OptinMonster is one of the highest-rated lead generation software tools out there, and for good reason. Not only can it be used on blogs and various websites, it can also be installed on any platform that can accommodate JavaScript. This means it can be used on almost any website (since most support Java), and there are many different options for users to choose from.
I’ve been using OptinMonster for 3 months now, and here’s what I now know. Hopefully I can help you decide if it’s right for your business.
What is OptinMonster?
The first line on the company’s website says “convert and monetize your website traffic,” which is a short yet comprehensive way to state the goal of the tool. The company was started in 2013 when the founders were looking for better ways to maximize leads and conversions, and its website states that “over a billion people see a website with OptinMonster on it every month.” That itself demonstrates what a reliable lead generation tool OptinMonster is.
OptinMonster has served over 21.4 billion “opt-ins” and over a million websites use this tool. The main purposes of OptinMonster are to grow email lists, reduce cart abandonment, and increase sales conversion. Many site owners report great success with OptinMonster’s functionalities. I’m still a new user, but so far it’s worked very well for me as well.
Why Do You Need OptinMonster?
Gaining followers and new customers is critical for any website or business to thrive. OptinMonster makes it very easy to create a professional looking popup or signup form on your site so that site visitors can add themselves to email lists. Then you can send marketing emails to them whenever you’d like.
Email campaigns consistently generate higher profits over other marketing tactics like social media that can be hit-or-miss and vary day-to-day. They also increase the number of people viewing your site and purchasing your products or services, as successful email campaigns add to your existing website visitors. Successful email campaigns can also improve your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings and get you more exposure on Google.
What Lead Generation Options Does It Offer?
OptinMonster offers numerous options when it comes to how you want to target your website visitors. These include options that we have all seen at some point before, including lightbox popups, gamified wheels, scroll boxes, full screen displays, inline, and side-in choices. The number of options allows you to pick the best one for your website based on whether or not you want the lead generation tool to be subtle or very obvious to your site visitors. And the really cool (and effective) aspect of OptinMonster is that you can set lots of rules as to when the pop occurs to site visitors. You can choose to make it appear when the visitor is exiting your site, when they’ve been on your site a certain amount of time, have scrolled a certain way down the page, are on only certain pages, etc, etc. This capability is probably the most useful benefit of OptinMonster, and it’s the one that really allows you to hone in what works for your site and your visitors. You can experiment with different types of forms and different display rules until you find the ones that work. And when it works, I can tell you from personal experience, it really works! I use OptinMonster for my site ShedCalculator.com. Before I did, I got about one new email signup a day. Now I get closer to 10!
Why You Should Use OptinMonster
While there are many reasons to choose OptinMonster, one is that users don’t need to have experience with coding. The company offers an extensive range of customizable template forms that you can use (they all look top notch). The drag-and-drop functionality lets you create a popup or form in just a few clicks.
As mentioned, OptinMonster works on just about every website. Some similar tools are only functional on WordPress pages, but this tool is different because it is not a plug-in like other ones; instead, it is a service and can be used on any site that supports Java (which is almost every website today).
OptinMonster also comes with many email integrations, meaning you can likely use the email service of your choice. All the top email marketing services are included (constant contact, Aweber, etc). If you use Zapier, OptinMonster can accommodate that, too.
Plans and Pricing
OptinMonster is one of the more transparent companies when it comes to pricing, as the prices are a flat rate. They offer four pricing plans, which currently include Basic ($9/month), Plus ($19/month), Pro ($29/month), and Growth ($49/month). If you purchase an annual plan instead of a month-to-month plan, you will save 50% on your overall price.
All plans come with the following basic features, and many additional features are included with each higher pricing tier:
- Lightbox Popups
- Floating Bars
- Inline Forms
- Sidebar Forms
- Slide-In Scroll Boxes
- Fullscreen Overlays
- Beautiful Template Library
- Drag & Drop Builder
- Custom Fonts
- Custom CSS
- Custom Success Messages
- Success Redirects
- Timed-Display Control
- Scroll Triggering
- Subscriber Recognition
- OptinMonster University
- List Segmentation
- Page Level Targeting
OptinMonster’s website lists out numerous other features of each plan, but some of the features for Growth users (the highest tier) get that others don’t are custom branding, geolocation targeting, AdBlock detection, activity logging, and client logins.
The Basic plan can support one site, the Plus plan can support two sites, the Pro plan can support three sites, and the Growth plan can support up to five sites.
In terms of pageviews, OptinMonster allows the following:
- Basic Plan: 2,500 per month
- Plus Plan: 10,000 per month
- Pro Plan: 25,000 per month
- Growth Plan: 100,000 per month
If you get so many leads that you exceed your plan’s pageviews, OptinMonster may automatically upgrade your tier. If Growth plan users exceed 100,000 per month, the company will reach out to them to set up a different, customized “Enterprise” plan to support the number of pageviews.
All of the plans support an unlimited number of campaigns, and customer support is available to all users but Pro and Growth users get priority support.
How Easy Is OptinMonster to Use?
OptinMonster has been carefully thought out, not only from the point of view of visitors on your website, but when it comes to setting it up. You won’t need any technical assistance to use it like a pro.
Downsides of OptinMonster
As with any lead generation service, OptinMonster does have a few downsides. First, there are a limited number of customizations that can be made when setting up the tool. Unless you are extremely picky, though, this should not be a problem, as there are plenty of design variations for most people.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I highly recommend OptinMonster. I don’t have any doubt that growing my email list so quickly will make OptinMonster pay for itself. I’ve used other popup tools, most of them free. Each time I was frustrated with some aspect of it. Either they were a hassle to integrate with my email marketing service, didn’t look very professional, or gave me very limited options with respect to when the forms were displayed. I can tell you that OptinMonster has none of these problems. They have clearly been around long enough to know what users like me want. Yes the price is more than I wanted to pay, but yes the cost will be worth it. If you have a website and want to grow your email list, don’t hesitate to signup. What they do is not rocket science. OptinMonster just makes it simple to create email popup forms that look professional and actually work – something that’s actually pretty hard to do on your own. If you want more email signups, leads, etc than definitely yes OptinMonster is worth the cost. Is there a cheaper solution out there? I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t have the time or patience to find it. I know this solution works very well and the cost is reasonable.