Can gravity forms be forms for me?

As a Gravity Forms user, I can answer the first one:

1. yes. You can send a plain text notification to yourself, in whatever format you like, so your script can parse it automatically and create your contact. You can also export entries from Gravity Forms. It's a CSV which you can parse however you like.

For #2 with group courses, with Gravity forms you can restrict the number of form submissions (entries.) That would take care of the students who are accepted (they would get an acceptance notification.) Then, I think what you could do is have a backup form for the waiting list people, which is not linked to any of your menus.

So, after 10 submissions for a group course, you don't accept any more students. There is a message displayed to visitors to your page. In that message you could point people to your "waiting list" form, which is basically the same form, but the confirmation is different (a wait list confirmation.) That form's entries would not be limited.

If someone cancels and you need to move a wait list person up to signed up, I don't think that can happen automatically with Gravity Forms. You would need to manually manage that I believe.

Also, every 2 months it would be easy to copy the form over to a new form and just change the dates and class number. It's easy to duplicate a form in Gravity Forms.

Finally, the plugin can be translated, but I am unsure if there is an Icelandic translation yet. There will be a page of translations here in the future but I don't think it's complete yet.

Hope that helps answer your questions. I think Gravity Forms will enable you to do everything you want to do.

Again, these are by no means official answers, just my experience as a Gravity Forms user.

#1 I would like plain text so I can parse it.

You can specify plain text notifications

Does it send the question and answers?

When setting up a plain text notification, you determine what goes into the notification. So, you can type in plain text like "Name" and then insert the form field of {name} and your notification will have your typed in text (Name) and the form data that was submitted. You would not have to rely on the question from the form. I don't know if there is actually a way to get the question in the email notification (there probably is, but if you're parsing it anyway, you can just type in known text like F1, F2, etc, and parse based on that.

With the plain text notification, you can do whatever you want.

and if so also the question if a field was left unanswered?

Yes. If a field is left blank, and you formatted your notification as described above ("Name" in my example) then your email notification will have the name of the field, with no data following.

#2 After max capacity had been reached would the form automatically
display that text and link to the waiting list form?

Yes. There is text shown when the max number of form submissions has been reached. In that text I would recommend the link to your "hidden" page, which has your backup form on it. You hide it in your site navigation, but it's still a live page. When the text is displayed indicating the class is full, there is a link to "If you'd like to be on the waiting list for this class, [a href="http://www.example.com/wait-list-form" title="Waiting list for group class number 33"]please sign up here[/a]. That way, when the text is displayed that the class is full (max number of entries has been reached) they get a link to the form where they can sign up for the waiting list.

Regarding moving people from the waiting list form to the course
form do you mean there is some function for that or that I would just email
them myself?

You would just email them yourself. I don't believe there is a function for that, to move an entry from one form to another. You can email direct from the Gravity Forms admin though, and have a record of the email.

And for the next form I would just copy my template form and link
it to this page. It would contain all the formatting etc from the template?
And previous forms would contain all the entries etc?

By next do you mean next class (in two months)? If so, then yes, everything is saved from one form to another. You would just change the name of the form to include the date maybe, and any text that indicated which date or class the submission was for.

There is no template or formatting to a form really (well there is, but not in this context I don't think). A form is embedded in a page or post on your WordPress site. Forms don't really exist outside of a page or post. However, a page or post might contain ONLY a Gravity Form, with a title (optional) and description (also optional.) That way, there doesn't need to be any text in the actual page or post. When you copy a form, the copy of the form will look just like the original, once it's embedded. Hope that makes sense.

The previous forms contain all the previous entries. Creating a copy of a form doesn't do anything to the entries.

Regarding the translation I meant that I want all the field names
in Icelandic, the submit button and instructions (like those hovering in some
forms and answer must be between 2-4 character long etc)

I've never translated the plugin, so I am unsure if "everything" is translatable, but there is a 5000 line .pot file included, to use for your translation. I am guessing that most everything is translatable, but you might run into a couple things that are not. That's been my experience with other plugins. With no experience with Gravity Forms though, I am unsure if that's the case here.

Bottom Line
I would not hesitate to purchase Gravity Forms. I think it will be able to do everything you need. So long as you are flexible with some of your work flow items, Gravity Forms is flexible too. Everything you're asking about is certainly possible. I can't think of another plugin that would more closely match your needs.

Plus, after you make your purchase, you have the benefit of the awesome support here to answer each specific question for you individually to get things working the way you need them to be.

Signed,
-- Extremely Happy User

trestian, I am going to close this topic as I see you've started another one.

http://www.gravityhelp.com/forums/topic/html-and-text-notifications#post-33437