You got your e-learning website in Moodle™ up and running. Great! What comes next is crucial – Having forms on your site. But, with a plethora of form building tools out there. The most popular ones being the Moodle Contact Form and the Edwiser Forms, which one should you go for. Ever wondered about the challenges involved in form creation and how these plugins can help?
You’re about to find out…
Moodle™ Contact Form
Moodle does have a free plugin called the Contact Form for creating forms in your Moodle site. The contact form plugin allows an administrator of a Moodle site to log in and configure a contact form for that site.
This plugin is not a web form builder but a web form processor. You need to understand HTML before you start using the plugin for form creation.
Edwiser Forms
Edwiser Forms plugin is a multipurpose, powerful form builder for your Moodle site. It is quick and easy to use. It does not require any expertise in coding or development.
Let’s see how Edwiser Forms plugin performs against the Moodle Contact Form plugin.
Edwiser Forms Vs. Moodle Contact Form
#1. Ease of Form Creation
Edwiser Forms – Edwiser Forms is a drag and drop form builder. You can create unlimited varieties of forms by simply dragging and dropping form fields from the list on the chosen template. You can add/remove/reposition the fields of your preference with a simple drag and drop technique.
Here’s how you can save time. Edwiser Forms plugin is well equipped with pre-existing form templates to choose from. You can create different types of forms aligning with your purpose, in minutes.
You can unlock more features with the Edwiser Forms Pro.
Moodle Contact Form – There’s a limitation on the type of forms that can be created using the Contact Form plugin. Also, it lacks the drag and drop functionality.
You can create the following forms using the Contact Form plugin:
- Contact Us Form
- Support Request Form
- Request a Course Form
- Information Request Form
- Lead Generation Form
- Membership Application Form
But, there’s no provision for convenient dragging and dropping of fields, to build endless forms with fields as many as you like.
As shown in the screenshot below, you need to write an 8 line HTML code just to create a simple two-field contact form. Similarly, a 20 line HTML code is required for a Request a New Course form or a 32 line code for the Support Request form and so on.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It has readymade form templates with simple drag and drop functionality
- Moodle Contact Form – It requires HTML knowledge or coding effort
Code for Moodle Contact Form
Created Contact Form
The Moodle Contact plugin allows for the creation of various form types. But they do not come with a ready to use set of form templates that could be customized in a jiffy. So, the form building process here is a bit tedious compared to Edwiser Forms.
#2. Ease of Field Addition
Edwiser Forms – It has more than 20 ready-to-use form field types to create customized forms. You can capitalize on these fields to make the most of your forms.
You can create customized forms using the drag and drop functionality if you think you need more form fields.
A cherry on top! You are not required to know the HTML5 basics to achieve this.
Moodle Contact Form – In Moodle, customizing forms require additional knowledge of HTML5. You need to know how to create basic HTML5 web forms since there are no ready-to-use form fields.
Also, It does not properly support more than one Text Area type field. You can have multiple Text Area type fields but the formatting won’t be that great.
There’s a limitation of 1024 fields including the submit button and the hidden fields. Further, you cannot submit more than 256 KB of data through web forms created with Moodle Contact form plugin.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It has 20+ ready-to-use form fields for custom form creation needs
- Moodle Contact Form – Customization of forms require additional knowledge of HTML5
#3. Spam Protection
Edwiser Forms – Edwiser Forms plugin is equipped to handle spam protection. It prevents spam bots from filling your forms making sure all the data gathered is authentic.
Moodle Contact Form – There is a condition in Moodle for anti-spam protection. Four input fields are crucial and must be included. They are name, email, sesskey, submit. Edwiser Forms plugin makes the cut in this case as there’s no such condition.
Also. blocking specific spam IP addresses in Moodle can be a bit taxing. The server settings need to be tweaked by referring to the Moodle web server documentation. Another way is to request the admin to block spammy IPs.
It’s tricky as there is a high risk that you could lock yourself out of Moodle while trying to accomplish this task.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It can effectively take care of spam protection
- Moodle Contact Form – Spam protection, although possible, is a bit complex
#4. Capability to Build Complex and Dynamic Forms
Edwiser Forms – Conditional logic enables you to build smart and dynamic forms. In Edwiser Forms, conditional logic is implemented for both checkboxes as well as radio-buttons. You decide different routes your form can take on the basis of user input. Different fields will appear with different user inputs.
For instance, in a food delivery app/website, the Upload a Picture of the Food Item field appears in response to a complaint initiated by the user or a Purchase ID field is created when the user selects the Return option
In a nutshell, the form fields will dynamically change/show/hide in response to different types of user queries so that multiple possibilities can be explored in a single form.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It supports conditional logic and can create smart, dynamic forms
- Moodle Contact Form – The conditional logic feature is missing in the Moodle Contact Form plugin
#5. Support for Multi-Page Forms
Edwiser Forms – Edwiser Forms saves you from boring, endless form scrolling. Long forms are divided into multiple pages to simplify the form-filling task for your e-learners. You can also access the information submitted across multiple pages, on one page in your backend
Moodle Contact Form – This feature is missing in the Moodle Contact Form plugin. Lengthy forms cannot be split into neat multi-page layouts, affecting user experience.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It supports multi-page forms to prevent indefinite scrolling
- Moodle Contact Form – It does not support multi-page forms, affecting the user experience
#6. Settings and Configuration Complexity
Edwiser Forms – Customized emails add a personal touch to what you are trying to convey. They appear more relevant. You can create customized emails in your forms using Edwiser Forms. The process is simpler than you think.
No frills here…You can directly type your message into the “Form Confirmation Email Message” box.
Moodle Contact Form – It does not have a provision for customized emails. Moreover, configuring an email message in Moodle contact forms is a time-consuming affair. A fixed format must be followed while adding the name of the recipient – alias|email address|name, as shown below
Email configuration in Moodle forms is not as quick as Edwiser Forms and involves a series of steps. All the editing of the language strings for the email message takes place on the Moodle Language Editor.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – Email configuration is simpler. You can directly add the message in the dedicated message box
- Moodle Contact Form – Adding an email id follows a fixed format. Also, it is a cumbersome task.
#7. Ease of Integration of Forms
Edwiser Forms – There are absolutely no placement constraints when it comes to adding your forms on the website. You can directly embed the form wherever you like, ensuring visibility of your forms for the users.
For instance, the feedback form can be embedded on the student dashboard. Simply copy-paste the shortcode to the desired page and you will have the form on the targeted page in seconds.
Moodle Contact Form – The task of adding forms on your website can be a bit technical in nature. A fair understanding of HTML might be a plus here. You first need to add an HTML block or a Moodle page.
An editor called Moodle Atto editor is used for copying and pasting the HTML code to create forms. If you wish to put the form in a block, you need to adjust the “../..” part in the action attribute of your form. Moodle does have the FilterCodes plugin to simplify this task. But it still requires the effort of understanding HTML.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – Forms can be quickly embedded into the target page using the shortcode functionality
- Moodle Contact Form – Moodle Contact Form requires HTML effort
#8. Data Entry Management
Edwiser Forms – More the number of data entries, the more difficult it is to manage them. Edwiser Forms have a solution for your inbox clutter. Effective data storage and management are taken care of. You can view and analyze all the data from one place.
Imagine all this data sent to you via email, form by form! Nightmare, right? Think about how you will process and study all that data. Edwiser Forms plugin has made the task of data management problem-free.
Moodle Contact Form – It is not capable of doing much to keep your inbox neat and clean. The reason being, the data entries are sent to you via email, on a per form basis. Also, a huge number of entries could make data analysis difficult.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It is capable of effective data storage and management. So, it keeps your inbox clutter-free. Further, the data can be downloaded or exported in CSV format to an excel sheet for analysis
- Moodle Contact Form – It clutters your inbox with entries, on per form basis.
#9. Support for File Uploads
Edwiser Forms – With Edwiser forms, you can easily upload files of different types such as images, videos, hyperlinked text, etc. Edwiser Forms support most file types. This is great for complex forms doing complex work.
Moodle Contact Form – This is also one of the limitations of the Moodle Contact Form plugin. There exists no support for attachments/file uploads of different types. There is no support file attachments type fields or form-data encoded as “multipart/form-data”.
Bottomline
- Edwiser Forms – It has support for a wide range of file types which can be uploaded as attachments
- Moodle Contact Form – It lacks support for file uploads of various types
A quick glance, in case you missed anything
Final Thoughts
Moodle Contact Form seems to be a good plugin, no doubt. But Edwiser Forms can make your web forms better and your life a bit easier.
With Edwiser Forms, you can style your forms the way you want. You can add custom colors in your forms to align with your brand without any code development.
It is the one-stop solution for all your dynamic form building needs. Don’t believe us. Try and explore Edwiser Forms to find out for yourself.
2 thoughts on “Edwiser Forms Plugin Vs. Moodle™ Contact Form Plugin”
Hola, quiero saber si tienen un demo para hacer pruebas. Se puede personalizar hacia que departamentos puede contactar el alumno?
además quiero saber el costo o precio del plugin en su versión premium y cuanto dura la licencia
un saludo
Hey Juan
You will receive demo access on your email by adding your email ID here: https://edwiser.org/forms/#viewdemo
The price for the annual license is $99 (yearly) and the Lifetime license costs $299.
Hope this helps!