Formidable Forms
  • Usability - 9/10
    9/10
  • Features - 8/10
    8/10
  • Support - 6/10
    6/10
  • Pricing - 3/10
    3/10
6.5/10
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Formidable Forms Review – The Form Builder I Love But Don’t Recommend

I'm conflicted when it comes to Formidable Forms because I love the plugin but they're some things that make me wish I had chosen another form builder for WordPress.

I don't write reviews to simply make money (although it's great when I get commissions for products I do like). In fact, I've written bad reviews for products that had high commissions.

I didn't care though because it was a sh*t product and I had no interest in making money from sh*t products.

And no it wasn't one of those scenarios where I write a takedown review of one product just to promote a competing product.

This is not the case with Formidable Forms,  in all honesty, If I had to place it in a top 10 list, I'd say it's in the top 3 best WordPress form builders.

Formidable Forms Review

When it comes to what can be accomplished with Formidable Forms (formerly Formidable Pro), calling it a form build simply isn't accurate, this plugin serves an added layer on top of WordPress which makes it a much more efficient data management platform.

So let's talk about what I liked and disliked about this plugin, they're a ton of features but I'm only going to highlight the ones that make this plugin stand out.

Pros

Formidable Views: In the early days of WordPress form builders, nothing even remotely close to creating views were available, today form builders are not only available but pretty complex.

You can all sorts of things like creating graphs, directories, tables, job boards, calendars and a whole lot more.

Without touching code you can display entries from the currently logged in user with dynamic filtering. They're easy to control and customize to match your site's design and layout.

Things like function, being sortable and searchable are also easy to achieve.
Without touching code you can display entries from the currently logged in user with dynamic filtering.

They're easy to control and customize to match your site's design and layout. Things like function, being sortable and searchable are also easy to achieve.

You can see an example of View setup on this site when you register to create a post.

Add-ons: When I first purchased Formidable Forms way back in 2012, the Add-on section was pathetic, today, that is no longer the case.

The last time I checked, they provided over 20 officials add-ons and because of the plugin is so widely used, they also have over 30 3rd party plugins, some of which I'm using on this site.


Useful add-ons include:

  • User Registration
  • MailChimp
  • PayPal
  • My Cred (3rd party)
  • User Tracking
  • Formidable API
  • Stripe

Usability: From the very beginning, one of the main things that stood out about Formidable was its ease of use, from download to installation, you can be up and building your first form in under 10 minutes.

The learning curve is very minimal.

Even today with all the new features that have been added to the plugin, the simplistic UI still remains the same.

Email Notifications: This feature is commonplace in all the best WordPress form builders out there but the thing that makes formidable a little better is that it integrates nicely with other plugins, specifically email plugins.

Many of us use email newsletter plugins like Mail Poet and Mailster to handle all our WordPress email needs, Formidable integrates nicely with these plugins because it doesn't add any unwanted HTML markup to their emails making blend nicely with Email templates used by other plugins.

Formidable Forms Review


The other thing is how easy they're to customize and personalize.

Drag and Drop form builder: This is awesome and pretty much self-explanatory, easily drag a field you can think of onto the board, change the position, width, alignment of fields with just a few clicks.

Cons:

Pricing: The cost of the plugin isn't a big deal by itself in comparison to other popular premium WordPress form builder plugins and once you buy it, you always have access to it, the problem lies within the support side of it.

After your first year of support expires, you have to renew it, which is not uncommon among premium plugins but the cost of the support is like you're paying for the plugin all over again.

I have the small business version so to get support every year it costs me $119.40, while the plugin cost me $199.

To some, this is not a big chunk of money but to most of the small one-man shops using WordPress to run their business, this is a big deal.

Support: Now I already talked about the pricing in the pricing part but there's more, what if your support has expired?

You have a minor question, search results have brought back nothing, so you submit a ticket.

You can forget about getting any timely response if any, you'll have to pay for that.

Adding insult to injury, if you asked a question and already got an answer for it while you had an active support license, if the answer was linked to something premium, you can forget about having access to that once your license expires.

That's unacceptable…

Furthermore, the user experience of support leaves much to be desired, seeing a big “Expired” label next to all the users that don't have support is a terrible user experience.

As an Experience Designer, it pains me to see that.

I don't know what that's doing for their conversion maybe it increases it, I'm not sure but from a user stand out, that's a very uncomfortable and negative experience.

Pricing and support are really the only two pitfalls of this plugin, a great plugin, something that I use daily on my own sites and my clients.

I'm too integrated to make a switch now but if I could start over, I probably would've gone in another direction.

Now if the pricing is not a deal-breaker for you then you'll be getting one of the best WordPress form builder plugins out there.

If it is, I'd recommend shopping around a little more.

Thanks for checking out my review, please comment and leave your rating below.

Glenton
I design and develop experiences that make people's lives simple.

8 thoughts on “Formidable Forms Review – The Form Builder I Love But Don’t Recommend

  1. i totally agree that its a very good form builder. Pbobabbly one of the best but current pricing makes it out of reach for me. Almost all of my projects are non profit and I can not pay such annual subscriptions plans like they have now.

  2. Thanks for your honest review, I have been comparing many form builders this week, and have many of the same needs as you with regards to form builders.
    It looks like even the updates for formidable Forms will be annual soon…
    Your review has almost convinced me to purchase this form builder now, reason: you voted it in top 3, and also if I need support after 1 year I would be happy to pay for it.
    I think you are 100% correct that after your support expires you should still have access to read the support tickets without expecting personal support.
    It still comes out cheaper for me to get lifetime updates, I will just hope I don’t need too much support after 1 year.

  3. Completely agree. Great plugin, support has dramatically declined in experience over the last six months. Previously I would get quick replies with engaged and useful answers. More recently, responses seem more dismissive, lacking a joyous etiquette and becoming increasingly unhelpful – where I’ll have to either figure out the solutions on my own or just dismiss it myself. Certainly if they charge so much for support they should provide a premium service. Their support service isn’t as knowledgeable as they once were.

    I feel they have found some success in the platform and have become a little focused on

  4. Interesting comment, but which other form plugins would you recommend? After a quick serach most of this kind of apps has payable annualy plans, and 199$ isnt actually the bigest price among them.

    Are in formidable Forms any articles, instructions, guides, forum, about the problems when subscription is over?

    Have you met many problems when creating forms that needed the support contact?

    1. Had some issues with their file upload function, there is no progress bar, so you don’t know what the status of the upload is. It’s been at least 5 years since I’ve been requesting they add that, it hasn’t happened. I’d have to login to see what all my tickets were about. At the time of writing this post, the highest price was $199, now there is a $399 version.

      I recommend WPForms, which has a great free version, Gravity Forms is my main driver these days. I have in-depth reviews of both of them coming up.

      Also, I’ll be updating this review soon as well, as they’re some new things to add.

  5. I have had it built for me and stop certain company control of my mail. My problem is I am not tech minded and its for android so I honestly don’t know where to upload it and quick I’m on Huawei and u can see it and use it in return for getting it up and running starting literally with how step by step and quickest way or I have to wait for another week for my pal. Please jst mail pH. Number just say hi give me a call, or I’m in a world of s**t

  6. I feel the same. I am using formidable form builder for the last 2 weeks. They have most of what I want. BUT if I struggle at some point there is no support at all. They are quite incompetent. Each time have to figure out myself. Since the other form builders do not have the frontend viewing option that I need, I have to stick to it. Otherwise, completely pissed off by the support.

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