GuideForms
Login GuideForms PRO

Conditions

Conditions let you build branching flows by hiding steps based on what a visitor selected earlier. For example, if someone picks “Beginner” in step 1, you can automatically hide an advanced-features step that wouldn’t be relevant to them. Conditions are evaluated in real time — the guide adapts instantly as the visitor makes selections.

Conditions are a Pro feature. Free users see an upgrade prompt when opening the Conditions tab. Everything below applies to GuideForms Pro.

Opening the Conditions editor

In the Guide Editor, click the Conditions icon in the left menu (the last tab, marked with a “PRO” badge for free users). The workspace switches to the conditions panel, which lists all rules for the current guide. If no rules exist yet, you’ll see a message prompting you to add one.

How conditions work

A condition is a rule with two parts:

  1. When — One or more triggers that check previous answers. For example: “When the visitor selects the card ‘Budget’ in step 1.”
  2. Then hide — One or more steps to hide when the triggers match. For example: “Then hide the ‘Premium Features’ step.”

Every time a visitor makes or changes a selection, all condition rules are re-evaluated. Steps that match a rule’s triggers are instantly hidden — they disappear from the progress bar, are skipped during navigation, and the visitor never sees them. If the visitor changes their selection so the triggers no longer match, the hidden steps reappear.

Creating a rule

Click the Add Rule button at the top of the conditions panel. A new empty rule card appears with two sections: When and Then hide.

Setting up triggers (When)

Click Add condition inside the When section. A trigger row appears with a step dropdown. Only Cards and Slider steps are available as trigger sources — Lead Form steps cannot be used because they don’t produce filter selections.

For a Cards step trigger:

  1. Select the cards step from the dropdown.
  2. A list of all cards in that step appears as checkboxes.
  3. Check one or more cards. The trigger fires when the visitor selects any of the checked cards.

For a Slider step trigger:

  1. Select the slider step from the dropdown.
  2. If the step uses a range slider, choose which bound to check — Min value or Max value.
  3. Pick a comparison operator: greater than or equal (≥), less than or equal (≤), greater than (>), less than (<), or equal (=).
  4. Enter a numeric value. The trigger fires when the visitor’s slider value satisfies the comparison.

Combining multiple triggers

You can add more than one trigger to a single rule. Between each trigger, a toggle button lets you switch between AND and OR logic:

  • AND (default) — All triggers must match for the rule to fire. Use this when you want to hide a step only when a specific combination of answers has been given.
  • OR — Any single trigger matching is enough to fire the rule. Use this when several different answers should all lead to the same step being hidden.

The AND/OR setting applies to all triggers in the rule — you cannot mix AND and OR within one rule. If you need more complex logic, create separate rules.

Choosing target steps (Then hide)

In the Then hide section, click Add step and select a step from the dropdown. You can add multiple steps — all of them will be hidden when the rule fires. Each target step has a delete button to remove it from the rule.

Multiple rules

You can create as many rules as you need. Each rule is evaluated independently. If multiple rules fire at the same time, all their target steps are hidden — the hidden steps accumulate. For example, Rule 1 might hide step 3 and Rule 2 might hide step 5; if both fire, steps 3 and 5 are both hidden.

To delete a rule, click the X button in the top-right corner of its card.

What happens on the frontend

When conditions hide a step, the guide behaves as if that step doesn’t exist:

  • The progress bar updates to reflect only visible steps — hidden steps are not counted.
  • The Next and Back buttons skip over hidden steps automatically.
  • If the visitor is currently on a step that becomes hidden (because they changed an earlier answer), the guide navigates to the next or previous visible step.
  • The live result count recalculates based on the remaining visible steps and active filters.

Example

Imagine a product finder guide with four steps:

  1. Category — Cards: Electronics, Clothing, Books
  2. Price Range — Slider: $0–$500
  3. Brand — Cards: brand options
  4. Size — Cards: S, M, L, XL

Step 4 (Size) only makes sense for clothing. You’d create a rule:

  • When: In step 1, the visitor selects “Electronics” OR “Books”
  • Then hide: Step 4 (Size)

Now visitors who pick Electronics or Books will go straight from step 3 to the results, while Clothing shoppers still see the Size step.

Tips

  • Keep rules simple. One clear trigger and one or two target steps per rule is easiest to maintain. Complex rules with many triggers can become hard to debug.
  • Test every path. After setting up conditions, preview the guide and step through each possible combination to make sure the right steps appear and disappear.
  • Don’t hide steps that have required filters. If a hidden step provides an important filter, its selections will be empty, which may return too many (or too few) results. Mark filter-optional steps as skippable instead of hiding them, or make sure hidden filters don’t affect the results you care about.
  • Use multiple rules instead of complex AND/OR. If your logic requires both AND and OR combinations, split them into separate rules. Each rule independently adds to the hidden set, so you can model complex behavior with simple rules.

Next steps

Continue with the remaining Guide Builder pages or explore the step types: