Pretty much every WordPress site needs a form, so you should always be on the lookout for a good form plugin. In our Forminator review, we’ll be taking a look at a free WordPress form solution from popular developer, WPMU DEV.
But while it’s free, you probably wouldn’t think it was a free plugin if I didn’t tell you that upfront.
In fact, one of the most notable things about Forminator is how generous it is with functionality and integrations for free.
Without spending a dime, Forminator offers integrations for Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, Trello, Slack, and more. It even supports calculations and payments via Stripe and PayPal for free. Plus front-end post submission forms, surveys and polls, and more. These are all features that pretty much every other form plugin charges for.
I think those free features are a big reason to consider this plugin. But it’s also got a nice drag-and-drop interface and some other benefits to offer.
Keep reading our full hands-on Forminator review for a deeper look at everything this WordPress form plugin has to offer…
Forminator Review: The Feature List
Forminator is a free plugin but its feature list really does feel like a premium plugin.
First off, Forminator gives you a drag-and-drop builder where you can design your forms. It doesn’t give you a live visual preview, but it’s still quite easy to use.
Forminator lets you create three types of forms:
- “Standard” forms
- Polls
- Quizzes
For the standard forms, you have a lot more flexibility than your average free form plugin. For example, you can still create:
- Payment forms via Stripe or PayPal
- Front-end post submission forms that add content to any post type
- Email opt-in forms thanks to the many email marketing service integrations
Speaking of integrations, the free version comes with a lengthy list of integrations for both email marketing services and other tools:
- Zapier – a great catchall integration that’s usually only available on the highest tier of paid form plugins
- Mailchimp
- Google Sheets
- HubSpot
- Slack
- Trello
- Campaign Monitor
- AWeber
- ActiveCampaign
Other useful free features include:
- In-dashboard form entry/submission management, including an option to disable or limit this for GDPR compliance
- Conditional logic
- Custom form email notifications
- Anti-spam protection with honeypot fields or only letting logged-in users submit a form. You can also connect to reCAPTCHA
Alright, that’s enough feature talk, let’s go hands-on and I’ll show you how it works.
Forminator Review: Hands-On
I’ll run through the three types of forms that you can create with Forminator. Then, I’ll take you through some settings and the in-dashboard entry management.
Creating a Form
When you go to create a new form, you can choose from some pre-made templates or create your own form from scratch:
In the form builder, you get a drag-and-drop interface to control the layout of your form. It’s not visual like some of the other form plugins, but it’s plenty easy to use:
If you want to add new fields, you get a variety of field types to include in your form:
Some of the unique options here that you wouldn’t expect to see in a free form plugin are:
- Post Data – submit data into any post type on your site.
- Calculations – perform calculations based on other number fields. For example, you could create a mortgage calculator or a quote estimator.
- Stripe & PayPal – payment fields.
- File Upload – let people attach files.
If you click into a field’s settings, you can customize everything about that field, including setting up conditional logic (called “Visibility“):
Once you finish setting up the fields, you can go to the Appearance settings to control the design of your form. You get a few different preset styles, including a nice material design style:
Next, you can set up form behavior, which lets you configure:
- Whether to use Ajax form submission or reload the page
- What to do after someone submits the form (e.g. you can redirect them to another page)
- Spam protection
- Whether to close the form after a certain date or number of submissions
Next up, you can set up email notifications, including using conditional logic to control when to send different notifications:
After that, you can set up integrations. For example, you could connect a form to Mailchimp to automatically add submissions as Mailchimp subscribers.
And to finish things out, you can set up important privacy settings, like whether to store form submissions and, if so, how long to store them for:
All in all, you get the features of a premium form plugin in a free package.
If I had just one nitpick, I would say that I’d like to see a true visual form builder, rather than the abstract drag-and-drop interface. But given the incredibly generous feature list, I’m happy to overlook that.
Creating a Poll
The basic process for creating a poll is similar, but you get a slightly different interface that’s optimized for polls.
First, you can enter your question. You can either use a text question or add an image as well. Then, you can add as many answers as you want:
Note – you can only ask a single question in a poll. If you want to ask more questions, you might be better off with a quiz, which I’ll cover next.
After that, you can go through the same basic settings that you saw with forms. There are a few differences where required.
For example, in the Behaviour settings, you can choose whether or not to show results and a vote count.
Creating Quizzes
Forminator lets you create two basic types of quizzes:
- Knowledge quizzes – quiz takers are judged based on how many answers they get right.
- Personality quizzes – quiz takers are assigned an outcome based on their answers. There’s no single “right” answer to each question.
In the quiz builder, you can add as many questions and answers as you want. You also get the ability to include images in your questions and answers.
For knowledge quizzes, you can mark the correct answer:
For a personality quiz, you can add your different personalities and then assign each answer to a specific personality:
You can choose from different quiz layouts in the appearance tab. And one feature that I really like is the ability to integrate social sharing in the Behaviour tab:
Viewing Submissions
Whether you created a form, poll, or quiz, you can view submissions from inside your WordPress dashboard (assuming you didn’t disable that feature, which you can do):
Exploring Settings and Integrations
Finally, let’s take a look at a few of the plugin-wide settings and integrations that you get.
In the Integrations area, you can set up integrations with all of the tools that I mentioned earlier:
And in the Settings area, you can configure a lot of miscellaneous settings including:
- reCaptcha support for anti-spam.
- Plugin-wide settings for data retention.
- Integrations with Stripe and PayPal.
- …a lot more.
Forminator Review: Pricing
Forminator is free and available at WordPress.org.
Or, if you are a WPMU DEV member, you can install it through WPMU DEV. You do not need to be a WPMU DEV member, though.
Forminator Review: Final Thoughts
As I’ve mentioned, Forminator really doesn’t feel like a free plugin with the feature list that it has. You get access to features that would typically cost you $100+ in almost every other form plugin, which is pretty incredible.
You can also create more than just simple forms, with support for polls and quizzes as well.
Plus, it all comes from WPMU DEV, a longstanding and reputable WordPress developer.
So if you’re looking for a free WordPress form plugin that doesn’t skimp on features, definitely give this one a look.
Visit Forminator @ WPMU DEV Download at WordPress.org
Keep reading the article at Learn WordPress with WPLift. The article was originally written by Colin Newcomer on 2020-02-20 03:52:38.
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