Building an email list is one of the best decisions you can make when trying to build your business or personal brand online, by converting your website visitors to email subscribers you have the ability to always reach them to communicate important news, special offers and you can build that personal connection between yourself and them.
One of the best proven ways to increase your email subscribers is to use an opt-in plugin for WordPress – these plugins will use a variety of methods for increasing signups to your list using techniques like boxes, popups, overlays and other techniques.
Struggling to find quality list building plugins through all of the noise? Building a list is a great way to create an evergreen asset that isn’t subject to the whims of Google. But if you want to successfully build a list, you’re going to need the right tool for the job, which is what I’ll be covering in this post.
Below, I’ll dig into 6 of the best WordPress list building plugins. Ready? Let’s go…
1. Bloom
Bloom is a popular list building plugin that’s part of the Elegant Themes Membership package. That means that in addition to Bloom, you also get access to the massively popular Divi theme, Divi page builder, Monarch social sharing plugin, and lots more.
But this post is about Bloom – not all of those other added goodies. So let’s get into what Bloom actually offers.
First up, Bloom lets you choose from 6 different optin display types. Those are:
- Pop-ups
- Fly-ins
- Inline forms
- Below content forms
- Widget area forms
- Content lockers
For the dynamic opt-in form types, you can also choose to trigger them based on a variety of options like:
- Timing
- Scroll depth
- After commenting
- After purchasing
- Inactivity
As for your actual opt-in forms, Bloom gives you 100+ pre-made templates to get started from. You can further customize these opt-in forms with different colors, border styles, and more.
To connect with your favorite email marketing service, Bloom offers 16 different email marketing integrations for services like:
- AWeber
- MailChimp
- Campaign Monitor
- Constant Contact
- GetResponse
And 11 other popular vendors.
Detailed Targeting and Split Testing
To optimize your list building efforts, Bloom also sets you up with helpful targeting options. Through these options, you can target specific forms to posts, pages, and more.
And then you can further optimize your opt-in forms by taking advantage of built-in split-testing that lets you compare different variations of your opt-in forms to find those that perform the best.
All in all, Bloom is an amazing deal if you’re interested in the other products offered in the Elegant Themes membership. And even if you’re not, it’s still not that expensive at $89 for the Elegant Themes membership. You can even get 20% Off With This Coupon Code.
Features
- 6 different opt-in form types
- A variety of targeting options based on timing, scrolling, and more
- Detailed targeting options to let you target different forms to different pieces of content
- Built-in A/B testing to compare different form variations
- Integrations for 16 different email marketing services
Price: Part of $89 Elegant Themes Membership
2. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is a powerful list building plugin from the team at Thrive Themes. It offers a variety of opt-in forms, targeting options, and optimization functionality.
With regards to opt-in form types, Thrive Leads offers an impressive 10 different form types. It covers all the standard form types, plus unique options like:
- Notification bars
- Multiple choice forms
- Welcome mats
- Screen filler overlays
For all of these forms, you can target them by taxonomy, post, page, specific URL, or more. And you can also add unlimited exclusion rules to further drill down your page-level targeting.
Beyond targeting options, you can also set up trigger options to trigger your opt-in forms based on things like:
- Exit intent
- Time
- Scroll
- Click
Like Bloom, Thrive Leads also lets you split test different opt-in forms against one another to find the best-performing option.
SmartLinks For Even More Power
And finally, let’s round things out with my favorite Thrive Leads feature:
SmartLinks
With SmartLinks, you can generate custom links that show different opt-in forms. This is great if you want to send a link to your newsletter. Everyone who gets the link already signed up for your list, so it doesn’t make sense to ask them for their email again.
SmartLinks lets you display a different offer to people who have already subscribed to maximize your website’s space.
Features:
- 10 different opt-in form types
- Page-level targeting and exclusions
- Trigger options to display ads on click, scroll, timing, or exit intent
- A/B testing
- SmartLinks feature
Price: Starts at $69 for a single site license or available as part of Thrive Themes Membership
3. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a popular standalone SaaS list building tool that easily connects to WordPress through a dedicated plugin.
One of OptinMonster’s claims to fame is how quickly you can start building your list – it only takes a few minutes to get up and running with some opt-in forms.
OptinMonster’s other claim to fame is its Exit Intent technology, through which it tries to specifically target users who are on the verge of leaving your site.
As for opt-in form types, OptinMonster offers all the popular options like:
- Lightbox popups
- Slide-ins
- Notification bars
- Sidebar forms
Beyond that, OptinMonster also helps you target and optimize your forms with:
- Detailed page-level targeting
- Built-in A/B testing
The only downside of OptinMonster? It’s a monthly fee, which makes it hard to stomach the price in comparison with some of the detailed one-time fee plugins.
Features:
- Quick opt-in form builder
- Exit Intent technology
- All the popular opt-in form types
- Built in A/B testing
- Page-level targeting
Price: Starts at $19 per month when billed monthly or $9 per month billed annually
4. Ninja Popups
Ninja Popups is a list building plugin that lacks some of the detailed functionality of the first three plugins but makes up for it with a significantly lower price point.
It’s not limited to list building, but one of the things it does do is sync up with a variety of email marketing services to make list building easy.
As the name suggests, Ninja Popups is focused almost exclusively on pop ups, rather than other email opt-in form types.
It comes with a drag and drop form builder, as well as 60+ pre-built popup forms.
It also includes targeting options for:
- Exit intent
- Scroll depth
- Inactivity
- Scroll depth
And Ninja Popups even also recently added A/B testing to get even closer to the previous list building plugins.
Finally, you get page-level targeting, content locker functionality, and a few other helpful features.
Features
- Drag and drop opt-in form builder
- Large number of integrations with email marketing services
- 60+ premade form themes
- A/B testing
- Detailed targeting and trigger options
- Email opt-in content locker feature
Price: $25 at Code Canyon
5. WP Subscribe Pro
WP Subscribe Pro is a premium list building plugin from the popular developer MyThemeShop. It integrates with most popular email marketing services and also has a focus on performance, which is great for those who are especially concerned with speeding up WordPress.
You can configure email animations and triggers, as well as set up page-level targeting for your opt-in forms.
In addition to a variety of opt-in forms, one neat thing about this plugin is that you can set a custom cookie expiration to control how often your forms are displayed to visitors. And you can also manually flush the cookie cache if you want to reset everything.
The backend interface isn’t quite as nice, but it’s still an affordable option for those looking to build an email list without breaking the bank. Just don’t expect built-in A/B testing like some of the other plugins.
Features
- Popups, in-content forms, and more
- Page-level targeting
- A variety of triggers and animations
- Custom cookie expiration to control how often forms display
Price: $29
6. OptinEngine
OptinEngine is the only list building plugin on this list that’s 100% free. But despite it being free, it still offers a quality product that can compete with some of the bigger players in the list building niche.
It offers 7 different display types:
- Popups
- Sliders
- Info Bars
- Before Post
- After Post
- Widgets
- Inline via shortcode
And it also has integrations for all of the popular email marketing services, like most of the other list building plugins.
You can choose to get started via a number of pre-made templates. And you can also customize these templates to make them better fit your design.
OptinEngine isn’t as popular as the other options yet, but it’s a great option if you’re willing to try something new. You can’t argue with free!
Features
- 7 different form display types
- Integrations with most popular email marketing services
- Easy form creation interface
Price: Free
Which Of These List Building Plugins Should You Choose?
If you’re struggling to choose between the many list building plugins on this list, let me step in and try to offer a little bit of guidance.
Here are a few thoughts:
If you’re super focused on list building and optimizing your email marketing efforts, I think Thrive Leads is your best option because of the SmartLinks feature as well as all of its helpful targeting and optimization options.
Casual users might not spend the time to benefit from these features, but serious email marketers should love the flexibility that Thrive Leads offers.
If you want the quickest way to create highly functionality opt-in forms and don’t mind paying for it, OptinMonster is easy to use while still offering deep functionality – you just might end up paying a bit more for that convenience.
If you’re already an Elegant Themes Member, or are interested in becoming one, go with Bloom for the amazing value (and still solid feature list). Use this Elegant Themes Coupon when signing up.
And finally, if you just want a solid free option, OptinEngine is neat – just remember that it’s still fairly new and not as popular as the other options. WP Subscribe Pro and Ninja Popups also offer affordable, though not free, options.
