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Meet Formidable

Formidable is a forms add-on for ExpressionEngine 7.5 and later. Build a form in the control panel, or keep the form you already wrote, and Formidable handles everything after: rendering, validation, spam protection, storage, notifications and handing submissions on to the services you use.

Why Formidable?​

Most form tools make you choose. Either a builder owns your markup, or you own your markup and write the plumbing yourself. Formidable doesn't make you pick.

  • One tag, a complete form. {exp:formidable:form form_handle="contact"} renders a finished, accessible form from a theme. That's the whole template.
  • Then take over as much as you like. Swap one class, one attribute, one field's markup, or the whole form. Every layer you don't replace keeps working.
  • Or bring your own. Wrap a hand-written form in {exp:formidable:capture} and Formidable builds the form behind it, leaving your markup exactly as you wrote it.
  • The server is the source of truth. Conditions, required fields, computed values and limits are decided again on submit, whatever the browser sent.

What's in the box​

A visual builder

Pages, sections and a grid. Drag fields in, resize them, and read every condition as a sentence.

Every field you need

Text, dates, choices, uploads, signatures, computed values, CAPTCHA, Turnstile and hCaptcha.

Conditional logic

Show, hide or require fields, skip pages and hide sections, on the page and on the server.

Repeating sections

"Add another" for dependants, employers or line items, with totals across the rows.

Submissions you can work with

Filters, saved views, statuses, encryption at rest, and exports to CSV, JSON, XML and text.

Workflows

Email, webhooks and CRM pushes, each with its own conditions, a replayable log and an optional queue.

Save and resume

Long forms can be saved part-way, finished later, and followed up with a reminder.

A JSON API

Serve forms and accept submissions from any front end, with the same validation as a posted form.

Where to start​

Formidable is available from the ExpressionEngine add-on store.

New to Formidable? Read these three in order. They take about fifteen minutes, and everything else will make sense afterwards.

  1. Installation: where to get Formidable, its requirements, and the two folders to copy.
  2. Your first form: build a contact form and put it on a page.
  3. How it works: the pieces, and the path a submission takes through them.

Already comfortable? Jump to the form tag reference, or learn to render a form your way.

Requirements​

ExpressionEngine7.5 or later
PHP8.2 or later
DatabaseWhatever your version of ExpressionEngine requires
About the examples

Template examples name the file they belong in. Where a page shows the HTML Formidable produces, it's labelled either rendered output, copied from a real install, or illustrative, written by hand to show a shape. Every tag parameter in these docs is checked against the add-on's source each time the site builds.