How to migrate from Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms

How to Migrate From Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms

Written by Casey Burridge Marketing Coordinator at GravityKit since 2021, Casey is an expert on Gravity Forms, WordPress, and marketing.

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Are you planning to migrate your Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms? Caldera Forms is no longer being supported so now is the perfect time to migrate over to a new, more robust WordPress form plugin.

But moving your forms and form entries over to a new plugin can be a daunting task, especially if you have hundreds (or thousands) of entries! You may feel stuck, not knowing what to do.

Here’s the good news. Migrating your data to Gravity Forms couldn’t be easier. Furthermore, there’s no need to manually rebuild your forms and no risk of losing important data. Sound good? Keep reading to find out more! 👇

What Is Caldera Forms?

Caldera Forms is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to create responsive forms using a drag and drop editor. The plugin was built for ease of use and includes a range of user-friendly add-ons for both WordPress beginners and web developers alike.

Why Migrate From Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms?

Early in 2021, Saturday Drive (the company that acquired Caldera Forms) announced that the plugin would be sunset/retired at the end of the year. The plugin has over 200,000 active installs, meaning there are now thousands of Caldera Forms users looking for a new web form solution.

Although there are several contact form plugins for WordPress, the best alternative to Caldera Forms is Gravity Forms! Not only does Gravity Forms include a drag and drop visual form builder, but it also comes with a host of other powerful features. This includes AJAX submit, conditional logic, accessibility features, and more.

Gravity Forms also supports a wide range of add-ons, allowing you to integrate your forms with email marketing platforms, CRMs, and many other third-party applications. This makes it easy to grow your user base and build an email list.

Caldera Forms vs Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms was one of the very first premium WordPress form plugins. Gravity Forms is known for its intuitive drag and drop editor and advanced accessibility features. Gravity Forms is supported by a passionate team that continually strives to push the boundaries when it comes to WordPress form functionality.

Apart from the many add-ons offered by Gravity Forms themselves, there are 7 certified developers that maintain various premium add-ons for extending and enhancing Gravity Forms.

Caldera Forms is a WordPress form plugin with an extensive “free” option that includes features like conditional logic and multi-page forms. While the Caldera Forms drag and drop form builder doesn’t come close to rivaling that of Gravity Forms, it still gets the job done! Caldera Forms also comes with a variety of templates, allowing you to get a new form up and running in no time. 

While Caldera Forms is being retired at the end of 2021, Gravity Forms remains #1 when it comes to WordPress form plugins 🚀

1. Export Your Entries From Caldera Forms

The first step of the form migration process is to export your form entries from Caldera Forms. To do this, hover over Caldera Forms in your menu admin menu and click Forms.

An arrow pointing to the forms links undernearth the Caldera Forms menu item in WordPress

Next, hover over your form and click on the Entries link.

The entries link undernearth the form name in Caldera Forms

On the right, you’ll see a list of all your form entries. To export your form entries, click the green button that says “Export All”. Alternatively, select the entries you want to export, click on the Bulk Actions dropdown menu, and select Export Selected

The 'Export All' button above the entries list in Caldera Forms

Your form entries will now download to your computer as a single CSV file. Each field in your form will be represented by a column in the CSV file.

An Excel spreadsheet containing columns for each form field

After downloading your form entries, be sure to save the CSV somewhere you’ll remember and move on to the next step.

2. Install Gravity Forms Import Entries

The Import Entries add-on for Gravity Forms allows you to import form data from a CSV file. You can import entries to an existing form in Gravity Forms, or allow the plugin to create a new one for you during the import process.

Import Entries makes it easy to migrate form data from other form plugins (like Fluent Forms, Contact Form 7, or Ninja Forms) to Gravity Forms.

To install Import Entries, you’ll need to first purchase a plugin license from our website. After that, head over to your Account page and download the plugin ZIP file. Finally, log in to your WordPress site, go to the Plugins page, and upload the plugin file.

When Import Entries has finished installing, click Activate. Now you’re ready to move on to the next step!

3. Import Your CSV File to Gravity Forms

Now that you’ve installed Import Entries, you can import the CSV containing your Caldera Forms entries to Gravity Forms. To do this, ensure that you have Gravity Forms installed, then hover over Forms and click Import/Export.

An arrow pointing to the Import Entries tab on the left of the Gravity Forms Import/Export page

Next, click on the tab that says “Import Entries”. Now drag and drop your CSV file into the box to upload it using the entry importer.

Dragging and dropping a CSV file onto the Import Entries screen to upload it

After uploading your CSV file, you’ll need to choose whether to import your entries to an existing form or create a new form. Select Create a New Form and give your new form a name. 

An arrow pointing to a button that says 'Create a New Form'

When you’re done, move on to the next step by clicking Continue With Import.

4. Map Your Fields

The next step of the import process is to map the columns in your CSV file to the correct field types in Gravity Forms. The importer will automatically detect the different data types in your CSV attempt to map them to the correct fields in Gravity Forms. However, sometimes you’ll need to manually update the field type by clicking on the FIELD TYPE dropdown and selecting a new field type.

Mapping fields in Import Entries

As you can see, the importer is trying to map the “Submitted” column to a Time field, which is not correct because the field contains a date and a time. To change this, we’ll simply click on the FIELD TYPE dropdown and select the Entry Date field under Entry Properties.

The FIELD TYPE dropdown menu

When you’re finished mapping your fields, scroll down and click Continue With Import.

5. Configure the Import Options

We’re almost done! The final step of the import process is to configure the import options. Here you’ll see the following three options:

  • Continue Processing If Errors Occur
    Enabling this option will ensure that the import continues even if errors are found.
  • Conditional Import
    Enabling this option will open the conditional logic settings, allowing you to import entries only if they match certain parameters.
  • Email Notifications
    Enabling email notifications will ensure that email notifications are sent as usual when new entries are added. If you’re importing a large number of entries, you may want to leave this option disabled, otherwise, you may risk overloading your inbox!
The Import Entries Import Options

When you’re done, click Create Form and Continue With Import. Import Entries will now import your Caldera Forms entries and create a new form for you in Gravity Forms 😎

6. Replace Your Caldera Form With Your New Gravity Form

The final step of the migration process is to replace your own Caldera Form with your newly created Gravity Form!

Head over to the page/post where your Caldera Form is displayed and delete the Caldera Form block. You can do this by clicking on the three dots and selecting Remove block

An arrow pointing to the 'Remove block' link in the WordPress block settings menu

Now click on the ‘+’ icon and add a Gravity Forms block to your page. 

The Gravity Forms block in the WordPress block editor

After adding the block, select your new form from the dropdown menu.

An arrow pointing to the 'Select a Form' dropdown menu on the Gravity Forms block

After selecting your form, you’ll see a preview of your form load inside the block editor. 

Preview of a Gravity Form inside the WordPress block editor

When you’re done, save your page by clicking Update. That’s it! You have successfully migrated your form (and the entries attached to it) from Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms!

Are You Ready to Migrate Your Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms?

Caldera Forms is a free contact form plugin for WordPress with over 200,000 active installs! The plugin was acquired by Saturday Drive in 2019 and now they’ve decided to sunset/retire the Caldera Forms plugin at the end of 2021.

In this post, we showed you how to migrate your Caldera Forms to Gravity Forms in 6 simple steps. First, you need to export your entry data from Caldera Forms to a CSV file and then you can import it to Gravity Forms using the Import Entries plugin. 

Import Entries will guide you through the import process and automatically create a new form for you in Gravity Forms which means there’s almost no manual work involved! So what are you waiting for? Get Import Entries and start migrating your form data today!

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