Gravity Forms vs. Wufoo for WordPress

Gravity Forms just updated to version 1.5. So it’s a good time for me to talk about how much I love this tool. It’s got tons of features and can get really complex but also allows for a quick and robust simple contact form.

One of the key features that puts it above the rest is the fact that entries are saved in your WordPress database and are viewable within the WP admin area. Email is great but having a record of all entries in one place makes this a really powerful tool that is one giant step ahead of the competition. And you can export entries as well as edit and add notes to them.

The other key feature is the slick and clean interface. I have had numerous clients who get so excited when they see this and instantly “get it”. Gravity Forms reveals it power very quickly once you start playing with it.

Some new features in 1.5:

Pricing Fields allow you to create quotes and order forms. It features integrated pricing calculations and is compatible with the Gravity Forms PayPal Add-On. Pricing Fields consist of a Product Field, Option Field, Quantity Field, Shipping Field, Donation Field and Total Field. They allow you to easily turn your form into an order form and collect payments when combined with the PayPal Add-On.

Textarea Character Counter: Easily limit the number of characters entered into a textarea and include a visual character counter that lets them know how many characters are allowed and how many characters have been entered.

CSS Ready Classes: multi-column layouts using built in CSS classes.

Default Notification: Gravity Forms will now automatically setup an Admin Notification that uses the WordPress Admin email as the Send To and includes all submitted form fields when a new form is created. A big time-saver.

Other nifties:

• Multi-Page Forms
• Post Field Enhancements
• Checkbox and Multiple Choice (Radio Button) HTML Support
• Shortcode Support
• Enhanced Bulk Edit Functionality
• New Hooks and Filters
• Upgrade and Renewals

Visit rocketgenius.com and check out Gravity Forms. It’s not expensive to use on a single site but I have a Developers License so if you are already a client (or want to become a WordPress client) you can have it for free.

Flip side: The article below explains how to use Wufoo and WordPress together. I have little experience with Wufoo but it does seem easy to use. He notes that Wufoo is able to take cc transactions – but the new Gravity Forms 1.5 integrates easily with PayPal.  He mentions there is a good reporting feature set that wufoo offers (data visualization).  His main concern with gravity forms is about support but I have had fantastic support from them. Read How to combine Wufoo and WordPress for easy custom web forms | Out:think.

There are a couple other WordPress form building plugin options but each has issues—and neither actually stores the data submitted into the WordPress database.

• cformsII – This is a very popular plugin. I’ve used it because it was the best option I found at the time. However it’s buggy, conflicts with a lot of other plugins and the user interface is really bad.
• Contact Form 7 – Also very popular. But building a custom form and having it email the right elements to the right people gets tedious. The interface is simple but not very powerful. I see an interesting plugin that allows for saving submissions to database. I have not used it so let me know if you like Contact Form 7 to Database Extension and share in the comments below how it compares to Gravity Forms – what I can see of the screenshots don’t looks very compelling.