Buyer's guide
How to actually choose a form entry manager
Almost every comparison in this space lines up plugins that do fundamentally different jobs and scores them against each other. It is worth two minutes to separate them first, because three completely different problems get called “entry management” and buying the wrong one leaves your actual problem untouched.
All five, side by side
Each cell names the cheapest tier that has the feature. Every row comes from one of the detailed comparisons below and keeps their sources. Flamingo is a new column, and both it and our own build were installed on our test site on 18 September 2026. "Not tested hands-on" means a paid screen we didn't buy and the vendor's pages don't settle it.
✓ included✓ Pro+ only from that tier up~ partly (catch noted)✗ not availablenot tested hands-on paid screen we did not buy
5 products: scroll sideways to see them all.
Where entries come from2 rows
| Feature | EntryVault | GravityView | Formidable Views | WPForms entries | Flamingo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form plugins it works with | 17 builders | Gravity Forms | Formidable only | WPForms | Contact Form 7 |
| Free version | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No | Lite stores no entries | ✓ Yes |
Working entries in wp-admin6 rows
| Feature | EntryVault | GravityView | Formidable Views | WPForms entries | Flamingo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kanban board with stages | Free | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Owner assignment | Free | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Email the person from the entry | Free | ✗ No | ✗ No | not tested hands-on | ✗ No |
| Approval of entries | Pro | ✓ Yes | not tested hands-on | not tested hands-on | ✗ No |
| Automations | Pro | ✗ No | Form actions; automation on Elite | Plus | ✗ No |
| Export entries | CSV free; scheduled CSV or Excel on Pro | ✓ Yes | Basic (Formidable core) | Basic: CSV, Excel, PDF | CSV |
Showing entries to visitors3 rows
| Feature | EntryVault | GravityView | Formidable Views | WPForms entries | Flamingo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front-end table of entries | Free: sortable table, no visitor search | ✓ Yes | Plus | not tested hands-on | ✗ No |
| Visitor search and filters | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | Plus | not tested hands-on | ✗ No |
| Submitters edit their own entry | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | Plus | not tested hands-on | ✗ No |
Price3 rows
| Feature | EntryVault | GravityView | Formidable Views | WPForms entries | Flamingo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest licence | $0; Pro Solo (3 sites) $29/yr or $89 once | $119/yr, 1 site | Plus (3 sites): $99.50, then $199 | Basic (1 site): $49.50, then $99 | Free, no paid tier |
| Needs another paid plugin first | ✗ No | Gravity Forms | No, it is Formidable | No, it is WPForms | Needs Contact Form 7, which is free |
| Money-back guarantee | 14 days | 30 days | 14 days | 14 days | n/a |
Sources (10)
- GravityView: https://www.gravitykit.com/products/gravityview/
- Formidable Views: https://formidableforms.com/features/display-form-data-views/
- WPForms: https://wpforms.com/pricing/
- Flamingo: https://wordpress.org/plugins/flamingo/
- EntryVault: https://jnkplugins.com/entryvault/pricing.php
- Formidable Views: https://formidableforms.com/pricing/
- WPForms: https://wpforms.com/docs/how-to-use-lite-connect-for-wpforms/
- GravityView: https://www.gravitykit.com/products/gravityboard/
- GravityView: https://www.gravityforms.com/pricing/
- Flamingo: https://contactform7.com/save-submitted-messages-with-flamingo/
First: three different problems
| Problem | What you need | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| Nothing is being saved | Storage — a record that survives the email | Flamingo, your form plugin's own entries screen |
| Visitors need to see the entries | Front-end display | GravityView, Formidable Views |
| A team has to act on the entries | A pipeline — stages, owners, replies | EntryVault |
These are not competing answers. A site can have all three problems, and quite a few do. But if your problem is the third one, no amount of front-end display will help, and if your problem is the second, a Kanban board is not the tool.
Second: how many form plugins does your site actually run?
This is the question that decides more of it than anything on a feature grid, and it is the one nobody asks. First-party entry tools only ever see their own plugin's submissions. WPForms' entries screen manages WPForms entries. GravityView reads Gravity Forms. Formidable Views reads Formidable. Flamingo reads Contact Form 7.
Sites accumulate form plugins the way they accumulate everything else: Contact Form 7 on the contact page from 2019, WPForms added for a campaign, something inherited with a theme. Each keeps its entries in its own tables behind its own screen.
Third: what it costs, and what has to be bought first
| Option | Cost | Requires | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| EntryVault | Free; Pro from $29/yr or $89 lifetime, 3 sites · $21.75 with WELCOME25 | Nothing | Yes |
| Flamingo | Free | Contact Form 7 | It is free |
| WPForms entries | $49.50 first year, $99/yr after | WPForms | Paid from Basic; Lite stores no entries |
| GravityView | $119/yr | Gravity Forms, from $59/yr | None |
| Formidable Views | From $199/yr at renewal (Plus tier) | Formidable Forms | Not in Basic |
The failure nobody plans for: the notification email
Most entry tooling records a submission after the fact. EntryVault captures on the
before-send-mail hook, which means the entry is stored whether or not the
notification email is ever delivered.
That sounds like a technicality until it happens. A misconfigured SMTP setting, a bounced address, a notification filtered as spam — the enquiry still exists, and you can still see it. On a form that only emails, that lead is silently gone and you never learn it existed. It is the reason the Contact Form 7 storage problem is worth solving even on a small site.
Read the specific comparison
- vs GravityView — publishing entries versus working them, and the plugin you have to buy first.
- vs Formidable Views — the same boundary inside a different form plugin, and the tier where Views starts.
- vs WPForms entry management — we read your WPForms entries rather than replacing them.
- vs Flamingo — the free Contact Form 7 answer, and when it is genuinely all you need.
Where we would not pick us
If you use only Contact Form 7 and you just need somewhere to read past messages, install Flamingo. It is free, it is by Contact Form 7's own author, and it does that job well. If your entries need publishing to visitors, GravityView or Formidable Views do something we do not attempt at all. And if WPForms is your only form plugin and you already hold a paid licence, its entries screen is included and adding a plugin to duplicate it is not an improvement.
And what counts against us right now. EntryVault's free build is not currently in the WordPress plugin directory at the moment: the listing is temporarily closed, pending a review. The free version is a direct download from us and updates itself from your dashboard. If a one-click install matters to you, that is a fair reason to wait.
Found something wrong on this page? Every vendor here changes pricing and moves features between tiers. Tell us and we will fix it — [email protected].