Category: Tutorials

If you don’t already have an email list for your website, you should probably stop everything you’re doing and start building one right now.

Your mailing list – the list of people who have signed up to receive emails from you – is potentially the most valuable asset in your marketing arsenal, and can help you to increase site traffic, build better relationships and trust with your audience, and ultimately make more money.

Email lists are so powerful because they offer an amazing conversion rate compared to other types of online marketing – in fact, email is 40x more effective than social media for acquiring new customers.

Your list is also totally owned by you and under your control.

Google changes its algorithms and sends you back to page 10 of the listings? No worries.

Facebook decides to start charging for business pages? Who needs Facebook anyway?

Ok so you’re convinced – you need an email list. But how on earth do you get started at building one?

Fear not, as WordPress site owners are spoiled for choice in terms of list building plugins that will do all the hard work for you so you can sit back and let the sign-ups start flying in!

Best Mailing List Plugins to Choose From for Powerful List Building

All you need to start building an email list is a simple form on your site to capture a visitor’s name and email.

Plugins make it easy to add this form to your site without any coding required and all the data you collect will be added to your WordPress database for easy export or integration with mailing software.

Effective list building plugins also offer extra features to help improve your conversions such as:

• Pop-ups, slide-ins, and other eye-catching ways to display your sign-up form
• Functionality to offer opt-in incentives such as a free e-book
• Reporting so you can see how well your forms are performing

Looking for a plugin that offers all of this and more? Read on for a summary of some of the best list building plugins for WordPress:

01. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads is considered by many to be the gold standard of list building plugins and it offers pretty much any feature you could possibly want, along with unlimited customization options.

This is a premium plugin but it’s actually great value for money considering all the functionality that you get, and it’s cheaper than several of the other premium options.

One of the great things about this plugin is that it’s designed specifically for WordPress users by the team behind Thrive Themes, so you know it’s a quality plugin that’s not going to slow your site down like some other generic solutions that aren’t built for WordPress in particular.

Some of the features of Thrive Leads include:

• Drag and drop editor to easily create any kind of form
• Created targeted offers based on post, category, tags, and more
• A/B split testing
• Detailed reporting
• SmartLinks displays different content to different types of visitor
• SmartExit triggers the opt-in before users leave your site
• Eye-catching animated form effects
• Fully mobile responsive.

Thrive Leads allows you to create just about any type of opt-in form so you can choose a combination of different styles that work best for your site and audience:

• Pop-up box
• “Sticky” ribbon
• In-line form
• 2-step opt-in form
• Slide-in form
• Opt-in widget
• Full screen overlay
• Content lock for opt-in incentives
• Scroll mat
• Multiple-choice forms.

Every form that’s built with Thrive Leads looks great as they offer an extensive library of templates to customize, so no worries if your design skills are somewhat lacking.

These templates are also optimized for conversion rates so you can just build and activate, without needing to do loads of research and testing on conversion techniques.

Thrive Leads really offers all the tools you need to grow your list without any hassle. The split testing and reporting features are particularly useful as they show you exactly what’s working and allow you to experiment with different types of form and calls to action.

Price: $67 for a single site license, or $19 a month as a member of Thrive Themes for access to all themes and plugins.

Get Thrive Leads

02. ConvertBox

ConvertBox is just like every other marketing tool in the market. It lets you collect leads by integrating with some of the best email marketing service providers around, segment your funnels, create lead capture forms, and even A/B test variations to see what’s working (and what’s not).

That said, this WordPress mailing list plugin prides itself in giving website owners a way to personalize every experience site visitors have while on your site. In other words, you don’t just display a random popup optin form whenever someone lands on your site. Instead, you deliver the right kind of message to people based on their interests.

ConvertBox comes with 4 built-in notification templates that include simple corner callouts, notification bars, modal window popups, and full page takeovers. And with a powerful, yet user-friendly drag and drop editor, you can easily create whatever kind of marketing element you need to build a bigger email list and grow your business.

Features included in ConvertBox include:

• Real-time data tracking and analysis
• Segmenting and tagging capability
• Intelligent targeting based on CRM data, sales, referrers, and more
• Dynamic text replacement for delivering personalized messages
• Countdown timers that integrate seamlessly with all offers
• Specialized mobile editor for on the go changes
• Fast cloning of elements or entire steps
• And much more…soon

This new guy on the block is not quite available yet. In fact, the team behind ConvertBox is working hard to add more powerful features to the plugin before making it available to all. However, if you’re interested, you can request early access now and see what all the hype is about. For doing so, you’ll even lock in a special lifetime price.

Price: Will be $99/month or $1,188/year…unless you unlock the early bird special, which right now is going for a one-time payment of $395. This license will be good for up to 10 websites and come with 250K views/month.

Get Convertbox

03. Optin Forms

Optin Forms is a free plugin developed by the team at FancyThemes and is a simple solution for creating opt-in forms on your website without any coding knowledge or fuss.

It comes with five customizable form designs and works with 7 of the most common email marketing solutions including AWeber and Mailchimp.

This plugin doesn’t have the fancy templates and advanced features of many of the other list-building software solutions. However if you’re after something simple and free, and you’re using one of the supported marketing platforms, it does the job.

Price: FREE

Get Optin Forms plugin

04. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is designed to increase the conversion rate of your website – converting visitors into subscribers, growing your email list, increasing page views, and getting more sales.

This plugin comes with over 65 pre-designed mobile-friendly form templates that are ready for you to customize as you wish. An advanced targeting engine also allows you to show personalized messages based on user behavior.

Some of the features included with OptinMonster include:

• Drag and drop form builder
• Automated actions and personalized messages based on user behavior
• A/B split testing
• OnSite retargeting – customizing promotions for returning users
• Integration with major eCommerce platforms

OptinMonster is particularly powerful in its targeting based on location, device, referrer, page, cookie, and more. It’s a good choice for eCommerce sites running segmented marketing campaigns.

One other thing to note is that OptinMonster is cloud-based rather than being a traditional WordPress plugin. This can be useful if you want to use it on several sites as everything can be managed in one central location. You can use it on any website – not just WordPress sites

Price: $9 – $29 a month depending on the features required and the number of sites you want to use it on.

Get OptinMonster

05. OptimizePress

OptimizePress is a landing page builder rather than an opt-in form builder. It provides mobile-ready templates for creating landing pages, sales pages, and product launch funnels.

Sometimes the optimal way of building your list is by using targeted landing pages rather than a form integrated with the rest of your content. Of course you don’t have to choose between the two – often a combined approach is the best option.

Most list building plugins don’t have the option to build whole landing pages so OptimizePress is definitely worth a look if that’s what you’re trying to do. It’s really easy to use with a drag and drop builder and you can choose to either customize one of the pre-built templates or start from scratch with your own design.

As well as the all-important opt-in form, there are over 40 custom elements to choose from when you’re building your page such as testimonial blocks, progress bars, and video players.

Another feature that will come in handy for some users is the plugin’s capability to create secure membership portals – you can create a member’s only area of your site as an incentive to sign up for your mailing list without the need for any extra software.

Price: $97 for use on up to 3 sites.

Get OptimizePress

06. Bloom

Bloom is one of the plugins offered with Elegant Themes membership, which means if you’re already an Elegant Themes member, you can use it on any of your sites for no additional charge.

The pop-ups and fly-ins can be triggered by various user actions including time spent on page, reaching the bottom of the post, after scrolling, or after purchasing. However it’s notably missing the “exit intent” trigger that’s a feature of some other plugins.

Just like the themes that Elegant Themes is most famous for, Bloom is beautifully designed and comes with over 100 professional templates that you’re free to customize for your own purposes.

You can learn more about Elegant Themes in our review here.

Other features include:

• A/B split testing
• Integration with an unlimited number of mailing list accounts
• Conversion and list statistics
• Targeted display settings.

Bloom strikes a nice balance between offering a flexibility and customization without being bloated and providing you with lots of extra features you probably won’t use.

Price: Included with Elegant Themes membership ($89 per year)

If you do decide to go with Bloom, make sure to use the Elegant Themes coupon to get 20% off.

Get Bloom

07. Leadpages

Like OptimizePress, Leadpages is a landing page builder that you can use to create launch pages, opt-in campaigns, and more.

It comes with over 160 beautifully designed templates ready for editing, that are optimized for conversion. In fact you can even choose templates based on their conversion rate to give yourself the best chance at getting new sign-ups to your mailing list.

Leadpages also comes with a Facebook ad builder, which will come in handy for those looking to build an audience through social channels.

Everything in Leadpages is tweaked to optimize your conversion rate so you can enjoy useful features including:

• A/B testing
• Campaign ROI management
• Easy-to-understand analytics
• Drag and drop builder for easy design and customization
• LeadBoxes turn any link on your site into a 2-step opt-in with pop-up
• Automatic integration with marketing tools
• Built-in payments.

Leadpages comes with its own plugin for WordPress so you can easily integrate it into your site without any additional software.

Price: Leadpages starts at $25 a month. If you’re not sure if it’s a right fit for you, there’s a 14-day free trial so you can try out the software before committing to it.

Get Leadpages

08. Sumo

Sumo provides a whole suite of tools designed to grow your website’s traffic and encourage people to sign up to your mailing list.

There are a few tools that come in the package that you’ll be most interested in if you want to build your list:

• List Builder makes it easy for you to create a lightbox pop-up to capture emails, integrated with all the main email campaign software
• Scroll Box triggers a pop-up email collection box when a user scrolls down the screen
• Smart Bar adds a floating bar to the top or bottom of your website, where you can add an email collection form
• Welcome Mat adds a full-screen call to action on landing.

Other tools included are:

• Share – makes it easy for visitors to share your content on social media
• Heat Map – see where people are clicking on your site
• Highlighter – makes it easy to tweet quotes from your articles
• Image Sharer – makes it easy to share your images on Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

Price: Sumo is available for free for those just starting out who have up to 200 email subscribers. For everyone else, memberships start from $24 a month.

Get Sumo

09. Ninja Popups

Ninja Popups integrates with all the popular mailing list software and makes it easy for you to create pop-ups that are specifically designed to convert.

A drag and drop editor simplifies pop-up creation and there is a library of over 70 pre-designed themes to choose from.

The pop-up can be triggered by exit intent, scrolling, or after a set time of inactivity. You can also target different pop-ups for different pages.

Other features include:

• Opt-in locker
• Social locker
• A/B testing
• Anti pop-up-blocker system
• Over 70 animation effects.

Ninja pop-ups is very reasonably priced and a lot cheaper than many of the other list-building plugins. It doesn’t offer as much customization and as many features as some other solutions, but if you just want to create pop-ups, it’s a great value option.

For a small additional fee you can buy add-on packs including the Opt-in Bars pack to turn your pop-up into a bar ($12), the Widget Extra add-on to integrate your designed pop-ups into content as a widget ($8), and an extra theme pack, which includes ten new theme designs ($9).

Price: $25

Get Ninja Popups

Choosing the Best WordPress Mailing List Plugin

All of these plugins work well and will make the task of building your list much easier and faster. If you’re still not sure which one to pick, take a moment to think exactly what you want from a plugin.

If you just want to add a simple subscriber form in a pop-up and you’d rather not spend any money, one of the free options such as Optin Forms will do the job.

Thrive Leads and ConvertBox are both premium solutions with lots of features. If you’re managing lots of sites, Convertbox’s cloud-based dashboard will make your job easier, but otherwise Thrive Leads works out better value for money with a one-off payment.

If you want to build landing pages rather than just a couple of pop-ups, you may want to look at Thrive Architect or Leadpages.

For Elegant Themes members, no need to buy an extra plugin as Bloom does the job beautifully. If you’re not already a member you might want to consider it to get access to the themes and other plugins.

Have we missed out your favorite plugin? Tell us about it in the comments.

The post 9 Best WordPress Mailing List Plugins for List Building – Compared (2020) appeared first on WPHacks.

Are you ready to boost the speed of your WordPress website with minimal effort?

If so, you need to choose from one of the best caching plugins in the market. Using a WordPress cache plugin is one of the most effective ways to ensure your website loads blazing fast and your visitors enjoy exploring your site.

Today we’re going to share with you the best WordPress cache plugins around so you can speed things up instantly.

After all, site visitors expect websites to load in 2 seconds or less. And 40% of people will abandon your site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

With such as easy solution like adding a caching plugin to your website, there is no excuse to give your site’s loading time a bump.

To help you out, here’s a convenient table of contents so
you can quickly jump to the section (or
solution) you want:

What is Cache?

When a site visitor clicks on your website, your site sends
a request to your server. This request asks the server to deliver your site’s
content to the site visitor’s browser so they can see it.

The problem is, your web server has to process these requests every single time someone clicks on your website.

And this takes time.

If your website is popular and has a lot of traffic, your server has to work extra hard to continue processing requests and delivering your site’s content to browsers all over the world. This means your website has the potential to slow down.

When you use a WordPress caching plugin, it tells your
server to store a copy of some of your site’s files to disk or RAM (depending on how it’s configured). This
is called the cache. When a site visitor that has accessed your site in the
past returns, the content is served up from the cache immediately. This equates
to faster loading times and a better user experience.

Why Use a WordPress Cache Plugin

There are plenty of benefits for using a WordPress caching plugin
on your website:

• Faster loading times. When you use one of the WordPress caching plugins on our list, your site’s content is delivered instantly to return visitors. Because of this, you’ll boost conversions, a lower bounce rate, and better search rankings too.
• Improve the user experience. When you increase your site’s loading times, people have a more enjoyable experience while exploring your site.
• Less server strain. Instead of making multiple requests to your server every time a repeat visitor comes to your website, a caching plugin saves the site data and files in the cache. This means you use less server resources and decrease the server strain. This is important if you run a dynamic website such as a membership or eCommerce shop.

01. W3 Total Cache

Note: BoldGrid recently acquired the plugin, so you can expect more regular updates & support.

W3 Total Cache aims to improve your SEO, the user experience, and site performance. It does this by caching everything on your website and integrating with your content delivery network. Better yet, it accommodates all hosting environments, from shared hosting to dedicated hosting environments.

This WordPress cache plugin offers support for Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Secure Socket Layer (SSL). This makes it an ideal solution for those with eCommerce sites and other websites with dynamic content that not only needs caching, but increased security too.

In addition, it comes with GZIP compression to optimize web browser rendering, which is just another way to speed things up.

Pros:

• Allows CDN integrations
• Works well on both desktops and mobile devices
• Reduces HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files without
  negatively affecting anything else

Cons:

• Backend can be tough to learn because of complex settings
• Has been known to have some theme and plugin incompatibilities

Price: FREE

02. WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is another one of the best WordPress caching plugins in the repository that serves static HTML files from your dynamic (ever-changing) WordPress blog.

This is done instead of processing PHP scripts, which strain your server, use up more resources, and slow your website down. The static files that are generated and stored in the cache will deliver to users that are not logged in, users that have not left a comment on your site, and even those that have not viewed a password protected post.

This caching plugin is great for compressing pages, cache rebuilding, and supporting your existing CDN.

Plus, it comes with intelligent caching so those who need cached content delivered get it, and those that don’t – don’t.

Lastly, this caching plugin comes with a neat feature called garbage collecting. As you cache your site’s content, the cache gets full.

However, WP Super Cache automatically cleans out the cache on a regular basis so your site continues to load fast.

Pros:

• It was created by Automattic, so you know it’s updated regularly and won’t disappear
• Most backend settings are pre-populated
• Cache rebuilding feature means your cache isn’t cleared when someone leaves a comment

Cons:

• There are 3 caching modes, which can be
  confusing for beginners
• No official documentation for troubleshooting
• Lacks browser caching

Price: FREE

03. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is a premium WordPress caching plugin that comes full of features, but also a simple and intuitive interface and quick setup.

Of course, you might be wondering why you’d need to shell out money on a paid caching plugin when there are so many free WordPress caching plugins available.

Well, here are some of WP Rocket’s best features:

• Both page and browser caching
• Lazy load of media for faster loading
• Database optimization for removing the number of resources used
• Integration with multilingual plugins
• WordPress multisite compatibility
• Optimization of Google Fonts (not found in any other WordPress cache plugin)

In addition, WP Rocket takes cares of the basics like minifying HTML, JS, and CSS, integration with Cloudflare CDN, mobile device detection, and intelligent caching of eCommerce site content.

Pros:

• Developer-friendly (lots of hooks) plus a user-friendly dashboard for beginners (simple to set up)
• Extensive documentation and priority support via
  support tickets
• GDPR compliant – doesn’t store or access
  personal data or add cookies

Cons:

• Is a premium solution that can become costly as
  the number of websites increase
• No free trial (though there is a 14-day money back guarantee)

Price: $49 for a
single site license

04. Comet Cache

Comet Cache is a caching plugin that takes a real-time snapshot of every page, post, category, link, and more and stores them in the cache. From there, the plugin decides which site visitors to deliver cached content to, and which ones to deliver fresh new content to.

By default, Comet Cache does not serve cached pages to users who are logged in or users who have recently left comments on your site. It also excludes admin and login pages.

This intuitive plugin allows you to control the automatic clearing behavior on homepages, posts, author pages, categories, tags, and even XML sitemaps.

Plus, it caches RSS feeds and 404 requests.

It also serves cached files on your site from a content delivery network (CDN). Lastly, to avoid generating a new version of the cache while your server is busy, the plugin will monitor the server load and disable the cache expiration temporarily.

Pros:

• Easy to install WordPress plugin
• Detailed documentation and FAQs
• Double caching – on the server and the user’s
  browser
• Cache stats available for monitoring status

Cons:

• Incompatible with other caching plugins and
  Google AMP

Price: FREE
(premium version is available starting at $39 for a single site license)

05. Cache Enabler

Cache Enabler is an open-source WordPress caching plugin that comes with a fast and reliable disk caching engine. It works with WordPress multisite, serves WebP images without the need of JavaScript, and has an easy set up with very little configurations, making it a great solution for those of all skill levels.

In fact, Cache Enabler is one of the easiest to use WordPress caching plugins around.

Additionally, Cache Enabler displays your cache size in the dashboard of your site so you can see exactly how much space your cache is taking up. There’s also an automated cache clearing feature, a customizable cache expiration, and compatibility with Autoptimize, a WordPress plugin that makes optimizing your website a cinch.

Pros:

• Automatic purging of cache to clear up space
• Displays cache size in WordPress dashboard (unique to WordPress caching plugins)
• Supports WebP

Cons:

• Can be incompatible with some eCommerce sites
• Requires htaccess
  editing

Price: FREE

06. WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache is not just another WordPress caching plugin
to install and activate on your site. In fact, it comes with unique features
such as desktop caching, minification of HTML, and combination options for CSS
and JS to speed things up. Plus, you get browser caching, GZIP tools, and one
of the best track records when it comes to speeding up WordPress sites.

The settings are easy to understand in WP Fastest Cache since they consist of simple checkboxes you select or deselect.

You can integrate your CDN, optimize images separately from your caching, and even specify a specific type of caching for your mobile theme if you want. It even allows you to disable emojis on your site if you want.

Pros:

• Desktop and mobile theme caching
• Separate image optimization
• One of the fastest solutions around

Cons:

• Not WordPress multisite compatible

Price: FREE

Which of the WordPress Caching Plugins Is Best for You?

And there you have it! The top WordPress caching plugins around.

If you’re looking for the best free WordPress cache plugin, you’ll definitely want to check out WP Fastest Cache. It has an amazing reputation and will surely speed up your website with very little configuration.

If you need a little more punch, and have some wiggle room in your budget, your best bet is going to be the premium WP Rocket cache plugin. It comes with unique features like image lazy load, multisite compatibility, and both browser and page caching.

Lastly, for those of varying skill levels, from beginner to advanced developer, WP Super Cache is the best WordPress caching plugin. This reliable plugin isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and comes with cache rebuilding, which is a feature not seen in most WordPress caching plugins.

If you’re looking for more ways to speed up WordPress, in addition to using a cache plugin, check out this guide on PHP versions and why it matter to WordPress users.

Which WordPress caching plugin do you use on your website? Why is it your favorite? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!

The post 6 of the Best WordPress Cache Plugins (2020 review) appeared first on WPHacks.