Does it have to be one or the other?
Gravity Forms is my #1 favorite form plugin. I've used it to build simple contact forms, a sales page for an e-book download, an entire online continuing education website with over 60 courses that earns over $75,000 a year for my client, a membership application/payment collection page, webinar registration/payment page that automatically adds people to a Mailchimp mailing list and GoToWebinar upon submission and lots of other uses, all of which I'll be blogging about.
Gravity Forms is a premium plugin – it's $39 to use it on one site without addons – so if you're just building simple forms I don't recommend it – use Ninja Forms instead. Gravity Forms' business license is $99 – that just adds email integration to forms and spam protection. I also don't recommend that license – you can accomplish that type of integration for free with other forms and plugins.
The magic of Gravity Forms lies in the developer license. If you need something for e-commerce, selling a e-book, event or webinar registrations, mailing list subscriptions or anything more intensive than a contact form, it's worth every penny. You get the full suite of add-ons for $199 that you can use on unlimited sites. It sounds pricy especially when there are free form plugins out there, but I've found that it's totally worth it for the ease of use, tech support and time savings you'll get from it. Gravity Forms will integrate with Authorize.net or PayPal, and it has a Zapier add-on. I'll write more about my love affair with Zapier in another article, but it connects different applications together and automates tasks.
Ninja Forms on the other hand is free for the basic form plugin. It's also super easy to install and get using right away, but if you want additional functionality like Mailchimp integration or Paypal you have to purchase add-ons, which start at $18.00 per add-on all the way up to the User Bundle for $189. For my first project using Ninja I used the free form plugin and bought one add-on.
When it comes to features, the stand-out for me for Ninja Forms is the ability to save a form and come back to it later. Gravity Forms doesn't have this functionality built in, and there are a couple of third party plugins that attempt it, but I was never able to get it to work. The ability to save a form is a big deal depending on what type of form you're creating, and Gravity Forms falls short in that department.
Ninja's support was phenomenal – and that always seals the deal for me. I was extremely impressed with the responsiveness and communication from the guy that helped me. Part of my problem was me rushing into things and not reading all the instructions, but the other problem was a bug that they resolved immediately.
Ninja Forms the clear winner for simple e-commerce forms and anything that you need to let the user save and come back to later. Gravity Forms is superior in terms of add-ons and functionality. I'm an affiliate for both products because I use them both extensively and think that they are top-notch plugins.
I'll be writing about the projects I've done with both in more depth, so stay tuned!
