Finding an OptinMonster Alternative: Solutions for Lead Generation

OptinMonster established a reputation as a lead generation plugin. It promises to convert visitors to your website into potential leads and offers a range of methods to do it.

That said, it may not be for everyone; you may not like the pricing or the templates, or you may be struggling to integrate it into your website. 

Luckily for you, your search for an OptinMonster alternative ends here. We’ve compiled a list of the best OptinMonster competitors that may suit you better, and since you’re on the lookout for lead-generation solutions to grow your email list, we’ve got you covered on that front as well.

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OptinMonster: What’s the Deal?

OptinMonster is a popular lead generation and conversion optimization tool used by website owners and marketers. It allows users to create various types of opt-in forms, such as pop-ups, slide-ins, and floating bars, to capture visitor information and build email lists. 

OptinMonster is known for its user-friendly interface and a range of features designed to help businesses convert website visitors into subscribers or customers.

Below is a table of its main offerings.

Feature	Description
Drag ‘n’ Drop Builder	An easy-to-use visual editor that lets users create and customize opt-in forms.
Different campaign types	Different popup types, like full-screen mats, countdown timer, lightbox popup, content locker, etc. depending on the industry and product/service.
Exit-Intent Technology	Detects when a visitor is about to leave the website and triggers a targeted popup.
Inactivity Sensor	Targets inactive visitors on the website.
Scroll Trigger	Shows campaigns after the user has scrolled a certain percentage of the page.
OnSite Follow-Up Campaigns	These campaigns are triggered by visitor interactions on the website.
Referrer detection	Displays targeted messages based on where the user came from.

Besides these, OptinMonster also allows integration with numerous services like email marketing services, e-commerce websites, content management systems, social media platforms, and webinar websites. Additionally, users also get an analytics tool that lets them study the performance of different lead capture campaigns and A/B-test them for improvements.

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OptinMonster Pricing

OptinMonster has four price tiers, and these prices are only available for those paying annually:

1. Basic: $9/month
2. Plus: $17.6/month
3. Pro: $22.8/month
4. Growth: $32.67/month

While the free plan looks good at $9 a month, you only get to display your popups 2,500 times a month. On the Plus plan, you get 10,000 views on 2 domains, whereas the Pro plan gives you 25,000 page views on 2 domains. On the Growth plan, you can target 100,000 visitors. A lot of features are only available on the top-tier plans, so it’s important that you read the details carefully.

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Pros and Cons of OptinMonster

Let’s compare its plus points versus its pain points.

Pros	Cons
Has an intuitive drag-and-drop builder, making it easy to create and customize opt-in forms.	It’s expensive, and no free plan
It offers a wide range of opt-in form types.	Had a major security scare in 2021 where the OptinMonster plugin made a million WordPress sites vulnerable
It supports integration with a variety of third-party platforms	A lot of the third-party integrations are only possible on the Pro and Growth plans
Users can perform A/B testing to optimize the performance of their opt-in forms	Can be slow and heavy
	The conventional design options in the popup template library aren’t great
	Customer care can be a bit slow

While any service has its pros and cons, is the list above reason enough for customers to bail? Let’s explore why customers are looking to OptinMonster competitors for answers.

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Why are OptinMonster Customers Looking for Alternatives?

The biggest gripe against OptinMonster seems to be billing issues. Customers also feel that OptinMonster can make implementation easier, with many users struggling to add features when creating popups and integrating them on their sites.

That said, the lack of a free plan can be discouraging to small and medium-sized businesses. Often, companies with a limited budget want to test a tool to see if it’s right for them; it’s a fair request. Unfortunately, OptinMonster needs you to commit with your credit card, and if you’re interested in its premium features, many of them are only accessible on the Pro and Growth plans, which are far more expensive.

Another strong reason for customers to seek OptinMonster alternatives is due to the security flaw that came to light in 2021 when the makers of Wordfence (a security plugin for WordPress websites) wrote a post explaining how the plugin had numerous vulnerabilities that exposed the entire site to hackers. 

Rumor has it that the issue affected a million websites that used the plugin. OptinMonster has taken steps since to keep customer data more secure, but an incident like this can cause customers to seek solutions elsewhere. 

And if you’re in the same boat, we’ve lined up the best alternatives to OptinMonster below — we’ve also included a FAR better method of lead generation that can get you loyal and interested customers for life.

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Poptin 

Poptin is a platform that provides tools for creating and managing pop-ups, overlays, and other types of widgets on your website to help with lead generation and conversion optimization. You can design and implement diverse types of pop-ups, including exit-intent pop-ups, scroll-triggered pop-ups, and more. 

Poptin offers its users a template library and analytics to study the performance of popups, plus an A/B tester tool. Third-party integrations with CRMs and other marketing tools are also possible. Being a lead-gen software, Poptin lets you target visitors based on traffic source, geo-location, operating system or browser type, cookies, and more.

Besides this, Poptin also lets you create contact forms and CTA forms, which helps collect customer data; plus, it offers an autoresponder to email them. You can also create segmented lists on Poptin.

Common complaints against Poptin include unhappiness regarding their pricing and billing methods. Customers aren’t especially happy about how view counts are being calculated, either. The designing tool also acts up a bit at times and makes it difficult to create popups efficiently. 

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Poptin Pricing

Poptin does offer a free plan, but it’s pretty limited. Here are all the plans Poptin offers:

Free: Free

Basic: $25/month

Pro:  $59/month

Agency: $119/month

If you sign up for the free plan, you can use Poptin on 1,000 website visitors a month on a single domain. The Basic plan lets you target 10,000 customers plus you get access to 1,000 autoresponders. For $59 a month, you now get to display popups to 50,000 site visitors on 4 domains and send out 5,000 autoresponders. If you want to target 150,000 visitors, prepare to shell out $119 a month.

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Sumo

Sumo (once known as SumoMe) has been around as long as OptinMonster has and is often compared with it. Sumo’s pitch is that it offers you a free email capture service — but is it any good?

The features it offers are fairly basic. You get features like email list building, social sharing, analytics, heat maps, and it has a user-friendly interface to design your popups and opt-in forms to capture email addresses. You can also perform A/B testing on different versions of their pop-ups to optimize for better conversion rates.

Sumo integrates with a variety of third-party platforms, including email marketing services, CRMs, and e-commerce platforms. It also provides analytics and insights, allowing users to track the performance of their marketing efforts.

While the “free” tag is great to reel customers in, you will soon discover that many of the advanced features and higher usage limits are only available in paid plans. Also, the free plan displays the Sumo branding on all the tools you use. You also can’t run A/B tests or integrate Sumo with your favorite third-party tools. It’s also not uncommon to see complaints from customers struggling to integrate Sumo effectively.

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Sumo Pricing

Sumo only offers two plans:

1. Free: Free.
2. Pro: $49/month.

The Sumo free plan limits you to emailing 10,000 contacts a month, whereas on the Pro plan, you can send out 50,000 messages. You also don’t get access to any of their design templates on the free plan, nor the advanced analytics. Access to the statistics for emails, forms, and popups is limited to just 30 days.

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OptiMonk

OptiMonk specializes in on-site retargeting and conversion rate optimization. It provides tools and features to help website owners and marketers engage with visitors, capture leads, and reduce cart abandonment. It is popular with Shopify users who use it for its smart popups. 

Besides a wide range of popups, OptiMonk also lets you design landing pages based on customer data, like referral sources or cookie information. You can also use geographic information to customize targeting campaigns.

As an OptiMonk user, you also get A/B testing tools, AI features, and an analytics suite. The template library is pretty decent too, with modern designs for popups, forms, and landing pages.

OptiMonk seems to get pricey pretty quickly, according to customer reviews. Another common pain point seems to be integration with third-party services. The analytics could also do with improvements, and new additions to the template library would be welcome, too.

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OptiMonk Pricing

OptiMonk has 5 tiers, including a free plan.

1. Free: Free
2. Essential: $39/month
3. Growth: $99/month
4. Premium: $249/month
5. Master: Custom

You get 15,000 views a month if you use the Free plan, but this includes the OptiMonk branding. If you have two domains, want to remove the branding, and want to display 30,000 popups, go for the Essential plan. For $99, you can display 100,000 popups on the Growth plan, which goes up to 500,000 on the Premium plan. The Master plan is a custom quote that depends on your requirements.

Additionally, there is also an OptiMonk AI plan at $249 a month, which customized web pages to target customers better. You can also try it free for 30 days to check if it’s a service you want to pay for.

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Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads is a WordPress plugin created by Thrive Themes, a company that built its reputation by creating WordPress tools and themes for conversion-focused websites. Thrive Leads helps website owners and marketers build and grow their email lists through various types of opt-in forms. You also have a range of triggers to choose from, based on visitor behavior.

Thrive claims its tool does “more than list-building,” as you can also show relevant, highly targeted offers on your site, using popups and ribbon banners. You also get access to A/B testing and analytics tools besides a template library. 

On the flip side, the Thrive plugin can make your site heavy, according to customer reviews. Some of the templates also feel outdated, and building forms can get a bit tricky at times. Another annoying thing about Thrive is that you have to sign up for the full suite, and pay accordingly; this can get pretty expensive, especially when you have a bunch of tools you don’t need.

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Thrive Suite Pricing

Thrive Leads is only available as part of the Thrive Suite, which costs $149 per quarter.

For this price, you also get these tools along with Thrive Leads:

1. Thrive Architect: Drag and drop WordPress editor, 
2. Thrive Quiz Builder: Quiz designer to help with engagement,
3. Thrive Apprentice: Tool to help build online courses,
4. Thrive Ultimatum: It helps you create limited-time deals,
5. Thrive Ovation: This feature lets you display customer testimonials,
6. Thrive Optimize: A/B testing tool for different website elements, 
7. Thrive Comments: You can add a comments section to your pages,
8. Thrive Automator: Helps you automate actions between different plugins.

At this price point, it works out to the same amount as a few of the other options listed here.

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Unbounce

Unbounce is a landing page builder and platform designed to help users create and optimize landing pages without requiring coding skills. Additionally, you can also create popups and sticky bars/banners. Unbounce also offers AI tools to help you write copy and change the dynamic text on your website’s different landing pages, based on customer behavior.

Unbounce also offers integration with popular marketing tools, e-commerce stores, and social media platforms. You can also build campaigns around Google or Facebook ads. You also get a template library for forms and popups when you sign up for a paid plan. If you’re interested in checking out Unbounce, it offers a 14-day trial for free.

On to the cons. The price seems steep for the value it offers, even on the basic plan. Modifying the templates is also challenging, as the page builder is not user-friendly. We also saw customer reports of Unbounce affecting the page performance. A/B testing is another area that Unbounce could stand to improve.

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Unbounce Pricing

Unbounce offers three paid plans:

1. Launch: $99/month
2. Optimize: $145/month
3. Accelerate: $240/month 
4. Concierge: $625/month

Opting for the Launch package gives you 20,000 unique views every month, along with a limit of 500 conversions. The Optimize plan lets you target 30,000 unique people on 5 domains. You get 10 domains and 50,000 visitors on the Accelerate plan, whereas the Concierge plan is perfect for users who want to target over 100,000 visitors every month. 

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Comparison of Free OptinMonster Alternatives

Here is a table comparing the pricing of each of the alternatives along with what you get for the price.

Service Provider	Free plan/trial	Base paid plan	Pageviews per month	Third-party tool integration	Special feature
OptinMonster	❌	$9/month	2,500	✅	Exit-Intent® Technology
Poptin	✅	$25/month	10,000	✅	Supports 60+ integrations
Sumo	✅	$49/month	Unlimited	✅	Free plan is good for SMBs
OptiMonk	✅	$39/month	30,000	✅	AI tools
Thrive Leads	❌	$37.25/month	Unlimited	✅	Plenty of additional tools with paid plan
Unbounce	❌	$99/month	20,000	✅	Custom landing pages

The table above should make it easier to decide which tool is right for your lead generation efforts. But there are other, far more effective methods of generating leads and attracting prospects towards your brand; let’s check them out.

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Want High-Quality Leads? Here’s a Secret Weapon

Most marketers already know what lead magnets are; it is an incentive or offer that you provide to potential customers in exchange for their contact information or other valuable data. 

The goal of a lead magnet is to attract and capture the interest of individuals who may be interested in a product or service, turning them into leads for the business. Typical lead magnets include webinars or workshops, templates, free trials, discounts, case studies, etc. 

Now let’s talk about the obvious benefits of lead magnets.

Lead magnets are highly effective in capturing leads, and their success is rooted in several compelling reasons. They provide a clear value proposition to potential customers and actively engage them by addressing their specific needs, challenges, or interests. Lead magnets establish trust between you and the potential lead and serve as a powerful tool for collecting essential data about potential customers.

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The Inbox Formula: The Final Piece of the Puzzle

At Campaign Refinery, we believe strongly in best email practices. We’ve seen trends and tools come and go, but we took a no-nonsense approach to email, building a strong foundation around a few core beliefs. 

Our focus has always been on the best possible deliverability, tools that let marketers create the campaigns of their dreams, automation that lets them execute ideas perfectly, and an analytics dashboard that gives them a holistic view of their marketing efforts.

As good as our tools are, it takes experience to use them effectively. And we’ve figured out how to pack a decade of experience into a guidebook.

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Campaign Refinery: Doing What OptinMonster Cannot

While generating leads from your website is a good idea, marketers tend to put all their efforts into it, and not as much into what they do with the leads after. 

If you have a list of leads, it’s just the beginning. You now have to assess how good this list is, you have to filter it for invalid emails, spam traps, and burner emails, and then, you have to launch your first email.

At this point, the email platform you use becomes crucial for effectively managing and nurturing those leads. And that’s what we do at Campaign Refinery — we open up a world of possibilities for your leads with all the features we offer.

Right off the bat, sending emails through our platform offers the best deliverability rates on the market. This means your email’s chances of reaching your customer’s inbox, instead of the spam folder, are extremely high. That is mainly due to the excellent sender reputation that we’ve been cultivating alongside our clients. This is complemented by our automated email list cleaning feature, which ensures your emails aren’t hitting any dead ends.

Next, you need to segment your lists and run different types of campaigns that will engage them. We’ve got you covered there, too — we’ve got a template library that you can use, as well as automation features that will guide your customer all the way through the sales funnel.

And what good is all of this without robust analytics? Our tools offer deep insights into your subscribers, helping you make informed decisions to improve your conversion rates.