Why?
Not every online sale needs a full e-commerce store. Gravity Forms is perfect when you want to sell something simple, custom, or occasional – without setting up a full shopping cart.
Here are a few situations where Gravity Forms is the better fit:
One-time or limited-run sales
Selling a single product, ticket, or event registration? Gravity Forms can collect payment, calculate totals, and send confirmation emails – all in one place, without the overhead of managing a store.
Donations or “add-on” payments
If you’re collecting donations, membership fees, or optional add-ons (like a premium gift with donation or custom thank-you gift), Gravity Forms gives you total flexibility. You can create conditional fields like “Would you like to receive a tote bag?” and only show extra options when selected.
Custom or service-based pricing
When your offerings aren’t as simple as “add to cart,” Gravity Forms shines. You can use dropdowns, checkboxes, or calculation fields to let buyers build their own package – like choosing consulting hours, design options, or class add-ons.
Simpler maintenance
WooCommerce and Shopify are fantastic for managing full product catalogs, inventory, and shipping – but they come with extra setup, plugins, and ongoing updates. Gravity Forms is lighter, faster, and easier to maintain, especially when you’re only selling a few items or taking payments through a single form.
Seamless integration
Because it lives right inside your WordPress site, Gravity Forms can connect with your existing tools – email lists, CRMs, payment gateways, and more – without adding a separate platform or checkout system.
In short:
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Use Gravity Forms for one-off sales, donations, events, or custom payments.
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Use WooCommerce or Shopify when you need a full shopping experience – multiple products, shipping, inventory, and ongoing transactions.
Many of our clients use both – Gravity Forms for special campaigns or services, and a store platform for their regular products. The key is choosing the tool that meets your needs.
How?
A Simple Client Checklist
If you want to sell products or services directly on your website using Gravity Forms, here’s what I’ll need from you – and some explanations to help you understand each step. We’ll handle the technical setup, but the more details you provide, the better your form will work for you, and the more efficient the process will be.
️ Your Shopping Form Essentials
1. What Are You Selling?
Tell me what you’re offering so that we can build your form around your products or services.
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Product names & brief descriptions:
Example: “Fruit box, Monthly meal plan, Consulting package” -
Options or variations:
Size, color, flavor, frequency, or other customer choices -
Product details (if applicable):
SKU, price, quantity, and whether the price is fixed or based on user input (like number of boxes or hours).
If you’re replacing an existing form, please share its URL so I can match the layout and functionality.
2. Collecting Your Buyers’ Info
Let’s make sure your form captures all the customer information you need.
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Standard fields:
Name, Email, Phone, Address -
Custom questions:
“Preferred delivery date,” “Add a gift note,” “Company name,” etc. -
Validation rules:
Do you need limits on word count or require specific formats?
You can also choose whether some fields only appear under certain conditions (for example, a details box might only appear if a user clicked “other” from a list of choices).
3. Payment Details
Your form can accept payments through several gateways.
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Payment method: Stripe, PayPal, Square, or others
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Type of payment: One-time, recurring (subscriptions), or donations
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Discounts or coupons: Should users be able to enter promo codes?
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Currency: USD, CAD, etc.
If you already have a payment account, please add us as developers, if possible, so that we can connect it. If not, we’ll have to coordinate creating a connection.
4. Handling Taxes (and Why Many Clients Skip It)
When you sell online, you might need to charge sales tax – but whether this makes sense to do on the form depends on various factors. If you need to collect taxes in more than one tax area, you may need to deal with many (many) tax rates, all of which are subject to change unpredictably. There are services that can get the current tax rate on the fly, but you have to subscribe and pay for them.
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Tax tools: Tools like TaxJar, Avalara, Stripe Tax, and Gravity Forms Tax Add-Ons can feed in current tax rates.
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Development: Charging more than one tax rate in your form can add to development costs.
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Maintenance: Even automated systems require setup and periodic review.
Because of this, many clients choose to skip sales tax in their Gravity Forms setup – especially if sales are small or handled under a separate accounting process. Often clients will calculate taxes manually for small scale sales.
If you decide to collect tax, please let us know:
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Do you want tax calculated automatically or entered manually?
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If automatically, what service do you want to use?
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What rate(s) apply, and for which items?
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Do you have any state exemptions or nonprofit rules?
5. After Payment: Confirmation & Notifications
Once a customer completes their purchase, what happens next?
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Thank-you message or redirect:
Should buyers see a thank-you statement or be redirected to a thank-you page?
If you want to send them to a thank you page, that will need to be designed and built with content. -
Confirmation emails:
What should the email to the user say? -
From / Reply-to email addresses:
What email address should the email come from?
If the user replies, what email address should replies go to? (generally the from email, but not always) -
Admin notifications:
Who on your team should get notified of new orders?
6. Privacy, Legal, & Integrations
Your sales form can connect with your other tools and meet legal requirements.
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Privacy Policy or Terms:
Do you want customers to check a box agreeing to your policy before submitting? (Please share the link or text.) -
Third-party integrations:
Do you want the form to connect to an email marketing service (Mailchimp, Constant Contact), CRMs (Hubspot, Salesforce), or automation tools (Zapier, Asana)?
7. Where Should the Form Go?
Tell me where the form should live on your site:
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Add to an existing page (please share the URL)
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Create a new page (describe where it should appear in your menu or navigation)
8. Data, Security & Delivery
How should you receive submissions?
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Email notifications only
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Export to a spreadsheet (Google Sheets, Excel, CSV)
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Sync to a CRM or third-party app
9. Reliable Email Delivery (SMTP)
When someone submits a form, you want to be sure the email notification arrives in your inbox – not your spam folder. Using “SMTP” helps your website send email securely and reliably, but it can take additional work to set up.
If desired, we can set this up for you using your existing email provider (like Gmail or Outlook) or coordinate with your IT contact to make sure everything works seamlessly.
