Comparison
Trinity Forms vs Formidable Forms
Formidable is less a form plugin with extras and more a data-application builder that starts with a form. Entries become directories, listings, calendars and charts. If that is what you are building, this page will say so. If you mostly collect enquiries, orders and survey answers, the picture changes.
The short version
Free against free, Trinity Forms gives you more. Formidable Lite keeps conditional logic, multi-page forms and file uploads for paid plans. Trinity Forms Free has conditional logic, multi-page forms, file uploads, scheduling, response limits, surveys and quizzes.
Paid against paid, it depends on what you want from your entries. Formidable Views is older and deeper than our Views layer, with calendar, timeline and directory layouts we do not have. We put integrations like HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Zapier and Google Sheets in every Pro tier, where Formidable keeps them for Business or Elite. And we never charge a payment fee.
Feature by feature
Four columns, because both plugins have a free build and paid tiers, and a lot of the difference sits in where each feature starts. For Formidable's paid column we name the cheapest tier that includes the feature (Basic, Plus, Business or Elite). Our rows are checked against the Trinity Forms 2.5.0 free and Pro builds you download, not our marketing copy.
✓ included✓ Pro+ only from that tier up~ partly (catch noted)✗ not availablenot tested hands-on paid screen we did not buy
Building forms8 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drag-and-drop builder | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Conditional logic | ✗ No | Basic | ✓ Yes | + nested groups |
| Multi-page forms | ✗ No | Basic | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Schedule a form and limit responses | ✗ No | Basic | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Save and continue laterFormidable: logged-in drafts from Basic, logged-out drafts from Business | ✗ No | Basic | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| One question at a time (conversational) | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| AI form builderFormidable connects the AI assistant you already use; Trinity uses your own OpenAI or Anthropic key | ✗ No | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Full-page landing page for a form | ✗ No | Plus | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
Fields6 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File uploads | ✗ No | Basic | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Repeater fields | ✗ No | Basic | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Cascading (chained) dropdowns | ✗ No | Basic | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| CalculationsFormidable: advanced math from Basic, calculator forms from Business | ✗ No | Basic | Pricing fields with a running total | ✓ Yes |
| Signatures | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Address autocomplete / geolocationTrinity's geolocation records where a submission came from; it does not autocomplete addresses | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | Location of the submitter, no autocomplete |
Entries7 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entries stored in your database | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| CSV export | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Private notes on an entry | not tested hands-on | not tested hands-on | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Approve entries before they count | not tested hands-on | not tested hands-on | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Form abandonment (partial entries) | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Surveys, polls and quizzes | ✗ No | Business | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Forms to PDF | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
Showing entries on your site5 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front-end views of entriesFormidable Views adds calendar, timeline and directory layouts; Trinity Views has table, list and cards | ✗ No | Plus | ✗ No | Table, list and cards; no calendar or timeline |
| Front-end editing of entries | ✗ No | Plus | ✗ No | + magic links |
| Graphs and charts from entries | ✗ No | Plus | Charts on a results page | Charts on a results page |
| Create WordPress posts from entries | ✗ No | Basic | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| User registration forms | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
Payments4 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe | With a transaction fee | Fee until Business | ✗ No | No fee |
| PayPal | ✗ No | Fee until Business | ✗ No | No fee |
| Square / Authorize.net | ✗ No | Square with fee until Business; Authorize.net on Elite | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Discount coupons | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
Integrations6 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | ✗ No | Plus | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Zapier and Google Sheets | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| HubSpot and ActiveCampaign | ✗ No | Elite | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Salesforce | ✗ No | Elite | ✗ No | ✗ No |
| Twilio SMS | ✗ No | Business | ✗ No | ✓ Yes |
| Outgoing webhook | ✗ No | Business (API add-on) | ✗ No | HMAC-signed |
Spam, privacy and moving house4 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| reCAPTCHA, hCaptcha, Turnstile, Akismet | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Hooks into WordPress personal-data export and eraseFormidable lists consent fields and IP and storage controls; we did not test its export and erase | not tested hands-on | not tested hands-on | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Import forms from Gravity Forms | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Export and import forms between sites | not tested hands-on | Basic | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
Price and licence5 rows
| Feature | Formidable Lite (free) | Formidable paid | Trinity Forms Free | Trinity Forms Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cheapest paid tierFormidable Basic covers 1 site; Trinity Forms Solo covers 3 | $0 | $39.50 first year, $79 after | $0 | $29/yr for 3 sites, same at renewal |
| Tier that removes payment fees | n/a | Business: $199.50, then $399 | n/a | Every Pro tier |
| Lifetime licence | n/a | ✗ No | n/a | From $89 once |
| Forms keep working if the licence expiresTrinity: Pro runs as normal for 30 days. After that new Pro fields lock, but existing Pro fields and payment forms keep working | n/a | Yes, but premium fields can't be edited | n/a | Yes, Pro fields and payments included |
| Money-back guarantee | n/a | 14 days | n/a | 14 days |
Sources (4)
- Formidable Forms: https://wordpress.org/plugins/formidable/
- Formidable Forms: https://formidableforms.com/features/
- Formidable Forms: https://formidableforms.com/pricing/
- Trinity Forms: https://jnkplugins.com/trinity-forms/pricing.php
What only one of them does
Only in Formidable Forms
- Formidable Views goes much further than ours: calendar, timeline and nested views, and app shortcuts for directories, listings and product stores.
- Square, Authorize.net and Salesforce, and a WooCommerce product configurator on Elite.
- Address autocomplete, an AI assistant connector, datepicker options and a white-label form builder.
- Over 300 form templates, many more than ours.
- A much larger, older user base (300,000+ active installs of the free plugin on wordpress.org).
Only in Trinity Forms
- Conditional logic, multi-page forms, scheduling, response limits, surveys and quizzes in the free version.
- No transaction fee on Stripe or PayPal at any Pro tier, where Formidable charges one until Business.
- HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, Zapier, Google Sheets and Twilio at the entry Pro price rather than Business or Elite.
- Mollie payments, entry approval before an entry counts, and an HMAC-signed outgoing webhook.
- Flat pricing that renews at the same price, and a lifetime licence on every tier.
Formidable Views is the real product, and ours is younger
Formidable Views takes the entries a form collects and shows them on the front end as grids, tables, calendars and timelines, with graphs and landing pages on top. Their pricing page calls it a “$349 value” and includes it from Plus upward. Their app shortcuts ship prebuilt directories and listings.
Trinity Forms Pro has its own Views layer: front-end table, list and card layouts of your entries, with permissions, front-end editing and magic links so a submitter can edit their entry without an account. It is narrower. There is no calendar or timeline layout, no prebuilt directory app, and our charts live on a results page in wp-admin rather than on your site. If you want a searchable member directory with charts, Formidable is the deeper tool.
What Trinity Forms looks like
These screens are from Trinity Forms Pro 2.5.0 on our own test site, with made-up data. Nothing here is a mock-up.
Formidable, for fairness: we have not bought a Formidable licence, so there are no screenshots of its paid features here and every paid row above comes from Formidable's own pages. Formidable Lite is free on wordpress.org if you want to try their builder before you buy.
The fee, and when it goes away
Most plugins that charge a payment fee charge it only on the free build. Formidable keeps it on two paid tiers. Their pricing table lists Stripe, Square and PayPal transaction fees against Basic and Plus, and the Basic plan says, word for word, “Upgrade to Business to remove the 3% transaction fee.” Business is $199.50 for the first year and $399 a year after.
Once you are on Business or Elite with a valid licence, Formidable says it charges no transaction fees, so this isn't a permanent tax. But if you buy Basic just to take payments, the fee comes with it. That is better to know before you buy than after.
Trinity Forms takes payments with Stripe, PayPal and Mollie from the $29 Pro tier, and takes nothing from any transaction. Our free build doesn't take payments at all, though it does have pricing fields with a running total.
What three years costs, one site
| Setup | Year 1 | Years 2 and 3 | 3-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Formidable Lite | $0 | $0 | $0 + 3% of payments |
| Formidable Basic (1 site) | $39.50 | $79 each year | $197.50 + 3% of payments |
| Formidable Plus (up to 3 sites, adds Views) | $99.50 | $199 each year | $497.50 + 3% of payments |
| Formidable Business (up to 7 sites, no fee) | $199.50 | $399 each year | $997.50 |
| Trinity Forms Free | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Trinity Forms Pro Solo (up to 3 sites), yearly | $29 | $29 each year | $87 |
| Trinity Forms Pro Solo (up to 3 sites), lifetime | $89 once | $0 | $89 |
More sites? Trinity Forms Studio is $49 a year for 10 sites and Agency is $99 a year for unlimited sites, each with a lifetime option ($149 and $299). There is no introductory rate, so there is no renewal jump. The fairer paid comparison is Formidable Business at $399 a year for up to 7 sites, where the fee stops, against our 10-site Studio plan at $49. Unless you need the depth of Formidable Views, in which case the extra buys something we don't offer.
When your licence expires
Both plugins keep your forms working. Formidable says that after expiry “front-end submissions still go through, and nothing breaks for your site visitors”, but you lose updates, support and the ability to edit premium fields you already use.
Trinity Forms Pro keeps working as normal for 30 days. After that you can't add new Pro fields or features, but your forms keep every Pro field they already have and you can still edit them. Payment forms keep taking payments with no time limit, so a late renewal never costs you a sale. Updates and support stop at expiry.
How we compared. Trinity Forms rows were checked against the released 2.5.0 free and Pro builds, and the screenshots were taken from Pro 2.5.0 on WordPress 7.0.2 with demo data. Formidable rows come from its pricing tier table, its features page and the Formidable Lite 6.35 listing on wordpress.org, read on 16 and 17 September 2026. We did not install Formidable's paid plugin; where the table says it lacks something, that means Formidable does not list it for that tier. Rows marked as not tested are ones their public pages don't settle either way.
Moving from Formidable to Trinity Forms
There is no Formidable importer in Trinity Forms today (we have one for Gravity Forms). A move is manual, and for most sites it is short:
- Export your entries first. Formidable exports entries to CSV on every build, including Lite. Keep that file; it is your history.
- Rebuild each form. Start from a Trinity template or a blank form. Conditional logic and multi-page steps are in the free build, so most contact and registration forms need no Pro licence.
- Recreate notifications and integrations. Email notifications are free. Mailchimp, HubSpot, Zapier and the rest need Pro.
- Swap the shortcode or block on each page, send a test submission, then deactivate Formidable.
If your site leans on Formidable Views for public directories or calendars, stop at step one and think again. Those pages won't have a like-for-like replacement here.
Choose Formidable if
Your entries need to be shown to visitors as a directory, listing, calendar or timeline; you want charts and landing pages built from form data; you need Square, Authorize.net, Salesforce or address autocomplete; or you are building an application rather than collecting submissions.
Choose Trinity Forms if
You want conditional logic, multi-page forms and surveys without paying; you take payments and don't want to reach a $399 tier to stop paying 3%; you want CRM and Zapier integrations at the entry price; or you want a price that stays the same at renewal, or a lifetime licence.
What counts against us. Trinity Forms is not 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 WordPress dashboard. Formidable Lite installs normally from wordpress.org and has 300,000+ active installs, a far longer track record than ours.
See Trinity Forms pricing Compare every option →
Found something wrong on this page? Formidable runs rolling promotions, so these figures have a shelf life. Tell us and we will fix it: [email protected].