How to Get the Most Out of Using Forminator

Forminator is WPMU DEV’s 5-star form-builder plugin. It lets you easily create forms, quizzes, polls, collect payments from Stripe & PayPal, and much more — for free!

“Amazing plugin, it really seems that only your imagination can limit its uses.”

– araca

In this article, we cover all you need to know to get the most out of Forminator, including how to:

1. Get Quick and Easy Access to Forms, Stats, and More in the Forminator Dashboard
2. Easily Create Basic Forms
3. Use Stripe and PayPal to Take Payments with No Setup Charges
4. Set Up a Poll for Your Audience
5. Crunch Numbers by Creating Calculations
6. Put Together Amazing Quizzes
7. Add Time-Saving Convenience with eSignatures
8. Organize Contacts Using the Submissions Area
9. Expand Forminator’s Capabilities with Add-Ons
10. Use Forminator with 3rd Party App Integrations
11. Add More Form Adjustments in Settings
12. Use Forms on Multiple Sites Using Import/Export Options
13. Schedule Report Notifications

There’s a lot to explore in Forminator! Let’s get started…

1. Get Quick and Easy Access to Forms, Stats, and More in the Forminator Dashboard

With Forminator installed and activated on your site, navigate to Forminator > Dashboard in your WordPress menu for quick, convenient, and easy access to form, quiz, and poll creation, and a quick overview and snapshot of all stats and statuses.

The plugin’s dashboard also lets you perform essential functions such as edit, preview, duplicate, copy shortcode, view submissions, export, and delete — all from one place.

The top section of the dashboard shows you how many active modules you have on your site and provides a quick breakdown of the total form, poll, and quiz submissions, as well as information on when the last submission took place.

The dashboard includes modules for Forms, Quizzes, and Polls. The layout of these modules is essentially the same.

For example, here’s the Forms module, where you can create a new form, access existing forms, and quickly check their status (e.g. blue circles indicate the form is published), view stats, and perform other functions.

Click the Stats icon next to a form to view more information about last form submission, number of views, total number of submissions, and conversion rate.

You can also perform additional tasks on this screen, such as view reports, edit the form, and apply a range of other bulk and individual form functions by clicking on the gear icon.

The functions you can access from this dropdown menu include:

• Edit: Selet this option to edit the current form.
• Preview: Click to display a preview of the form within a popup window.
• Copy Shortcode: Allows you to copy the shortcode for the form, enabling you to embed it into any desired page or post.
• Publish/Unpublish: This action will either publish draft forms or, conversely, revert published forms back to draft status.
• View Submissions: Access the submission data for the specific form to review user input.
• Duplicate: Instantly create a copy of the entire form along with its settings. The duplicated form will be added to the bottom of the list.
• Reset Tracking Data: Reset the data related to user views and conversions for the form. This does not affect information collected for marketing purposes.
• Apply Preset: Choose and apply any preset style (from the Appearance Presets screen) to customize the form’s appearance.
• Export: Generate the form’s code for easy copying and pasting into the Forminator import tool on any website.
• Delete: Permanently remove the form from your site.

Note: You will see different functions in the dropdown menu depending on the screen you are currently in.

2. Easily Create Basic Forms

Forminator lets you quickly and easily create and customize a form in just a few clicks. You can jumpstart a form using a prebuilt template or create a new form from scratch.

Click Create to get immediate access to all templates.

Forminator’s templates include:

• Blank – Design your own form from scratch.
• Contact Form – Includes essential information for users to contact you.
• Quote Request – Lets users choose your services, add notes, and reach out to you.
• Newsletter – Perfect for collecting email addresses and getting users to subscribe to your newsletter.
• Registration – Requires users to set up a username, their email, and a password to register.
• Login – Customize this form to allow your registered users to log in.
• Create Post – Perfect for multiauthor sites, this allows users to create a post, upload featured images, add a category, and create a post.

Start by selecting a template that best suits your needs.

Templates include essential fields already set up for you to use as-is, and you can easily add additional fields or remove any that are unnecessary.

For example, a registration form template includes prepopulated fields like Username, Email, and Password.

For a basic form, you can choose only the bare minimum required information, such as Name, Email, and Phone Number.

Clicking on the fields will highlight them in blue and add these to your form after clicking Insert Fields.

Add as few or as many fields as you like.

Click the Preview button at any time to see how your form is coming along.

If your form looks good, click Publish, then copy and paste the shortcode to embed the form into any WordPress post or page, or any widget that allows code to be inserted.

Your form is now ready to use!

Need to make changes? No problem. You can edit the form at any time if you need to add more fields, remove fields, tweak modifications, adjust colors, and so on.

3. Use Stripe and PayPal to Take Payments with No Setup Charges

Unlike similar plugins on WordPress.org, Forminator lets you set up and use Stripe or PayPal payment methods on any form…completely free of setup charges!

It’s the ideal way to collect payment for eCommerce items, services, memberships, and more.

You can set up payments with Forminator in just a few quick and easy steps.

When creating a new form, you’ll see Stripe and PayPal in the Fields area. Keep in mind that you can only pick one method per form. However, you can set up both accounts to decide between the two at any time.

If you add both Stripe and PayPal fields to your form, we recommend that you use Forminator’s visibility conditions, so only one option is visible at a time. For example:

1. Add an option to your form using a Radio (or Select) field that allows visitors to choose the payment method.
2. Apply visibility conditions to both Stripe and PayPal fields so only one is visible based on the visitor’s selection in the Radio (or Select) field.

To begin configuring your payment form settings, click on the Stripe and/or PayPal fields. Forminator provides quick and easy setup walkthroughs for both Stripe and PayPal. If you need any help setting these up, see our documentation.

Note: You will need to connect your PayPal or Stripe accounts to Forminator before being able to accept payments.

For example, you’ll get the following message if you have not connected your PayPal account with Forminator:

Each payment method also lets you adjust different field settings.

For example, if you select Stripe, you’ll see the Labels section, where you can customize the label, description, and language for the Stripe field, plus options to show the card icon and collect the postal code.

The Settings section lets you switch from Test (Stripe) or Sandbox (PayPal) modes to Live mode when you’re done testing your payment processes and are ready to go live.

You can also change the currency and specify payment amounts (e.g. fixed or variable based on a formula) in this section.

The screenshot below shows the Settings tab for PayPal.

If you select Stripe, the Settings tab will also include the option to set up one-time and subscription payment plans and configure plan conditions.

For more information on configuring payment plans for the Stripe field in Forminator, see our documentation.

The Advanced section lets you configure various options depending on which payment method you have selected.

For example, with PayPal selected, you can configure options like Disable Funding Sources, Pre-fill Billing Details, Shipping Address, Language, and enable or disable Debug Mode.

Stripe, on the other hand, lets you configure options like Payment Receipt, Payment Details, Card Validation, Billing Details, and Meta Data.

For example, with Payment Receipt, you can choose whether you want to email a receipt to your customers once payment has been successfully completed for live payments. You can also customize the email template.

You can also easily enable and collect Billing Details on your forms and send this data to Stripe.

In the Styling tab of the Stripe module, you can add additional CSS classes for complete customization.

In the PayPal module, you will find customization options in the Edit Field > Customize tab.

Finally, you can add rules and conditions for your selected payment methods under the Visibility tab.

After configuring the above, you’ll have a functional Stripe or PayPal payment form.

For more information on building an order form in WordPress and collecting payments with Forminator, check out the video below:

Also, to see a payment form in action, check out this demo t-shirt shop we set up. It’s a great example of an order form with various options.

4. Set Up a Poll for Your Audience

Polls are great for gathering information, creating tests, adding a fun element, and much more.

Getting a poll set up with Forminator is a snap.

From the dashboard, hit Create and give your poll a name, then type in the question you’ll be asking users to vote on in the Question section. You can also add a feature image and an optional description to help explain your question further to users.

Next, add your poll Answers.

You can add as many answers as you like (with images) and enable custom input fields to allow users to add their own responses.

You can also customize the button label used to submit the poll answer (e.g. ‘vote’, ‘submit’, or anything you like!).

Forminator gives you many options to customize the poll’s appearance, such as changing the Design Style, Colors, Padding, Border, and adding custom CSS.

Customize your poll’s appearance.

The Behavior section lets you configure how to display your poll’s results.

You can display results as a Pie Chart or Bar Graph with customized colors, and choose from the following options:

• Link on Poll – Adds a “View Results” link to the poll. Clicking this link displays the results on the same page, accompanied by a “Back to Poll” link for easy navigation.
• Show After Voted – Automatically displays the poll results on the same page once the user submits their vote, also featuring a “Back to Poll” link for user convenience.
• Do Not Show – Hides the poll results from respondents. The page behavior, whether refreshing or reloading, will depend on the submission settings chosen.

You can also choose whether to show or hide the vote count on results.

Additional options found in the Behavior section include:

Submission Method

• Reload Page: Choose this to refresh the page after poll submission if Ajax causes issues.
• Ajax: The default method; does not refresh the page.

Vote Opening

Set poll voting parameters:

• Status: Choose if the poll is open, paused, or closed.
• Open From: Set the opening date, or start immediately.
• Open Until: Set the closing date, or remain open indefinitely.
• Custom Messages: Input messages for closed, paused, or upcoming voting periods.

Voting Limit

Define voting frequency:

• Limits: Allow single voting by default. For multiple votes, leave blank or set a wait time (minutes to years).
• Method: Identify returning voters by IP address or browser cookie.

Security

Enable Akismet spam protection to either reject spam submissions with a custom message or log them as spam without listing in Submissions.

Rendering

Optimize poll rendering against caching issues:

• Use AJAX to load polls, preventing cache conflicts.
• Enable DONOTCACHEPAGE to stop caching on poll pages, ensuring compatibility with cache plugins like Hummingbird.

After adjusting your poll’s behavior settings, click through to the Email Notifications tab.

Enable the option to send email notifications to one or more email accounts whenever a user’s poll results are submitted.

You can enter a custom subject line and a custom message into the fields, use the editor to format your message, and include poll data in your notification email subject, body, and the “from name” using various merge tags.

Forminator even allows you to sync polls with thousands of 3rd-party apps in the Integrations section through dedicated services and automation apps like Zapier, Integrately, Tray.io, Make, Workato, and other automation tools that support webhooks.

The Settings area is where you can control your Data Storage and adjust Privacy settings.

There are options to disable storing submissions in your database. You can also change how long you want to retain a poll’s submission for and adjust how long you want to keep IP addresses before a submission is anonymized.

Hit the Preview button to preview your polls before publishing.

I think we all know the answer to this one.

When it all looks good, hit Publish, then use the shortcode provided on any WordPress page, post, or widget that accepts code and your poll is ready to go.

5. Crunch Numbers by Creating Calculations

If you need to create sophisticated calculations, add a simple tax to an eCommerce order, or your WordPress site features mortgages, financial loans, statistics, a BMI calculator, etc., the Calculations field can be of great additional benefit.

Input the formula you want to use into the Calculations field, then enable and use merge tags for fields that function with calculations like Number, Radio, Checkbox, Selection, and Currency.

Under Labels, enter a label and description.

In the Settings field, you can choose whether to hide the field so that the calculated result doesn’t show up on the form, or display it as read-only (default), and select formatting values such as prefix, suffix, and separator types, and rounding from 0 to 4 decimal places.

To create actual calculations, go to the Calculations tab.

You can combine fields and values to create calculation formulas, preview your form and check the validity of your formulas, and decide how to treat values if you have chosen to hide the field.

You can also style the field with CSS in the Styling section.

And set visibility rules and conditions in the Visibility tab.

If your site needs forms that can perform calculations (e.g. add tax to a product or calculate loans), then Forminator has you covered.

For some great examples of setting up complex calculations in Forminator, see our articles on creating free payment forms with Forminator and free WordPress calculator plugins.

6. Put Together Amazing Quizzes

Quizzes are great for entertainment, educational purposes, and engagement. One can quickly and easily get a quiz set up in Forminator’s dashboard.

When you create a new one, right away, Forminator will ask you what type of quiz you’d like to create. You have the option of Knowledge Quiz or Personality Quiz.

In this example, we’ll look at a Knowledge Quiz. To start, choose a Title, Feature Image, and a Description.

You can add as many questions as you want in the Questions section by clicking Add Question.

Add your question(s), answers, optional images and description, and indicate which answer(s) is/are correct by ticking the Correct Answer checkbox(es).

You can edit the quiz and add more answers any time you like.

Nail the look of the form by adjusting options in the Appearance section.

The Design Style lets you choose from Default, Flat, Bold, Material, or None.

Preview design styles by clicking on the tabs

In the Colors section, choose either the default palette or customize the colors of quiz elements like answer containers, submit button, social sharing, etc.

Each element category includes color pickers that let you enter colors using their HEX code (e.g. #8C8C8C) or by clicking on the palette.

In the Fonts section, you have the option of styling your quiz with your theme’s default fonts or overriding these with custom typefaces from Bunny Fonts.

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Pick a layout for your quiz in the Layout area. Choose radio/checkbox image dimensions (automatic or custom), how you want your quiz answers to display (list or grid) and your quiz to align (Left, Center, Right), and drag and drop the order of items in your quiz.

To wrap-up the appearance of your quiz, you can also change container elements and use custom CSS.

The Behavior section lets you control how your quiz will behave as users go through it.

Start by choosing how you’d like to present Questions in your quiz. Select Paginated Quiz if you’d like to split your quiz into different pages. You can then choose how many questions to display to users per page, customize the text in your quiz buttons, and choose whether to display current and total page indicators.

The Results area lets you choose how to display quiz results to users.

For example, you can decide whether to display the correct answer in real-time or upon submission and whether to display a loader to indicate that your quiz is evaluating the participant’s selected response. Note that participants can only choose one answer if you select the Real Time method.

Edit the copy in the Messages section to display what uswers will see for correct and incorrect answers, and when displaying the final count.

And what good is a quiz without social sharing?

Forminator gives you the option to let users share your quizzes on Facebook, X (Formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn. You can also customize your social share message.

Even better, when combined with our SEO plugin SmartCrawl, you can enhance how the results will look when shared on social media via the plugin’s OpenGraph and X/Twitter card support.

You can also configure additional quiz behavior settings like Lifespan (keep your quiz going forever or specify a date or number of submissions to close it and display a custom expiration message), and choose quiz Rendering options (Load quiz using AJAX and Prevent page caching on quiz pages).

To notify team members or clients every time a new quiz submission is made via email, just configure the Add Email Notification settings in the Notifications section.

You can also add Integrations with external services to your quiz.

Integration with quizzes work the same way as they do for polls. For more details, see the section of this article about setting up a poll.

Finally, you can set up your data settings in the Settings tab.

After your quiz is all set up and ready to go, hit Preview to make sure everything looks alright…

Looks like the right answer.

Are you happy with it? Then hit Publish, copy & paste Forminator’s shortcode to your WordPress site, and start quizzing your visitors.

Note: setting up a Personality quiz is similar to setting up a Knowledge quiz. The main difference is the Personalities section, where you can add as many personalities as you’d like.

After adding your personalities, the next step is to add your questions in the Question area.

Ask anything you like and then match it to the personality. Likewise, you pick who this wouldn’t be like. You can make it a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ caption or whatever you choose.

Create as many personalities and questions as you’d like. When you’re finished, like our other quiz, hit Preview and/or Publish.

Make your personality quiz fun, engaging, and shareworthy!

7. Add Time-Saving Convenience with eSignatures

Add eSignatures to your form and let users sign off on forms and documents that require a signature with their mouse, trackpad, digital pencil, or even an uploaded sig.

Forminator makes it so easy, secure, and convenient to set up eSignatures on your forms…just click on the Insert Fields button and select E-Signature.

Click on the Labels tab to customize the label and placeholder text. Add an optional description if required.

The Settings tab provides options to adjust eSig parameters. You can make signatures be required, select the filetype signatures will be saved as (PNG or JPG), customize the height of the signature field, and specify signature stroke thickness.

The Styling tab lets you add additional CSS classes to the form, and you can include rules and conditions to display the eSignature field in the Visibility area.

Save your changes when done and you’re all set!

Note: eSignatures are a Forminator Pro feature only. Check out this video to learn more about the advantages of using Forminator Pro:

For more information about using the eSignatures feature and including a signature upload option for your users, see our article on how to capture eSignatures with Forminator.

8. Organize Contacts Using the Submissions Area

You can view all form, quiz, and poll submissions in the Submissions area. From there, you can export form data, get detailed information about individual submissions, delete submissions, or use that data with a CRM like HubSpot for marketing purposes.

Go to Forminator > Submissions and select Forms, Polls, or Quizzes from the dropdown menu. Then, select the individual form name from that category.

Next, click on Show Submissions. This brings up a paginated list of all submissions made from that form, organized by form fields in columns.

To view detailed information about an individual submission, click on the expand/collapse arrow.

If you have many submissions to search through, click on the funnel icon in the upper right-hand corner to filter your data and speed up your search.

You can perform bulk operations and filter entries using multiple parameters like date range, ID, keyword, sorting, and status. You can also choose how to display search results (All or Specified Fields).

You can also export your search results by clicking on the Export button.

In the Edit Scheduled Export screen, choose whether to manually export submission data as a CSV file, or schedule and automate your data exports.

9. Expand Forminator’s Capabilities with Add-Ons

The Add-ons section enhances Forminator’s capabilities by enabling the installation of additional modules.

The currently available add-ons are exclusive to Forminator Pro users and include:

To install an add-on, simply click “Install”. For more details about each add-on, click “Details”.

10. Use Forminator with 3rd Party App Integrations

+1000 third-party applications sync with Forminator. Everything from CRM and email services to cloud storage, project management, and more.

Some of these integrations apps include:

And many more…

Integrating Forminator with 3rd-party apps is not only a great way to get the most out of your forms, but with Forminator Pro, you can also build your own integration and custom Forminator apps.

To connect with available apps, navigate to the Integrations screen.

You can see which apps you have connected to Forminator and which apps are available and can be used.

Click on an app to view instructions for enabling the integration and to be guide through the process.

10. Add More Form Adjustments in Settings

In addition to creating perfect forms, quizzes, and polls in just a few steps and deciding what to include in your forms and how these should look and behave using individual form settings, you can make further tweaks and global adjustments to speed up your form creation and editing workflow by going to Forminator > Settings.

There are so many options you can configure to make Forminator work exactly the way you want it to.

For example, in General > Dashboard, you can adjust the Module Listings to display a specific number of your most recent forms, polls, and quizzes, and adjust the Status to display only published forms, only drafts, or both.

Form Headers, lets you change the default sender’s name and email address for outgoing emails.

The Pagination section lets you determine the number of modules and submissions to show per page.

Click through to the Accessibility section if you want to enable high contrast mode to increase the visibility and accessibility of elements and components to meet WCAG AAA requirements.

Data settings let you choose what happens to the plugin’s settings and data if you uninstall or reset Forminator and whether to store all form file uploads in our secure default directory or your own custom directory.

Additional settings options include enabling CAPTCHA, import existing forms from Contact Form 7, handling form submission data by length of time, setting up payments for PayPal and Stripe, and more.

Here’s a summary of what you can do in each of Forminator’s Settings tabs:

• General: Customize the dashboard display, email settings, and item counts on modules and submissions pages.
• Accessibility: Activate High Contrast Mode to enhance UI visibility and meet WCAG AAA standards.
• Appearance Presets: Design and apply custom styles to forms with one click.
• Data: Choose to preserve or reset plugin settings and data upon uninstallation.
• CAPTCHA: Enhance form security with Google reCAPTCHA or hCAPTCHA; customize the display language.
• Import: Import forms from Contact Form 7 if form files exist on the same site.
• Submissions: Enabling any “Custom” option and setting it to “0” is equivalent to the “Forever” setting.
• Payments: Integrates with Stripe and PayPal; requires connected accounts to process payments.
• Permissions: Manage user access; administrators have full access by default.

11. Use Forms on Multiple Sites Using Import/Export Options

Do you have multiple WordPress sites with Forminator installed where you would like to add a form, poll, or quiz you’ve previously created? No problem!

You can easily export any form by selecting the gear icon and clicking on Export in the dropdown menu.

This brings up the Export Form with all of your selected form’s code. You can select all the text and copy it to your clipboard or download it to a file.

Log into the site where you want to import the Forminator form code, select the type of form you would like to create, and click on the Import button.

Paste the text from your clipboard or download file into the Import Form text area and click the Import button to complete the process. You can also specify whether to change all recipients in the form to the current user email by ticking the checkbox.

Your form will be imported into your selected WordPress site.

12. Schedule Report Notifications

Want to schedule reports so you can view the performance of forms, quizzes, and polls? It can be set up in just a few clicks.

First, go to the Reports section.

Next, select Notifications and click on Add New Report.

This opens up the Settings modal where you can configure and customize your report’s content.

Use the Labels field to give the report a custom name, select the Module (Forms, Quizzes, or Polls), and choose whether to include all forms in your selected module or only those you specify.

Click Continue to set up your report’s Schedule.

You can set up automated reports to be sent out daily, weekly, or monthly, and on the day and time you specify.

Click the Continue button to include your report’s Recipients.

You can add recipients by searching and selecting Users or by entering their Email addresses. Make sure to enable Activate Report and click the Save Changes button when done.

That’s all there is to it! Forminator will start sending out scheduled reports automatically to your nominated recipients.

You can access, perform bulk or individual edits, or delete scheduled reports in the Notifications area.

To perform bulk edits, tick the checkboxes to select multiple reports, choose an option from the Bulk Actions menu dropdown (Activate, Deactivate, Delete), and click the Apply button.

To individually edit or delete a report, click on the gear icon next to the report and select an option.

Forms, Polls, and Quizzes At Your Fingertips

As you can see, Forminator can be used not only to create simple or advanced contact forms and engaging polls and quizzes in just a few easy steps, but also to set up customized payment forms that can perform complex calculations, behave according to specific rules and conditions, and be copied or exported across to other WordPress sites.

Plus, you can expand Forminator’s capabilities with add-ons like PDF generation and geolocation, and integrate form functionality with over 1,000 third-party applications, allowing you to set up eCommerce stores, store data on the cloud, automate email marketing campaigns to existing customers, and so much more.

With features like registration & login forms, payment forms, eSignatures, calculations, etc. there is no limit to what you can do with Forminator.

… And it doesn’t stop there! Forminator is always coming out with new features, improvements, and enhancements thanks to our tireless superhero developers. You can keep tabs on what’s happening next with Forminator (and all of our products) in our Roadmap.

Hopefully, now you know how to get the most out of Forminator. To get even more out of our stellar plugin, we recommend using Forminator Pro and checking out our comprehensive Forminator documentation.

Forminator Pro is available to all WPMU DEV members and WPMU DEV-hosted websites. If you’re not a member yet, we recommend giving us a no-risk try today. And if you have any questions, our 24/7 expert support team is always available to help.

So, what are you waiting for? Start creating forms, polls, and quizzes with Forminator and experience the power of our 5-star awesome plugin’s features for yourself.

[Editor’s note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and updated in April 2024 for accuracy.]