The 6 Best WordPress Popup Plugins For List Growth

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Want to grow your email list like crazy?

Popups work amazingly well, and they don’t have to be annoying.

If you time your popup effectively and give your visitors an offer that they’re interested in, they’ll be happy to see it.

And let’s be honest, it’s hard to avoid adding popups to your site when they convert so well.

In this collection, you’ll find the top WordPress popup plugins that will help you create beautiful popups welcomed by your visitors.

WordPress popup form plugins

The plugins included here can be used for an email newsletter, exit-intent popups, or a simple popup with an announcement or message.

Additionally, you won’t have to worry about finding a plugin that integrates with your email marketing service of choice. Most of these plugins have a vast variety of integrations. For instance, integration with MailChimp, Aweber, and ConvertKit easy to find.

Also, these are all highly-rated WordPress plugins with excellent reviews and customer support, so you can trust the products you find here.


  • 1. Poptin

    Poptin

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    Plugin Description

    Poptin is a great solution for anyone looking to build their email list. Unlike some of the plugins here, Poptin has the advantage of having its own interface designed well for creating and deploying popups. Additionally, integrating is extremely easy with WordPress – you just copy & paste one small line of Javascript.

    The Poptin plugin includes seven different types of optin forms:

    • Lightboxes
    • Floating bars
    • Fullscreen popups
    • Slide-ins
    • Big sidebars
    • Social widgets
    • Mobile popups

    There’s a nice assortment of pre-designed templates to choose from, all of which are highly customizable, so you’ll have no trouble creating the perfect popup for your site.

    Unlike the other plugins here, Poptin also allows you to create advanced forms with custom fields beyond “name” and “email.” Plus, there’s a simple autoresponder configuration for sending coupons and “thank you” emails. Overall, it’s a pretty robust program for creating popups and one of the more advanced solutions listed in this post.

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  • 2. MailOptin

    MailOptin

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    Plugin Description

    MailOptin is one of my favorite plugins, which I used for a long time on the Compete Themes website.

    Before diving into the features, you should know that there is a free version and a paid version that is reasonably priced. There’s no monthly charge like many other solutions.

    With the MailOptin plugin, you can create notification bars, full-screen popups, slide-ins, and embedded forms. You can use the shortcode or the widget to output forms to custom locations in your theme. There are unlimited forms, so the sky’s the limit.

    MailOptin also integrates with more than 20+ email marketing platforms, including ConvertKit, which I use for all the emails sent from this site.

    The responsive popup forms in MailOptin are quite customizable. The form customizer is just like the Live Customizer you see when editing your WordPress theme, and there’s a good variety of templates to get started with.

    Lastly, MailOptin includes a huge variety of display options so you can show the right form to the right visitor. There’s page-level targeting, so you can choose specific pages or even posts in certain categories to display your form. You can also use advanced targeting options to display your popup to first-time visitors or mobile devices users only. On top of the page targeting, there are several triggers to choose from. You can show a form after a visitor has been on your page for a certain number of seconds, or after they scroll a percentage of the way down the page, or when they display exit-intent.

    And to top it all off, every single form allows for A/B testing or split-testing, so you can continuously optimize your conversion rates. MailOptin has a free version, but the premium upgrade is well worth it and a great value considering how useful this plugin is.

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  • Popup Maker

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    Plugin Description

    The Popup Maker plugin is overlooked, in my opinion. The developer, Elfsight, consistently creates beautiful and easy-to-use plugins, and this email subscription plugin is no different.

    Popup Maker lets you create forms for sales and special offers, cart recovery and abandonment, welcome offers, and upcoming events. Whatever you need to advertise on your site, this plugin can handle it.

    While the templates aren’t incredibly customizable, there’s more than enough included for most users. Not to mention, the responsive popup templates they offer look great out-of-the-box.

    The targeting options offered are well-organized and comprehensive. You can choose specific triggers to launch the popups, decide which pages they should display, and even select specific devices. While this isn’t quite as many options as some other plugins, it’s more than enough for your average internet marketer.

    Popup Maker is compatible with all WordPress themes, so there’s no worry there, and you don’t have to write code to use it. Most of the time, the popups will be added to your site automatically, but there’s also a shortcode, widget, and block, allowing you to place your email signup forms virtually anywhere on your WordPress website.

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  • 4. OptinMonster

    OptinMonster popup builder

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    Plugin Description

    OptinMonster is the most comprehensive email list building software on the web. While not exclusive to WordPress, they have a plugin that makes their forms easy to implement without writing any code.

    With OptinMonster, you’ll create your optin forms on their website. This gives you access to a complete form designer that doesn’t slow down your site or have to fit into the WordPress dashboard. You can decide which pages to display it on and who should see it all from the OptinMonster dashboard.

    There are nine different optin types to choose from due to a couple of unique options in this popup software. Most notable is the “coupon wheel” which is like a small game added to your site. Visitors spin the wheel in the popup to decide which reward they’ll get and then subscribe to access their prize. It’s a little bit tacky but certainly original, and it converts like crazy for some websites.

    OptinMonster includes a massive variety of advanced targeting options, so you’ll be able to create offers for whoever you want on your website. One last feature worth pointing out is the “MonsterLinks” option, which lets visitors click a link to display the popup. This simple feature is really flexible, and you might find yourself using it a lot once you try it out. Not every popup plugin includes link-triggered popups, but I would recommend selecting one that does.

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  • Popup Builder Plugin

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    Plugin Description

    Popup Builder is the most popular free WordPress popup plugin with more than 200,000 active installations.

    The Popup Builder plugin is really flexible and allows you to add all sorts of content into the popups you create. For instance, it will enable you to insert shortcodes and images into your popups rather than using pre-defined form elements. There’s also a PDF popup, and a template for gathering Facebook likes with a popup banner.

    The drawback of this plugin is that it doesn’t have a visual editor. The forms are created and styled with an admin options menu, which means you don’t get to see what your form looks like until you preview it after making your changes. Additionally, the design quality is lacking compared to templates in other popup plugins listed in this post.

    If you’re looking for a free popup plugin that can be used for more than email subscriptions, this will be a good choice for your site.

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  • 6. Hustle

    Hustle Popup Plugin

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    Plugin Description

    Hustle is a relatively new email list-building plugin that includes popups, slide-ins, and embeddable forms. It’s sensibly designed and will have you growing your newsletter in no time.

    As a flexible form creator, this plugin can be used for giveaways, site-wide notices, and exit popups. And it’s easy to do it all in style.

    The templates that come included in Hustle have great modern designs that don’t need any aesthetic improvements. It’s enough to swap out the text and images to create a form that will work well for your WordPress site. That said, the form customization options are really nice and include settings for fonts, colors, and spacing.

    The Hustle popup plugin includes the standard variety of targeting options and also includes a neat scheduling tool. If you’re running a time-sensitive offer, you can schedule a popup to display only on certain days or times. You can even schedule popups to display recurring on certain days of the week.

    Hustle integrates with most email services, so you won’t have to worry about missing yours. It works with Aweber, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, GetResponse, Hubspot, Constant Contact, InfusionSoft, SendinBlue, and more.

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Which popup plugin is best?

After reading about these plugins, you’ve learned which features are common and which are unique.

Options such as form customization and basic page targeting can be found despite some plugins working better than others.

MailOptin gets a top recommendation because it has all the features you need, and the premium version is reasonably priced. Additionally, it includes A/B testing, which a lot of plugins don’t have yet.

If you want a quick and beautiful solution, consider the Popup Maker plugin, which is underrated in my opinion.

And if you’ve got a larger budget and you’re looking for something with all the bells and whistles, pick up a copy of OptinMonster.

To learn more about using WordPress popup plugins, read this guide next:

How to Add Beautiful Popup Forms to WordPress

Thanks for reading, and if this post helped you find a great new plugin, then make sure to share it before you go.

Ben Sibley
Ben Sibley
This article was written by Ben Sibley. He is a WordPress theme designer & developer, and founder of Compete Themes.