# Gravity Forms

> Gravity Forms is a premium WordPress plugin from Rocketgenius, licensed annually from $59 for one site, that adds a full form builder to a self-hosted WordPress installation with more than thirty field types, conditional logic, calculations, payments through your own processor accounts, partial entry capture, and WCAG 2.0 AA form output, storing every submission in your own database with no response metering of any kind.

- Category: Forms & Surveys (https://saastracker.org/categories/forms-surveys)
- Website: https://www.gravityforms.com
- Starting price: $59 per year at renewal for the Basic licence, one site
- Free plan: No
- Free trial: No trial version; a hosted online demo is available, along with a published refund policy
- Founded: 2008, HQ: United States, with a fully distributed team, Ownership: Privately held by Rocketgenius, Inc.; independent and never venture-backed
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/gravity-forms

## Overview

Gravity Forms is the answer to the question this whole category is built on avoiding: what if you did not rent your form tool at all. It is a WordPress plugin, released in August 2009 by Rocketgenius and still maintained by the same company, that installs into a site you already run and turns it into a form platform. Submissions land in your own MySQL database, uploaded files land on your own disk, and the licence costs the same whether you collect fifty entries a year or five hundred thousand.

That single fact reframes every price in this market. A hosted vendor charging $99 a month for 10,000 responses is charging roughly $1,188 a year for capacity that Gravity Forms provides for $59, because you are supplying the infrastructure. What you give up is everything the hosting fee was covering: uptime, backups, spam defence, email deliverability, security patching, and somebody else's responsibility when it breaks. For a business that already runs a WordPress site with a competent host, that trade is usually worth making. For one that does not, it is a bad idea dressed as a saving.

The plugin itself is deep rather than pretty. More than thirty field types, conditional logic on fields, pages, and notification emails, a calculation engine, entry management with imports and exports, partial entry capture on abandoned forms, geolocation and address autocomplete, and more than five hundred developer hooks. Payments run through Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Mollie against your own merchant accounts, with recurring billing and discount codes, and Rocketgenius takes no percentage of anything. Add-ons for surveys, polls, quizzes, signatures, conversational forms, and user registration ship with the Elite licence.

Licensing is straightforward and self-serve: Basic at $59 a year renewal for one site, Pro at $159 for three sites with the payment and automation add-ons, and Elite at $259 for unlimited sites with every add-on included. There is no free trial, only a hosted demo, which is the one meaningful friction in an otherwise frictionless purchase. Agencies and anyone running more than three sites should look straight at Elite, where unlimited sites at $259 a year is the best arithmetic in this entire category.

## How it works

1. You buy a licence key, install the plugin on a WordPress site, and activate it. From that point the form builder lives in the WordPress admin alongside your posts and pages, and forms are placed on pages with a block or a shortcode.

2. Forms are built from a field library covering standard inputs, file uploads, signatures, product and pricing fields, and post-creation fields that let a submission become a WordPress post. Conditional logic controls field visibility, page routing, notification recipients, and confirmation messages, and the calculation engine handles quotes, fees, and scored results.

3. Submissions become entries in your database, visible in an entry list you can filter, search, bulk edit, export to CSV, and import from CSV. Partial entries capture what someone typed before abandoning the form, which is the data hosted vendors usually charge a mid-tier upgrade for. Notifications and confirmations are sent through WordPress mail, which is exactly where most self-hosted setups go wrong unless you connect a proper transactional email service.

4. Everything else happens through add-ons and hooks. Payments connect to your own Stripe, PayPal, Square, or Mollie account. CRM and email add-ons push entries to Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, or Campaign Monitor. Zapier, Slack, Trello, and Dropbox connect on the Pro licence. Beyond that, a REST API and more than five hundred hooks mean a developer can make the plugin do essentially anything, which is why Gravity Forms is the default in the WordPress agency world.

## Best for

Businesses and agencies already running self-hosted WordPress with reliable hosting, who want unlimited forms and unlimited submissions at a flat annual price, full ownership of the data, and a plugin their developer can extend without permission.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone without a WordPress site, since the plugin has no standalone hosted product and buying WordPress hosting purely to run forms is a false economy.
- Non-technical buyers who want somebody else responsible for uptime, backups, spam, and email deliverability; those costs do not disappear with self-hosting, they move to you.
- Healthcare businesses needing a business associate agreement, because Rocketgenius does not sign one and any HIPAA posture is something you architect and defend yourself.
- Teams that need a form tool with no site attached, such as a standalone survey link for an organization that runs on Squarespace, Webflow, or Shopify.
- Buyers who want to try before paying; there is no trial version at all, only a hosted demo and a refund policy.

## Features

### Building and logic

A deep, mature builder that has been iterated on since 2009.

- **More than thirty field types**: Standard inputs plus file upload, signature, product and pricing fields, quantity and shipping fields, list fields, and post fields that turn a submission into WordPress content.
- **Conditional logic across the whole form**: Show and hide fields, route pages, decide which notification email fires, and choose which confirmation is shown. Logic is included in the $59 Basic licence rather than gated to a higher tier.
- **Calculations**: Mathematical formulas across fields produce quote totals, fees, and scored results, with the calculated value usable in logic, notifications, and payment amounts.
- **Multi-page forms with progress**: Long forms split across steps with a progress bar and conditional page routing, which is standard here rather than an upgrade.
- **Conversational Forms**: An add-on on the Elite licence that renders a form one question at a time, covering the format Typeform charges a subscription for.
- **Geolocation and address autocomplete**: Address fields can autocomplete and capture location data, which reduces typing errors on delivery and service forms.

### Entries, data, and ownership

The part no hosted vendor can match, because the database is yours.

- **No response metering at all**: There is no monthly submission cap, no storage cap, no overage, and no pause. The licence fee is identical at fifty entries a year and five hundred thousand, because the storage is your hosting.
- **Partial entries**: An Elite add-on captures what a respondent typed before abandoning, which is the diagnostic data most hosted competitors reserve for a mid or upper tier.
- **Entry management**: Filter, search, star, note, bulk edit, and delete entries from the WordPress admin, with per-user permissions controlling who sees what.
- **Import and export**: Entries export to CSV and import from CSV, and because the data sits in your own MySQL tables you also have direct database access, which is the most complete data ownership in this category by a wide margin.
- **File uploads to your own storage**: Uploads land on your own server or wherever your host puts them, with no vendor storage allowance and no respondent login requirement of the kind Google Forms imposes.
- **GDPR tooling**: Consent fields, data retention settings for automatic entry deletion, and integration with WordPress personal data export and erasure requests.

### Payments and commerce

Your merchant accounts, your rates, no platform cut.

- **Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Mollie**: Payment add-ons on the Pro licence connect to your own processor accounts. Rocketgenius takes no percentage of any transaction, so your cost is the processor's rate and nothing more.
- **Recurring payments**: Subscriptions and recurring billing are supported through the payment add-ons rather than requiring a separate billing tool.
- **Discount codes**: Coupon handling for pricing forms, which most form builders in this price range simply do not offer.
- **Product and pricing fields**: Quantity, option, shipping, and total fields turn a form into a small order form without an ecommerce plugin.
- **PCI posture through the processor**: Card data is handled by the processor's own hosted fields rather than passing through your WordPress installation, which is what keeps the compliance burden manageable.

### Accessibility, security, and anti-spam

One documented strength and one clear set of responsibilities you inherit.

- **WCAG 2.0 AA form output**: Gravity Forms publicly commits to WCAG 2.0 AA compliant rendered forms, which almost nobody else in this category documents. For public-sector, education, and grant-funded buyers this is often decisive.
- **reCAPTCHA and honeypot**: Google reCAPTCHA v2 and v3 plus an anti-spam honeypot are built in, though spam defence on a self-hosted form is ultimately your problem to tune.
- **Regular security auditing**: The vendor publishes that its plugin suite is audited regularly, and patches arrive through the normal WordPress update mechanism.
- **Role-based access**: WordPress user roles and capabilities control who can build forms and who can view entries, using the permission system your site already has.
- **Data residency by construction**: Your data lives wherever your host lives, so an EU business with EU hosting has an EU residency answer without needing a vendor feature, a contract clause, or an upgrade.

### Extensibility and integrations

The reason agencies standardize on it.

- **More than five hundred hooks**: Filters and actions covering nearly every stage of rendering, validation, and submission, so a developer can change behavior without forking anything.
- **REST API and webhooks**: A REST API for forms and entries plus simple webhooks for custom integrations, included rather than reserved for an enterprise tier.
- **Marketing and CRM add-ons**: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, and Campaign Monitor are available from the Basic licence upward.
- **Automation add-ons**: Zapier, Slack, Trello, and Dropbox connect on the Pro licence, covering most small-business automation needs.
- **Survey, poll, and quiz add-ons**: Elite includes survey, polls, and quiz add-ons, adding rating scales, likert questions, and graded scoring to the core builder.
- **Signature and user registration**: Elite includes e-signature capture and user registration, so a form can create a WordPress account or collect a signed agreement.

## Use cases

- **WordPress agency managing client sites**: Twenty client sites each need forms, and buying a hosted subscription per client would cost thousands a year. Outcome: One Elite licence at $259 a year covers unlimited sites with every add-on included, and each client keeps their own data on their own hosting. Nothing else in this category comes close on price at that shape.
- **Small business with one very popular form**: A quote request form takes 4,000 submissions a month, which triggers an upgrade on every metered vendor and would breach Formstack's per-form cap outright. Outcome: Gravity Forms charges the same $59 a year at that volume as at forty submissions, and the only real cost is that the host needs to be decent. This is the single clearest case for self-hosting.
- **Public-sector or education site with an accessibility obligation**: Forms have to meet a documented accessibility standard and procurement will ask for evidence. Outcome: Gravity Forms publicly commits to WCAG 2.0 AA compliant form output, which is a rare thing to be able to point at in this category, and the forms sit inside a site whose accessibility you already control.
- **Consultancy taking deposits online**: Booking forms need to take a deposit, apply a discount code, and set up a recurring retainer. Outcome: Pro-tier payment add-ons connect the firm's own Stripe account with recurring billing and coupons, and Rocketgenius takes no cut, so the only transaction cost is Stripe's own rate.

## Pricing

Annual software licence per number of sites, not a subscription to a hosted service. Unlimited forms and unlimited entries at every tier; the tier determines how many sites you may activate and which add-ons you receive.

- **Basic**: $59 per year at renewal (often discounted for the first year during promotions). 1 site; Unlimited forms and unlimited entries; Conditional logic and calculations; HubSpot, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Campaign Monitor add-ons; Standard support.
- **Pro**: $159 per year at renewal. 3 sites; Everything in Basic; Stripe, Square, PayPal, and Mollie payment add-ons; Zapier, Slack, Trello, and Dropbox add-ons; Standard support. The payment add-ons are the reason most businesses land here rather than on Basic.
- **Elite**: $259 per year at renewal. Unlimited sites; Every add-on included; Partial entries, conversational forms, signature, surveys, polls, quizzes, and user registration; Priority support. Unlimited sites with every add-on for $259 a year is the best raw arithmetic in this category, and the obvious choice for agencies.

Billing notes:

- This is a licence, not a hosted subscription. Letting it lapse does not delete your forms or your data; you lose updates, support, and add-on access, and running an unpatched form plugin is a security decision rather than a saving.
- Promotional first-year discounts are common, with a 25 percent sale running in August 2026 that put Basic at $44, Pro at $119, and Elite at $194 for the first year. The numbers that matter for budgeting are the renewal prices of $59, $159, and $259.
- There is no free version and no trial, only an online demo and a published refund policy, which is the main friction in the buying process.
- Modelled at 500 submissions a month: $59 a year plus hosting. Modelled at 5,000 submissions a month: $59 a year plus hosting. The licence does not move, which is the entire pitch.
- The real costs are the ones the licence does not cover: WordPress hosting good enough to take the traffic, a transactional email service so notifications do not land in spam, backups, and the staff time to keep it patched.
- Payments settle in your own Stripe, PayPal, Square, or Mollie account at that processor's rate, with no Rocketgenius commission of any kind.
- Storage for entries and file uploads is your own disk and database, so heavy upload volume is priced as hosting rather than as a vendor storage tier.

Value assessment: On pure capability per dollar nothing in this category is close. Elite at $259 a year delivers unlimited sites, unlimited entries, conditional logic, calculations, payments with no commission, partial entries, e-signature, surveys, quizzes, conversational forms, and a REST API, against hosted competitors charging $1,000 to $3,000 a year for a fraction of that with a submission meter attached. The honest counterweight is that the price excludes the infrastructure and the labour, and those are not free. If you already run WordPress on hosting you trust, Gravity Forms is close to an automatic buy. If adopting it means becoming a systems administrator, the hosted vendors are charging you for something real and you should pay them.

## Strengths

- No response metering of any kind, so the cost is identical at any volume and there is no upgrade trigger, overage, or pause behavior to plan around.
- Elite at $259 a year covers unlimited sites with every add-on, which is unbeatable arithmetic for agencies and multi-site businesses.
- Complete data ownership: entries live in your own MySQL database and files on your own storage, with direct database access on top of CSV export.
- Public commitment to WCAG 2.0 AA compliant form output, which almost nobody else in this category documents.
- Payments through your own processor accounts with no platform commission, plus recurring billing and discount codes.
- More than five hundred developer hooks and a REST API, making it endlessly extensible and the de facto standard in the WordPress agency world.
- Data residency is solved by construction: your data is wherever your hosting is, with no vendor feature or contract clause required.
- Stable, independent vendor operating the same product under the same ownership since 2009, with no private equity or venture repricing risk.

## Limitations

- Requires self-hosted WordPress; there is no standalone hosted option, so it is simply unavailable to businesses on Squarespace, Webflow, Shopify, or a hosted WordPress.com plan without plugin support.
- You inherit uptime, backups, patching, spam defence, and email deliverability, and form notifications sent through default WordPress mail routinely land in spam unless you configure a transactional email service.
- No free version and no trial, only a demo, which makes evaluation harder than for any hosted competitor.
- No business associate agreement and no vendor HIPAA programme, so regulated healthcare use is entirely your own architecture and risk.
- The best features are split across licence tiers by add-on, so partial entries, e-signature, and conversational forms all require Elite.
- Support is for the plugin, not for your site: if the problem is your host, your theme, or another plugin, that is your problem to solve.
- The admin interface lives inside WordPress and feels like WordPress, which is functional rather than modern next to a purpose-built hosted builder.

## Comparisons

- **Gravity Forms vs Formstack**: Formstack charges $996 a year for 25 forms with 1,000 submissions each and one builder user; Gravity Forms charges $59 a year for unlimited forms and unlimited submissions on one site. What Formstack adds is hosted infrastructure, document generation, bundled e-signature, approval routing, and native Salesforce operation. If you are a Salesforce shop or need generated documents with a vendor accountable for them, pay Formstack. Otherwise the price difference is difficult to justify.
- **Gravity Forms vs Jotform**: Jotform from $39 a month is hosted, supported, HIPAA-capable on a published tier, and includes an accessibility checker, tables, and approvals. Gravity Forms is $59 a year, unmetered, and yours. The deciding question is not features but responsibility: buy Jotform if you want someone else on the hook for uptime and compliance, and Gravity Forms if you already run WordPress competently and would rather keep the money and the data.
- **Gravity Forms vs Cognito Forms**: Cognito Forms is hosted, has a genuinely usable free tier, and does repeating sections, calculations, and workflow better than most, with HIPAA on its $174 Enterprise plan. Gravity Forms costs a fraction of that annually but only exists inside WordPress. Choose Cognito Forms for a hosted tool with real structure and a compliance path; choose Gravity Forms when the site is already WordPress and volume economics dominate the decision.
- **Gravity Forms vs Paperform**: Paperform sells a beautiful document-style editor and a hosted experience aimed at small businesses who want the form to look designed. Gravity Forms sells capability and ownership inside a site you maintain yourself. If the form is a customer-facing brand surface and nobody on the team wants to touch hosting, Paperform. If the form is functional and the site is already WordPress, Gravity Forms wins on cost by an order of magnitude.
- **Gravity Forms vs Youform**: Youform attacks the metered incumbents with unlimited free responses on a hosted product, which is the same economic argument Gravity Forms makes from the self-hosted side. Youform requires nothing of you technically; Gravity Forms requires a WordPress site but gives you the database. Pick Youform if you want unmetered forms with zero infrastructure; pick Gravity Forms if you want unmetered forms plus ownership and extensibility and already have the site.

## Implementation

- Setup time: Fifteen minutes to install, licence, and publish a first form on an existing WordPress site. Add an hour or two to configure a transactional email service, which is the step most people skip and then regret when notifications stop arriving.
- Learning curve: Low for anyone comfortable in the WordPress admin. The conditional logic and calculation systems reward some study, and the hook system is developer territory rather than something a marketer will touch.
- Onboarding: Entirely self-serve: buy a licence online, download the plugin, activate the key. No sales contact exists at any tier, which is one of the reasons agencies like it.
- Migration: Forms from other tools are rebuilt by hand, but entry data imports from CSV, so historical submissions can be brought across, which most hosted vendors do not allow. On the way out, entries export to CSV and you additionally have raw database access, making this the most complete exit path in the category. Letting the licence lapse does not remove your forms or data; it stops updates and support.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Self-hosted WordPress plugin, Any hosting environment meeting WordPress requirements, Forms rendered inside your own site and theme
- API: REST API for forms and entries, webhooks, and more than five hundred developer hooks for customizing behavior. Included in the licence rather than reserved for a higher tier.
- Compliance: GDPR tooling including consent fields, retention settings, and WordPress data export and erasure integration, PCI handled through the payment processor's hosted fields, WCAG 2.0 AA compliant form output
- Data residency: Determined entirely by where you host, which means residency requirements are satisfied by your hosting choice rather than by a vendor feature or contract term.
- SSO: Uses WordPress authentication and roles; single sign-on depends on whatever your WordPress installation provides.
- Security notes: reCAPTCHA v2 and v3, an anti-spam honeypot, regular published security auditing of the plugin suite, and role-based access through WordPress capabilities. Everything below the plugin, hosting, TLS, backups, and patching, is your responsibility.

## Support

- Channels: Ticket support with a Basic or Pro licence, Priority support with an Elite licence
- Documentation: Comprehensive documentation covering the builder, add-ons, hooks, and the REST API, alongside a developer reference that is unusually good for a plugin.
- Community: One of the largest third-party ecosystems in WordPress: independent add-on developers, agency tutorials, and a long history of community solutions accumulated since 2009.

## Company

- Founded: 2008
- Founders: Carl Hancock, Alex Cancado, Kevin Flahaut
- Headquarters: United States, with a fully distributed team
- Ownership: Privately held by Rocketgenius, Inc.; independent and never venture-backed
- Employees: Not disclosed; a small, privately held team relative to the hosted vendors in this category
- Funding: None disclosed. Rocketgenius has been funded by product revenue since launch.

Timeline:

- 2008: Rocketgenius is founded by Carl Hancock, Alex Cancado, and Kevin Flahaut.
- 2009: Gravity Forms 1.0 is released on 24 August, bringing a serious form builder to WordPress as a paid plugin.
- 2014: The add-on framework matures, with payment, CRM, and marketing add-ons turning the plugin into a platform.
- 2019: Marks a decade as the default premium form plugin in the WordPress agency world, with a large independent add-on ecosystem around it.
- 2021: Ships Conversational Forms, bringing the one-question-at-a-time format that hosted competitors charge subscriptions for into the Elite licence.
- 2024: Continues shipping accessibility and security work, maintaining the public WCAG 2.0 AA commitment for rendered form output.
- 2026: Licences at $59, $159, and $259 a year at renewal, with unlimited forms and entries at every tier, standing as the cheapest high-volume option in the category.

## Integrations

Stripe, PayPal, Square, and Mollie, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Campaign Monitor, Zapier, Slack, Trello, Dropbox, REST API and webhooks, More than five hundred developer hooks, A large independent third-party add-on ecosystem

## FAQ

### What is Gravity Forms?

Gravity Forms is a premium form-building plugin for self-hosted WordPress, made by Rocketgenius and released in 2009. It adds more than thirty field types, conditional logic, calculations, payments through your own processor accounts, entry management, partial entry capture, and a REST API to a WordPress site, storing every submission in your own database.

### How much does Gravity Forms cost?

Licences renew at $59 a year for Basic (one site), $159 for Pro (three sites, including the payment and automation add-ons), and $259 for Elite (unlimited sites, every add-on, priority support). First-year promotional discounts are common. There is no monthly subscription and no per-response charge.

### Is there a limit on how many submissions Gravity Forms can take?

None imposed by the plugin. There is no monthly response cap, no storage allowance, no overage billing, and no pause behavior, because submissions are stored in your own database rather than on a vendor's servers. The practical limit is what your hosting can handle, which is a very different kind of constraint from a licensing one.

### What does Gravity Forms not cover that a hosted tool does?

Everything underneath the plugin. Uptime, backups, security patching, spam filtering, and email deliverability are all yours. Form notifications sent through default WordPress mail frequently land in spam unless you configure a transactional email service, which is the single most common cause of people believing a self-hosted form is broken when it is not.

### Does Gravity Forms take a cut of payments?

No. Payment add-ons on the Pro and Elite licences connect to your own Stripe, PayPal, Square, or Mollie account, and Rocketgenius takes no percentage of any transaction. Your only cost per payment is the processor's own rate, which compares well with hosted funnel tools that add a platform commission on top.

### Are Gravity Forms accessible?

Gravity Forms publicly commits to WCAG 2.0 AA compliant output for its rendered forms, which puts it in a very small group in this category alongside Jotform's in-builder accessibility checker. That commitment covers the form itself; the accessibility of the surrounding page is determined by your theme and remains your responsibility.

### Can Gravity Forms be used for HIPAA-regulated data?

Rocketgenius does not sign a business associate agreement, so there is no vendor HIPAA programme to rely on. In principle a self-hosted stack can be architected to meet HIPAA requirements, but the encryption, access control, audit logging, hosting agreements, and defensibility are entirely on you. A small practice that wants a straightforward compliant answer should look at Jotform at $129 a month or Cognito Forms at $174.

### Does it support partial submissions and conditional logic?

Conditional logic is included from the $59 Basic licence and covers fields, pages, notification emails, and confirmations. Partial entries, which capture what a respondent typed before abandoning the form, are an add-on included with the Elite licence at $259 a year. Hosted competitors typically place partial-submission capture on a mid or upper tier costing several times more annually.

### What happens if my licence expires?

Your forms keep working and your data stays in your database. What stops is plugin updates, add-on access, and support. Running an unpatched form plugin on a public website is a security risk rather than a saving, so a lapsed licence should be treated as a decision to make rather than a state to drift into.

### Can I export everything if I move away?

More completely than with any hosted product here. Entries export to CSV from the admin, and because the data lives in your own MySQL tables you also have raw database access. Entry data can be imported from CSV as well, so historical submissions from another tool can be brought in, which almost no hosted vendor allows.

### Who makes Gravity Forms?

Rocketgenius, Inc., founded in 2008 by Carl Hancock, Alex Cancado, and Kevin Flahaut, with Hancock as chief executive. The company is privately held, independent, and has never taken venture capital, and it has shipped the same product under the same ownership since 2009, which is a meaningful stability argument in a category where competitors have been repriced by new owners.

## Editorial verdict

Gravity Forms is the cheapest serious form platform in this category by a wide margin, and the comparison is not really about features: at $59 a year for unlimited submissions on one site, or $259 for unlimited sites with every add-on, it prices the hosted vendors' entire business model as a service charge. Everything the category argues about, response caps, overage behavior, storage allowances, branding removal fees, data residency, complete export, simply does not apply when the database is yours. The condition is real and non-negotiable: you must already run self-hosted WordPress and be willing to own hosting, backups, spam, patching, and email deliverability. If that is true, buy it and stop shopping. If it is not, the hosted vendors are charging you for something genuinely valuable, and you should not pretend otherwise to save nine hundred dollars.

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology