FormLift vs. The Official Infusionsoft WP Plugin

I have to admit, we were a bit worried when Infusionsoft announced their release of the official WordPress Infusionsoft plugin for web forms. Mostly we were worried they would reverse engineer FormLift (Their developers downloaded it twice, no seriously! I have the receipt). But it looks like our fears were unwarranted because they actually based their plugin off Bloom, which I featured in another post The Ultimate Web Form Comparison. Although I have to admit had they “copied” our work we would have been flattered. It appears they mostly just changed the logos and the UI a bit, but overall it’s just a “fork” (a stage of development which has been publicly released by the creators of Bloom fo further development) of Bloom.

Of course, things have changed (slightly), so we’re going to do a head to head comparison between FormLift and The Official Infusionsoft Plugin!

Round 1: Design

FormLift

As it always has been. FormLift is styled 100% by the end user, coming up with their own theme to best match their website’s style. While sometimes not super intuitive, FormLift also comes with good looking default styling to aid the user in their usage. There are no default themes or templates to use, just simple form styling. Also, FormLift is 100% about the form. There are no lightboxes, no images, nothing like that to get in the way of creating the form. It’s very no-frills in that respect.

Official Plugin

Like Bloom before it, this plugin comes with SO MANY templates to help you design your forms. These templates generally include text, header, and an image to say what the form is about. You can style limited colours and styling. But generally, you can get by with custom styling if you want certain things to look certain ways. But the amount of customization is rather limited.

Round 2: UI

FormLift

We’ve rebuilt FormLift from the ground up three times trying to get it just right. when Version 6 rolled out we were super happy with it and our users were too. With the form import feature, you can have a form on your site within seconds. And settings never go more than 1 level deep.
The UI is simple to navigate and never changes throughout the plugin, making it as brain dead as possible for users to create beautiful forms.

Official Plugin

Like it’s predecessor, the Offical Plugin uses the setup guide method to create forms. There is a total of three steps you have to go through before you can create a form and place it on your site. So you’re generally looking at 5-10 minute time commitment to create a form with the Official Plugin. Which isn’t a deal breaker, but can be annoying if you’re trying to get a project moving quickly. It also changes the fonts in the WP menu, not that it’s a big deal but it’s kind of distracting.

Round 3: Functionality

FormLift

Again, FormLift is all about the forms and not much else. But it packs a lot of functionality into those forms including complex validation, conditional display and redirects, Google captcha, pre-population, and much more. Plus it comes with the ability to personalize pages with shortcodes that merge user data. All in all it’s pretty and definitely the option you want if you’re planning on doing complex automation! With FormLift you also do not lose default Infusionsoft form functionality like tracking. Basically, it does everything you wish you could do with regular Infusionsoft forms. Oh, and it works with your existing Infusionsoft Forms, so no need to go changing all your goals in campaigns.

Official Plugin

It’s free Thrive Leads. That’s what it is. It’s heavily opt-in/lead magnet based. This is not what you want to use if you have intake forms. Plus, affiliate tracking and lead source tracking do not work with this plugin (yet). It does have really cool features like time-based pop-ups, top page bars, split testing and that good stuff. But misses out on the more subtle things that FormLift does like the auto-population and the conditional redirects.

The Conclusion: Use both

They are compatible, use them at the same time. If you’re on a budget use the Official Plugin for your fly in opt-ins and your easy stuff. But when you need some complex automation or a personalized thank you page use FormLift to power your system.

FromLift and the Official Plugin fill two very different spaces in form functionality, FormLift for Automation and Functionality and the Official Plugin to drive lead capture.

But wait, Round 4…

If you combine FormLift with literally any free pop-up plugin (I use Popup Maker, Best Rated) in the WP repository you get all the cool stuff that the Offical Plugin does (without using the official plugin) AND all the bonuses of FormLift. That is way more powerful!

Oh, and you can try FormLift for free too!