I recently changed the contact form plugin I use on my site and I want to let you know about a great new plugin I have found called Gravity Forms.

DISCLOSURE: links to gravity form are affiliate links.

What Was I Using

I was happily using contact form 7, an excellent and slick little plugin which provides most of the contact form requirements I need, but there was still the last 20% i needed which  couldn’t get from my current plugin.

What Was The Problem

I need a little more from a contact form than contact form 7 supplies me.  I needed the following:

The ability to capture the php referer variable and the query string to see where my contact requests were coming from, is something I really wanted, there is no simple way to code contact form 7 to do this.

Redirection to another page upon completion.  I need the redirection to enable a conversion tracking script. I was able to hack the plugin and re-code it to do this, but every time I updated the plugin, I had to re-code it,what a pain.

What Gravity Form Brings To The Table

Gravity form is a premium plugin that meets my needs and then some, using Gravity form will greatly streamline my service business estimation process by adding new clients to my Freshbooks system, and creating a draft estimate, add all new potential clients to my mail chimp mailing list, let me capture where my leads are coming from, let me automate my referral payment system, redirect to my conversion script page, send out an autoresponder message to my clients to let them them know they are in the system, I am one happy bunny.

This is one feature rich plugin,a full list of Gravity form features can be seen at Gravity Forms.

Integration Movement

There is an excellent thing going on in the software as a service industry which allows service to integrate with one anther, this is where Gravity Forms really won me over was that I can integrate a contact form with the other systems I use to run my business.

From one contact form I can:

1. Add the person to my mailchimp email list
2. Create a new user and prepare a draft estimate in my freshbooks account.
3. Capture the querystring – I use this to mark my estimates with affiliate IDs (want to join my affiliate system)

This may not seem a big deal to you, but I prepare quite a few quote each week for my services business and having to re-type contact details into freshbooks and then importing these contacts into my email list is a time consuming and dull, and if you are anything like me dull tasks get overlooked.  As a result I was not recording new clients some of the time.

Cost

This is a premium plugin,but I think the functionality it adds over free plugins makes it worth the while.

• single site: $39
• multi site: $99 (up to 5 sites)
• developers: $199 (unlimited sites)

Need A Better Contact Form?

I purchased the developers license of Gravity Forms so I can build my clients cool interactive forms, request a quote for me to do this for you on my WordPress helpdesk (powered by Gravity Form)

Alternatively why not buy a copy if you found this review useful please use my affiliate link – buy Gravity Forms.