This is my testing and biased view of some popular WordPress plugins for creating Surveys, Polls, Forms, Quizzes and similar, paid and free. Before going into further review, there are some points to consider:
- This is my opinion at the time of writing this post, that could be biased.
- I’m not associated with any of these plugins or their creators.
- This is not a comprehensive review of plugins, only unique and interesting features examined, that were needed for the task.
- Basic features like text, radio and check fields, drag and drop interface, form design customization should be a must at default and preferably straight in free plugin version.
I was looking for advanced particular features like these:
- available calculations, values for the scoring of questions or storing results in custom variables
- more advanced form logic than basic show/hide fields at the answer conditions
- showing partial calculation results to taker mid form (eg. category score) or at the end of the survey
- showing input errors instantly
- saving and reviewing of submitted individual results possibilities in WP admin panel
- exporting and reusing of the form/survey/quiz results and etc. to make charts and other items in programs like Excel.
- form multi device responsiveness for viewing and using the survey on mobile devices
- preferably multi-language support
- bot prevention features
My particular survey/quiz task was:
- Possible questions in pairs (answer from the one should correct value in the other in pair), answer value from these questions and question pair result should be calculated and stored for later use
- Question pair should be visible in one page
- Numerical/Rating/Likert input from 0 to 5 available
- Pagination would be a plus
- Categorization, and score per category, category averages calculation
- Displaying results in real time for the survey/quiz taker at the end (charts in report is a plus, certificate is a plus)
- Reviewing survey/quiz results individually and/or in total (charts is a plus)
- Exporting results in csv (pdf and other formats is a plus)
- Prebuilt templates to immediately launch a survey (is a plus)
- Customization tools to add logos, branded colors, style (is a plus)
- Notifications that get sent to your team when a survey response is provided (is a plus).
- Spam protection that limits the number of fake submissions (is a plus).
Formidable Forms
Price: Free with a premium upgrade. 4 paid plans: from Basic $39.50/year .. Business $199.50 /year, Elite $299.50 /year
Advanced form builder in the same maturity level as Gravity Forms or WPForms. And again many more “addons” for “plus” paid features. My rating : 9.0 / 10
Advantages 👍
- Lots of styling options (every field can be customized) + css if needed, also you can have many style “presets”
- Convenient field bulk edit
- With additional addon added you can display form results (entries data) on pages, also as charts
- Many (not just one) customizable form submit actions
- Custom applications from form data possible
- Can customize pdf output, like make certificates, export entries as pdf, or email pdf (paid pdf addon).
- ACF support
- Has variety of graphs for data visualization, including table and world country map.
- Extensive public documentation for review
Shortcomings 😔
- The free version is relatively limited
- 4 different paid plans, giving access to various system addons, you’ll need to investigate which tier is suitable for you
- Quiz Maker and Survey addons on a paid Business plan
- Advanced features requires separate “addons” to activate and keep maintained in plugins section
- Quiz scoring automated, no scoring per category, though you can make manual calculations
- Simple show/hide conditionals
Fluent Forms
Fluent Forms https://fluentforms.com
Easy and speedy plugin, that has yearly and lifetime plans. Free version has some limitations though.
Advantages 👍
- Convertible to conversational mode
- Custom CSS & JS – can add your own code
- Has a lifetime plan
- Declares, that it is lightweight and speedy.
Shortcomings 😔
- Advanced styling only in Pro version
- Limited field customization
- Limited fields in conversational mode
- Error and validation after submit
- Styling is not common across fields
Tripetto
Price: Free and Pro version $199/year
Tripetto is visually apealing form drag and drop building tool. Surveys and quizzes can be build in nice visual style. Has advanced logic features even in free versions (which are only behind pay in other plugins), advanced calculations. Data export, reports (charts) and integration options might be limited though. This was the one of only plugins (besides SurveyJS), that allowed me construct paired questions. My rating: 7.5 / 10
Advantages 👍
- Visually appealing styling
- Advanced logic and conditionals
- Advanced computational fields
- Custom variables, values
- Conversational mode in free version
- Unique engine for form building
Shortcomings 😔
- Limited export options (csv only)
- Limited integrations
- No “Reports” module for making, generating views in charts – you’ll have to rely on external tools.
AYS Pro
AYS Pro different plugins https://ays-pro.com/wordpress (https://quiz-plugin.com/wordpress-quiz-plugin-pro-demo/)
Price: Single pay for three plans: 49$ Business, 129$ Developer, 249$ Agency.
Haven’t tested it thoroughly yet.
Advantages 👍
Shortcomings 😔
- Separate plugins for survey, quizz or poll
- Charts possible, but on separate plugin
Quiz and Survey Master (QSM)
https://www.quizandsurveymaster.com
Powerful quiz & survey maker plugin for WordPress. The one of only that still provides lifetime license. In general free plugin version allows you to achieve more than many paid plugins. My rating: 7 / 10
Price: Three paid plans: Basic $129, Plus$179, Pro$199 per year or Lifetime: from $387 to $597
Advantages 👍
- Questions can have categories, hints and featured images
- Can calculate and show category score, points or just correct/wrong
- Works with WPML
- Has yearly and lifetime plans
- Extensive documentation
- Can export answers in pdf (paid addon)
- Can generate certificates for quiz
- All questions can be reused later in other survey
- Pagination anywhere you like
Shortcomings 😔
- 3 paid plans for different advanced features
- Custom styling issues
- Conditional logic, captcha only in paid plan
- Very limited settings for validation, calculation
- Missing some question types like “Rating” or “Likert” (in paid addon there are 3 “advanced” question types: Matching Pairs, Radio Grid, and Checkbox Grid, that can simulate)
Modal Survey
Modal survey Regular single price : $44 . +for additional support. Declares itself as best rated survey plugin on codecanyon platform. Can build surveys and quizzes. You can add many types of charts for individual or categorized score display. Administration and question adding ui is not very convenient, and you must read a documentation to understand usage and the “way” of working with this plugin. Experienced some issues also. Not a standard survey visual style, though you can change that through css probably. The price is really an advantage here. My rating – 6.5 / 10
Advantages 👍
- Results can be exported to many formats, including pdf, csv, json
- Allows you to visualize results as charts: pie chart, doughnut chart, bar chart, radar chart, line chart, or polar chart.
- Participants page to view answers.
- Form can be exported/imported for backup
- Multiple ending conditions (custom message or display individual chart at the end of the survey).
- Social Sharing at the end of the Survey.
Shortcomings 😔
- Admin and questions UI is rather complicated – you need to read documentation first, to know all the usage. Also not drag and drop UI.
- No pages or partial display in categories
- Occasional slowdowns and bugs (wrong survey displayed, or not displayed at all)
Piotnet Forms
Price: Free with a premium upgrade to 3 paid plans: from Personal $59/year to Expert $99/year, and agency $189 /year. Lifetime plan available at $350 for 100 sites. It has nice admin UI with many advanced field adjustments like input masks, shortcodes, dynamic values, calculated fields and hidden fields possible. Also can implement custom pagination, add repeatable sections. Not useful for quizzes, though you can make calculations through multiple conditional logic. My rating: 7 / 10.
Advantages 👍
- Fields have advanced options like calculations, hidden fields, presetting values.
- Many styling options, also can have inline fields
- Multi device responsive test in admin UI
- Rather convenient admin UI
- Many submit actions and integrations
- Can import/export forms as json
- Field input masks
Shortcomings 😔
- Not for quizzes so making quiz and calculations can be time consuming (option to make through conditional logic only)
- Occasional bugs like disappearing fields or adjustments not showing correctly
- No charts generation
Watu (Pro) Quiz
https://calendarscripts.info/watupro/ https://calendarscripts.info/watupro/features.html
Three paid plans: $47/year, $87/year +some features, $137/year full. In general it is powerful and very configurable quiz taking plugin, that also can be used for surveys and tests. Though you’ll have to get used to its old school style user interface, and going trough page lots of options. Manual definitely needed. My rating 8 / 10.
Advantages 👍
- Can generate html certificates
- Export to pdf possible with an addon plugin
- Scores per categories can be calculated
- Reporting and charts (limited) possible with additional addon
- Can create timed quizzes
- Can also create like personality quiz without score
- Many setting and configuration options, though not very conveniently organized
Shortcomings 😔
- Settings UI are not very clearly organized and unintuitive, needs a redesign or restructuring
- Adding and configuring questions is inconvenient
- Some contents, questions are not translate-able (using WP language settings).
- Rather limited choice of question (field) types (ex. multi lists or countries combo.. hard to achieve)
- Not clear if custom variables/hidden field is possible
Forminator
https://wpmudev.com/project/forminator-pro/
Price: Free – Has a full working free version | Pro – $7.50/month
Great feature set in the free version, you might even don’t need the famous pricy plugins for your task form, the only premium feature is an e-signature field. Easy for beginners and nice looking UI. You can make simple polls, quizzes and surveys. For quizzes you can only mark correct answers, no scoring. My rating 8 / 10.
Advantages 👍
- Clear and convenient drag’n’drop UI/UX
- Has some advanced features in free version available, like conditional show/hide
- Has a calculations fields, though read only(?)
- Field value validation after input.
- Customization options, custom CSS
- Form, quiz and poll available, though in separate sections and quite different logic for each
Shortcomings 😔
- Not clear how to reuse calculated values in fields.
- No categories available.
- Quiz can only mark correct answers, no scoring.
- Rather simplistic atm. (compared to others)
SurveyJS
SurveyJS is a set of JavaScript components that allow you and your users to build surveys, quizzes, polls, and other web forms, store them in your database, and visualize survey results in custom dashboards. Has a plugin for a WordPress. The plugin is free and is released under the GPLv2 WordPress standard license.
Price: Free – Has a full working free version, commercial usage of GUI-based form/survey builder requires a developer license, which is perpetual, world-wide and royalty-free.
It has probably the best graphical UI to build a survey, and that for a free price. Also there lots of options for the survey and questions themselves. There are many question types that you can need and customize to your need. Results can be exported to csv. However integrations to 3 party tools, email sending, and analyzing or representing results to survey taker are limited. My rating 8 / 10.
Advantages 👍
- Really great UI and options set for building any survey or quiz
- Rating, ranking and matrix fields and many more in free version
- Many advanced settings per question field, calculations possible, conditions possible, variables etc.
- Can add custom validation
- Custom pagination available
- Can export results as csv and for print
- Results are stored in WP Database
Shortcomings 😔
- Limited custom styling options, only prebuilt themes
- May be too technical for general user type
- No integrations to popular third party tools
- Not clear where emailing results after submitting settings are
- Not clear how to write/build custom html visual report
LearnDash
https://www.learndash.com https://www.learndash.com/quiz-options/
LearnDash is system for posting and maintaining online courses, but also has quiz subsystem. LearnDash quiz makin is rather simplistic, but has a nice drag and drop quiz builder. You can mark correct answer only in questions, no points per answer, no calculations or jump logic.
Price: $199 per year
Advantages 👍
- Certificates can be given after submitting.
- Questions can be scored in categories.
- Results page with calculated spent time, categories score, overall score, leaderboards.
- Point scoring system, average comparing to other takers.
- Custom grading/score end messages.
- Possible to review correct/incorrect answers after taking quiz.
Shortcomings 😔
- Oriented towards quizzes, not a standard survey/form behavior.
- Question types are limited for quiz type questions.
- More integrations/features are added through separate plugins, which bloats plugins section.
- Results exporting to csv only.
- No point/score adjustments (per answer) or grading, no calculations.
Thrive Quiz Builder
https://thrivethemes.com/solutions/quizzes/
Thrive Quiz Builder is part of Thrive Suite which includes Thrive Architect, Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Leads, Thrive Apprentice, Thrive Ultimatum, Thrive Ovation, Thrive Optimize, Thrive Comments and Thrive Automator
Thrive Suite Price: $299 per year
Advantages 👍
- Quiz score in point, percentage, personality, or just survey
- Can customize final page (social badge) appearance for sharing to social sites
- Convenient question and style builders, easy to create logical branches
Shortcomings 😔
- Oriented towards quizzes, limited settings, no pagination?
- Question types are limited, no likert or ranking types etc., no numerical or combobox types.
- Not clear how input validation works (no templates?)
- Limited question settings, reusing values?, no categories?
Gravity Forms
https://www.gravityforms.com/features/
Price: Three paid plans: Basic $59, Pro $159, Elite $259 per year
Plus: from $159 to $399 per year for Access to other addons: GravityView, GravityImport, GravityCharts, GravityActions, GravityExport, GravityMath, GravityEdit, GravityCalendar, GravityRevisions
Gravity Forms is one of the most popular WordPress surveys and forms plugin out there, getting many recommendations. But to achieve your task, you may need pricey Elite plan or even more paid plugins, for example charts and export options. If price is not your concern, then it may be good alternative. My rating : 7.5 / 10.
Advantages 👍
- Multicolumn form layout
- Many question types and input masks
- Custom pagination
- Many features and integrations, but probably behind more paid options
- Some extensive documentation online
Shortcomings 😔
- Only paid versions and 3 different plans
- Survey, quiz or poll available through additional separate addons which is in pricey Elite plan only
- Many functions and features clustered through additional addons, like export, charts requires separate paid addons (GFCharts etc.)
- Myriad of addons will bloat your WP plugins section
WS Form Pro
https://wsform.com Trial: https://wsform.com/demo/
Price: Three paid plans: Personal $59, Freelance $149, Agency $249 per year
Advantages 👍
- Many question types including color, input mask, immediate input validation
- As many form submit actions as you want.
- Multiple columns choices (up to 12)
- Advanced conditionals possible (if, then, else) plus on multiple events, many actions
- Calculated values
Shortcomings 😔
- Not for quizzes, you can make one, but would take some work for making manual calculations
- No graphs for results display
WPForms
Price: Has a free version WpForms Lite also Several 4! paid plans: Elite $300, Pro $200, Plus $100 and Basic $50 per year.
Very popular plugin on WP.org. But for the price there are better choices.
Advantages 👍
- Easy for non professionals
- Many ready to use templates
Shortcomings 😔
- Simplistic conditions only
- Free version limited on functionality
- Survey, quiz functions available through additional paid addon which is in pricy Pro plan only
- Many functions and features clustered through additional paid plans
- Additional addons will bloat your WP plugins section
Final verdict and remarks
Some final remarks and insights:
- If looking for paid and trusted that could do everything you’ll want, there are three Old Grands in survey (poll, quiz) WP world – WPForms, GravityForms and Formidable Forms, you’ll definitely would need a paid version of either of them if you needs go beyond basic contact form. WpForms is just too fractured into different addon plugins and is rather simplistic at the functional level, perhaps oriented towards general user type. GravityForms feels somehow ancient but has myriad of additional functionalities and solutions, also clustered in hundreds additional plugins. Formidable Forms is solid plugin and has great structured workflow. There are also some levels per needed addon plugins, but perhaps less clustered than other two. I would choose Formidable Forms for new complicated survey projects.
- If you’re looking for a free version of the survey (quiz) or form plugin, there’s Forminator, Tripetto and SurveyJS. Forminator in the free version offers a lot, even some paid versions doesn’t provide that much. Tripetto has a nice user interface, also provides great visually looking forms, logic branches and calculations. SurveyJS has probably the best survey and quiz building tool, and that for the price of free, the only limitation is reports and integrations, which you would need to make yourself.
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