Gravity Forms: What It Is, Pricing and How to Use It (2026 Guide)

What is Gravity Forms?

Gravity Forms is a paid form-builder plugin for WordPress. You install it on your own site, build forms in a drag-and-drop editor, and it handles submission, validation, email notifications, confirmation messages and storage of every entry in your WordPress database. Add-ons send those entries on to email marketing tools, CRMs, payment processors and automation services.

It is made by Rocketgenius, Inc., a company based in Virginia Beach, USA, which also makes Gravity Flow (workflow and approvals on top of forms) and Gravity SMTP (email delivery for WordPress).

The problem it solves is that WordPress has no serious form system of its own. A contact form is easy to add with many plugins; a lead form that routes enquiries to the right team, a quote form that calculates a price, an order form that takes a Stripe payment and creates a CRM contact, or a multi-page application with file uploads is where Gravity Forms earns its fee.

The current major line is Gravity Forms 3. Version 3.0 (28 July 2026) brought a new date picker that no longer depends on jQuery, new input masks, <button> elements for form buttons and an international variant of the Phone field. Version 3.1 (August 2026) added Gravity Forms MCP, which lets AI assistants work with your forms and entries. Patch releases up to 3.1.3 followed in September and October 2026, mostly security and accessibility fixes.

Who it is for

• Small businesses on WordPress that need contact, quote, booking-request and lead forms that send entries to the right inbox and to their email marketing tool.
• Agencies and freelancers who build many client sites. The Elite licence covers unlimited sites and WordPress Multisite.
• Shops and organisations taking simple payments such as deposits, registrations or donations, using the Stripe, PayPal Checkout, Square or Mollie add-ons (Pro and above).
• Developers who want a form engine they can extend with 500+ actions and filters, the REST API and Gravity Forms CLI.
• Teams experimenting with AI assistants who want Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor to draft forms or look up entries through MCP.

Who should not use it: anyone not on self-hosted WordPress, anyone who needs one basic contact form (a free plugin will do), and teams that mainly run customer surveys and NPS programmes, where a dedicated survey platform such as SurveySparrow gives you more reporting.

Key features

• Form editor. Drag-and-drop editing with 30+ fields, multi-column layouts and a form template library. Multi-page (paginated) forms and Save & continue let people finish long forms later.
• Conditional logic. Show or hide fields, pages and buttons based on earlier answers, and use the same logic to decide which notifications are sent and where entries are routed.
• Calculations and Merge Tags. Number and product fields can calculate totals. Merge Tags insert field values into notifications, confirmations and redirect URLs.
• Notifications and confirmations. Email logic sends different notifications to different recipients based on answers. Confirmations can show a message, open a page or redirect to a URL.
• Add-ons. Basic includes 20 add-ons for email marketing and anti-spam (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Brevo, Kit, HubSpot, reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, Akismet, SendGrid, Postmark and more). Pro adds 15 more, including Stripe, PayPal Checkout, Square, Mollie, Zapier, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, Zoho CRM, Capsule CRM, Help Scout and Twilio. Elite adds Conversational Forms, Partial Entries, Polls, Quiz, Survey, Signature, User Registration, Webhooks, Salesforce, Coupons and Geolocation.
• Anti-spam. Advanced Honeypot (renamed from Honeypot in 3.1), Google reCAPTCHA v2 and v3, plus Cloudflare Turnstile and Akismet add-ons.
• Gravity Forms MCP. Connects AI assistants through the WordPress Abilities API and MCP Adapter. Tools cover creating and editing forms, inspecting conditional logic, searching and updating entries, submitting test entries, managing PayPal, Stripe and Mailchimp feeds and resending notifications. It is off by default, each tool is switched on individually, destructive actions need confirmation, and access is limited to the role of the WordPress user whose application password you use.
• Developer tools and data controls. 500+ hooks, a REST API, a framework to build your own add-on, Gravity Forms CLI, import and export of forms, and Personal Data settings that connect to WordPress’s export and erase tools with an optional retention policy.

The vendor states WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility for forms. Server requirements listed on the features page are PHP 7.4+ and MySQL 5.7+.

Pricing

Gravity Forms sells annual licences in US dollars. There is no monthly option, no free plan and no trial. Prices below are from the vendor’s pricing page at the time of writing.

Licence	Price	Sites	Support	Add-ons included
Basic	$59 per year	1	Standard Support	20 Basic add-ons: email marketing and anti-spam
Pro	$159 per year	3	Standard Support	Basic plus 15 Pro add-ons: payments, Zapier, Slack, CRMs
Elite	$259 per year	Unlimited	Priority Support	All add-ons, plus WordPress Multisite

Points worth knowing before you buy:

• The add-ons drive the choice. If you need to take a payment, choose Pro. If you need surveys, quizzes, signatures, user registration, partial entries or webhooks, choose Elite.
• Refunds. You can request a refund within 30 days of any payment (purchase, renewal or upgrade) from your account dashboard. The licence is deactivated immediately and cannot be reactivated. There are no partial refunds or downgrades.
• Renewals. The pricing and refund pages do not say whether renewals are discounted or exactly what happens to your forms when a licence expires. Ask support before you rely on either.
• Other tiers. A vendor blog post mentions Nonprofit and Developer licences, but their prices are not published on the pricing page.
• MCP is included with every licence tier.

How to use Gravity Forms: step-by-step

1. Buy, install and activate

1. Choose a licence on gravityforms.com and complete checkout. Your licence key and the plugin download appear in your account.
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, upload the Gravity Forms zip file and click Activate.
3. Enter your licence key in the Gravity Forms settings so the plugin can receive updates and install add-ons.
4. If you are upgrading an existing site from 2.x to 3.x, test on a staging copy first. The 3.0 changelog recommends a sandbox test because of the new date picker, input masks and button markup.

2. Build your first form

1. Go to Forms > New Form. Start from a template (for example a contact or request-a-quote form) or a blank form.
2. Drag fields from the field panel onto the form: Name, Email, Phone, a Drop Down for “What do you need help with?”, and a Paragraph Text for the message.
3. Click a field to open its settings. Mark required fields, set placeholders and, for long forms, add a Page field to split the form into steps.
4. Turn on spam protection: enable Advanced Honeypot in the form settings, or add a reCAPTCHA or Turnstile field once the relevant add-on is configured.
5. Save, then add the form to a page with the Gravity Forms block in the WordPress editor.

3. Route entries with notifications and conditional logic

This is the workflow that justifies the plugin for most businesses.

1. Open the form and go to Settings > Notifications. Edit the default Admin Notification or add a new one.
2. Set Send To to a specific address and use Merge Tags in the subject line, for example New {Drop Down:3} enquiry from {Name:1}.
3. Enable conditional logic on the notification: send to sales when the Drop Down equals “Pricing”, and add a second notification to support when it equals “Existing order”.
4. Go to Settings > Confirmations and choose a message, a thank-you page or a redirect.
5. Submit a test entry yourself and check both inboxes. Then open Entries to see the stored submission.

4. Connect an email marketing tool or take a payment

1. Go to Forms > Add-Ons and install the add-on you need, for example Mailchimp or Kit (Basic) or Stripe (Pro).
2. Connect your account in the add-on’s settings (usually an API key or an OAuth connection).
3. Back in the form, open Settings and the add-on’s feed, map form fields to the service’s fields, and add a condition such as “only if the newsletter checkbox is ticked”.
4. For payments, add Product and Total fields to the form, create a Stripe feed and test in the processor’s test mode before going live.

5. Optional: connect an AI assistant with MCP

1. Make sure you are on Gravity Forms 3.1 or later on a self-hosted WordPress site. The launch post says WordPress 6.9 or later is required; check the current docs for the exact minimum.
2. Enable MCP in the Gravity Forms settings and switch on only the tools you need. Start with read-only tools such as searching entries.
3. Create a WordPress application password for a user with the narrowest role that can do the job.
4. Copy the MCP endpoint URL into your MCP client (Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code), then ask it something simple, such as “list the last five entries on the contact form”.

Tips to get better results

• Pick the licence by add-on, not by site count. The most common mistake is buying Basic and then finding Stripe or Zapier is a Pro add-on.
• Keep forms short. Ask only what you need now. Use conditional logic to hide follow-up questions until they are relevant.
• Use Save & continue on long forms. Applications and onboarding forms get more completions when people can come back.
• Name fields clearly. Merge Tags and add-on mappings are much easier when fields have descriptive labels.
• Fix email delivery first. Notifications that never arrive are usually a WordPress mail problem, not a form problem. Use an SMTP service or the SendGrid or Postmark add-on.
• Set a retention policy. If you collect personal data, use the Personal Data settings to delete old entries automatically.
• Limit MCP access. Enable only the MCP tools you need and use a low-privilege WordPress user for the application password.

Limitations and common problems

• WordPress lock-in. Forms, entries and add-on configuration live inside WordPress. Moving to another platform means rebuilding forms elsewhere and exporting entries.
• Add-on paywall. Payments, Zapier, Slack, webhooks, surveys, quizzes and signatures need Pro or Elite. Check the add-on list against your needs before buying.
• No trial and a strict refund rule. You can only evaluate it via the demo or by buying and using the 30-day refund window, and a refund kills the licence permanently.
• Upgrade breakage. Sites with custom CSS or JavaScript around date pickers, input masks or buttons may need fixes after moving to 3.x. Test on staging.
• Unclear WordPress minimum for MCP. The MCP announcement says WordPress 6.9+, while the 3.1 changelog raises the System Status minimum to 7.0. Keep WordPress current and check the docs.
• Spam still gets through. Combine Advanced Honeypot with reCAPTCHA, Turnstile or Akismet on public forms.
• Compliance claims are general. The vendor states GDPR and PCI compliance (PCI through the payment processors), but we found no SOC 2 or ISO certification. Because entries sit in your database, your own hosting security matters most.

Alternatives

• WPForms, Formidable Forms or Ninja Forms - other WordPress form plugins, some with free versions; worth comparing if you only need simple forms.
• SurveySparrow - better for survey programmes, NPS and feedback reporting; see our SurveySparrow guide.
• Softr - if your forms are really the front end of a client portal or internal tool, see our Softr guide.
• Landing page builders - if you mainly need lead capture forms on campaign pages, Leadpages or Unbounce include forms with the page.
• Typeform or Google Forms - hosted form builders that work without WordPress.

Browse more options in our productivity tools directory. If your forms feed an email list, see our guides to ActiveCampaign and Kit, or our roundup of the best email marketing software.

Verdict

Sign up for Gravity Forms if you run a self-hosted WordPress site and your forms need to do real work: route enquiries, calculate prices, take payments or push contacts into a CRM or email tool. Choose the licence by the add-ons you need, test on staging before major upgrades, and treat MCP as a useful extra for teams already using AI assistants rather than the reason to buy. Skip it if you are not on WordPress, need only a single contact form, or want a free trial before paying, since the 30-day refund is the only way to try it on your own site.