Building an email list is an important part of conducting business online, every business or blogger who wants to engage with their readers or customers should start to build a mailing list at the earliest opportunity they can. By building a large, engaged email list you can enable your business to grow faster, acquire more sales, drive traffic to your latest content or special offers and also hedge against downturns in traffic due to search engine changes or seasonal downturns.
When you build an email list, you not only get to drive targeted traffic to your blog and offers whenever your want, but you also get to build trust with your readers. Also, by building an email list, you are never in the danger of losing all your traffic and sales even if one or all of your marketing channels like Google, Pinterest or Facebook stop performing as well as they have done in the past.
Exclusive WPEngine Coupon Code for AlienWP Visitors!Get 5 Months Free & 30% Off All Plans.
Click the coupon code to copy and open the link »
Building an email list helps you deepen your relationship and build trust with your readers. That is the reason why Ramit Sethi, a very popular Entrepreneur, and Personal Finance blogger, only sells his products through his email list. If you want to buy any course he sells online, you will have to first sign up for his email list, go through his series of highly targeted emails and then get a chance to buy at the end.
The tools you use to grow your email list are as important as the tactics you use. The tools you use must offer you all the functionality you will need to make sure you don’t leave any subscribers on the table.
So, to save you hours research and money trying out different products, we have compiled a list of the best Email List Building Tools for WordPress available on the internet.
OptinMonster
OptinMonster is one of the most popular and the oldest player in the game. It is a product by Syed Balkhi, the same guy behind WPBeginner. OptinMonster was first released as a WordPress plugin but now is offered as a SaaS application.
OptinMonster is used by a lot of popular brands and professional bloggers. It offers all the features you will need as a blogger like Split Testing, Content Locking, Advanced Display Rules, Exit-Intent Popups, and tons of beautiful, customizable templates.
Features:
- Exit Intent detection feature allows you to trigger popups when the user is about to exit your website. Helps a lot with cart abandonment.
- A/B Split Testing allows you to split test your forms and constantly improve your conversion rate.
- Popup, Slide-in, After Post, Canvas and many more types of opt-in forms available.
- Supports most of the popular Email Marketing platforms including MailChimp, GetResponse, Aweber and Constant Contact.
- Advanced Display Rules to help you create highly targeted opt-in forms. You can choose to display your forms only when someone clicks a link, is about to leave the page or has spent a specific number of seconds on the page.
Price: Starts at $19/month for one site.
Bloom
Bloom is a WordPress list building plugin by Elegant Themes which is extremely popular and comes with dozens of features and offers tons of value.
You can use it to create multiple types of opt-in forms like Popups, Inline opt-in forms, sidebar widgets and below post opt-in forms.
Bloom offers multiple display triggers to allow you to create highly targeted opt-in forms. It offers triggers to help you display your opt-in forms when someone leaves a comment, scrolls to a specific % of the page, or spends a specific number of seconds on the page.
Features:
- Over a hundred beautiful templates to choose from.
- Multiple opt-in form types available including fly-in, popup, in-line forms, after content, sidebar widget, and content locker.
- Multiple display triggers including Timed Delay, Bottom of Post, After Scrolling, After Commenting, After Purchasing, and After Inactivity.
- Integration support for major email marketing software including MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Aweber, GetResponse, iContact, OntraPort, SendInBlue, and ActiveCampaign.
- Content Locker opt-in form allows you to lock premium content only for subscribers. Locked content can only be viewed once the user subscribes to your email list.
Price: $89/year for access to all plugins and themes with unlimited website usage.
We have written a full indepth review of Bloom here.
Mail Optin
Mail Optin is a new plugin which has been built to help you grow your email list and send out event-triggered email newsletters. It uses a variety of methods such as popups, notification bars, slide-in boxes, widgets and so on to help capture your website visitor’s email addresses. As well as adding visitors to your mailing list, it can also send out a notification when you create new posts and also daily/weekly or monthly digests of your new posts. It integrates with the main mailing list senders and has some nice themes and templates for you to use.
Features:
- Lightbox Popup
- Notification Bar
- Slide-in
- Sidebar Widget
- Before / After Post
- Premium Themes & Templates
- Unlimited Optins
- Page-Level Targetting
- User-Base Targetting
- New Post Notifications
- Email Digests
Price: $99 Per year for unlimited websites
Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is a popular list building plugin by Thrive Themes. It offers multiple types of opt-in forms including In-Line Forms, Welcome Bars, Popups, Scroll Mats and Opt-in Widgets. It comes with over 50 beautiful templates that you customize with their drag and drop editor within seconds.
Thrive Leads comes with in-built A/B Split Testing functionality which allows you to not only split test different form variations but also different form type variations.
Features:
- Over 50 beautiful templates to choose from.
- An easy-to-use drag and drop editor to help you create high-converting opt-in forms within seconds.
- A/B Split Testing to help you constantly improve your conversion rate. Unlike most other plugins on this list, Thrive Leads allows you to split test not only different form variations but also different form types.
- Integration support for all major Email Marketing Services including MailChimp, Active Campaign, Constant Contact, GetResponse, ConvertKit, and Drip.
Price: For just $67 you will get 1 Year of Support and Lifetime free updates for one site.
Sumo
Sumo is not a WordPress plugin but a web application (SaaS) that offers a suite of tools. It not only helps you get more email subscribers but also helps you get more traffic. Unlike other tools on this list, It offers different types of opt-in forms as individual apps. Think of SumoMe as the App Store for your website. You can enable and disable each app with just a click.
While SumoMe does offer dozens of tools and tons of value, it might not be the most affordable solution if you are just starting out as a blogger. You can try their free plan but it comes with a lot of limitations.
Features:
- Offers integration for most of the popular Email Marketing Services including Aweber, Constant Contact, MailChimp, and ConvertKit.
- Multiple opt-in form types available including Popup, Welcome Bar and Welcome Mat.
- A/B Split Testing.
- Advanced Display Triggers to help you create highly targeted opt-in forms.
Price: A Limited Free plan available. Premium starts at $29/month for one site up to 5000 visitors when paid annually.
Leadpages
LeadPages is not a WordPress plugin but a web application that allows you to grow your email list with more than just opt-in forms. It allows you to
One thing you should know is that LeadPages only offers Popups (called LeadBoxes), so if you are looking for a solution that helps you create multiple types of opt-in forms, LeadPages is probably not the best choice.
But if you are looking for a tool that helps you create both Landing Pages and Popups, LeadPages is the way to go.
They offer dozens of free Landing Pages and Popup templates that you can sort by Conversion Rate. All of these templates are field-tested by the experts behind LeadPages. And if you ever run out of free templates, you can buy more from the LeadPages Marketplace that offers hundreds of premium Landing Page templates.
Features:
- Offers an easy drag and drop builder to help you build Landing Pages and Popups within seconds that match the branding of your website.
- Over 160 field-tested high-converting Landing Page templates that you can sort by conversion rate.
- Digital Asset Delivery helps you send your lead magnets (free Books, Reports, etc.) directly to the subscriber from LeadPages.
- All plans allow Unlimited Pageviews, Leads, and Landing Pages.
- Integration support for major Email Marketing Services including ActiveCampaign, Aweber, Constant Contact, Drip, ConvertKit, Emma, GetResponse, and MailChimp.
- An easy-to-use drag and drop builder to help you create high-converting Landing Pages and Opt-in forms within seconds.
Price: Unlimited Leads, Traffic and Landing Pages for just $37/month.
WP Subscribe
WP Subscribe is a free plugin by MyThemeShop that helps you create basic opt-in forms for your website. It doesn’t come with tons of features but gets the job done.
If you are just getting started and looking for a free plugin, WP Subscribe is the way to go. Its free version offers dozens of features to help you get started building your first email list.
While the plugin doesn’t offer as much functionality as the other plugins on this list, it does offer basic customization options and page level targeting.
If you want more features, you can get the premium version of this plugin for just $29.
Features:
- Integration support for major Email Marketing Services including MailChimp, Feedburner, GetResponse, Aweber, Drip, SendGrid and SendInBlue.
- Allows you to create popups and in-line opt-in forms.
- Offers page level targeting, popup animations and popup triggers like Exit Intent.
Price: Basic version available for free. The premium version is available for just $29, can be used on unlimited websites, and comes with one year of support and updates.
PopUp Domination
Popup Domination is one of the oldest and the most popular opt-in form plugins available for WordPress. As the name suggests, Popup Domination focuses on Popups and only allows you to create one type of opt-in form – Popups.
While it doesn’t offer multiple opt-in form types, it does get the job done pretty well. It is used by a lot of popular blogs like Income Diary.
Popup Domination offers multiple types of Popups and dozens of customizable templates. It offers multiple popup triggers to help you display highly targeted popups based on time spent, pages viewed, exit-intent and more.
Features:
- Integration support for major email marketing service providers including Aweber, iContact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Constant Contact, GetResponse, and Infusionsoft.
- Multiple Popup types including Countdown Popups, Redirect Popups, and Exit-Intent Popups.
- Comes with A/B Split Testing built-in to help you constantly improve the conversion rate of your popups.
- Dozens of beautiful mobile-responsive templates available.
Price: Starts at $9/month for up to 30000 popup views, unlimited domains, and unlimited popups.
Thrive Landing Pages
Thrive Landing Pages is a landing page builder by Thrive Themes, but unlike LeadPages, it’s a WordPress plugin allowing you to handle everything directly from your website.
It offers over 150 templates that are designed in sets to help you maintain branding across your landing pages and comes with dozens of conversion-focused elements including buttons, forms, testimonials, feature grids, star ratings and much more.
While it does come with integration support for major email marketing services, if yours is not yet supported, you can send subscribers to your Email Marketing service using custom HTML forms.
When you purchase Thrive Landing Pages, you also get access to Thrive Content Builder. It’s a drag and drop content builder tool that helps you easily within seconds create beautiful looking Content Pages for the best content of your website.
Features:
- Over 150 templates to choose from.
- Easy-to-use drag and drop landing page builder allows you to create high-converting landing pages within seconds.
- In-built A/B Testing support to help you constantly improve the conversion rate of your landing pages.
- Integration support for most of the popular Email Marketing Service providers including MailChimp and Aweber. You can use custom HTML forms for services that don’t integrate directly with the plugin.
Price: Starts at $67 for one website and one year of support.
Can’t Decide?
If you still can’t decide, let me make it easier for you.
If you are just starting out and don’t want to spend a thousand bucks just to test the waters, you should go with the free version of either Sumo or WP Subscribe. Both of these offer tons of features for free and will help you get started.
If you are looking for powerful list building plugins with lots of options, stats and great customer support we recommend you use OptinMonster or Bloom.
If you are just starting out and haven’t started building an email list, the plugin (or tool) you choose from the above list doesn’t matter as much as it matters that you get started.
So, if you don’t have an email list, just choose any one of the above plugins and start building your email list as soon as possible.
Most of the successful bloggers online believe they made a mistake by not starting to build their email list as soon as they started their blogs. Don’t be a part of that group and start building your email list today.
Which of these plugins is your favorite?
Did we miss your favorite tool or plugin?
2 Comments
Very informative post!! I have used few prospecting and Lead generation tools like AeroLeads, rainClutch , Rapportive and it’s really helped me a lot to increase my business reach!
Hey first of all thanx for nice post.
I have a question, for my blog I use All in One Seo and recently bought SEOPressor, Now will they both work together?? Because both have Meta, Social Seo & Rich Snippet Settings. Mainly i’m concerned about meta settings.
RTegards
Alisha Ross