion polls and surveys with ease. Combined with the conditional fields feature described above, thus function makes Gravity Forms a really strong asset for your website. It’s well-known that such research among your readers is priceless, as it allows webmasters to fine-tune their pages for maximum effectiveness and for offering their audience the best experience. This translates in happier users and more profits, so it’s a wise investment for any website.
Another break-through function of Gravity Forms is the possibility of publishing and organizing user-generated content on your WordPress website. It is even possible to have people guest post on your blog without having to create a new user for them in the WordPress dashboard. Just imagine how useful this can be on a review website. You write the reviews, then readers can add their own input in a form other than the regular blog comments we all know.
There are three pricing options for the Gravity Forms WordPress plugin. You can get a Personal License, which costs $39 and it allows you to use it on one site. If you need more, you can buy a
Business License which is $99 but it is good for up to 3 websites. If you are a web developer and you want to include this plugin on your clients’ websites, you need to get a Developer License. This one is $199 and it allows you to use it on as many websites as you wish.
Anyway, you can start with the cheapest license and give Gravity Forms a try. If you are happy, you can upgrade it any time.
Gravity Forms Add-Ons
With some optional Add-Ons you can quickly and easily integrate with a variety of third party services to further enhance the capability of your WordPress website . Available Add-Ons:
- AWeber Add-On– Collect and add subscribers to your email marketing lists automatically when a form is submitted
- Campaign Monitor Add-On -Integrate with your Campaign Monitor email marketing service.
- MailChimp Add-On- Integrate all of your form with MailChimp .
- Picatcha Add-On- Provides a usable and secure alternative CAPTCHA solution to Gravity Forms users.
- Authorize.Net– With the Add-On you can capture credit card payments along with any additional data you want from the user right on your site.
- Freshbooks Add-on -Turns any Gravity Forms submission into a FreshBooks invoice or estimates and automatically create FreshBooks clients
- Paypal Standard Add-on – Enable your users to pay you via PayPal Payments Standard as part of the Gravity Forms submission process.
- PayPal Pro Add-on – Can capture credit card payments along with any additional data you want from your customer right on your site
- Polls Add-on – Easily add poll questions to any form!
- Quiz Add-on – allows you to quickly create Quizzes that are automatically graded or scored when the form is submitted.
- Signature Add-on – allows you to capture signatures online by allowing users to sign your forms using touchscreen devices, touch pads or mouse
- Survey Add-on – Market research, customer satisfaction, employee surveys, job satisfaction surveys, anything is possible!
- Twilio – Sends notification via a customizable SMS text message as soon as a form is submitted, or a payment is received via an order form.
- User Registration – Automatically register WordPress users when a form is submitted.
How to Buy
Click here to buy Gravity form for your website (aff link) . We also use the form plugin for all of our website including the Hyaroo website.
