You know it’s true. Forms are one of the most important features on any website and WordPress just doesn’t do them justice. You want a straight-to-the-point form that entices your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and makes information collection a breeze. If you’re looking to build easy-to-use, custom forms and don’t want to waste time messing with code, than the free Dynamic Forms Builder plugin is the tool for you. Dynamic Forms Builder allows you to quickly and easily build forms features for beginners and advanced users.
Pro: Versatile and Packed With Features
Dynamic Forms Builder offers extremely versatile form creation. You can use it to create both for simple and complex forms. It also comes packed with a wide array of features including:
- Various customizable fields, including:
- Single-line text
- Rich Text Editor
- Drop-down list
- Date picker
- Hidden field
- Checkbox
- File
- Text Area
- JavaScript based forms
- Create contact form or newsletter plugin
- Set required fields and unique fields
- Receive email notifications
- Store the collected information in a database or export to Excel
- Design your form to seamlessly integrate with your website deign
- Easily add user contact details, inventory item updates, radio buttons, and drop down lists.
Con: Large File Size
The Dynamic Forms download is a whopping 2.4Mb zip file. It’s huge and takes a long time to download and install. Furthermore, it can cause PHP timeouts and can slow down your site. If you want a lightweight plugin to add to your WordPress site, this isn’t it.
Pro: User-Friendly Format
However, Dynamic Forms features a very user-friendly format and intuitive GUI to help beginners and advanced users alike. Creating a form is set up into four easy stages, as explained in detail in their user guide. Each stage includes specific options and menus which you can access and use:
- Stage 1: Form settings
- In the first stage, you can define settings like receiving emails, error messages, buttons text and more.
- Stage 2: Field and Views Settings
- From here you can define various settings related to the fields and views of the form. These options allow you to further customize and define the data that the user will see on his screen.
- Stage 3: Testing Your Forms
- The next stage allows you to test and manipulate your form. Via the testing page, you can see exactly how your form will look on the front end.
- Stage 4: Adding the Form to Your Front End
- The last stage is, of course, adding your form to your pages and posts. Using the “Add dynamic forms” admin box found in post and page editing, you can easily add previously saved forms to your website.
Con: Limited Free Support
Dynamic Forms offers very limited information by way of free support. A subscription for technical support costs $10 for 3 months. Ten dollars may not break the bank, but it’s something you should consider when evaluating pricing.
Bottom Line
Dynamic Forms Builder delivers a powerful form building tool. It’s pretty advanced for a free plugin – far better than other free form plugins available (such as Contact Form 7, CForms II and the free version of Formidable). As opposed to Contact Form 7, Dynamic Forms saves contact information in a database; its admin pages are more streamlined and intuitive than CForms II; and it offers far more features and ad-ons than the free version of Formidable.
However, this plugin doesn’t quite hold up to commercial solutions like Gravity Forms or Formidable Pro. You can purchase a single license of Formidable Pro for a one-time fee of $47. You’ll receive four basic templates with easily customizable CSS, drag and drop fields, custom hooks, dozens of features and add-ons and full technical support.
Best,
Michael Pignataro
VP of Operations
