8 Best WordPress Popup Plugins 2024 (Free & Premium)

Email marketing is the most effective way to build an audience and to promote businesses. In fact, building an email list is one of the best investments you can make.

According to a report, every $1 spent on email marketing brings an average return of $42. That’s a better return on investment than the ROI from all social media platforms combined.

Setting up email optin forms and popup messages are the easiest ways to grow your email list. As well as to convert your website visitors into leads and potential customers.

This is where WordPress popup plugins come to help.

What Is a Popup Plugin?

WordPress popup plugins allow you to easily integrate email marketing services such as MailChimp with your website and to collect the emails of your website visitors. Every email collected from a popup plugin form gets stored directly on your email marketing service automatically.

The main purpose of a popup plugin is to setup popup messages on your website. Most popup plugins come with an editor where you can design your own messages. And setup how the popup messages are shown to visitors. You can choose to show a popup message when a user scrolls down on a page or after a short delay.

This whole process of creating popups and integrating email marketing services is very easy as well.

Main Features to Look for in a Popup Plugin

Before you start looking for a WordPress popup plugin, remember to look for these features and functions.

Compatability with Themes and Plugins

When choosing a popup plugin or any WordPress plugin, the first thing you should do is make sure it’s compatible with your theme and other plugins already installed on your website.

Some plugins often have conflicts with theme functions and third-party plugins. So before you buy and install a plugin, make sure to read the plugin description thoroughly to make sure it’s compatible with all your plugins and themes.

Integration with Email Marketing Services

There are dozens of email marketing services out there. MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, CampaignMonitor, just to name a few. Whichever platform you’re using, check to ensure the popup plugin supports integration with your preferred email marketing service.

Exit-Intent Technology

Have you ever noticed how some websites show a popup message just when you’re about to leave the website or close the tab? Well, that’s done with the help of exit-intent technology.

This technology detects when a visitor is about to leave and shows a popup message to grab their email before they leave. This technology is usually only available with premium popup plugins.

Popup Designer

Designing popup messages to reflect your branding and to blend in with your website design is important to create a seamless user experience. Most popup plugins include a popup builder or an editor that lets you design your own popup forms and messages using a drag and drop interface.

Now that you know what to look for, try checking out some of the popup plugins below to get started.

1. Ninja Popups

• Price: $27

Ninja Popups is a premium WordPress popup plugin that offers the best worth for your money. For its one-time price, you can use the plugin to create unlimited popups, get future updates for free, and access all of its popup templates.

With more than 37k users, this is also one of the highest-rated popup plugins available on WordPress. It also has a popup builder and supports all popular email marketing services from MailChimp to Mailjet and dozens more.

Best Features

• Choose from more than 60 popup form templates
• Create your own popups using the theme builder
• Features exit-intent technology
• Optin locker allows you to lock content behind an email signup form
• Supports all email marketing services
• A/B split test popup designs to improve engagement
• Compatible with WooCommerce, Google Analytics, and more

2. Green Popups

• Price: $24

Green Popups (previously Layered Popups) is a more advanced popup plugin for WordPress. Similar to Ninja Popups, it comes loaded with tons of great features for building effective email optin forms.

In addition to all the basic functions, this plugin also includes exit-intent technology, content locker for locking articles behind an optin form, a drag and drop popup designer, and much more. Another benefit is that the plugin barely affects your website performance and consumes very little resources.

Best Features

• More than 200 different popup templates to choose from
• Drag and drop popup builder lets you create your own designs
• Supports all email marketing services
• Features A/B testing, conditional logic, payment popups, and more
• Compatible with WooCommerce, WPML, and other third-party plugins

3. MailOptin

• Price: Free / $59

MailOptin is one of the best free popup plugins on WordPress. Unlike most other free versions, this plugin doesn’t set any restrictions on usage and allows you to easily create simple popup forms.

The plugin also supports all popular email marketing services, including Sendy, a cheaper alternative to traditional email marketing that uses Amazon SES. Read our review of this plugin for more details.

Best Features

• Easily create basic email popups to capture emails
• Supports integration with all popular email marketing services
• Includes sidebar widget, page-level targeting, and spam protection
• Allows you to send one-off email newsletters to registered users

4. Elementor Pro

• Price: $49

Elementor is a well-known plugin among WordPress users as one of the best page building plugins on WordPress. The premium version of the plugin recently introduced a new popup builder that allows you to create all kinds of popups using its drag and drop editor.

The specialty of Elementor popup builder is that it allows you to create any kind of popup. Whether it’s an email optin form or even a popup to promote a sale, Elementor can handle it all.

Best Features

• Easy to use drag and drop editor for creating beautiful popup forms
• More than 100 modern popup templates to choose from
• Create welcome mats, login forms, content locks, and more
• Includes exit-intent technology
• Supports all popular email marketing services
• Compatible with WooCommerce

5. Thrive Leads

• Price: $67

Thrive Leads is a popup builder made with professionals and marketers in mind. This plugin offers very detailed insights into the performance of your popup forms with stats and reports for understanding how well each popup form performs.

The plugin also features all the basic functions of a popup builder, including lots of pre-built popup templates, exit-intent technology, and more.

Best Features

• Create effective popup forms with professionally designed templates
• Easily build your own forms using drag and drop editor
• Ability to create social triggers, on-click, and more for targeted optin forms
• Get detailed reports and stats on engagements
• Supports integration with all email marketing services

6. Brave Popup Builder

• Price: Free / $59

Brave is a new member among the WordPress popup plugins. It comes with a smooth and beginner-friendly editor where you can easily build and design popup forms with ease.

The free version of the plugin lets you use 8 elements to design custom email forms and lets you access 10 templates with unlimited use of the plugin. With the premium version, you get access to more advanced design elements and lots more templates.

Best Features

• Design custom popup forms using the beginner-friendly editor
• 10 free templates to choose from
• Unlimited popups and pageviews
• Supports 12 popular email marketing services
• Includes analytics for tracking stats and views

7. ConvertPlus

• Price: $24

ConvertPlus is another versatile premium popup plugin that comes packed with a lot of useful features. Such as behavior triggers that allow you to optimize how the popups are shown. And it also has in-line forms that let you insert optin forms directly in between the paragraphs of your blog posts.

The plugin is also more suitable for business websites, online stores, and markers. Especially for businesses with referral programs as the plugin has a way to detect visitors coming from referral links.

Best Features

• Choose from more than 100 unique popup templates
• Ability to display your email optin forms in 10 different positions
• 12 different behavioral triggers and filters
• Includes exit-intent and two-step optin forms
• Customize and build your own popups using drag and drop editor

8. Icegram

• Price: Free / $97 per year

Poptin is another great free popup plugin that’s ideal for beginning bloggers to create a simple email optin form a small blog or website. It comes with lots of beautiful pre-made popup templates and a beginner-friendly editor as well.

The only downside to using the plugin is that the optin templates available with the plugin feature slightly outdated designs and limited customizability.

Best Features

• Create both email optin and promotional popup messages
• Includes action bars, two-step optin, and targeting rules
• Unlimited views and use
• Integration with popular email marketing services

Which WordPress Popup Plugin is Best?

If you can afford to invest a few bucks, we’d recommend using Ninja Popups. It offers an incredible amount of features for its low price. And you get future updates for free.

A good free alternative is the MailOptin plugin. It may not have many great templates or design features, but the plugin will help you get more subscribers.

We also covered a list of best email newsletter plugins for WordPress. If you’re tired of paying for email marketing services, make sure to give that article a read.