Importing Forms from Other Plugins

Core Forms ships importers for six form plugins: Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WPForms, Fluent Forms, Ninja Forms, and Formidable Forms (the last two are new in 4.4). Each selected source form becomes a brand-new Core Forms form — source forms and their data are never modified, so you can run both plugins side by side while you cut over.

Using the Import screen

1. Go to Core Forms → Import in the WordPress admin (requires the edit_forms capability).
2. Pick a source from the plugin cards. Each card shows how many forms are ready to import, or a note when the plugin isn't detected.
3. Review the per-form list. Every row shows the form title plus a summary of what will be converted — detected field names for Contact Form 7 (with an expandable Preview converted HTML panel), or field and action counts for the other sources — so you can inspect a form before committing.
4. Tick the forms you want (or Select all) and click Import selected forms.

After the import you get a success notice with a link to your Core Forms list, plus a warning listing any forms that were skipped because they could not be parsed. Imported forms get unique slugs automatically, so re-running an import creates fresh copies rather than overwriting anything.

What carries across

All importers convert source fields to Core Forms' plain-HTML markup, map notifications to Send Email actions, and carry success messages and redirect URLs into the form settings. Field tokens in email templates are translated too (for example Gravity's {field:name} or WPForms' "all fields" table become [name] and [all:label]).

Source	Detected via	What is imported
Contact Form 7	CF7 active	Shortcode markup → HTML, the mail template → an Email action, and custom messages → Core Forms message overrides.
Gravity Forms	GF active (GFAPI)	Fields, every notification (with its conditional logic as per-recipient conditions), the default confirmation → success message / redirect, and field-level conditional logic.
WPForms (Lite + Pro)	WPForms active	Form definitions and notifications (with conditional logic), plus an optional entry import — see below.
Fluent Forms	fluentform_forms table exists	Fields, notifications (with per-recipient conditions), webhook integrations → Webhook actions, and field-level conditional logic.
Ninja Forms (new in 4.4)	Ninja Forms active	Field schemas, email actions, success messages, redirects, webhooks, and supported conditions.
Formidable Forms (new in 4.4)	Formidable active	Field definitions, email notifications, confirmations (message and redirect), and supported field settings such as placeholders and options.

WPForms entry import

When a WPForms Pro entries table is present, the WPForms panel shows an "Also import existing entries" checkbox (on by default). Selected forms then bring their stored entries into the Core Forms submissions table alongside the form definition, and the success notice reports how many entries came across.

Fluent Forms works without the plugin active

The Fluent Forms importer reads the fluentform_forms and fluentform_form_meta database tables directly rather than calling the Fluent Forms API. That means it also works on sites where Fluent Forms has already been deactivated or deleted — as long as its tables are still in the database, your forms appear on the Import screen.

Conditional logic

Field-level show/hide rules carry across where the source supports them (Gravity Forms, WPForms, Fluent Forms, Ninja Forms) and become data-show-if / data-hide-if attributes that the Core Forms runtime evaluates on the frontend. Two limitations to know about:

• A single attribute holds one rule per field. When a source field has multiple AND-combined rules, the importer keeps the first usable rule and you re-add the rest in the editor.
• "Is not" operators are converted by flipping show ↔ hide, which produces the same effective behavior.

What doesn't carry across

• Contact Form 7 submissions stored in Flamingo are out of scope.
• Layout-only elements (HTML blocks, section dividers) are replaced with an HTML comment placeholder rather than converted.
• Source-plugin add-ons and integrations beyond email and webhook actions need to be reconnected using Core Forms' own actions.

Forms that can't be parsed at all are skipped and reported — nothing partial is created.

After importing

1. Open each imported form under Core Forms and review the generated markup in the editor.
2. Send a test submission and confirm the Email/Webhook actions fire as expected.
3. Swap the old plugin's shortcode or block for the Core Forms one — see Embedding Forms.
4. Once you're satisfied, deactivate the source plugin. Your imported forms are fully independent copies.

Prefer the command line? Core Forms' own JSON export/import is available via WP-CLI for moving forms between Core Forms installs.