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Honest rankings: “forms”

WordPress.org search rewards raw install count with no ceiling, so the biggest install bases float to the top regardless of quality signals. Here's what searchers actually see, next to a merit ranking that caps the install factor and weights ratings by review volume. How this works →

Install-weight distortion

Constant Contact Forms sits at wp.org #7 but earns only #23 on merit , 97% of its ranking comes from install count alone, on 20K+ installs at just 2.7★.

Buried gem

Calculated Fields Form – AI Form Builder for WordPress – Contact, Payment, Quote, Quiz & More deserves #7 on merit but wp.org shows it at #23 , 4.9★ from 970 reviews, buried by lower-quality plugins with bigger install counts.

wp.org merit plugin Δ
1 — #1 WPForms – AI Form Builder for WordPress – Contact Forms, Payment Forms, Survey Form, Quiz & More 5M+ · 4.8★ (14354) 0 2 — #2 Forminator Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form & Custom Form Builder 600K+ · 4.8★ (2098) 0 3 #12 Contact Form 7 10M+ · 4.0★ (2174) +9 4 #6 Ninja Forms – The Contact Form Builder That Grows With You 600K+ · 4.4★ (1394) +2 5 — #5 Fluent Forms – Customizable Contact Forms, Survey, Quiz, & Conversational Form Builder 700K+ · 4.8★ (777) 0 6 #9 Everest Forms – Contact Form, Payment Form, Quiz, Survey & Custom Form Builder with AI 90K+ · 4.9★ (374) +3 7 #23 Constant Contact Forms 20K+ · 2.7★ (102) +16 8 #4 Formidable Forms – WordPress Form Builder for Contact Forms, Calculators, Quizzes & More 300K+ · 4.8★ (1375) -4 9 #18 Gravity Forms Zero Spam 100K+ · 4.3★ (24) +9 10 — #10 MetForm – Contact Form, Survey, Quiz, & Custom Form Builder for Elementor 600K+ · 4.7★ (499) 0 11 #24 Crowdsignal Forms 200K+ · 5.0★ (3) +13 12 #3 CleanTalk Anti-Spam. Spam Firewall & Bot protection 200K+ · 4.8★ (3196) -9 13 — #13 SureForms – Drag & Drop Contact Form & Form Builder, Payment Form, Survey, Quiz & Calculator 500K+ · 4.9★ (81) 0 14 #15 hCaptcha for WP 70K+ · 4.6★ (85) +1 15 #8 User Profile Builder – Beautiful User Registration Forms, User Profiles & User Role Editor 50K+ · 4.7★ (734) -7 16 — #16 HTML Forms – Simple WordPress Forms Plugin 10K+ · 4.9★ (57) 0 17 #22 Snow Monkey Forms 30K+ · 5.0★ (5) +5 18 #20 Gutena Forms – Contact Form, Survey Form, Feedback Form, Booking Form, and Custom Form Builder 20K+ · 4.6★ (10) +2 19 #17 CF7 Apps – Honeypot, Database, Redirection, Webhook, and Addons for Contact Form 7 300K+ · 3.8★ (135) -2 20 #11 Jetpack – WP Security, Backup, Speed, & Growth 3M+ · 3.8★ (2402) -9 21 #19 GSheetConnector for Elementor Forms – Sync Elementor Forms to Google Sheets 9K+ · 5.0★ (12) -2 22 #21 Cognito Forms 2K+ · 4.0★ (19) -1 23 #7 Calculated Fields Form – AI Form Builder for WordPress – Contact, Payment, Quote, Quiz & More 40K+ · 4.9★ (970) -16 24 #14 HubSpot All-In-One Marketing – Forms, Popups, Live Chat 200K+ · 4.3★ (207) -10

Merit ranking caps the install boost at 1M (wp.org leaves it uncapped), replaces the raw star average with a volume-weighted Bayesian score and a Wilson lower bound, and keeps wp.org's own freshness and compatibility decays. Method from the plugin-directory source; see Meta Trac #8298.