chuck scottHi – i'm wondering if you could comment on what makes Formidable Pro different / better than Gravity Forms ..??..
yes, i can see your Formidable Pro license offers lifetime updates and is a bit less money than Gravity Forms and their one year $199 developer license but i'm more interested in features and functionality …
not being able to take either plugin for live test drive leaves me on side lines a bit guessing hence this question … certainly your 30-day guarantee is helpful but even so, sometimes it takes 60-90 days before my feet are totally wet before i truly get it or not …
as an aside, this 90 day thing is also one of the many reasons i love buying computers from Costco – even Dell direct doesn't give 90 days – only 30 days from time it ships … then one has to pay shipping to return and who knows about restocking fees but i digress …
point is, i love buying knowing i have some breathing room to check things out fully and then if hiccup, to be able to get money back hence i appreciate your refund policy … something i also did not see dominantly pronounced at Gravity Forms other than x-number-of-thousands have bought it and downloaded but then again, i'm not inspired by lemmings so i don't really care that much how many people might have bought it … although sometimes truth in numbers can point to reassuring trends but again i digress …
thanks in advance pointers … as fyi, i've been doing a ton of research on plugins and coming down home strecth trying to nail this last bucket for form fields into database and data-use in WP site therein … thus i'm down to final four plugins in this dept and believe the answer lies in the intersection between Formidable Pro or Gravity Forms, perhaps in concert with either Pods CMS and/or DB-Toolkit ..??..
to be continued … cordially, chuck scott
ps – one of the things that impressed me when i first visited Formidable was your polling graph charts from data after polls … this seemed cool and also seemed to convey one could get said graphs without having to buy another license for javascript graph library which was also a point of further appreciation …
April 7, 2011 at 1:13 pm
Whoa. What a post.
You're using the free version, right? Although the feature page says there's a 30-day money back guarantee, technically PayPal allows both seller and buyer initiated refunds for up to 60 days. Final answer: if you're not happy within 60 days, of course there is still flexibility. Very few users have asked for refunds though.
The way I see it, Gravity and Formidable Pro are not very easily comparable. It all depends on what you're trying to do. Although the added form fields in Formidable Pro are very helpful, the main benefit of upgrading is the ability to display and edit your content, allow your users to edit their own content as well, and of course get high quality support. It really depends on your application. I'm not really sure why you'd need to combine with one of those database plugins. I would think custom post types would be a better alternative, although it's hard to say without knowing what you're planning on building. Formidable Pro allows linking of entries to create one-to-many relationships using the "Data from Entries" field (ie registrations for an event, or applications for a job). If you do want to use custom post types, I really like Custom Post Type UI plugin for creating the post types, and Formidable Pro 1.5 (currently in beta) for populating the content.
As far as the number ticker on the Gravity site goes, it really doesn't mean anything since it is a site count, and not a user count. Formidable Pro is running on EduBlogs, so that alone is over 750,000 sites. But again, that number doesn't really mean much. I am interested in their user count though, since they've had a year head start and lots of money put towards marketing. I'm sure it's higher then Formidable Pro's 2000+ users.
Anyway, I think what it comes down to is what are you planning on building?
April 7, 2011 at 2:03 pm
I agree with Steph, a lot depends on how you would like to use the plugin. If you strictly want an easy way to create contact forms or other data collection forms, I think either Gravity forms or FormidablePro would work for you.
However, If you are wanting to create forms that collect information then display that collected information on the front end of a website in a highly configurable fashion. If you want your users to be able to see their submitted information and possibly even edit and re-submit the information, Then formidable pro is the plugin for you.
I am amazed at some of the things I have seen developers do with formidable. I don't max out its potential by any means but it makes it possible for me to create a website, and pass off the website to a client without teaching the client how to create posts and pages in the wordpress admin. They simply have to fill out a "form" to generate content for their own site. Formidable Pro is one of the first plugins I install when I create a wordpress website for a client.
April 17, 2011 at 7:49 pm
If you're looking to create and edit posts. Gravity doesn't do that. Also the flexibility of custom displays is fantastic.
Gravity is really slick, they really have a nice product and I love the UI, but I can't really compare these two plugins because there are lots of things that Formidable addresses at it's core that Gravity does not... and wasn't meant to.
Formidable is the only commercially supported plugin of it's kind really...
May 30, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Actually you CAN create and edit posts with Gravity Forms, if you are going to compare the two you should at least be honest in your evaluation. I've never used Formidable Pro so can't comment on it but can say that I would not build any WP site without using Gravity Forms. Because of the nature of sites I build I use the developer license however prior to getting that license I always found the Gravity Forms help forums to be very helpful.
To be fair I'll have to give Formidable Pro a try to see how it compares.
May 30, 2012 at 4:16 pm
When "edit" is used here, it refers to front-end editing.
May 30, 2012 at 8:02 pm
I have Gravity and just bought Formidable Pro. I believe there is room for both in your toolbox. I'm not a programmer but so far have been able to get really far with Formidable in just one evening because it's very easy for the non-programmer.
One thing I really like is the reporting/graphing feature in Formidable, it's very cool. So far I have not been disappointed with my purchase.
Since both have their strengths I will be using both of them in my current and future projects because they complement each other.
PS The front-end editing in formidable is great and easy to setup.
December 4, 2012 at 10:40 am
Formidable Pro is clearly better for three reasons: support, functionality and cost.
I've made a nice post with a really great graphic detailing Gravity Pro vs Formidable Pro.
One thing you will find as you research the difference is how there are many people who have serious issues with the "priority support" given by Gravity Forms. My forms were out of commission for eight days and I would get very terse messages from them which weren't helpful. Even after I told them I had set all other plugins to be inactive and still had the error, I'd get a message telling me to do just that and then I wouldn't hear back for a couple days. I opened a new ticket hoping that I could get another one of their techs to help and the guy who was supposed to be helping me refunded my money and blocked me. And as it turns out they were wrong about the fact that it was their plugin and not another plugin.
Anyway, I think the difference is a no-brainer. The 20-year cost is over $2,000 for Gravity and it's $117 lifetime for Formidable Pro. Again, I have detailed the more specific differences in my post in a graphic that works quite well.