In order to build an email list, you need a powerful lead generation tool. You get more benefits when the right people visit your site and end up becoming subscribers. This is the reason behind the current trend of building email lists for marketing campaigns, and this is exactly what you can achieve with this plugin. Let’s see in this OptinMonster Review if it really can live up to its hype.

From the creators behind other great plugins such as WPForms and Monsterinsights, OptinMonster was developed with just one point in mind. Get you leads. It doesn’t do much more than that, but it does it really well. For this reason has become the most known lead generation tool in the market.

It has some “killer” features for marketers like the “exit intent” recognition, to show popups only when the user is trying to exit the page, or the 100% visual popup designer, to surprise your users with custom and stunning designs. In addition to this, it allows the creation of A/B Testing Campaigns to experiment with different strategies to catch customers.

OptinMonster Review

1. Why use it

In most cases, website visitors follow a common pattern: They get to the site, determine whether it’s good for their purpose and if so, then read it and leave. Unfortunately, 70 percent of those visitors will likely never come back after leaving. This is why you want to get the visitor’s email address, to target this user in your campaigns and, hopefully, make him/her return to your website.

To work with this plugin, you do not require any expertise in email marketing. The plugin is simple and powerful as we will see in this OptinMonster Review. It also does not require server space because most things will be served from the plugin’s own servers. There are many other characteristics that make the plugin appeal to users:

• Attractive and clean designs.
• User-friendly interface.
• Visitor-friendly and interactive forms.
• An exit intent feature. As discussed, when this feature is activated, a visitor gets a popup form when about to leave the site. Why? Because you want to reduce the distraction. You do not want to disturb the visitor with a popup form every time a page loads.

2. How to Install and Configure it

The easiest way to install this plugin is from your WordPress backend. Just go to “Plugins” –> “Add New”, and write “Optinmonster” in the search box. After this, you should see OptinMonster in one the first positions of the list.

Once you install it on your site, you will see a new button in the left sidebar. If you click on it you will encounter a settings page where you need to either buy a license or connect the plugin to an existing one. As we mentioned, this plugin doesn’t have a Free version, so it’s not possible to use it without having a valid license.

The plugin was built with both beginners and professionals in mind. Due to this, we can observe how they have created an extremely clean interface with multiple videos and explanations to help you out in the beginning. If you have tested other plugins like WPForms and Monsterinsights, all of this will probably sound familiar. You can expect the same level of quality here as well.

3. Features

Unfortunately, this plugin only comes with a PRO version, meaning that it forces you to pay first in order to use it, which it’s not really convenient if you just want to test it out. Let’s see its main features at a first glance:

• Beautiful Forms (Capture leads with more than 75+ pre-made templates)
• 100% Mobile-ready & responsive Forms (Prepared to engage with visitors “on-the-go”)
• Several Form Types (Popups, Floating, Fullscreen, Slide-ins…)
• Complete Form Customization (The only limit is your imagination. You can add HTML and CSS to your forms)
• A/B Testing (Test different strategies with just a few clicks)
• Exit Intent Technology (Even if other plugins are using similar technology, Optinmonster was the pioneer)
• Page Level Targeting (Create different segmentation rules to run multiple campaigns in your site. Create unlimited forms for different purposes in various posts and pages.)
• Advanced Traffic Redirection (Send traffic to different pages by creating buttons and actions)
• Analytics (Use beautiful graphs to find out how your users are engaging in your site. Visualize individual insights for each form)
• OnSite Retargeting (Display different offers depending on whether the visitor is known or not)
• Integration with the main email marketing services. MailChimp, GetResponse, Aweber, ConstantContact, Infusionsoft, CampaignMonitor and many others.
• Adblock detection (Display different information depending on whether the user has Adblock activated or not)

4. Pros and Cons

Pros

• Beautiful and responsive Forms to engage with your subscribers and customers.
• Complete customization thanks to the 100% popup visual editor. Easily customizable, appealing and interactive forms.
• Incredible Analytics suite inside the plugin that provides individual information.
• Top-notch technology to help you capture leads (Exit Intent & OnSite Retargeting)
• A single interface that can be used to manage multiple sites. This plugin offers a hosted service rather than just a plugin that uses your server’s resources.
• Ability to create campaigns using email marketing services.
• Created by developers behind other popular plugins including MonsterInsights, WPForms and SeedProd.

Cons

• No Free version. You cannot test the plugin/service before you can decide to get the PRO version.
• The Basic Plan ($19/mo) is quite limited in terms of features. It kind of forces the user to choose the immediate superior one, Plus Plan ($39/mo)
• The price is prohibitive to sites that are just starting out with little or no subscribers.
• It doesn’t offer Unlimited sites in any subscription Plan, which it might be a deal-breaker if you have several websites.
• There are similar plugins that, even if they don’t have all of its features, can compete with a much cheaper price (e.g., ConvertPro).

5. Verdict

In this OptinMonster Review, we saw why it’s considered the best lead generation and popup plugin for WordPress. It has extremely advanced features to help you get the most out of your traffic by providing you with juicy leads! The question is, is it worth it?

This is a tricky question that we will try to give an answer in the next lines. Basically, if you have a popular website with a considerable amount of traffic, you might feel the need to start capturing the email of your users, to start doing some marketing. If this is the case, OptinMonster might be what you are looking for.

However, if you are a small Blog of a personal website with < 500 daily visits, it’s not really worth it in my opinion. The main reason is the current price. The benefits that you might end up getting from those new leads won’t be bigger than the cost you will be paying every month only to keep using the OptinMonster plugin.

Before finishing this review, we would like to mention a few OptinMonster alternatives that you might find useful during your search. Please let us know in the comments section whether you have worked with them or not! 🙂

• Popup Maker (free with pro addons).
• Icegram (free and pro).
• GetSiteControl (free and pro).
• Sumo List Builder (free and pro).
• WP Subscribe Pro (paid annually).
• Bloom
• Ninja Popups (one-time lifetime pay)

Summing up, OptinMonster plugin is an important tool for your website. It helps you to build your email list and run email campaigns. If you are looking to increase the engagement of your users (and have the budget for it!) there’s no better candidate out there!

OptinMonster costs $99/month 10 Sites, $59/month 5 Sites, $39/month 3 Sites and $19/month 1 Site, and can be bought here.

Want to read more? Check out our review of MonsterInsights!