Gravity Forms incorporates automatic updates like WordPress and other WordPress plugins; however, sometimes we need to make updates available to users before they are deployed globally. We already do so, but many users aren’t aware.

We will frequently update the version of Gravity Forms that is available for download on the downloads page and we do the same for Add-Ons as needed. These updates have to be applied manually by downloading the plugin files and overriding the plugin files on your site with the new files.

This allows us to make updates available to users who need them immediately before we deploy the updates globally via automatic updates. Think of it as our version of what WordPress does with nightly builds.

In the future we do plan on implementing true automatic updates like WordPress has introduced for core WordPress updates. This way we can push security and maintenance releases to users immediately rather than having them initiate the automatic update. As with WordPress you will be able to disable this. But we will be limiting it strictly to security and maintenance releases so we won’t be springing new features on users without them realizing it when we do so.