In the dynamic landscape of WordPress, capturing leads, collecting customer data, or taking orders often requires reliable form builders. These plugins allow you to create online forms seamlessly without any coding expertise. However, with many options available, finding the right one that perfectly aligns with your needs can be challenging. In this article, we compare two popular options, Fluent Forms and HappyForms, and evaluate their key features to help you make an informed decision.
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Quick Overview: Fluent Forms and HappyForms
Fluent Forms
Fluent Forms is a lightweight WordPress form builder plugin known for its intuitive user experience. It offers a range of basic to advanced features and is one of the fastest form builders available. With conversational forms, frequent updates, and widespread usage across over 200K websites, it caters to various form-building needs. The plugin provides a free version that covers most basic requirements, while the Pro version extends its capabilities significantly.
HappyForms
HappyForms, developed by The Theme Foundry, provides a simple user interface integrated with the WordPress customizer. Despite being relatively new, it has features like Honeypot and ReCaptcha spam protection, responsive forms, and GDPR compliance. The plugin offers unlimited forms and supports live previews, making it a competitive option.
Feature Comparison: Fluent Forms vs HappyForms
1. Ease of Use
Fluent Forms: Fluent Forms’ user-friendly interface features a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) design. The live preview is centered on the screen, while input fields and customization options are easily accessible on the right. Adding fields is straightforward with a drag-and-drop feature. The clear and intuitive design ensures that even beginners can navigate the interface easily, making form creation a breeze.
HappyForms: HappyForms’ interface integrates smoothly with the WordPress dashboard. However, adding fields requires clicking on the desired input type, and customization is necessary before use. While the interface is clean, it lacks the ease of Fluent Forms, particularly in terms of field placement and real-time customization, which might feel cumbersome to users seeking a quicker solution.
Winner: Fluent Forms wins with a more intuitive interface and easier field customization, providing a smoother experience for beginners and advanced users.
2. Pre-built Form Templates
Fluent Forms: It offers over 60 pre-built templates catering to various industries, providing a quick start for different forms. These templates cover many use cases, from contact forms to surveys, quizzes, and event registrations. This extensive library allows users to quickly find and customize a template that suits their needs, saving time and enhancing productivity.
HappyForms: Unfortunately, HappyForms does not offer pre-built templates, requiring users to start from scratch. This lack of templates can be a significant drawback for users who need a quick and easy solution or lack the time and expertise to create forms from the ground up.
Winner: Fluent Forms excels with a wide array of pre-built templates, offering a more versatile and time-saving solution.
3. Layout Feature
Fluent Forms: It provides multi-column layouts (up to six columns) with a drag-and-drop container option for flexible form design. This layout flexibility is particularly useful for creating complex forms with multiple sections or aligning related fields side-by-side. The drag-and-drop feature makes it easy to customize layouts to fit specific needs, enhancing the form’s usability and appearance.
HappyForms: It offers limited layout flexibility, requiring manual width adjustment for individual fields. Additionally, it does not support more than four side-by-side fields, limiting design possibilities. This limitation can frustrate users who want more control over their form layouts, especially when dealing with more complex forms.
Winner: Fluent Forms provides better layout flexibility and easier customization, making it a more adaptable choice for varied design needs.
4. Input Fields
Fluent Forms: The free version offers over 40 input fields, with the most available. The fields are ready to use without additional customization and cover many needs, including text inputs, dropdowns, radio buttons, checkboxes, and more. This extensive selection ensures that users can create diverse forms tailored to their requirements without upgrading to the pro version.
HappyForms: It provides only around 20 input fields, with only seven available for free. The limited selection in the free version can be restrictive, especially for users needing more specialized input types, pushing them towards the paid plans for features readily available in Fluent Forms’ free version.
Winner: Fluent Forms wins with more available input fields, both free and paid, offering greater flexibility and functionality for various form-building needs.
5. Conversational Forms
Fluent Forms: This unique feature enhances user experience by making lengthy forms feel more interactive and conversational, reducing abandonment. Conversational forms mimic a real conversation, asking one question at a time, which can significantly improve user engagement and completion rates, particularly for complex or detailed forms.
HappyForms: Does not offer conversational forms. This absence can be a drawback for users looking to enhance engagement and create a more interactive form-filling experience.
Winner: Fluent Forms stands out with this interactive feature, effectively enhancing user experience and engagement.
6. Conditional Logic
Fluent Forms: This feature is available even in the free version, enabling dynamic form behavior based on user input. Conditional logic allows users to show or hide fields based on previous answers, creating a more personalized and relevant form experience. This feature is particularly useful for complex forms or forms requiring specific information based on user responses.
HappyForms: Conditional logic is available only in the paid version. This limitation can deter users needing this functionality, as it requires upgrading to a paid plan to access a feature that’s free in Fluent Forms.
Winner: Fluent Forms provides more value by offering this feature for free, making it a more accessible and cost-effective choice for users requiring dynamic form functionality.
7. Third-Party Integration
Fluent Forms: It offers 45+ native integrations and supports over 4000 additional integrations through Zapier. These integrations enhance Fluent Forms’ functionality, allowing it to connect seamlessly with email marketing services, payment gateways, CRM systems, and more. This extensive integration support makes Fluent Forms versatile for various business and marketing needs.
HappyForms: It supports only 17 native integrations, limiting compatibility with other tools and services. This restriction can hinder users who need to connect their forms with specific third-party services, reducing the plugin’s overall utility.
Winner: Fluent Forms offers significantly more integrations, enhancing its functionality and compatibility with various tools and services. This makes it a superior choice for users needing extensive integration options.
8. Calculated Fields
Fluent Forms: This feature allows numeric calculations based on input, which is useful for quotes, pricing, or any calculation-related forms. Calculated fields can automatically compute totals, averages, and other numerical outputs based on user input, enhancing the functionality of forms requiring numerical data processing.
HappyForms: Does not offer this feature. The lack of calculated fields can be a drawback for users needing to create forms involving numerical calculations or dynamic pricing.
Winner: Fluent Forms outshines HappyForms again with this valuable feature, providing more functionality for specialized form needs.
9. Quiz Module
Fluent Forms: It includes a quiz module, ideal for creating interactive quizzes with various scoring methods. The quiz module allows users to create engaging and educational content, with scoring options like grades, points, fractions, or percentages. This feature is particularly useful for educational or interactive marketing purposes.
HappyForms: Does not offer a quiz module, limiting its use for interactive or educational content creation.
Winner: Fluent Forms is more versatile with this feature, providing more options for interactive content creation and engagement.
10. Pricing and Licensing
Fluent Forms offers six pricing options, including annual and lifetime plans, reasonable prices for single, agency, and unlimited licenses, and caters to different user needs, from individual bloggers to large agencies, providing cost-effective solutions for varied use cases.
HappyForms: It offers three annual plans without a lifetime option. The lack of lifetime licensing can be a drawback for users seeking a long-term investment, while the yearly pricing is higher than Fluent Forms for similar features.
Winner: Fluent Forms offers more flexible and cost-effective pricing options, making it more valuable than HappyForms.
Final Verdict
Comparing the features, Fluent Forms is the clear winner across all aspects, including user experience, features, functionality, and pricing. It caters to beginners and advanced users with unique features like conversational forms, calculated fields, and quiz modules. Fluent Forms offers robust free and pro versions, making it a superior choice over HappyForms, which has limited features and higher pricing for unlimited licenses.
For a comprehensive form-building experience, Fluent Forms is the better choice. It offers versatility and value that outshines its competition.