WPForms and Gravity Forms are the two most popular premium WordPress form plugins. Both build contact forms, lead capture forms, multi-step forms, and payment forms. Both integrate with major CRM and email marketing platforms. Choosing between them comes down to a few specific factors: your budget, the complexity of form logic you need, and which features your specific use case requires.
Pricing
Gravity Forms uses a flat annual license model. As of current pricing:
- Basic: one site license, core form features and integrations
- Pro: three site licenses, adds additional integrations (HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Stripe, PayPal, Polls, Surveys)
- Elite: unlimited site licenses, adds all add-ons including Zapier, Signature, User Registration, and others
WPForms uses a tiered pricing model:
- Basic: one site, essential features
- Plus: three sites, adds email marketing integrations
- Pro: five sites, adds Stripe, file uploads, surveys, form abandonment, and more
- Elite: unlimited sites, all features
Both plugins are in a similar price range for single-site licenses. WPForms tends to start slightly lower at the entry tier; Gravity Forms’ flat per-tier pricing can be more predictable for agencies managing many sites.
Ease of Use
WPForms is generally considered more beginner-friendly. Its drag-and-drop builder has a simpler interface with fewer configuration options visible at the form level. The form creation process is guided, with suggested field types and templates for common use cases (contact form, newsletter signup, request a quote). For someone who needs a functional contact form quickly and without complexity, WPForms is faster to get to a working result.
Gravity Forms has more configuration depth at every level — more field options, more conditional logic capabilities, more notification routing options. This depth is its strength for advanced use cases and a steeper learning curve for simple ones. Someone new to WordPress form plugins may find Gravity Forms’ interface more complex than necessary for a basic contact form.
Conditional Logic
Both plugins include conditional logic: showing or hiding fields based on previous answers, routing notifications based on form values, setting confirmation messages conditionally. Gravity Forms’ conditional logic is generally considered more powerful and more granular — more conditions available, more complex rules, more control over how form behavior changes based on input.
For forms with complex branching logic — multi-path intake forms, lead qualification forms that ask different questions based on earlier answers, forms that calculate values and display conditional output — Gravity Forms’ conditional logic is more capable. For standard contact or request forms with simple show/hide logic, both plugins handle the use case equivalently.
Integrations
Both plugins connect to major CRM and email platforms through native integrations and through Zapier (which enables connections to hundreds of additional apps). Common integrations available on both:
- HubSpot
- ActiveCampaign
- Mailchimp
- Salesforce (via Zapier or native)
- Stripe (payment processing)
- PayPal
- Zapier (connects to virtually any other tool)
Gravity Forms has a larger ecosystem of third-party add-ons built by the community and add-on developers. If you use a niche CRM or a specific platform that needs a direct integration (not via Zapier), check both plugins’ add-on libraries before deciding.
Lead Source Tracking with Both Plugins
A common requirement for lead generation sites is capturing UTM parameters (source, medium, campaign) at form submission and passing them to a CRM or marketing attribution system. This tells you which marketing channel drove each specific lead.
Both WPForms and Gravity Forms support hidden fields — form fields that are not visible to the user but are populated programmatically. The typical approach for UTM capture:
- Add hidden fields for utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign (and optionally utm_content, utm_term)
- Use JavaScript to read UTM parameters from the page URL and populate the hidden fields before submission
- The hidden field values are included in the form submission data, which flows to your CRM or email platform via the integration
First-party attribution tools like Sales Provenance handle this automatically — they read UTMs from the URL and inject them into hidden fields without custom JavaScript, and handle session persistence (storing UTMs in a cookie so they survive if the visitor navigates to another page before submitting the form). Both WPForms and Gravity Forms are compatible with this approach.
Which to Choose
- Choose WPForms if: you want a straightforward, easy-to-use form plugin for contact forms and basic lead capture, you are building sites for clients who will manage their own forms, or you are new to WordPress form plugins and want a gentle learning curve.
- Choose Gravity Forms if: you need advanced conditional logic for complex form flows, you are building sophisticated multi-step intake forms or application forms, you manage many WordPress sites and want a flat unlimited-site license price, or you need a specific integration available in Gravity Forms’ broader add-on ecosystem.
For a typical small business site with a contact form, request-a-quote form, or simple lead capture form, both plugins perform the job well. The decision at that level comes down to which interface you prefer. If you anticipate needing more complex form logic as your site and marketing evolve, Gravity Forms gives you more room to grow without switching plugins.