WS Form PRO

The number that matters on a form is how many fields you removed

It is the opposite of what any form builder promises, and worth saying before discussing features.

Every field you add costs submissions. Not a little: a fair amount. The contact form asking for first name, surname, email, phone, company, job title, city, estimated budget and "how did you hear about us" receives a fraction of the messages it would receive asking only for the email and the problem.

And most of those fields exist because somebody thought it would be nice to have the data, not because anybody will look at it. The question to ask of each field is simple: if this arrived empty, would anything change about what I do with the message? If the answer is no, out it goes.

WS Form PRO is an advanced builder for when what you genuinely need is a complex form, and that is where it makes sense.

What it brings

• A drag and drop editor for forms of any complexity.
• A broad catalogue of fields ready to use.
• Advanced real-time validation, correcting as you type rather than on submit.
• Conditional logic, showing or hiding fields according to what the visitor answers.
• Integration with external services: email, customer systems and webhooks.
• Reusable templates, useful if you build many similar forms.

Conditional logic is how a long form gets made short

Here is the way out of the problem above, and the main reason for buying an advanced tool rather than a basic one.

There are cases where you genuinely need fifteen pieces of data: a renovation quote, an insurance application, an enrolment with options. You cannot remove them because you need them in order to work.

What you can do is not show them all at once. With conditional logic the visitor sees three questions, and depending on the answers the next ones appear. The form has the same fifteen fields and feels like one with five, because nobody ever sees the ones that do not apply to them.

And real-time validation does the other half: flagging the error in the phone field while it is being typed, rather than after pressing submit and losing everything entered.

Two things to decide before publishing any form

What happens to the data. A form collects personal data and stores it in your database. That calls for, at minimum, a consent box that does not arrive ticked, a link to your policy, and a decision on how long you keep submissions. Accumulating four years of messages with phone numbers and addresses because nobody remembered to delete them is the usual case.

How you stop spam. A public form with no protection fills with automated submissions within days. Invisible trap fields work surprisingly well and bother nobody, which is more than can be said for other solutions.

Requirements

It needs WordPress. Integrations with external services require an account and credentials for each.

Alternatives in the catalogue

The catalogue's most widespread by a distance is WPForms Pro, which is also the easiest to handle if your forms are not complicated. Fluent Forms is the light and fast alternative.

If you work with Elementor and want the form inside the builder, MetForm and Cool FormKit fit better for where they live.

And if your form has to end in a document, which is a very common case with quotes and contracts, E2Pdf turns the submission into a PDF using your template, and Gravity PDF does the same in the Gravity Forms ecosystem.

If what you need is the form calculating a price from variables, that is another piece: Uni CPO.

Frequently asked questions

How many fields should a form have?
The minimum needed to work. Every extra field costs submissions.

How do I make a long form short?
With conditional logic: three questions get shown and the next appear according to the answers.

Does it integrate with other services?
Yes, with email, customer systems and webhooks, using each one's credentials.

Do I need a consent box?
Yes, unticked, along with a link to your policy and a decided retention period.

How do I avoid spam?
Invisible trap fields work well and bother no visitor.

Is it too much if my form is simple?
It can be. For contact and little else there are simpler options, quicker to set up.