Contact Form 7 vs Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types
Compare WordPress plugins and tools side by side. Pick products with “Compare” in the software directory.
| Feature | Contact Form 7 v6.2.3 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.0/5 Visit Details | Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types v3.1.33 · checked 23 Oct 2026 Free · ★ 4.4/5 Visit Details |
|---|---|---|
| At a glance | ||
| Active installs | 10M+ | 10,000+ |
| Last updated | October 21, 2026 | September 17, 2026 |
| Editions | Contact Form 7 | Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types |
| Pros | Completely free, with no upsells in the code; Several spam options: Akismet, reCAPTCHA, Turnstile, quiz, disallowed list; Stripe payment field and Brevo contact sync built in | Maps form submissions to a chosen custom post type; Saves taxonomy terms from form fields; Shows term names in entry views and exports |
| Cons | No visual drag-and-drop builder; forms are markup; No conditional logic or multi-step forms without add-ons; Does not store submissions without Flamingo | Requires Gravity Forms and a minimum Gravity Forms version; Only maps to custom post types and taxonomies, not to other data; Shows an admin warning when Gravity Forms is missing or too old |
| Mentioned in our posts | 1 | — |
| Features (Form plugins checklist) | ||
| Drag-and-drop builder | No | — |
| Conditional logic | No | — |
| Multi-step forms | No | — |
| Payments | Yes | — |
| File upload | Yes | — |
| Calculations | No | — |
| Entries in admin | No | — |
| Spam protection | Yes | — |
| Free version | Yes | — |
| More features | ||
| Other features | Form-tag markup editor for fields and mail templates, Block editor contact form selector, REST API for forms and submission feedback, Quiz and Really Simple CAPTCHA tags, Spam check against the WordPress disallowed comment keys, Saves submissions to Flamingo when that plugin is active | Map form submissions to a custom post type, Save taxonomy terms from form fields after the post is created, Form setup hook for the chosen post type and taxonomies, Show term names in entry detail, list and export, Checks for Gravity Forms and a minimum version |
| Integrations | ||
| Payment | Stripe | — |
| Brevo (Sendinblue) | — | |
| Plugins | Akismet, Flamingo | Gravity Forms |
| Other | Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile | — |
| Requires WordPress | 7.1 | 3.0.1 |
| Requires PHP | 8.3 | 5.6 |
| Tested up to | 7.1 | 7.1 |
| Phones home | No | No |
| External services | api.stripe.com, www.google.com, www.recaptcha.net, challenges.cloudflare.com, api.sendinblue.com | — |
| Blocks | 1 | — |
| Shortcodes | 2 | — |