Over the last few years, we’ve worked with different WordPress popup plugins to get leads and conversions on our websites. There are dozens of popup plugins in WordPress that can help you improve conversion rates. However, most of them will either slow down your website, offer inaccurate statistics, or worse.
That’s why we decided to test all the most popular options and look at factors like popup types, customization settings, reports, and pricing.
In this article, we will share everything we learned from testing the most popular WordPress popup plugins on the market so you can see which is the best option for your website.
Things to Look For With WordPress Popup Plugins
The main purpose of using popup plugins for WordPress is to help you capture leads and boost your email list subscribers. However, popups need to be used carefully. Poorly made WordPress popups can easily become annoying and ruin the user experience along with your brand’s reputation.
You need to pick a solution that offers proper behavior interaction, targeting, and personalization features so that you can offer the best user experience while ensuring maximum conversions.
Performance is another issue with most WordPress popup plugins. Since many popup plugins use WordPress to track analytics, this significantly increases the server load and slows down your website. As you already know, a slow page speed negatively affects your SEO rankings.
This is why you need a WordPress popup plugin that offers powerful conversion features without slowing down your WordPress website.
Last but not least, you need to ensure that the WordPress popup plugin you choose actually works with your WordPress hosting environment. Many popup plugins are poorly coded, so their advanced features, like A/B testing and reporting, will not work with the most advanced caching solutions that many hosting companies are now using.
Contenders for the Best WordPress Popup Plugins
Now that you know the common problems with most WordPress popup builders, you can use this information to evaluate all popular WordPress popup plugins. Since there are dozens of popup plugins, this process can be rather time-consuming. That’s why we did the research for you.
Before we jump into our review, here’s a quick summary of the best WordPress popup plugins we will cover in this article:
| Rank | Name | Best For | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OptinMonster | Targeted popups | $9 per month |
| 2 | TrustPulse | Social proof notifications | $5 per month |
| 3 | Thrive Leads | Lead capture | $99 per year |
| 4 | Bloom | Basic popups | $89 per year |
| 5 | PopupAlly | Small budgets | Free plan available |
| Bonus | UserFeedback | Customer feedback | $49.50 per year |
How We Test and Review Popup Plugins in WordPress
- We used them on our websites. We used the WordPress popup plugins across our testing and live websites so that we could see the real-world user experience, features, and conversions.
- We looked at the most popular options. We reviewed the most popular WordPress popup plugins to see if they were actually worth the hype. We made sure to look for significant features, pros, and cons so that we could evaluate each option thoroughly.
- We considered the plugins from the perspective of a small business. Since we have years of growing businesses from the ground up, we know how important it is to choose a popup plugin that can get you conversions and signups, fast.
1. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the most popular lead generation software on the market. It allows you to easily convert website visitors into subscribers and customers. It comes with a powerful WordPress popup builder and the most comprehensive targeting and personalization features. Simply put, it allows you to maximize your conversion potential like a marketing pro.
Features
OptinMonster offers the most powerful set of targeting and personalization features in the market. They allow you to create different campaigns, including popups, fullscreen welcome mats, floating bars, scroll boxes, and so on. Their targeting features allow you to target users by the page they are visiting, activity on your site, geo-location, and dozens more.
Below are some of OptinMonster’s most notable features:
- Beautifully designed, non-intrusive lightbox popups
- Exit-intent popups that are displayed when a user is about to leave your site
- Powerful targeting options with page level, geo-targeting, on-site retargeting, device-based targeting, and more
- Adblock detection to display targeted messages to users
- Device targeting with mobile-friendly campaigns that look good on smaller devices
- Trigger popups with exit intent, scrolling, inactivity sensors, time-based triggers, and more
- Dozens of ready-made beautiful popup templates
- Drag and drop popup maker to easily create popups with your own images, fonts, and style
- Multiple campaign types include inline/after-post optins, a floating notification bar, countdown timers, a fullscreen welcome mat, coupon wheel popups, and more
- Monster-links popups which trigger a popup by clicking on a link
- MonsterEffects™ technology to make your popups stand out with CSS animations and sound effects
- Yes/No popups, two-step popups, and success message customization
- Integrates with all top email marketing services, contact form plugins, eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify, and more
Performance
The biggest advantage of using OptinMonster is its performance. It is a SaaS application that does not use your WordPress hosting resources. It loads asynchronously and does not slow down your perceived page load speed. This is crucial not just for user experience but also for SEO. Lastly, since OptinMonster doesn’t use WordPress to store analytics, your stats will be the most accurate, and it will work with any hosting environment.
Ease of Use
OptinMonster comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder. You can simply design your own popups by adding a background, choosing colors, images, and fonts, with your text and sign-up form. If you don’t want to do that, you will find beautiful, ready-made popup templates. Each template is fully customizable using a simple point-and-click editor. Adding popups to your website is also very easy. You don’t need to edit any WordPress files or add code to your website. You can simply install their WordPress connector plugin.
Pricing
Starting from $9 per month (billed annually). Bonus: You can try the free plan, which is only available through the OptinMonster WordPress plugin. WPBeginner users can also use our OptinMonster coupon to get additional savings.
2. TrustPulse
TrustPulse is a WordPress popup plugin that uses social proof to help you boost conversions on your website. It shows social-proof notifications on your website to help build user trust, trigger the FOMO (fear of missing out) effect, and encourage more users to sign up or make a purchase.
Features
TrustPulse helps you instantly win user trust by sharing social proof using less intrusive but highly effective popups.
- Uses urgency and social proof to trigger the FOMO effect (fear of missing out). This encourages users to sign up or complete a purchase.
- Real-time tracking and popups to show purchases, activity, and signups.
- Smart targeting to show social proof popups to the right users at the right time.
- Use the default design or make it your own with easy customization options.
Performance
TrustPulse does not affect your page load speed and improves the user experience at the same time. It is a SaaS app and does not use your WordPress hosting resources. All the code used to display popups loads asynchronously from the cloud servers.
Ease of Use
TrustPulse comes with an insanely easy setup process. The default social proof popup works with very few modifications. It has an easy-to-use interface, which allows you to customize popups, set up targeting, view stats, and run customized campaigns on your online store.
Pricing
Free 500 sessions per month, and then pricing starts from $5 per month (billed annually).
3. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is another popular popup plugin for WordPress, used by over 114,000+ website owners. It comes with beautiful popup templates and an easy-to-use popup builder. There are also advanced targeting features that allow you to show more personalized offers to visitors based on posts, categories, tags, and more.
Features
Thrive Leads is designed to help you capture leads on your WordPress site and grow your email list.
- Multiple optin types, including lightbox popup, inline forms, 2-step optin, slide-in forms, content lock, scroll mat, screen filler overlay, and more
- Simple drag-and-drop editor to customize sign-up forms
- Advanced A/B testing and analytics for your forms
- Multiple trigger options for displaying popups, including exit, time, scroll, and click
- Page-level targeting, including categories, tags, post types, and more
- Hide popups or show different offers to your existing subscribers
- Works with all popular email services
- Mobile-friendly popups for small devices
Performance
Thrive Leads does try to balance out performance and features. However, it is still a bit slower than other solutions like OptinMonster. It is a WordPress plugin, so all the code runs on your WordPress hosting server and uses your resources. This can slow down your website’s page load speed and affect the user experience.
Ease of Use
Thrive Leads offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy to design and customize optin forms. You can simply add or remove elements, change colors, and use custom CSS to style your forms. Adding forms to your website is also straightforward.
Pricing
Starting from $99 per year for the Thrive Suite, which includes all their plugins and themes.
4. Bloom
Bloom is an email optin plugin by Elegant Themes, creators of the Divi theme. Bloom comes with 6 different display types and a large number of pre-built templates. It is designed to help you grow your email list and boost conversions.
Features
Bloom offers a variety of optin forms and advanced targeting options to show the right forms to the right users.
- 6 different display types, including automatic optin popups, fly-ins, inline optin forms, below-content forms, widget area forms, and locked content forms
- Multiple optin form templates with customization options
- Multiple trigger options for displaying popups, including time delay, scroll depth, and after inactivity
- Advanced page-level targeting options, including categories, tags, post types, and more
- Show popups only to new visitors, return visitors, or existing subscribers
- Detailed statistics and insights on your optin form performance
- Works with all popular email marketing services
- Mobile-friendly optin forms
Performance
Bloom is a WordPress plugin, so it runs on your WordPress hosting server and uses your resources. This can slow down your website’s page load speed. However, Bloom is well-coded and performs well on most WordPress websites.
Ease of Use
Bloom comes with a user-friendly interface and an intuitive form builder. You can easily create and customize optin forms, choose display options, and set up targeting rules. Adding forms to your website is also straightforward.
Pricing
Starting from $89 per year, which includes access to all Elegant Themes products.
5. PopupAlly
PopupAlly is a flexible popup plugin for WordPress that helps you create professional-looking popups and optin forms. It is designed to be easy to use and offers a range of customization options.
Features
PopupAlly offers a variety of features to help you create effective popups and grow your email list.
- Create lightbox popups and embedded optin forms
- Customizable templates with drag-and-drop editor
- Multiple trigger options for displaying popups, including time delay, scroll depth, and exit intent
- Advanced targeting options, including page-level targeting and device targeting
- Integration with popular email marketing services
- Mobile-friendly popups
Performance
PopupAlly is a lightweight plugin that is designed to have minimal impact on your website’s performance. It loads asynchronously and does not slow down your page load speed.
Ease of Use
PopupAlly comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy to create and customize popups. You can simply add or remove elements, change colors, and use custom CSS to style your forms. Adding forms to your website is also straightforward.
Pricing
Free plan available, with premium plans starting from $99 per year.
Bonus: UserFeedback
UserFeedback is a customer feedback plugin for WordPress that helps you collect feedback from your website visitors. It allows you to create custom surveys and feedback forms to get insights into your users’ experience and improve your website.
Features
UserFeedback offers a range of features to help you collect and analyze feedback from your website visitors.
- Create custom surveys and feedback forms
- Multiple question types, including multiple choice, open-ended, and rating scales
- Advanced targeting options to show surveys to specific users
- Detailed analytics and insights on your survey responses
- Integration with popular email marketing services
- Mobile-friendly surveys
Performance
UserFeedback is a lightweight plugin that is designed to have minimal impact on your website’s performance. It loads asynchronously and does not slow down your page load speed.
Ease of Use
UserFeedback comes with an easy-to-use form builder that makes it easy to create and customize surveys. You can simply add or remove elements, change colors, and use custom CSS to style your forms. Adding forms to your website is also straightforward.
Pricing
Starting from $49.50 per year.
Conclusion: Which is the Best WordPress Popup Plugin?
After reviewing the most popular WordPress popup plugins on the market, we can confidently say that OptinMonster is the best WordPress popup plugin. It is the most comprehensive, offering the most powerful targeting and personalization features, without affecting your website’s performance.
If you’re looking for a simple and affordable social-proof popup plugin, then TrustPulse is the best option. Thrive Leads and Bloom are also great options if you’re looking for advanced targeting and customization features.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress popup plugin for your website.
