TL;DR

The best giveaway ideas are built around a prize only your customers would want, so the people who enter are people who might buy from you. With a generic prize, you tend to fill your email list with freebie hunters who will leave the day you announce the winner.

I’ll show you 12 giveaway ideas grouped by business type: eCommerce stores, local businesses, SaaS companies, and content creators. Each one comes with a real popup I built in OptinMonster, so you can see what a visitor would see.

Giveaways often end the same way, with a pile of new email addresses, a prize given to a stranger, and a bunch of unsubscribes the week after. The prize was usually a tablet, so the people who entered wanted a tablet, not your products.

When a giveaway works, then it’s usually because the business gave away something only a future customer would want, and showed the popup to people who were already on its website. I picked every idea in this post with that in mind.

I’ll go through the 12 ideas by business type first, then walk you through the setup, with RafflePress for the giveaway itself and OptinMonster for the popups.

How to Pick a Prize for Your Giveaway

Who will enter your giveaway depends on the prize you’re offering.

If the prize is cash or a gadget, then almost anyone enters, and your email list fills with people who may never buy from you. If the prize is something only your customers would want, then fewer people enter, but more of them are likely to buy from you.

For example, in our case study with KnivesShipFree, an online knife store, they ran a monthly giveaway where the prize was one of their own knives.

They then launched a new knife, and 31 people from the giveaway list bought it on launch day. That was worth $10,118.20 in sales, and 22 of those buyers were first-time customers.

Three kinds of prizes are worth offering:

• Your own product. Most of the people who enter already want what you sell, and the ones who don’t win know which product to buy next.
• Credit to spend with you. This could be a gift card to your shop or a free month of your plan. The winner has to come back to use it.
• Access. This could be early access to a launch, or a call with you. Giving away access costs you time instead of products, and it mostly interests people who already care about your business.

Here’s the second kind, store credit, as a shopper sees it on a store’s homepage:

Giveaway Ideas for eCommerce Stores

For an eCommerce giveaway, I’d recommend offering a product you sell and putting the entry form on the pages shoppers already visit.

1. A monthly product giveaway popup

One product a month can be a great prize. You show a popup that collects a name and email as the entry, and you draw the winner on the last day.

With a new prize on the first day of the month, returning shoppers have a reason to enter again, and the people who join the email list you build are more likely to want your products.

KnivesShipFree ran exactly this giveaway with a lightbox popup. That’s the kind that opens over the page and dims everything behind it.

In the case study, their desktop popup converted 8.64% of the visitors who saw it, and the mobile version converted 10.31%. Together they collected more than 5,000 email addresses in under four months.

I built the popup below in OptinMonster from the Subscribe for Gift template.

You could then schedule each month’s popup in OptinMonster to go live and end on its own.

For full details, see our guide to scheduling a campaign by date and time.

2. An order-to-enter sweepstakes for leaving shoppers

Every order placed this week could be an entry in your giveaway to win the order back, or a bigger bundle.

Your only cost would be refunding one order, and shoppers who were going to wait now have a reason to buy from you this week instead.

The popup above is OptinMonster’s Abandoned Checkout Discount template with the copy changed. The template comes with a cart icon on the left, and I swapped it for a photo of the bundle the shopper could win.

Keep in mind that in the US, a sweepstakes that requires a purchase also needs a free way to enter. So, make sure to add a no-purchase entry route, and check the rules where you sell.

You could show the sweepstakes popup only to shoppers who are about to leave the cart or checkout page, with OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent® trigger. There’s no reason to interrupt someone who is already paying.

Our guide to activating Exit-Intent® shows how to turn it on and which devices it runs on.

3. An everyone-wins spin wheel

With a spin wheel, every shopper who spins wins something, from free shipping to 25% off, and they give you their email address to spin.

The wheel works because the shopper feels like they won something. And the discount is usually one you’d have offered anyway.

The wheel above is OptinMonster’s Spin for a Discount template. It fills the whole screen, and the only copy I touched was the headline and the one line under it.

You can set how often each slice wins in OptinMonster’s Coupon Wheel campaign, and a slice set to 0% will show on the wheel without ever winning. That’s the setting I’d check first, because the odds decide what the wheel costs you.

The Coupon Wheel campaign comes with OptinMonster’s Growth plan, so it’s the one example in this post that isn’t on every plan.

Our roundup of the best spin the wheel plugins shows the tools and settings that real stores can use.

Giveaway Ideas for Local Businesses

If you run a local business, then the prize can be something the winner has to walk in to collect, and customers can enter while they’re still in your shop.

4. A feedback-for-entry draw

In this giveaway type, customers tell you what they enjoyed about their visit, and everyone who answers goes into a monthly draw for a $100 gift card.

You get feedback you can quote and an email address for every entry. The winner also has to come back to spend the gift card.

You could show the feedback popup in OptinMonster on your website’s thank-you page, or to anyone who comes back within a few days of a purchase.

5. A birthday club draw

People can give you their birth month in return for a birthday treat. Then each month, everyone with a birthday that month goes into a draw for a bigger prize, like dinner for two.

People then have a reason to come back for the bigger prize in their birthday month, when they may already be planning to celebrate.

I created the popup above using the Birthday Discount template with the copy rewritten for the draw. The birthday month dropdown was already in the form, so I didn’t have to add it.

You could connect the popup to your email platform in OptinMonster, and that platform then sends the monthly draw email.

6. An in-store QR code to the giveaway page

A QR code on receipts or the counter could open a giveaway page on your website. People who just bought from you can enter while they wait, and you get the email address of someone who already shops with you.

You build the giveaway page in RafflePress, and I’ll cover that in the setup section.

If you’d rather not build a page at all, then you can use an OptinMonster Shareable MonsterLink instead. It’s a link that opens your popup on its own hosted page, with the form already on it.

For full details, see our guide to using MonsterLink.

Giveaway Ideas for SaaS Companies

For a SaaS giveaway, the prize is usually your own plan. You can ask people to enter by doing something you already want users to do, such as inviting a teammate.

7. A refer-a-teammate draw

Each time a user invites a colleague who starts a trial, that user gets one entry in a quarterly draw for a free year on a higher plan.

Referred trials are usually the cheapest trials you’ll get, and the prize only costs you one account for a year.

You could show the referral popup to users who have logged in a few times. A brand-new user probably isn’t ready to recommend you to a colleague yet.

The Refer a Friend action in RafflePress tracks the referrals, and you can cap how many each person makes. That cap is the first setting I’d turn on. Otherwise, one person spamming invites can spoil the draw for everyone else.

8. A gift card for booking a demo, with a Yes/No step

In this giveaway idea, your visitor sees a question first, something like “Want a $25 gift card for taking a 15-minute demo?”, and only the people who click Yes see the form.

So, the people who fill in the form have already said yes to a demo call.

In our case study with SnackNation, they showed a fullscreen Yes/No popup to visitors who were leaving the free trial page. 31.85% of those leaving visitors took the gift-card offer, and SnackNation got around 1,200 email addresses a week from it.

For full details, see our guide to creating a Yes/No campaign.

9. An early-access draw

Before a launch, you can open a waitlist and draw a set number of people from it to get early access. Early access costs you very little, and you were going to let people in anyway.

You can also use the size of the waitlist to judge how much demand there is before you ship.

You could show the waitlist popup in OptinMonster on your changelog or roadmap page, where the people who care about new features already are. In RafflePress, you could give bonus entries to people who share the waitlist, so it reaches people beyond your existing users.

Giveaway Ideas for Content Creators and Publishers

If you’re a creator, then the prize is usually access to you, and people enter the giveaway when they subscribe.

10. A subscriber-only monthly draw

Every subscriber is automatically in the monthly draw, and the prize changes each month. For example, you might offer a signed book one month and a call with you the next.

New readers can subscribe to enter, and existing subscribers get a reason to stay on your mailing list.

You could show the subscriber popup to readers who have scrolled through most of an article. Those readers probably like your writing already.

11. A milestone giveaway

A birthday or a product launch is a good reason for people to pay attention. Affiliate partners who want to reach your audience can also provide the prize bundles, so you can offer a bigger prize at no cost.

For OptinMonster’s own 10th birthday, we ran a multi-prize giveaway with three bundles, and you can see the page in RafflePress’s giveaway landing page examples.

You could announce the milestone giveaway with a popup to every visitor for the week it runs. This is the one giveaway where I wouldn’t narrow the targeting.

12. A viral referral giveaway with bonus entries

Entrants get one entry for subscribing to your list, and extra entries for every friend who joins through their link. Your entrants can share the giveaway with their friends, and those friends are more likely to trust a link from someone they know.

We ran our own Black Friday giveaway on RafflePress and got 24,372 entries and 3,500 new users. Our email list grew 3X faster because of it.

You set the bonus entries up in RafflePress. I’ll come to that in the setup section.

How to Run These Giveaways With RafflePress and OptinMonster

You need to build the giveaway page, the entry actions, and the winner draw in RafflePress. You then use OptinMonster to show the popup to the right visitor at the right moment, and for a simple draw like the monthly product giveaway, you can collect the entries with the OptinMonster form instead.

Before your giveaway goes live, make sure to write the rules.

They need to cover:

• Who can enter
• The start and end dates
• How you choose the winner
• A free way to enter, if a purchase is involved

Our guide to running an online contest has a section on each of those rules.

Step 1: Build the giveaway in RafflePress

RafflePress is a WordPress giveaway plugin built by the same team as OptinMonster, and it has a free version on WordPress.org.

Here’s how you create the giveaway:

1. From the RafflePress dashboard, click Add Giveaway.
2. Give the giveaway a name and pick a blank layout or one of the pre-made templates.
3. Add the prize name, with an optional description and image.
4. Set the start and end dates.
5. Add your actions. These are the things that earn entries, such as joining your email list or following you on a social network.
6. Save your changes, then open the Publish tab and copy the shortcode, or add the giveaway block to a page or post.

The page you put that shortcode on is the page your popup will send people to. RafflePress’s own guide to creating your first giveaway has screenshots of each step.

Step 2: Build the popup in OptinMonster

Here’s the easiest way to build a popup:

1. From your OptinMonster dashboard, click Create New Campaign and choose Templates.
2. Pick Popup as the type, find a template you like, and click Use Template.
3. Name the popup, choose the website it will show on, and click Start Building.
4. In the Design view, click any text to change it. Write the prize, the entry mechanic, and the date you draw the winner.
5. Decide what the button does. If your giveaway is on a RafflePress page, then click the button, set Button Click Action to Redirect to a url, and paste the giveaway page’s address. If the giveaway is a simple draw, then keep the email form, and the entries will go to your email list.
6. Click Save.

For full details, see our guide to the best popup examples.

Step 3: Decide when the popup shows

A popup that shows at the wrong moment annoys people. So, I’d spend more time on when it shows than on how it looks.

For an exit offer like the order-to-enter sweepstakes, you turn on Exit-Intent® in the Display Rules view. I left mine on the default settings, and I’d do the same for a first run. Our guide to activating Exit-Intent® shows you how.

For a monthly giveaway, you set a start date and an end date in the Publish view. Our guide to scheduling a campaign by date and time shows you where they are.

Finally, make sure to publish the popup.

Step 4: Draw the winner and email everyone else

When the giveaway ends, open the Users screen in RafflePress and click Pick Winners. RafflePress will pick the winner at random, and you’ll be able to email them from the same screen before you announce it.

After that, make sure to email everyone who didn’t win with a consolation offer, such as a discount on the prize they entered to win.

I’d expect most of a giveaway’s sales to come from that email. Everyone on that email list has already shown you which product they want.

Frequently Asked Questions About Running Giveaways

Start Your First Giveaway Now

I’d start with the first idea in the section for your kind of business, run it for one month, and track the numbers. If you get lots of entries but few sales, then I’d change the prize first.

The popup templates I built these examples from come with every OptinMonster plan, apart from the spin wheel, which is a Growth plan campaign. Exit-Intent®, scheduling, and MonsterLink come with Pro plans and higher, so see which OptinMonster plan fits your giveaway.

If you’d like to compare options before you commit to RafflePress, then our roundup of online giveaway tools compares it with ten others.

We’ve heard this from agencies a lot, and from anyone whose account runs to dozens of campaigns across several websites and folders. You know exactly which campaign you want to open, but the list still makes you search for it.

The old filter only let you sort by one thing at a time. You couldn’t combine it with a second filter, and you couldn’t put one sorting option ahead of another. So, if you only wanted to see your Popups, you still had to scroll past every Floating Bar to reach them.

That changes now.

We’ve launched Advanced Filters, available now on all plans. You can now find every filter and sort option on your Campaign Dashboard in one panel and sort them in the order you choose.

And you can now favorite templates. Heart the ones you build from most in the template library, and they’ll be just one click away the next time you need them.

What Are Advanced Filters?

Advanced Filters is the new panel that controls which campaigns appear on your OptinMonster campaign dashboard, and in what order.

You’ll find it by clicking on the Advanced Filters button above your campaign list. Every filter and sort option opens together in one place.

Set the list up the way you’d rank it yourself, then select Apply, and your campaign list will update to match.

Sort in the Order You Choose

You can now sort your list by more than one thing at once.

There are 6 options:

• Date (Newest or Oldest)
• Name (A to Z or Z to A)
• Visitors
• Conversions
• CR% (Highest or Lowest)
• Status (Active first or Paused first)

Sorting options stack. The first one you turn on groups your campaigns and the second ranks them inside each group, so you decide what matters most and what comes second.

For example, let’s say you want your live campaigns at the top, ranked by how many conversions each one is getting. Set Status to Active first, then Conversions to Highest.

Your active campaigns will sit at the top in order of results, with the paused ones underneath in the same order. So, the campaigns that matter most are the first ones you see.

Changed your mind? Select Reset and the list will go back to its default order.

Filter by Campaign Type, Website, or Folder

Advanced Filters also narrow the list to only the campaigns you’re working on. If you run campaigns for more than one client, then this is the part we built for you.

Simply select a client’s website or folder in the sidebar and the settings panel starts there, so every filter you add applies to that client alone, never across all of them.

The sidebar also shows how many of each website’s or folder’s campaigns match your filters, so you can see where the campaigns you want are before you click into them.

Advanced Filters vs. the Search Box: What’s the Difference?

The Search campaigns box above your list of campaigns hasn’t gone anywhere. It searches based on campaign name, so it’s still the fastest route when you already know what you called the campaign.

Advanced Filters is for everything else, including the campaigns of one type, in one client’s folder, ranked by how they’re performing.

In short, use the search box when you know the name, and the panel when you know the type, the client, or the results you’re after.

Also Featuring: Favorite Templates

If you build from the same two or three templates again and again, then every new campaign has started with the same search for them.

Now, you can select the heart beside any template to favorite it, on any campaign type. Then, select My Favorites at the top of the filters column, and the templates you actually use are the only ones on the screen.

Keep in mind that favorites belong to you as a user, and they aren’t shared across your account. So, if a teammate builds from the same templates, then they’ll want to heart them, too.

Build the Next Campaign Faster with Saved Blocks and Saved Rulesets

Advanced Filters help you find your campaigns more quickly. Two other features, Saved Blocks and Saved Rulesets, help you build the next one faster.

• Saved Blocks: style a form, a button, or a countdown once, save it, and drag it into the next campaign. You never have to restyle the same block twice, and every campaign matches your branding.
• Saved Rulesets: save a set of Display Rules once and import it into any campaign. This lets you put identical display rules and schedules on dozens of marketing campaigns in minutes rather than hours.

3 Ways to Use Advanced Filters Right Now

1. Review a Client’s Campaigns, Ranked by Results

Select the client’s website or folder in the sidebar, then set Status to Active first and Conversions to Highest.

You’ll see their live campaigns ranked by results, which helps when putting together monthly client reports.

2. Find the Campaigns to Fix Before Holiday Traffic Arrives

Filter to one campaign type, then sort Visitors to Highest and CR% to Lowest.

The campaigns at the top are getting plenty of traffic and converting the least of it, so they’re the ones to rework or pause first.

3. Start Every New Client From a Template You Trust

Favorite the two or three templates you use for every new client. Then, when the next client signs, open My Favorites and start from one of them instead of searching the library.

If you’ve also saved the form block and the display rules from your last client, then the design and the targeting are already done.

Available Now on All Plans

Advanced Filters and favorite templates are available on every OptinMonster plan, and they’re already in your account. The button is above your campaign list and the hearts are in your template library.

Filter and Sort Your Campaigns in 4 Steps

You can try this on the campaigns you already have:

1. Log in to your OptinMonster dashboard and select the Advanced Filters button above your campaign list.
2. Check the campaign types you want to see, and pick your websites or folders under Site(s) and Folder(s).
3. Turn on the sorting options you want, then drag the most important one to the top and check the ORDER line.
4. Select Apply, and your list will update.

For the full walkthrough, see our guide on filtering and sorting campaigns.

You’ve scrolled past enough campaigns to find the one you wanted. Go and set up your list now.

Ready to find your campaigns faster? Log in and open your Campaign Dashboard.

Until next time,

Angie and the OptinMonster Team

P.S. Black Friday is only weeks away, and our template library has designs ready for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, Christmas, and more. Heart the ones you’ll use this season now so they’re one click away when the campaigns need building. And if you don’t have OptinMonster yet, you can get started here.

TL;DR

A holiday marketing campaign is an offer, a popup, or an email linked to one date on the shopping calendar. This guide covers the year-end season, which runs roughly from Halloween to the New Year sales, and each date works best with a different kind of campaign.

It starts with the list you build in October, runs through Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and the December shipping cutoffs, and ends with the January sale.

Are you planning your holiday marketing around one Black Friday discount? The holiday season has nine important sales dates, but each one works best with a different campaign.

The holiday season is the one time of year when your visitors arrive already planning to buy. So, your job is making sure they shop with you, come back for the next date on the calendar, and leave you with an email list that keeps customers coming back.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through the year-end season one holiday at a time, from the list you build in October to the sales you can still make in January. For each date, I’ll name the campaign I’d suggest running on your website and help you set it up.

Your 2026 Holiday Marketing Calendar at a Glance

Each of these campaigns should contain four parts: the offer itself, the email to your list, a post on social media, and the campaign on your own website.

Here are the dates that matter for 2026 and the campaign I’d build for each:

The dates move a little every year, and there are plenty of smaller ones I’ve left out.

For full details, see our ecommerce holiday sales calendar, which lists every shopping date in the year with ideas for each one.

Before any of these dates arrive, make sure the website itself is ready for the traffic. Our guide on getting your site ready for the holiday ecommerce season covers speed, mobile, and site search.

October – Halloween and the List-Building Window

Your email list is the one channel you own. Ads cost more in November and social posts reach fewer people when every brand is posting, but an email to your list is free and reaches everyone on it.

So, build the list first, and start as early as you can. Mid-October is the latest I’d start.

The offer: The simplest version is an early-access signup. This is a popup on your busiest pages that offers first access to your Black Friday deals in exchange for an email address. You can add a gift guide, a wishlist download, or a small welcome discount, but hearing about the deals first is often enough on its own.

The email and social post: You don’t have a holiday list yet, so this month the message goes out where you already have an audience. Tell your social followers and current subscribers that early access to the sale is coming, and where to sign up for it.

On your website: In OptinMonster, filter the template library by season and start from a Halloween design instead of a blank page.

If you want the signup process to feel more engaging, then a coupon wheel also works well in October. The visitor spins for a prize, and you set the odds and the coupon for every slice yourself.

One of our customers built their holiday campaigns this way. Cloudways’ holiday campaigns grew their overall list by 229%, which led to a 120% increase in free trials.

For more details, see our Halloween popup ideas.

Thanksgiving Week – Tease the Sale to Your Subscribers

Thanksgiving is November 26 this year. During the week before, you need to keep the early-access promise you made in October.

The offer: Show your subscribers the offer, the opening time, and the closing date before anyone else sees them.

The email: Make sure to also send the same teaser to your list by email, because it’s probably the first holiday email your subscribers will open. For help with this, see our holiday email templates and examples.

If you announce the sale on social media too, then our guide on creating a social media holiday strategy covers the posting schedule.

On your website: that teaser works well as a floating bar across the top or bottom of the page with the offer and the date it opens.

I’d build it now and schedule it in advance, so it appears on the day you choose and stops running when the sale opens. That way you’re not logging in to switch campaigns on during your busiest week.

In OptinMonster, you can set the start and end using the Scheduling button on the Publish screen. You can learn more about how to schedule OptinMonster campaigns.

Black Friday – Countdown to a Real Deadline

Black Friday is November 27, but the work for it should start in early October.

For the full timeline, see our guide on how to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and for the deals themselves, I recommend reading our Black Friday marketing ideas.

The offer and the email: A Black Friday campaign has three parts: the deal, the announcement email to your list on the morning the sale opens, and a countdown on your website.

On your website: Shoppers buy on Black Friday because the offer is about to end, so I recommend making the deadline a real one. If your countdown resets every time someone reloads the page, people notice and stop trusting it. Pick the date the sale ends and count down to that.

Our guide on using countdown timers to create scarcity explains why using a fixed deadline works well.

Where the timer sits on your page matters, too. On a product or content page, I’d recommend using a floating bar for a countdown, because it sits at the top of the page without covering what your visitor came to read. Save the full popup for the moment a shopper is about to leave.

For the full build, step by step, see our guide on how to create a countdown timer popup.

If you’re still choosing the tools for the sale, see our roundup of the best Black Friday marketing tools.

Small Business Saturday – Show Local Shoppers a Local Offer

Small Business Saturday is November 28, and the message that you show that day should be different from Black Friday’s.

Shoppers that day are looking for a reason to buy from a store near them, so being local matters more than the size of the discount.

The offer: If you have a shop or a service area, then you can show a Small Business Saturday message only to visitors in the towns you serve that offers in-store pickup, same-day delivery, or a thank-you offer for neighbors.

The email: Tell your local list about the offer by email the day before, and also post it in the local community groups your customers use. The website campaign is for the shoppers who find you on the day.

On your website: In OptinMonster, the Physical Location rule limits the campaign to the cities or regions you type in, so only local visitors see it.

Visitors outside that area never see the campaign and keep seeing your regular Black Friday offer. For full details, see our guide to what geotargeting is and how to use it.

Cyber Monday – A Second Offer for the People Who Didn’t Buy

Cyber Monday is November 30, and it can feel tempting to run the same Black Friday offer again with a new banner. But the shoppers who bought on Friday don’t need the same offer again, and the shoppers who looked and left didn’t want the offer the first time.

The offer: You could also make the second angle free shipping or a bundle rather than a deeper discount, so shoppers don’t learn to wait for a better price.

The email: Write a fresh Cyber Monday email too, instead of resending Friday’s, and give the second offer its own subject line.

On your website: So, I’d give Cyber Monday a different angle and show it to the people who didn’t convert on Friday. OptinMonster’s OnSite Follow Up Campaigns® let you do that.

For example, your Black Friday campaign could offer a 10% coupon, and the Cyber Monday follow-up could offer 20% off only to the visitors who didn’t take the first one.

For full details, see our guide on how to make follow-up campaigns on your website.

Giving Tuesday – Ask for the Donation

Giving Tuesday is December 1, and it’s a day focused on donations. If you run a nonprofit, then this is often the biggest single day of your year-end campaign, and the people visiting your website that day want to donate. If you run a store, it’s a good day to show the cause you support and pause the sale messaging for the day.

The offer: The donation itself, with a named goal and a real deadline, and no coupon attached.

The email: The email to your donors matters as much as the popup, and we’ve collected nonprofit newsletter examples to work from.

On your website: The campaign I’d build is a popup or floating bar that names the goal and shows how close you are to it. A visible fundraising progress bar does that job, so each donation feels like it makes a difference.

You can also add a Yes/No view in front of the donation form. Then the first thing the visitor sees is a question (“Will you help us reach our goal?”), and the form comes after a yes.

For more ideas, see our tips on how nonprofits can boost year-end donations with popups.

December – Urgency & Recovering Abandoned Carts

December shoppers are buying for other people, they’re running out of time, and a lot of them leave without finishing.

The Gift-Guide Popup

Someone shopping for a relative they rarely see doesn’t know which of your products to look at. A popup that asks one question and routes the answer works well here.

You can build a Yes/No view with “Shopping for yourself?” and “Shopping for someone else?”, where the second button sends the visitor to your gift guide or a curated collection page.

The gift guide itself works as an email and a social post too. Send it to your list in the first week of December, and the popup reaches the visitors who didn’t come from either.

For more options, see our guide to the best eCommerce lead generation strategies that actually work.

The Shipping-Cutoff Bar

The last order date for delivery by December 25 is a real deadline, and your shoppers need to know it. Put that date in a floating bar on your product and cart pages with a Static countdown to the cutoff.

The setup is the same as in our guide on how to add a free shipping bar.

Just make sure to update the date as each courier deadline passes rather than building a new campaign every time. A reminder email to your list a day or two before the cutoff is also helpful, and you can add a countdown timer to the email, too.

Once the shipping deadline has passed, our last-minute holiday marketing guide has ideas for the final days before Christmas.

The Exit-Intent® Popup

Most of the people who add something to a cart during the holidays won’t finish their purchase. In fact, around 70% of shoppers will abandon their online shopping carts.

An exit-intent campaign appears at the moment a visitor is about to leave, with one reason to stay. That reason can be the coupon they were hoping for, free shipping, a reminder of the shipping cutoff, or an offer to save their cart by email so you can follow up.

OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent® rule detects the leave on desktop from mouse movement toward the browser bar and on mobile from a quick scroll back up the page.

In our case study with the Christmas Lite Show, an exit-intent optin converted 49% of abandoning visitors. Over the four weeks tickets were sold online, nearly 30% of all site visitors either bought a ticket or subscribed for the coupon.

For more ways to use the trigger, see our exit-intent popup hacks.

After Christmas and New Year: Re-Engage the List You Built

Make sure not to treat December 25 as the final date of your holiday marketing campaign. The week after Christmas is full of shoppers with gift cards to redeem, returns to exchange, and January budgets to spend.

The offer: Gift cards are worth focusing an entire campaign on. In our case study with the Nashville Pedal Tavern, a popup selling gift certificates brought in $2,300 in 14 days.

The email: Next, it’s time to look at the email list you built in October. It’s now full of people who bought from you once, and getting them to buy a second time is often cheaper than finding a new customer. A short win-back email in the first week of January, with one offer and one button, is usually enough.

On your website: The campaign I’d recommend building for this week is for people who have shopped with you before. OptinMonster’s OnSite Retargeting® has a Returning Visitor rule.

With this campaign, a “welcome back” popup with a gift-card reminder, a “complete the set” offer, or your January sale shows only to visitors who have been to your website before. First-time visitors still see your signup.

For the setup steps, see our guide on how to create a popup for returning visitors.

But before you build any of this, keep one limit in mind.

If your website gets very little traffic yet, or you don’t have an email platform to send to, then you should focus on building the email list first. Then you can come back to the campaigns when there are visitors to show them to.

Holiday Marketing Campaigns FAQs

Get Started With Your Holiday Marketing Campaigns

The stores that do best over the holidays start early, match each campaign to the specific holiday, and keep their deadlines real.

But if you only do one thing this week, then build your email list. Every marketing campaign after that is easier when you have people to send it to.

Ready to build your first holiday campaign? Get started with OptinMonster today!

Popups and Fullscreens are usually the highest-converting campaign types, but they also take over the screen. So you risk annoying your visitors and losing the conversion anyway.

Then there’s the close button. Somebody clicks it on their way past, and your campaign has disappeared for the rest of their visit. They don’t get another look at the offer, and you don’t get another chance to make it.

That changes now.

We’re launching Campaign Teasers, available now on Plus plans and higher. Your Popup, Fullscreen, or Floating Bar can now start out as a small element at the edge of the screen. It can also shrink back down when a visitor closes it, instead of disappearing for the rest of the visit.

Stop choosing between your conversions and the user experience. Your offer just stays one click away. And a campaign that used to be closed for good becomes a non-intrusive, persistent reminder that your visitor can reopen whenever they’re ready.

What Is a Campaign Teaser?

A Teaser is your campaign’s minimized state. It’s a small version at the edge of the screen, like a tab, a circle, or a gift icon, instead of the full campaign displayed on your website.

It’s similar to the chat bubble in the corner of a support site. You know it’s there, it stays out of your way, and you click it when you want to ask a question.

A Teaser works the same way, except it opens your optin. So, the offer is available for the whole visit without taking over the page, and a visitor can access it with a single click.

To turn it on, just select the Teaser view, then toggle Enable Teaser view in the View Visibility section of the Basic tab.

While that toggle is off, your campaign’s close button behaves the way it always has and closes the campaign completely.

Let Visitors Come to the Offer, or Come Back to It

Your offer now gets two moments in front of the visitor instead of one. There’s the moment before someone has engaged with anything on your website, which is when a full campaign might have been an interruption.

And there’s the moment just after they close it, when most offers are gone for good.

You’ll find two display options in the When To Show section:

• Show before the campaign opens: Your campaign loads as the Teaser, and your visitor clicks it to reveal the offer. That’s the Teaser-first approach, and it’s the gentlest way to run a campaign. Nothing covers the page until somebody asks for it. It’s the same principle behind MonsterLink campaigns, where a visitor who chooses to open the offer is more likely to take it. If you’ve given up on Fullscreens because they feel too intrusive, start here.
• Show when visitor closes the campaign: Closing the campaign minimizes it to the Teaser instead of hiding it. Your visitor gets their screen back but the offer is still there, so they can open it again themselves whenever they’re ready.

There’s also a Remember minimized state across pageviews toggle. Turn it on and the Teaser stays minimized while your visitor browses. This means the decision they made on your homepage still applies to the next page.

Six Teaser Styles, Eight Places to Put Them

How your Teaser looks and where it appears on your website will decide whether anyone clicks on it, so you can make it as subtle or as obvious as you like.

There are six options to choose from:

• Tab, Pill, and Handle contain your own text, up to 24 characters. Make sure to replace the default, because every new Teaser starts out saying “Get 10% Off!”
• Circle swaps that text for an icon from the library, and Gift shows a gift icon.
• Image shows a file you upload, so your Teaser can match your branding exactly.

You can also choose where the Teaser sits, from eight positions around the edge of the screen. Keep in mind that Tab and Pill run along the top or bottom, the Handle sits on the left or right edge, and Circle, Gift, and Image can use any of the eight.

Just make sure to check what’s already in that corner first, because the bottom right of your website is usually where your chat widget is.

Choose How Much Attention Each Campaign Asks For

You know which of your offers deserve to be shown immediately to visitors and which ones are better off waiting to be asked. Teasers let you control this setting campaign by campaign, instead of each one behaving the same way.

If you leave the Auto open delay switched off, then nothing will open until somebody clicks the Teaser, which keeps your campaign completely out of the way. Or you can set a short delay, and your campaign will open on its own after a few seconds.

Style the Teaser to Match Your Brand

Your Teaser has its own styling controls, so it’s easy to match your branding.

You can set a solid or gradient background, change the colors, and adjust the border, the corners, and the spacing. This is worth a minute of your time, because it’s the part of your campaign your visitors will see most.

Your Display Rules and Targeting Don’t Change

If you’ve already spent time on your display rules, then none of that work is affected. The Teaser only changes what happens after your campaign loads or gets closed, so your targeting still applies exactly as it did before.

And you decide which devices show it at all. Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile each get their own toggle in the Show On section.

Split Test the Teaser Like the Rest of the Campaign

If you’re adding a Teaser to one of your best campaigns, then you’ll want to know which version of it earns more clicks. Because the Teaser is a view of your campaign, it comes along when you split test, the same way everything else does.

5 Ways to Use Campaign Teasers Right Now

Here are 5 easy ways to get started with Campaign Teasers right now:

• Run a Fullscreen that doesn’t block the first click. Build the Fullscreen campaign you actually want, then check ‘Show before the campaign opens’ so it loads as a gift icon in the corner. The visitor who clicks it is already interested.
• Turn a close into a second chance. On the Popup carrying your offer, check ‘Show when visitor closes the campaign’ and put the offer itself into the Teaser text. Somebody who closes your popup on arrival isn’t the same as a shopper a few pages later with a full cart.
• Let the offer follow your visitor. Turn on ‘Remember minimized state across pageviews’, and the campaign your visitor minimized once stays that way while they browse your website.
• Move the Teaser off your chat widget. If the bottom right position is already taken, try the Handle style on either edge or a Tab along the top. Your Teaser and your chat widget fighting over one corner is the first thing your visitor will notice.
• Treat mobile differently from desktop. In the ‘Show On’ section, let a Popup open normally on desktop and start minimized on mobile, or skip the Teaser on mobile altogether.

Campaign Teasers vs. the Slide-In Minimized State: What’s the Difference?

Campaign Teasers work with your Popup, Fullscreen, and Floating Bar campaigns.

Slide-In campaigns have their own slide toggle settings instead, which minimize the campaign in a similar way. Our guide on how to enable the minimized state for Slide-In campaigns has the details.

So there’s nothing to migrate and nothing to rebuild. If you’re running Slide-Ins with the minimized state today, then they’ll keep working exactly as they are.

Also Featuring: The New Slide-In Position Grid

And while we’re on the subject of where things sit on your screen, Slide-Ins have a new position grid too. If you’ve ever wanted a Slide-In somewhere other than the bottom right, that’s a built-in setting now rather than a custom CSS job.

Slide-In campaigns used to be fixed to the bottom right corner. You can now choose from a grid of nine positions instead, including the top, the center, and either side.

You’ll find the Slide-In Position grid under Slide-In Settings in the builder, and our guide on how to reposition your Slide-In campaign has the steps.

Available Now on Plus and Higher

Campaign Teasers are available with a Plus or higher subscription.

If you’re on Plus, Pro, or Growth, the Teaser view is in your campaign builder right now, so go and open a campaign.

Enable Your First Teaser in 5 Steps

You can do all of this on a campaign you already have, without building anything new:

1. Log in to your OptinMonster dashboard and open a Popup, Fullscreen, or Floating Bar campaign in the builder.
2. Select the Teaser view in the view bar at the bottom of the builder.
3. Toggle Enable Teaser view in the View Visibility section.
4. Under When To Show, choose whether the Teaser appears before your campaign opens, when a visitor closes it, or both.
5. Pick your style, text, position, and auto open delay in the Teaser Style section, then click Save.

For the full walkthrough, see our Campaign Teasers documentation.

Your best-converting campaign types don’t have to be your most intrusive ones anymore. Go and give one of them a Teaser.

Ready to keep your offers within reach? Get started with OptinMonster Plus today.

Until next time,

Angie and the OptinMonster Team

P.S. Curious what campaigns like these actually earn? Our OptinMonster case studies have the numbers, along with the exact setups behind them.

TL;DR

A social proof popup shows your visitors that other people already trust you.

A notification popup streams real activity, like “Sarah just signed up,” in a corner of the page. On the other hand, a lead-capture popup carries the proof inside it, like a subscriber count, a review score, or a customer quote.

Are you getting traffic to your site but nobody wants to convert?

That’s the gap that a social proof popup can fill. A first-time visitor to your website doesn’t know you, so they look for a sign that other people bought, signed up, or left happy before they will decide anything.

I’ll show you 7 social proof popup examples in this post. Most of them are campaigns we run on our own website, so I can tell you why we built each one the way we did. I’ll also cover the one situation where I’d tell you not to run a social proof popup at all.

What Is a Social Proof Popup?

A social proof popup is any popup whose job is to show a visitor that other people already trust you. The proof could be in the form of a live signup notification, a customer count, a star rating, a media logo, or a quote from a happy customer.

Social proof works because a first-time visitor can’t tell whether your company or product is worth trusting, so they look at what other people decided. A popup shows them those decisions while they’re still deciding, instead of on a reviews page that they may not open.

A notification popup is a small card in the corner of the page that streams real activity as it happens. And a lead-capture popup with proof in it is a normal optin campaign with a trust line or a quote added to the design.

Any of the campaigns in our guide to the types of popups can contain this kind of social proof, which I’ll show you in this guide.

7 Social Proof Popup Examples

Now, let’s take a look at the most effective social proof popup examples.

You build five of the seven examples below in OptinMonster itself, and the first two need TrustPulse, which is our live notification tool. Notifications are better for the pages where people decide to buy, and proof inside a popup suits anywhere you already ask for an email address.

1. A Recent Activity Notification on the Pricing Page

A recent activity notification is a small card in the corner of the page that shows real signups as they happen. This is highly effective because it shows social proof and can also trigger fear of missing out (FOMO).

We show these popups on our pricing pages because that’s where many users are asking themselves whether they can truly trust our product. A popup showing a signup that just happened, from a real customer, answers that exact question without us having to do anything extra.

The easiest way to set up live sale notifications on your website is with TrustPulse. Just make sure to include the real name and action in the popup so that it doesn’t read as generic or fake.

For full details, see our guide on how to use a recent sales popup.

2. An “On Fire” Popup for Anonymous Actions

An On-Fire notification is a single popup that shows the number of people who did something on your website in a set period, like 43 signups in a day. This works when the action is anonymous, because the running total still shows social proof without naming anybody.

For example, it’s a good option for showing actions that don’t capture a name, like adding a product to the cart or clicking a demo button. Plenty of visitors never fill in a form, so a count is the only honest way to show that those clicks are happening.

In TrustPulse, this is the On-Fire campaign type, and the setting that matters is Number of days to aggregate. Just make sure to pick a window your site can actually fill, because a low number like 3 actions over 7 days looks worse than no popup at all.

For full details, see TrustPulse’s guide on how to create an On-Fire campaign.

3. A Subscriber Count Inside the Newsletter Signup Popup

A subscriber count is a line of text inside the optin itself, showing the number of people who have already joined your mailing list. This works as social proof because that number tells a reader other people judged the newsletter worthy of handing over their email address.

For example, we show this social proof in our blog’s newsletter popup, with the heading “Join Over 235,335 subscribers to get free conversion optimization tips and resources.” We keep the number exact rather than rounding it, because an exact figure is harder to fake and readers trust it more.

To set this up easily in OptinMonster, simply add a Text block above the optin fields. Just make sure the count comes before the offer, so that it’s the first thing that anyone reads.

For full details, see our guide to email popup best practices.

4. Trust Lines Inside an Exit-Intent® Popup

Trust lines are a short list of proof points placed under the button within a popup, usually a few words each. This social proof works well because a visitor who is already leaving will likely read four short lines when they wouldn’t read a paragraph.

We show these on our own exit popup, which fires when someone moves to leave the page. Two of the lines read “Trusted by 1,000,000+ websites” and “600+ 5-star reviews”, so the offer and the proof are visible at the same time.

In OptinMonster, you can easily build them with a Text block, or an Icons block if you want checkmarks beside each one. Keep in mind that Exit-Intent® needs a Pro or Growth subscription.

For full details, see our guide to Exit-Intent® popup examples and how the technology works.

5. One Customer Quote Under the CTA Button

A testimonial popup includes one customer quote, placed directly under the call to action. This works well for a website without a big number of users yet, because one named customer can carry more weight than a count of just 300 subscribers.

For example, we show one of our own customer testimonials under the button in a popup on our website. A reader deciding whether to use our product wants to hear from somebody who already did, in their own words.

In OptinMonster, you can set up the quote using a Text block, with the customer’s name and company underneath it. Just make sure to pick a quote that names a result, and add their photo if you have permission to use it.

For more information, see our guide to customer testimonial examples and how to get them.

6. A Quote and a Count in a Floating Bar

A floating bar is a strip at the top or bottom of the screen that shows off your social proof without covering the page. This works on the pages where a lightbox popup would cost you more than it earns, like a product page or a checkout.

It’s also a good fit for a long tutorial, or any page somebody came to read, because the bar stays visible while the user keeps scrolling.

I recommend pairing one customer quote with a subscriber count and a single button, so that the whole thing is still readable at a glance. It’s also a good idea to name where the quote comes from, whether that’s Google, G2 or your own store, so that a visitor can go and check.

For more information, see our guide on how to add a floating bar.

7. Proof Shown Only to New Visitors

A New Visitor rule shows your proof popup only on somebody’s first session. This works because social proof is designed for people who don’t know you yet, so a customer on their fifth visit may just read it as noise.

You can pair this display rule with any of the six social proof popup examples above to make it more impactful on first-time visitors.

In OptinMonster, you add it in the Display Rules view and even add a delay of a few seconds so that it doesn’t show up immediately. You could also add a referral rule, so visitors arriving from a review site see a popup that names that site.

For full details, see our guide on how to use display rules.

When Not to Use a Social Proof Popup

Now, there are some cases when it’s not the best idea to include social proof in your popups. Before you switch on an activity feed, check your own numbers against a simple test. Would they impress you on somebody else’s website?

Here are some examples:

• Your store gets a couple of orders a day. A recent activity feed shows the same two names for hours, and people spot it fast. I’d use one customer quote instead, which works at any size.
• Your site is brand new. You have no activity worth showing yet. I’d collect a few real reviews first and add the popup after that.
• On mobile the popup lands on a buy button. A shopper taps the popup instead of the button. Make sure to keep it in a corner, and give it a few seconds before it appears.

How to Add Social Proof to a Popup in OptinMonster

It’s super easy to create a social proof popup in OptinMonster. All you need is an OptinMonster account and a campaign, which can be any of the 700+ templates.

1. Open the campaign in the builder. The Design view shows your blocks and settings on the left and a live preview on the right.
2. Drag a Text block from the left sidebar onto the preview, above or below your button. Type the proof line: a count, a rating, or a quote.
3. For star ratings or checkmarks, drag an Icons block instead and pick the icon from the library. For a customer photo or a logo, use an Image block.
4. Click any block in the preview to edit its copy, size, or color in the left pane.
5. Open the Display Rules view and add the rule that decides who sees it: a page, a time delay, Exit-Intent®, or New Visitor.
6. Open the Publish view, set the status to Live, and check that you’ve assigned the campaign to your website.

For a full walkthrough, see our guide on how to create a newsletter popup.

Social Proof Popup FAQs

Get Started With Social Proof Popups

Make sure to pick the social proof popup example that matches your volume. If your site has steady signups or sales, a notification feed on the pricing or checkout page is the fastest win.

If it doesn’t, then a subscriber count or one customer quote inside the popup you already run will do more than a feed ever could.

Ready to put your proof where visitors decide? Get started with OptinMonster today.

We’ve heard this from marketing agencies a lot, and the frustrating part is that the data already exists. It’s just been stuck inside your OptinMonster dashboard.

So every month, you copy campaign numbers into a spreadsheet, one analytics screen at a time. Then you do it again for the next campaign, and the next client, because each client needs their report cut differently.

That changes now.

We’re launching Analytics Exports, available now on Pro and Growth plans. It pulls your campaign data out of the dashboard and into a filtered CSV, with exactly the scope, date range, and columns you choose.

The screen-by-screen copying is gone. Just export the data once, then build the report your client actually asked for.

What is Analytics Exports?

Analytics Exports pulls your campaign performance data out of OptinMonster and into a CSV file. This data opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers, or whichever tool your reports already live in, so your numbers end up right where you work with them.

You can find the new Export Analytics button at the top of any campaign’s analytics screen. Just click it and the export panel slides in from the right side.

From here, you control what to export, how to filter it, and which columns to include. So the file you download comes ready for the report you’re building, with exactly the data you need.

Export the Exact Cut of Data You Need

An export isn’t a data dump. You’re in charge of every row.

Pick what to export, then keep narrowing until the file holds exactly what you need.

Setting the date range also takes just one click. Pick a preset like Last 7 Days, Last 30 Days, or Last Month, or set a custom range on the calendar to fit your needs.

Only want the popup numbers? Limit the export to specific campaign types and pull just your Popups, or just your Floating Bars, Slide-ins, Fullscreen, or Inline campaigns.

It’s an easy way to keep a report focused on the campaigns that your client cares about most.

Which columns you include is up to you, too. The Columns to include picker sorts them into four groups, and you can toggle each column on its own:

• Campaign Details: the campaign’s name, ID, type, launch date, last modified date, associated folders, and top performing pages
• Performance: impressions, conversions, conversion rate, and campaign status
• Revenue Impact: total revenue, click-through revenue (from visitors who converted in the campaign before buying), and view-through revenue (from visitors who saw it, then bought)
• Split Tests: the test’s name and status, each variation’s totals, and which variation is the Primary

Every export includes the Campaign Name column, and as you adjust your filters, the estimated row count updates live at the bottom of the panel. So you know exactly what you’re getting before you click anything.

Built for Multi-Client Work

If you run campaigns for more than one client, or more than one website, this is the part we built for you. Client reporting is where you prove your work is paying off, and scope is what makes it fast.

At the top of the panel, under What to export, you’ll choose your scope:

• This campaign – just the one you’re viewing
• A folder – every campaign in the folders you pick
• A domain – every campaign on the websites you pick

You can select more than one folder or domain, or narrow down to specific campaigns within them.

If you keep each client’s campaigns in their own folder, then that’s the whole client’s data in one download. One export per client, not one per campaign.

Now multiply that across every client you manage.

Split Tests, Revenue, and Top Pages in Every Export

Total numbers are only part of the answer for a report. Clients will typically have questions about which version of the campaign had better results, how much revenue it brought in, and which pages the conversions came from.

Analytics Exports puts all three answers in the file as columns.

Split tests come through in full. Each variation gets its own row, with its own impressions, conversions, and conversion rate, so the file shows which version of a campaign is doing well instead of one blended number.

The Revenue Attribution columns also cover the revenue question. Just turn them on, and every campaign will include its total, click-through, and view-through revenue, which is the number that clients ask about most.

The Top Performing Pages column answers the last question, which is where those conversions came from.

The file also records its own context. Its name includes the export date, and a short header records the date range, generation time, and account. So, anyone who opens that CSV weeks later knows exactly what they are looking at.

And if an export is too large for the browser, we’ll email you a download link instead, usually ready in 5 to 10 minutes and valid for 7 days.

3 Ways to Use Analytics Exports Right Now

1. Build Each Client’s Report From One Export

Set the scope to a client’s folder, pick your date range, and export. Everything that client’s campaigns did lands in one file, ready to shape into their report.

2. Put Campaign Revenue in Your Reports

If you have Revenue Attribution enabled, include the Revenue Impact columns, and the revenue each campaign generated goes straight into your presentation or report. Your client was going to ask for that number anyway.

3. Audit Every Campaign on a Website in One File

Set the scope to a domain and export everything. Then, sort by conversion rate to see which campaigns are performing well and which need attention.

Also Featuring: The Analytics Screen Redesign

Analytics Exports ships alongside a redesigned campaign analytics screen.

A new filter bar separates your campaign selector and date range controls from the charts below, so the controls for what you’re seeing sit in one clear place.

Each split-test variation also gets its own section header, with its own title, Primary tag, and a pencil icon for quick edits.

And there’s a new Top Pages tab in each campaign section, right alongside Revenue and Conversions, which shows each variation’s top-performing pages.

Available Now on Pro and Growth

Analytics Exports is available now on Pro and Growth subscriptions.

Account Owners and Admins can run exports. So if a teammate doesn’t see the Export Analytics button, that’s why.

If you’re already on Pro or Growth, it’s in your dashboard right now. If you’re on Basic or Plus, this is what upgrading unlocks, alongside Revenue Attribution, Exit-Intent®, and the Google Analytics integration.

Analytics Exports vs. Google Analytics Integration: What’s the Difference?

The Google Analytics integration (available on Pro and higher) sends your campaign events into your Google Analytics property. This lets you analyze OptinMonster activity alongside the rest of your website’s data, in Google’s interface and on Google’s terms.

On the other hand, Analytics Exports gives you OptinMonster’s own numbers as a file you control. It comes with campaign-level conversion data, split-test variations broken out per row, and the revenue attributed to each campaign.

If you want OptinMonster events inside your Google Analytics reports, then use the integration. If you want the raw campaign data in a spreadsheet, a client report, or your own dashboard, that’s Analytics Exports, and plenty of accounts will use both.

Run Your First Analytics Export in 5 Steps

1. Log in to your OptinMonster dashboard and open the campaign you want data from.
2. Click the View Analytics icon in the campaign’s toolbar.
3. Click the Export Analytics button at the top of the analytics screen.
4. Choose your scope, filters, and columns in the export panel. The row estimate updates as you go.
5. Click Export CSV. Your file downloads right away, or we’ll email you a download link if it’s a big one.

For the full walkthrough, see our Analytics Exports documentation.

Your campaign data has been stuck in the dashboard long enough. Go get it.

Ready to build your reports from your own numbers? Get started with OptinMonster Pro today.

Until next time,

Angie and the OptinMonster Team

P.S. Want to see what other marketers do with campaigns like yours? Check out our OptinMonster case studies, complete with winning stats and the exact strategies behind them.

Below are nine alternatives worth moving to, with what each one is good at, who it suits, what it costs and where it falls short.

Leadpages Alternatives at a Glance

Ratings in brackets are the number of reviews behind the score, which matters: a 4.6 from five reviewers is not the same evidence as a 4.3 from 521.

What Is Leadpages?

Leadpages is a hosted platform for building landing pages, popups and alert bars without writing code. You get a drag-and-drop editor, a template library, A/B testing on the higher plans, and pages that live on Leadpages’ infrastructure under your custom domain.

It does two jobs, and that matters for choosing a replacement. It builds and hosts standalone pages, and it captures leads on them. Most people only need to replace one of those.

Why Choose a Leadpages Alternative?

You want to own what you build. Pages built in Leadpages live on Leadpages. Stop paying and those URLs go dark, which is the single most common reason people move to a builder that publishes to their own domain.

You are on WordPress. You already pay for hosting, a domain and a CMS. A hosted page platform duplicates all three, and WordPress-native builders integrate with the rest of your site in a way an external platform cannot.

The features you need are gated high. A/B testing does not appear until the $79 per month Grow plan. Smart Traffic, heatmaps and auto-personalization need Optimize at $159. If testing is why you are paying, you are paying at the top of the range.

The templates feel restrictive. This is the most common complaint in the review sites, and it is the reason design-led teams tend to end up on Unbounce or a WordPress builder.

The bill went up. Leadpages now runs two product lines: cheap HTML Pub plans at $8, $23 and $39 per month billed annually, none of which include A/B testing, and the Leadpages plans proper at $79, $159 and $319. There is no free plan and the trial is seven days. If you are on an older Standard plan, those names no longer exist, so compare against the current lineup rather than an article quoting the old one.

Worth saying plainly: this is not a bad product. Leadpages holds 4.3 out of 5 on G2 across 232 reviews, the same score Unbounce, Instapage and GetResponse carry. People leave because of fit and cost, not because it stopped working.

First, Decide Which Half of Leadpages You Are Replacing

Replace the page builder if your landing pages exist only inside Leadpages. You need somewhere to rebuild them, which is what the first eight tools below are for.

Replace only the capture layer if you already have a website that works. Your pages are on WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace or a custom build, and Leadpages is really just the thing collecting emails on top of them. In that case a landing page builder is the wrong purchase.

Plenty of teams need both. The point is to price them separately instead of buying one platform that half-does each.

The 9 Best Leadpages Alternatives

1. SeedProd: Best Leadpages Alternative for WordPress

Full disclosure: SeedProd is made by Awesome Motive, the same company behind OptinMonster.

SeedProd is a drag-and-drop landing page and theme builder that runs inside WordPress, so the pages you build live on your own domain and stay there whether or not you keep paying.

Best for: anyone whose site is already on WordPress.

You get a visual drag-and-drop editor with live preview, more than 300 templates covering landing pages, 404s, coming soon and maintenance pages, a full theme builder for headers, footers and archive pages, and direct integrations with the major email tools. It is built to stay light, so it does not add the bloat that general-purpose page builders do.

Pricing: Free plugin with over 700,000 active installs. Paid plans from $79 per year for one site, up to $599 for 100 sites. Introductory rates renew higher. G2: 4.6/5, though from only 5 reviews.

Pros: Pages live on your own domain permanently. Theme builder covers the whole site, not just landing pages. Annual pricing rather than monthly.

Cons: WordPress only, so irrelevant on Shopify or Squarespace. The free plugin’s landing page templates are limited enough that most people end up paying. No built-in A/B testing.

Versus Leadpages: you trade hosted pages and A/B testing for ownership and a far lower run rate. A full year of SeedProd Basic costs what one month of Leadpages Grow does.

2. Unbounce: Best for A/B Testing and AI Optimization

Unbounce is the closest like-for-like replacement, and the one to look at if testing is the reason you were paying for Leadpages in the first place.

Best for: marketers and agencies who run real experiments.

Unlimited A/B testing with unlimited variants on the Experiment plan, AI traffic routing that sends visitors to the variant most likely to convert, dynamic text replacement for matching ad copy to page copy, over 100 conversion-optimized templates, popups and sticky bars included, and around 1,000 integrations. Conversions are unlimited on every tier and hosting is included.

Pricing: From $22 per month billed annually ($29 monthly) for 500 visitors, rising to $74 for 20,000 and $187 for 50,000. 14-day trial, no card required. G2: 4.3/5 from 386 reviews.

Pros: the testing and optimization layer is genuinely stronger than Leadpages’. Unlimited conversions on every tier. Deep integration support.

Cons: plans are metered by visitors, so a traffic spike costs money. The entry tier’s 500 visitors is small enough that most real businesses land on Build or above. The builder takes some learning.

Versus Leadpages: the two land within five dollars of each other on annual billing and are identical month to month, so price is not the argument. Capability is. You get more testing headroom and more traffic for the same spend.

3. Instapage: Best for Paid Ad Teams

Instapage is built for people spending real money on ads and matching each ad to its own page.

Best for: teams whose landing pages exist to protect a media budget.

The differentiator is scale of personalization: unlimited pages and unlimited contacts on every plan, ad-to-page matching so each campaign gets its own variant, server-side experimentation, heatmaps, and collaboration tooling built for agencies reviewing work with clients.

Pricing: $79 per month billed annually ($99 monthly) for 15,000 unique visitors, or $159 annually for up to 50,000. 14-day trial capped at 2,500 visitors. G2: 4.3/5 from 521 reviews, the largest review base of any dedicated builder here.

Pros: the strongest ad personalization on this list. Unlimited pages means you can build a variant per campaign without watching a counter. Collaboration features suit agencies.

Cons: overkill without meaningful paid traffic. Metered by visitors. The most expensive way to solve a simple problem.

Versus Leadpages: identical price, different specialism. If your pages serve paid campaigns, Instapage is built for that and Leadpages is not. Without paid traffic, this is not your tool.

4. Landingi: Best Mid-Market Value

Landingi sits between the cheap builders and the enterprise platforms, which is where a lot of growing teams actually live.

Best for: teams who have outgrown a $20 builder but will not spend $159.

You get over 400 templates, a genuine entry tier rather than a token one, A/B testing on the mid plans, popups, smart sections for reusing blocks across pages, and extra domains as a $5 add-on instead of a forced plan upgrade.

Pricing: from $24 per month billed annually for 2,000 visitors and 10 pages, then $119 for 30,000 visitors and 100 pages. 14-day trial. No free plan. G2: 4.5/5 from 387 reviews.

Pros: the $24 tier is usable rather than decorative. Large template library. Sensible add-on pricing for domains.

Cons: a steep gap between $24 and $119 with nothing in between. The trial ends at 200 visits or 14 days, whichever comes first. No free plan.

Versus Leadpages: the cheapest credible way to keep a hosted platform. You give up AI traffic routing, which on Leadpages sits on the $159 plan anyway, not the one you were comparing.

5. ClickFunnels: Best for Full Funnels and Checkout

If you are selling directly from your pages rather than collecting leads for a sales team, ClickFunnels replaces more of your stack than a landing page builder does.

Best for: anyone taking payment on the page.

Checkout, order bumps, one-click upsells, email marketing, courses, a CRM and affiliate management all sit in one subscription, with unlimited funnels on every plan. The point is not that the page builder is better, it is that four other subscriptions disappear.

Pricing: from $81 per month billed annually ($97 monthly) with 10,000 contacts and unlimited funnels. 14-day trial. G2: 4.6/5 from 417 reviews.

Pros: replaces several tools at once, which changes the cost comparison entirely. Unlimited funnels on every plan. Strong for selling rather than collecting.

Cons: considerable complexity if all you wanted was a page with a form. The editor is opinionated. More expensive than Leadpages at list price.

Versus Leadpages: roughly the same money for substantially more product, as long as you use the selling half. If you are collecting leads for a sales team, most of what you are paying for sits idle.

6. Systeme.io: Best Free Leadpages Alternative

Systeme.io is the answer for anyone who needs landing pages and has no budget at all, because its free plan is permanent rather than a trial.

Best for: solo founders and anyone starting from zero.

The free tier covers three sales funnels, 2,000 contacts, a custom domain, unlimited emails, one blog, one online course and an affiliate program. Paid tiers lift the funnel and contact limits and add webinars and sub-accounts.

Pricing: free forever with the limits above. Paid from $17 per month for 5,000 contacts and unlimited funnels. G2: 4.8/5 from 750 reviews, the highest rating on this list.

Pros: a real permanent free tier that includes a custom domain, which almost nothing else here offers. Email is bundled, so it can retire two subscriptions. Free migration on the top plan.

Cons: the builder is functional rather than polished and it shows next to Unbounce. Three funnels is a hard ceiling on free. Fewer integrations than the established players.

Versus Leadpages: it does the thing Leadpages has no answer to, since Leadpages offers only a seven-day trial. Start here if budget is the whole reason you are reading this.

7. Carrd: Cheapest Option for Simple Pages

Carrd builds one-page sites, and plenty of Leadpages pages are exactly that: a headline, an image and a form.

Best for: simple standalone pages where a whole platform is overkill.

Responsive one-page sites, a clean editor you can learn in an afternoon, custom domains, forms, widgets and embeds, and pages that load about as fast as anything on the web.

Pricing: free for three sites with core features. Pro from $19 per year adds custom domains, forms, analytics and branding removal. G2: 4.5/5 from 34 reviews.

Pros: costs a year what other tools cost a week. Fast to learn, fast to load. The free tier is usable rather than crippled.

Cons: one-page sites only. No A/B testing, no funnels, minimal analytics. Wrong tool for campaigns at scale.

Versus Leadpages: not comparable on capability, and entirely comparable on outcome if your landing page is a headline, an image and a form.

8. GetResponse: Best for Pages Plus Email in One

GetResponse is an email marketing platform with a landing page builder attached, which suits anyone currently paying separately for Leadpages and an email tool.

Best for: teams who want the page and the follow-up on one bill.

Landing pages, email campaigns, marketing automation with visual workflows, webinars on the higher tiers, and a form and popup builder. The automation is more capable than anything bundled into a page builder.

Pricing: from $15.58 per month billed annually ($19 monthly) at 1,000 contacts, rising with list size. Free plan available with landing pages capped at 1,000 visitors a month. G2: 4.3/5 from 1,140 reviews.

Pros: two line items become one. Predictable scaling with contact count. Automation well beyond a page builder’s.

Cons: landing page A/B testing needs a paid plan. Costs rise with list size whether or not you build more pages. The builder is good, not best in class.

Versus Leadpages: cheaper while also replacing your email tool. The trade is that your pages are now tied to your email vendor.

9. OptinMonster: Best for Replacing the Lead Capture Half

Yes, this is our product, and here is the honest positioning: OptinMonster is not a landing page builder and will not rebuild your Leadpages pages. It replaces the other half of what Leadpages does, the part that collects the leads, and it runs on the site you already have.

Best for: anyone whose pages already exist and who is really paying Leadpages for lead capture.

You get popups, floating bars, slide-ins, inline forms and fullscreen campaigns, plus the targeting layer that decides who sees what: Exit-Intent® Technology that fires as a visitor moves to leave, page-level targeting, device and geolocation rules, and behavior-based triggers. It works on WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace or a custom build.

Pricing: from $7 per month billed annually, up to $49 for Growth. A free plan is available through the WordPress popup plugin, which has over one million active installs and includes three campaigns. Exit-Intent® Technology starts on Pro, A/B split testing on Plus. G2: 4.3/5 from 108 reviews.

Customers who published their numbers: Social Media Examiner added 95,654 email subscribers in seven months using Exit-Intent® Technology. SnackNation converted 38.5% of abandoning visitors using Exit-Intent® Technology on a fullscreen campaign and adds around 1,200 segmented leads a week. Shockbyte more than doubled its sales conversion rate.

Pros: works on any platform, on pages you already own. Targeting rules go well beyond what a page builder includes. Free plan through the WordPress plugin.

Cons: it does not build or host landing pages, so if that is what you need to replace, pair it with SeedProd or Unbounce rather than choosing between them. Exit-Intent® Technology needs the Pro plan and geolocation needs Growth, so the entry tier is not the full product.

Versus Leadpages: a different job, and worth being clear about it. This sits alongside your landing pages, not instead of them. For a fuller breakdown see our OptinMonster vs. Leadpages comparison.

Best Leadpages Alternatives for WordPress

On WordPress the calculation changes, because you already own hosting, a domain and a CMS. Paying a platform to host pages elsewhere is paying twice.

SeedProd is the straight replacement, building pages inside WordPress that stay on your domain.

Thrive Architect is the alternative if you want conversion-focused page templates and are comfortable in the Thrive ecosystem. It builds landing pages, sales pages and opt-in pages directly in WordPress, with advanced design controls and custom HTML where you need it. From $99 per year.

Divi suits anyone already running the Divi theme. The builder bundles with Bloom and Monarch, offers a large library of pre-built layouts, and includes theme building for headers, footers and sidebars. From $89 per year or $249 for lifetime access.

Elementor and OptimizePress are both reasonable if you already run one for the rest of your site. There is no reason to add a second builder when you have one working.

OptinMonster handles capture on whichever of those you choose, with a free plan through the WordPress plugin.

The combination worth pricing out is a WordPress page builder plus a dedicated capture tool. Everything you build stays on your own domain when you stop paying, which is the part a hosted platform cannot match.

Is There a Free Leadpages Alternative?

Yes, three of them are genuinely free rather than trials.

Systeme.io is the most complete: three sales funnels, 2,000 contacts, a custom domain and unlimited emails, permanently free.

Carrd gives you three sites free, though custom domains need Pro at $19 per year.

SeedProd’s free WordPress plugin includes the drag-and-drop builder and email integrations, with the better templates reserved for paid plans.

For capture rather than pages, OptinMonster’s free plan through the WordPress plugin covers three campaigns.

Leadpages itself has no free plan. The seven-day trial is the only way in, which is worth knowing before you count it as an option.

Tools We Left Off, and Why

A few well-known names are missing from the list above. That is deliberate.

Kartra does what ClickFunnels does at a similar price with a smaller ecosystem behind it. If you want an all-in-one, ClickFunnels is the stronger version of the same choice.

Convertri is built around page load speed, which is a real advantage, but it is a narrow reason to pick a whole platform and its template library and integrations trail the others here.

Wix and Squarespace build websites that happen to include landing pages. If you need a website they are fine. If you are replacing Leadpages specifically, you are buying a lot of product you will not open.

HubSpot’s free landing pages are genuinely free, but the free tier brands your pages and the paid tiers cost considerably more than Leadpages, so it only makes sense if you are already committed to HubSpot’s CRM.

Mailchimp and Brevo bundle landing pages with email. If that is the combination you want, GetResponse does it better at the price points most people are comparing.

How Leadpages Compares Head to Head

Leadpages vs ClickFunnels: choose ClickFunnels to sell and Leadpages to collect. ClickFunnels adds checkout, upsells and email for roughly the same money, which only pays off if you use the selling half.

Leadpages vs Unbounce: Unbounce is the better testing platform, with unlimited variants and AI traffic routing on plans that cost about the same. Leadpages is simpler and does not meter your visitors.

Leadpages vs Instapage: same price, different specialism. Instapage wins for paid campaigns because of ad-to-page personalization, and is unnecessary without them.

How to Choose the Right Leadpages Alternative

1. Name the half you are replacing. Pages, capture, or both. This eliminates most of the list immediately.
2. Check where your site already lives. On WordPress, a builder that publishes to your own domain beats a hosted platform on both cost and ownership.
3. Decide whether you actually split test. If you do not, you can skip the plans priced around that feature entirely.
4. Ask who owns the pages. Hosted platforms hold your URLs. Self-hosted builders do not. This is the difference that bites hardest later.
5. Count the subscriptions you can retire. GetResponse, Systeme.io and ClickFunnels each absorb tools you may already pay for.

If you want more on the capture side, our lead generation guide and these exit-intent popup examples go deeper than a roundup can.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best Leadpages alternative? It depends which half you are replacing. For WordPress sites, SeedProd is the most direct swap. For A/B testing, Unbounce. For a free option, Systeme.io. For replacing lead capture rather than page building, OptinMonster.

Is there a free alternative to Leadpages? Yes. Systeme.io offers a permanent free plan with three funnels, 2,000 contacts and a custom domain. Carrd offers three free sites. SeedProd offers a free WordPress plugin. Leadpages has no free plan, only a seven-day trial.

What is a cheaper alternative to Leadpages? Nearly everything here. Carrd is $19 per year, SeedProd starts at $79 per year, Landingi at $24 per month and Unbounce at $22 per month, against $79 per month for Leadpages Grow.

How much does Leadpages cost in 2026? Billed annually, HTML Pub plans are $8, $23 and $39 per month, none including A/B testing. The Leadpages plans are $79, $159 and $319 per month. Month to month those are $10, $29 and $49, and $99, $199 and $399. No free plan, seven-day trial.

Which is better, Leadpages or ClickFunnels? ClickFunnels for selling, since it includes checkout, upsells and email. Leadpages for straightforward lead capture pages.

Can I replace Leadpages with a WordPress plugin? Yes, if your site is on WordPress. SeedProd handles page building and OptinMonster handles lead capture, both on your own domain, for a fraction of a hosted platform’s annual cost.

If any of that sounds familiar, here are the nine best OptiMonk alternatives worth considering, who each one actually suits, what it costs, and where each one falls short.

Why People Switch From OptiMonk

The bill grows with your traffic, not your usage. OptiMonk charges by pageviews, and its own pricing page is clear that a pageview counts “each time any page on your site is loaded, whether or not a campaign is displayed.” A blog with popups on six posts out of fifty still pays for all fifty. This is the most common reason people start shopping.

A lot of it is built for ecommerce. Smart product recommendations, auto-generated coupon codes and Shopify-specific targeting are genuinely strong. They are also most of what the price is buying, and a B2B site or a publisher will not open any of them.

Setup takes a while. Two of the write-ups about OptiMonk alternatives name a learning curve as one of harder things about OptiMonk. It is a softer complaint than the other two, but it comes up often enough to mention.

None of these matter if they do not describe you. If you run a Shopify store, you use the product recommendations, and your traffic is steady, staying put is a perfectly good answer.

OptiMonk Alternatives at a Glance

Where a tool bills less on an annual plan, the annual figure is shown and labeled.

The 9 Best OptiMonk Alternatives

1. OptinMonster: Best for WordPress and Content Sites

Yes, this is our product.

OptinMonster runs on any site, with an install base concentrated on WordPress: the plugin has more than 1,000,000 active installations on wordpress.org, against roughly 4,000 for OptiMonk’s WordPress plugin. You get popups, floating bars, slide-ins, fullscreen mats, inline forms and gamified campaigns, with 700+ templates and a targeting ruleset that includes Exit-Intent® Technology, page-level targeting, geolocation and OnSite Retargeting®.

Pricing: OptinMonster pricing runs Basic $7/mo, Plus $19/mo, Pro $29/mo and Growth $49/mo, billed annually at a 60% introductory discount for the first 12 months. Standard annual rates are $210, $570, $870 and $1,470 a year. Plans cover 1 to 5 sites, with unlimited campaigns and subscribers on every tier and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Free plan: available through the WordPress plugin, which registers a free account with 3 campaigns and up to 500 campaign impression credits.

Pros: you are only billed when a campaign actually appears, the targeting ruleset is the deepest here for content sites, and campaigns and subscribers are unlimited even on the entry plan

Cons: Exit-Intent® Technology unlocks at Pro and A/B split testing at Plus, so the $7 Basic plan is a starting point rather than the full product; ecommerce integrations and Follow-up Campaigns® are Growth-only. Both OptinMonster and OptiMonk offer the option to build and manage campaigns with AI, but in different ways. As of the date this article was published, OptinMonster provides it through their MCP, while Optimonk offers it both in their product and through an MCP. This means you can use AI to create and manage campaigns with both platforms.

But Exit-Intent is worth it: Social Media Examiner added 95,654 email subscribers in seven months using OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent® Technology, and SnackNation recovered 38.5% of abandoning visitors with a fullscreen OptinMonster campaign triggered by Exit-Intent® Technology.

Versus OptiMonk: OptinMonster has more targeting depth for content and lead generation, simpler ecommerce options, and a meter that only counts when a campaign shows.

2. Justuno: Best for Ecommerce Personalization at Scale

Justuno is the closest like-for-like replacement for what OptiMonk actually does: AI-driven targeting, onsite personalization and product recommendations for ecommerce, rather than popups alone.

Pricing: Lite $59/mo for up to 10,000 monthly visitors. Done-For-You $299/mo for up to 20,000 visitors, adding managed services and a dedicated account manager. Save 10% annually. 14-day trial on Lite, 30 days on Done-For-You.

Pros: AI product recommendations, strong ecommerce analytics, and a managed-service tier if you do not have the team to run campaigns yourself

Cons: the highest entry price of any self-serve tool here, tight visitor caps on Lite, and a G2 rating of 4.3 from 67 reviewers that sits below OptiMonk’s

Versus OptiMonk: the nearest match feature for feature, at roughly three times the entry price. Worth it only if you will use the personalization layer.

3. Privy: Best for Shopify Stores That Want Popups Plus Email

Privy sells two things you can buy separately: onsite displays, and email and SMS marketing. That split is the appeal.

Pricing: popups and displays only, from $24/mo for up to 10,000 monthly pageviews, scaling to $1,500/mo at 3.5 million. Email plans start at $30/mo priced by mailable contacts. 15-day trial, no permanent free plan.

Pros: the cheapest entry point for popups alone, deep Shopify integration, and it replaces two tools at once if you need email

Cons: the popup plans are pageview-metered exactly like OptiMonk’s, so switching does not fix that problem, and the email side gets expensive as your list grows

Versus OptiMonk: a sideways move on billing, a step up if you want email on the same invoice.

4. Poptin: Best Free Plan

Poptin is the budget pick, and its free tier is the most usable one here for a site that is just getting going.

Pricing: free for 1,000 monthly visitors and 1 domain, with Poptin branding. Basic $25/mo ($240/yr) for 10,000 visitors. Pro $59/mo ($564/yr) for 50,000 visitors and 4 domains. Agency $119/mo ($1,140/yr) for 150,000 visitors and unlimited domains.

Pros: 4.8 on G2 from 90 reviewers, unlimited popups on every plan including free, and visitor-based rather than pageview-based billing

Cons: thinner targeting than OptiMonk or OptinMonster, and 1,000 visitors runs out quickly on a growing site

Versus OptiMonk: cheaper and simpler, with less personalization. A good fit if you want an exit popup and an email form rather than a conversion platform.

5. Popupsmart: Best for a Fast, Simple Setup

Popupsmart is built around getting a campaign live quickly, with a no-code builder and 500+ templates.

Pricing: free for 5,000 pageviews, 1 website and 1 live popup. Basic $39/mo for 50,000 pageviews and 3 sites. Advanced $69/mo for 100,000 pageviews, 5 sites and A/B testing. Pro $99/mo for 250,000 pageviews. Expert $159/mo for 500,000 pageviews and unlimited sites. 20% off annual billing.

Pros: a clean builder, generous site counts at the middle tiers, and 4.5 on G2 from 141 reviewers

Cons: pageview-metered, A/B testing sits behind the $69 tier, and the free plan allows only one live popup

Versus OptiMonk: the same billing model at a higher entry price, but more sites per plan and a gentler learning curve.

6. Sleeknote: Best for DTC Brands That Want Native-Feeling Popups

Sleeknote’s pitch is design: campaigns that look like part of your site rather than an interruption, aimed at DTC and ecommerce brands.

Pricing: Core from €49/mo billed annually (€62 monthly) for up to 25,000 monthly visitors, rising to €369/mo annually at 300,000 to 500,000 visitors. Gamification costs extra at every tier, starting at €68/mo annually. 14-day trial, no free plan.

Pros: the strongest design control here, unlimited campaigns and domains on all plans, and phone support

Cons: gamification is a paid add-on rather than included, pricing is in euros, and the G2 rating is 4.3 from only six reviewers, which is thin evidence in either direction

Versus OptiMonk: better design tooling, no free plan, and gamification that OptiMonk includes costs more here.

7. Getsitecontrol: Best for Unlimited Views on a Budget

Getsitecontrol is the one tool here that will stop metering you altogether.

Pricing: free for 10,000 monthly widget views. Pro $19/mo for 100,000 widget views. Pro Max $29/mo for unlimited widget views. Emails are billed separately at $1.40 to $2.00 per 1,000 sent. Up to 25% off annual billing.

Pros: unlimited views at $29/mo is the best value here for a high-traffic site, widget views are a fairer meter than pageviews, and contacts are unlimited on every plan

Cons: email sends are a separate line item, targeting is basic next to OptiMonk’s, and 25 G2 reviews is a small sample

Versus OptiMonk: far cheaper at scale, noticeably less capable. A high-traffic blog that wants one reliable email form should look here first.

8. Wisepops: Best for Enterprise Budgets

Wisepops has moved upmarket and now sells strategy, technology and execution together rather than self-serve software.

Pricing: from €499/mo, set by traffic volume, channels and service level. 14-day trial, and the company steers you toward a demo first.

Pros: a polished product, AI recommendations, push notifications and multi-step forms, and 4.5 on G2 from 87 reviewers

Cons: the entry price is roughly 25 times OptiMonk’s, there is no self-serve tier, and you cannot see a price without talking to sales

Versus OptiMonk: a different market. Worth evaluating only if €499 a month is a rounding error for you.

9. Thrive Leads: Best for WordPress Users Who Want No Traffic Metering

Thrive Leads is a self-hosted WordPress plugin, which means your traffic is nobody’s billing input.

Pricing: sold only inside Thrive Suite at $299/year introductory, $599/year standard, covering all eight Thrive plugins on up to 5 sites. No free plan.

Pros: a flat annual cost whatever your traffic, no per-view ceiling, and a full WordPress toolkit in the box

Cons: WordPress only, you are buying a suite to get one plugin, campaign data lives on your own server so you carry the performance cost, and it is not listed in G2’s pop-up builder category

Versus OptiMonk: the right answer if metering itself is your objection and you run WordPress. The wrong answer if you need ecommerce personalization or run on Shopify.

What You’re Actually Being Billed For

This is the detail that decides your bill, and it is easy to miss because two tools can use the same word for different things.

OptiMonk’s pricing page, on every plan card:

“A pageview is counted each time any page on your site is loaded, whether or not a campaign is displayed. Pageviews ≠ impressions.”

OptinMonster’s account billing screen, defining its own limit:

“A pageview is counted any time an optin form is shown to a visitor.”

Same word, two meters. Across the rest of the list: Popupsmart and Privy’s popup plans count page loads. Poptin, Justuno and Sleeknote count visitors. Getsitecontrol counts widget views. Thrive Leads counts nothing.

Two examples of what that means in practice:

A content site at 200,000 pageviews a month showing one exit campaign on 15% of them. OptiMonk counts all 200,000, which lands on the 250,000 tier at $129/mo annual or $174 monthly. OptinMonster counts the 30,000 times the campaign appeared, which fits Growth at $49/mo.

A small store at 15,000 pageviews a month showing campaigns to nearly everyone. OptiMonk’s Essential tier covers it at $19/mo annual. OptinMonster Plus covers 10,000 shown campaigns at $19/mo. The two land in the same place, and OptiMonk’s free tier may cover the store outright.

At low traffic with heavy campaign coverage, page-load billing is competitive and often cheaper. The gap opens as traffic grows and as the share of pages showing a campaign falls.

Best OptiMonk Alternatives for Shopify

OptiMonk is ecommerce-first and ships as a Shopify app, so a Shopify store is the most likely thing you are replacing it on. Three routes:

Privy is the closest swap. Built for Shopify, integrated with Shopify’s discount and cart systems, and the popup-only plan starts at $24/mo. If you want email in the same tool, its email plans start at $30/mo by contact count.

Justuno is the upgrade path if what you valued was the personalization layer rather than the popups. It costs more and does more.

Klaviyo’s built-in sign-up forms are the cheapest route and the easiest to overlook. If you already pay for Klaviyo, its forms cover basic email capture at no extra cost, and Klaviyo’s free plan covers up to 250 profiles and 500 emails a month. They will not replace a real onsite campaign tool, since you get far less targeting and no gamification. But if all OptiMonk was doing for you was collecting emails into Klaviyo, you may be paying twice for one job.

Best OptiMonk Alternatives for WordPress

WordPress is where OptiMonk is thinnest, and the install counts show it: its WordPress plugin has more than 4,000 active installations, OptinMonster’s has more than 1,000,000, and Thrive Leads ships inside a suite built entirely for WordPress.

For a WordPress site the choice comes down to two models. OptinMonster is a hosted WordPress popup plugin, so campaigns load from a CDN rather than your server, and you are billed only when a campaign shows. Thrive Leads is self-hosted on a flat annual license, so traffic never changes the bill, but the campaigns run on your own hosting.

If you want a free starting point on WordPress specifically, OptinMonster’s free plan comes through the WordPress plugin and includes 3 campaigns with up to 500 campaign impression credits.

Is There a Free OptiMonk Alternative?

Several, and OptiMonk’s own free plan is one of the better ones:

If free is the requirement and you have real traffic, OptiMonk’s own free plan is hard to beat at 10,000 pageviews. Getsitecontrol matches it on volume with a fairer meter, since only widget views count. The rest are starting points rather than destinations.

How to Switch From OptiMonk Without Losing Your Campaigns

Nobody wants a gap in lead capture mid-migration. The order that avoids one:

1. Export your contacts first. Pull the lists out of OptiMonk before you touch anything else, and confirm the file opens cleanly.
2. Write down what is actually running. Campaign name, trigger, targeting rules and the last 30 days of conversions for each. Sort by conversions and rebuild from the top. Campaigns that converted nobody last month do not need to survive the move, and rebuilding them is how a one-afternoon migration becomes a week.
3. Rebuild in the new tool while OptiMonk is still live. Build and preview without publishing.
4. Reconnect the integrations and send a real test lead end to end into your email tool before switching anything off.
5. Publish the new campaigns and pause OptiMonk’s on the same day. Same day matters: two tools firing at once will show some visitors two popups and make your data unreadable.
6. Cancel only after your first full billing cycle on the new tool. If something was missed, you want the old account readable rather than closed.

Check your renewal date before step one. Annual plans do not prorate.

OptiMonk Head to Head

OptinMonster vs. OptiMonk: OptinMonster bills only when a campaign shows and leans toward content sites, lead generation and WordPress. OptiMonk bills page loads and leans toward Shopify and ecommerce merchandising. Our full OptinMonster vs. OptiMonk comparison goes feature by feature.

Privy vs. OptiMonk: both bill page loads. Privy is cheaper to start at $24/mo and adds email and SMS in the same account. OptiMonk has stronger onsite personalization.

Nosto vs. OptiMonk and Dynamic Yield vs. OptiMonk: these are enterprise personalization platforms rather than popup tools. They cost multiples of OptiMonk and are sold through sales teams. If you are comparing them seriously you are shopping in a different category, and OptiMonk is the budget option in that comparison rather than the expensive one.

Tools We Left Off, and Why

• Unbounce and Leadpages: landing page builders. They build pages; they do not run campaigns on the pages you already have. If you need both, see our guide to Leadpages alternatives.
• Picreel, ConvertBox, Bloom, Hello Bar, PopupAlly: all capable, none better than the tool already filling their slot above. ConvertBox does not publish current pricing on its site.
• BDOW! (formerly Sumo): 4.0 on G2 from 55 reviewers, the lowest here, and largely coasting on its legacy install base.
• Amped: acquired by Mailchimp, so its pricing and roadmap are unsettled.
• Convert Pro and Ninja Popups: WordPress plugins that no longer compete with Thrive Leads or OptinMonster on features or support.

How to Choose the Right OptiMonk Alternative

Four questions, in order:

1. What will you be billed for? Work out your monthly pageviews and roughly what share of them will show a campaign. If that share is low, avoid page-load billing. This one calculation eliminates half the list.
2. What platform are you on? Shopify points to Privy or Justuno. WordPress points to OptinMonster or Thrive Leads.
3. Do you need merchandising or list building? Product recommendations and cart-value features are a different job from email capture, and they carry most of the price on the ecommerce-first tools. If your campaigns are all “join the list,” you are funding a feature set you never open.
4. What is your ceiling? Check the price at three times your current traffic, not today’s. That is where these tools diverge.

Whichever you land on, the campaigns matter more than the software. Our lead generation guide covers what to actually put in them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some alternatives to OptiMonk?

The nine above: OptinMonster, Justuno, Privy, Poptin, Popupsmart, Sleeknote, Getsitecontrol, Wisepops and Thrive Leads. For Shopify stores, Privy and Justuno are the closest matches. For WordPress sites, OptinMonster and Thrive Leads.

How much does OptiMonk cost?

The free plan covers 10,000 pageviews a month with OptiMonk branding. Paid plans start at $19/mo billed annually, or $29 billed monthly, for 20,000 pageviews, and rise to $299/mo annually for 1,000,000 pageviews. Custom pricing above that.

Is OptiMonk free?

There is a real free plan: 10,000 monthly pageviews, one domain, unlimited campaigns and all features. Your popups carry OptiMonk branding until you upgrade.

Does OptinMonster have a free plan?

Yes. It comes through the WordPress plugin and includes 3 campaigns with up to 500 campaign impression credits. It is not a trial and it does not expire.

What is the cheapest OptiMonk alternative?

Getsitecontrol at $19/mo for 100,000 widget views, or $29/mo for unlimited views. OptinMonster’s Basic plan is lower at $7/mo on the current introductory rate, though it covers 2,500 shown campaigns rather than unlimited views.

Which OptiMonk alternative is best for Shopify?

Privy if you want popups and email in one account. Justuno if you need the personalization and product recommendation layer.

Do any OptiMonk alternatives avoid traffic-based pricing?

Two. Thrive Leads charges a flat annual license with no traffic component, and Getsitecontrol’s Pro Max plan removes the view cap at $29/mo. OptinMonster still meters, but only counts a visitor who was actually shown a campaign.

Can I use OptiMonk and another tool at the same time?

You can, but do not leave both running the same campaign type. Two tools firing exit popups will show some visitors two overlays and make your conversion data unreadable. Pause one before you publish the other.

Nobody runs lead generation on a single tool, and that includes us. I run lead generation at OptinMonster, so on-site capture is the part I build and ship every day, but the pipeline behind it runs on a stack: a CRM for follow-up, automation for the handoffs, scheduling, chat. Several tools on this list are in ours.

The rest, from B2B contact databases to software that overlaps with what we build, I evaluate as part of the job, because knowing exactly where we stand is how OptinMonster gets better. So this guide covers the 15 best lead generation software and tools organized by the job each one does in a stack, with pricing verified, free plan details, and a straight answer on who each one is for. Every tool here passed the same two-question test: does it directly generate leads, and is it one of the best at that specific job?

Lead Generation Software and Tools Compared

What Are Lead Generation Tools?

Lead generation tools are software that helps you attract prospects, capture their contact information, and move them toward a sale. Instead of manually hunting for leads, this software does the heavy lifting: it converts website visitors with targeted campaigns, finds verified business contacts, qualifies prospects in chat, and routes every new lead into your CRM automatically.

Most lead generation software falls into one of six categories:

1. On-site lead capture tools convert the traffic you already have with popups, forms, and landing pages.
2. Form and survey builders collect contact details and qualify leads.
3. B2B lead generation tools find and verify business contacts and buying signals.
4. CRM and lead nurturing software stores, scores, and follows up with leads.
5. Conversational and SMS tools capture and qualify leads in real-time conversation.
6. Automation and scheduling tools connect everything and remove friction.

The first two categories work inbound: they convert people who already found you. B2B data tools work outbound: they find people who haven’t. The rest support both sides.

The best lead generation system usually combines two or three of these, not all fifteen. Capture leads on your site, enrich and nurture them, and automate the handoffs.

Best On-Site Lead Capture Tools

Your website traffic is the cheapest lead source you have. These tools convert more of it before you spend another dollar on ads.

OptinMonster – Best for On-Site Lead Capture and Conversion

Yes, OptinMonster is our product. It’s also the tool I know most deeply, so judge my take against the results below.

OptinMonster turns your existing website traffic into leads with popups, floating bars, fullscreen welcome mats, slide-ins, and gamified spin-to-win campaigns. The reason it leads this list is targeting: campaigns fire based on what a visitor is doing, not on a blind timer. Exit-Intent® Technology detects the moment someone is about to leave and shows your offer right then, which is often the difference between a lost visitor and a captured lead.

That’s not theory. When Storyly used OptinMonster, their content-locking campaign converted at 14.57%, sales form conversions rose 80%, and their email list grew 45%. Those results came from pairing Exit-Intent® with page-level targeting and A/B testing, all features included in the platform. The campaign flow behind numbers like that is the part I’d show you in person: pick a template, set the display rules (which pages, which visitors, which moment), connect your email platform or CRM, and let the A/B test decide which version stays.

Independent reviewers put OptinMonster at 4.4 stars on G2 as of July 2026, and the praise clusters around the same thing I’d brag about: targeting depth nobody else in the capture category matches.

Key features:

• Exit-Intent® Technology, page-level targeting, OnSite Retargeting®, and geolocation targeting
• 700+ templates and a drag-and-drop builder, no developer needed
• MonsterLinks 2-step optins that turn any link or button into a campaign
• TruLead® lead verification to filter spam and junk emails before they hit your list
• Built-in A/B testing and conversion analytics
• 50+ integrations with email marketing, CRM, and ecommerce platforms

Pricing: starts at $7 per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: there’s no free plan, and the deepest targeting rules take some learning before they feel natural.

Skip it if: you have almost no site traffic yet. OptinMonster multiplies traffic you already have; go build the traffic first and come back.

Pair it with a strong lead magnet and you have the front end of a lead generation system that feeds every other tool on this list.

Unbounce – Best for Landing Page Lead Generation

When a campaign needs a dedicated page instead of a popup, Unbounce is the landing page builder I reach for. A popup converts traffic that came for something else; a landing page converts traffic you sent there on purpose, which is why paid campaigns live or die on this category.

Unbounce’s differentiator is Smart Traffic: build two or more page variants and it routes each visitor to the one most likely to convert them, based on attributes like device and location, instead of the fixed 50/50 split of a classic A/B test. You still get the classic test when you want a clean answer to a specific question. Reviewers rate it 4.4 stars on G2 as of July 2026, with the recurring gripe being price, not product, which matches my read.

https://www.g2.com/products/unbounce-unbounce-landing-pages/reviews/unbounce-landing-pages-review-12707370

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop landing page builder with conversion-focused templates
• Smart Traffic auto-routing plus classic A/B testing
• AI copy generation for headlines and page variants
• Popups and sticky bars included on all plans

Pricing: starts at $22 per month (billed annually). No free plan, but there’s a 14-day trial.

Watch out for: costs climb quickly with traffic and conversion volume; the $22 Starter tier is genuinely a starter.

Skip it if: your leads come from organic content on your existing site. You don’t need new pages for that; you need capture on the pages already ranking.

Best Form and Survey Tools for Lead Generation

A form is where a visitor stops being anonymous. These two cover the dominant use cases: WordPress sites and conversational standalone forms.

WPForms – Best for WordPress Lead Capture Forms

WPForms comes from our parent company, Awesome Motive, which is exactly why I can vouch for it in detail. If your site runs on WordPress, it’s the fastest way to build lead capture forms that people actually finish. The drag-and-drop builder handles everything from simple contact forms to multi-step lead qualification forms with conditional logic, and entries flow straight into your email platform or CRM.

Two features earn the lead-generation label specifically. Form abandonment capture saves partial entries, so a visitor who types their email and then bails still becomes a lead. And conversational form mode presents questions one at a time, Typeform-style, without a second subscription. The WordPress community has left more than 12,000 reviews on WordPress.org, which is the kind of volume you only accumulate by being the default choice for a decade.

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop builder with a large template library
• Form abandonment capture that saves partial entries as leads
• Conditional logic, multi-page forms, and conversational forms
• Payment, email marketing, and CRM integrations

Pricing: starts at $49.50 for the first year (renews at full price). A free Lite version is available on WordPress.org.

Watch out for: it’s WordPress-only, and the intro price doubles at renewal, so budget for year two.

Skip it if: you’re not on WordPress. On any other platform, Typeform or HubSpot’s free forms cover this job.

WPForms pairs naturally with the popup tools above; here’s how popups and WordPress plugins fit together.

Typeform – Best for Conversational Forms and Quizzes

Typeform shows one question at a time, which feels more like a conversation than a form. That format shines for lead qualification quizzes and surveys where completion rate matters more than speed: each answered question is a small commitment, and small commitments compound into finished forms.

The lead generation move here is the qualification quiz. Logic jumps route respondents down different paths based on their answers, scoring tags them by fit, and by the time the email address arrives your sales team knows budget, use case, and urgency instead of just a name. Users rate it 4.5 stars on G2 as of July 2026, consistently citing the design polish that makes people finish these things.

Key features:

• One-question-at-a-time conversational format
• Logic jumps and quiz scoring for lead qualification
• AI-assisted form creation
• Native integrations with major CRMs and email tools

Pricing: free plan with 100 responses per month; paid plans start at $28 per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: response caps drive the pricing, so a form that succeeds gets expensive; heavy-volume forms belong in WPForms or HubSpot instead.

Skip it if: you just need a contact form. Typeform earns its price on qualification and surveys, not on “Name, Email, Message.”

Best B2B Lead Generation Tools

B2B lead generation flips the model: instead of waiting for leads to find you, these tools find the leads. This is outbound territory, where data quality decides everything.

One note before the databases, because outbound isn’t the only B2B play. The B2B buyers already on your site rarely announce themselves, and that’s where OptinMonster earns its spot in a B2B stack specifically: Exit-Intent® campaigns on high-consideration pages like pricing and demo requests, and content gating that trades whitepapers or reports for a work email. Catch the researchers first; then go outbound for everyone else.

Apollo.io – Best All-in-One B2B Prospecting Platform

Apollo is what I’d hand a two-person B2B team that needs outbound running this quarter. Where Sales Navigator sells you access and pure databases sell you data, Apollo bundles the entire loop into one subscription: filter the contact database down to your ICP, push the list into an email sequence, call the warm opens through the built-in dialer, and book the meeting without leaving the tool. Competitors make you assemble that from three products.

The Chrome extension is the feature that hooks people: open any LinkedIn profile and Apollo shows the verified email and phone alongside it, one click from a sequence. In practice this turns LinkedIn browsing, which every sales rep already does, into list building.

Users back this up at scale: Apollo holds a 4.7 out of 5 rating across more than 9,300 G2 reviews as of July 2026, unusually high for a tool this broad. The recurring complaint in those reviews matches my caution below: the platform is generous until you hit the credit meter.

Key features:

• B2B contact database with ICP filtering and buying signals
• Sequences, dialer, and meeting scheduler in the same workflow
• Chrome extension that surfaces verified contact data on LinkedIn profiles
• Enrichment to fill the gaps in your existing CRM records

Pricing: free plan available; paid plans start at $49 per user per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: everything meaningful consumes credits (exports, mobile numbers, enrichment), and the cheaper tiers meter them tightly, so the advertised price is a floor. Data accuracy also thins outside the US, so verify coverage in your market during the free tier before you commit.

Skip it if: you’re B2C, or your entire pipeline is inbound. Apollo is an outbound machine, and it earns its cost only when someone works it daily.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator – Best for Social Selling

Sales Navigator is the price of admission for serious LinkedIn prospecting, and its data advantage is structural: every other B2B database goes stale the day someone changes jobs, while LinkedIn updates the moment they announce it. You’re prospecting from what people say about their own careers, today.

The workflow is filters, then signals: stack search filters (title, seniority, company size, geography, recent activity) into saved searches, let lead recommendations surface lookalikes, and use InMail for the prospects you have no path to otherwise. Reviewers hold it at 4.4 stars across 2,100+ G2 reviews as of July 2026, and the complaints are the same two I’d give you: the price, and the walled garden.

Key features:

• Advanced lead and account search filters with saved-search alerts
• Lead recommendations and buyer intent signals
• InMail messaging to prospects outside your network

Pricing: Core starts at $119.99 per month (or $1,079.88 per year).

Watch out for: it finds and messages prospects but doesn’t export them anywhere useful on its own; teams end up pairing it with Apollo, Hunter, or a sync tool, so budget for the companion.

Skip it if: your buyers aren’t active on LinkedIn. Local businesses, most B2C, and many trades sell where LinkedIn isn’t, and this becomes an expensive directory.

Leadfeeder (Dealfront) – Best for Identifying Anonymous Website Visitors

Most of your B2B website traffic leaves without filling out anything. Leadfeeder, now part of Dealfront, identifies which companies those anonymous visitors work for by matching their network data against a company database, then shows you what pages they viewed, how long they stayed, and how often they come back.

The output that makes sales teams keep it: a daily feed of warm accounts, filterable down to “companies over 200 employees that visited the pricing page twice this week,” synced into the CRM or pushed to Slack. The web visitor identification product holds 4.6 stars across 2,000+ G2 reviews as of July 2026, among the highest in this list’s B2B section.

Key features:

• Company-level identification of anonymous website traffic
• Behavioral filters, visit scoring, and CRM sync
• Alerts when target accounts visit key pages

Pricing: free Lite plan identifies up to 100 companies per month; paid plans start at €79 per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: identification is company-level, not person-level; you learn the account visited, then still need a contact tool like Hunter or Apollo to find the human.

Skip it if: your site traffic is mostly B2C or too small to matter. Identifying 30 visiting companies a month is only useful if some of them can buy.

Hunter – Best for Finding and Verifying Email Addresses

Hunter does one job extremely well: find and verify professional email addresses. Give it a domain and it returns the address pattern the company uses plus known addresses, each with a confidence score and the public source it was found at, so you can judge the data instead of trusting it blind.

The verifier is the quiet hero. Bounces are what actually get outbound programs killed, because a high bounce rate torches your sender reputation and takes your deliverability down with it. Verifying before sending is cheap insurance, and Hunter Campaigns handles the simple cold outreach itself without another subscription. Users rate it 4.4 stars across 650+ G2 reviews as of July 2026, and the word that keeps appearing is “simple,” which for a point tool is exactly the right review.

Key features:

• Domain search and email finder with confidence scores and sources
• Email verification to protect sender reputation
• Simple cold email campaigns included

Pricing: free plan with 50 credits per month; paid plans start at $34 per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: it’s a precision tool, not a platform; at real outbound volume the credits go fast and Apollo’s bundle can cost less overall.

Skip it if: you need phone numbers or intent data. Hunter is email-only by design; that’s a database tool’s job.

Best CRM and Lead Nurturing Software

Capturing a lead is step one. These platforms store, score, and nurture leads until they’re ready to buy. If you’re new to nurturing, our beginner’s guide to email marketing covers the fundamentals.

HubSpot – Best for All-in-One CRM and Lead Nurturing

HubSpot remains the default answer for teams that want marketing, sales, and service in one connected platform. Let’s be precise about what does the lead generating here, because a CRM that only stores leads is lead management, not lead generation: HubSpot’s free tier includes form and popup-form builders, live chat and a chatbot builder, and landing pages, all of which capture net-new contacts directly. Every lead they capture lands in the same database your future paid features will use, and that single-database design is the real product: lead scoring, nurture workflows, and reporting all agree with each other because there’s nothing to sync.

The lead generation workflow at the free and Starter tiers: capture through HubSpot forms or any tool that integrates with it (OptinMonster does natively), segment lists by behavior, and nurture by email, then add scoring and automation as you grow into paid tiers. HubSpot holds 4.4 stars on G2 across one of the largest review bodies in software (35,000+ across its product line) as of July 2026.

Key features:

• Free CRM with forms, live chat, and email marketing built in
• Automated lead nurturing workflows and lead scoring on paid tiers
• Native integrations with nearly everything, including OptinMonster
• Deep reporting across the whole funnel

Pricing: free tools available; Starter is $7 per seat per month on current promo pricing ($20 regular).

Watch out for: the cliff. Professional is $800 per month plus a $3,000 onboarding fee, and most teams hit the features that require it sooner than they budgeted. Model the year-two cost before you commit.

Skip it if: you only need capture and a simple email tool. HubSpot’s gravity pulls you toward the suite; if you don’t want the suite, don’t step on the on-ramp.

Pipedrive – Best Sales Pipeline CRM for Small Teams

Pipedrive is the CRM salespeople don’t complain about using, and that’s not faint praise; a CRM only generates revenue if reps actually live in it. The design principle is activity-based selling: instead of staring at deal values, you always see the next action for every deal, and the visual pipeline makes stalled deals impossible to ignore.

The lead generation itself lives in one specific place: the LeadBooster add-on, which contains the chatbot, live chat, web forms, and a prospector database. Those four features capture and source net-new leads; the rest of Pipedrive manages what they bring in. Users rate Pipedrive 4.3 stars across 3,000+ G2 reviews as of July 2026, and it ranked in G2’s top ten sales products for 2026. Note that Pipedrive renamed its plans in mid-2025; the entry tier is now called Lite (formerly Essential), which matters when comparing against older reviews and price lists.

Key features:

• Visual drag-and-drop pipeline built around next actions
• LeadBooster add-on for chatbot, live chat, forms, and prospecting
• Workflow automations for follow-ups

Pricing: starts at $14 per user per month (billed annually), with a 14-day trial.

Watch out for: the lead generation features live in LeadBooster, which is a paid add-on on top of the seat price.

Skip it if: marketing and sales need to share one system. Pipedrive is a sales tool with add-ons; if marketing automation matters, HubSpot’s model fits better.

Salesforce – Best for Enterprise AI-Driven Lead Generation

For enterprise teams, Salesforce is still the gravity well everything else orbits. The features that actually generate leads, as opposed to managing them: Web-to-Lead forms that pipe website submissions straight into Sales Cloud, and Marketing Cloud’s forms and landing pages on the marketing side. From there, Einstein AI scores and prioritizes what those capture based on your actual conversion history rather than generic rules, Agentforce automates the routine follow-up, and the platform can be configured to match nearly any sales process, which is both the pitch and the warning.

The scale of adoption is its own evidence: Salesforce Sales Cloud holds 4.4 stars across more than 25,000 G2 reviews as of July 2026, making it among the most-reviewed B2B products anywhere. The Starter Suite at $25 per user per month is a genuine SMB on-ramp with core CRM, pipeline, and email in one place, but be clear-eyed that the value everyone describes lives in the configured enterprise editions, not the starter tier.

Key features:

• Web-to-Lead forms and Marketing Cloud landing pages for direct capture
• Einstein AI lead scoring and routing trained on your pipeline
• Agentforce automation for routine sales work
• Deep customization plus the AppExchange marketplace
• Scales from small teams to global sales orgs

Pricing: Starter Suite is $25 per user per month; costs grow with editions and add-ons.

Watch out for: total cost of ownership. Between editions, add-ons, and the admin time it takes to configure well, the sticker price is the smallest number you’ll pay.

Skip it if: nobody on your team can own it. Salesforce rewards dedicated admin resources and punishes their absence; a small team is better served by Pipedrive or HubSpot.

Best Conversational and SMS Lead Generation Software

A visitor with a question is a lead in progress, and a visitor willing to hand over their phone number is further down the funnel than one who gives a throwaway email. These two capture leads in the conversation channels themselves.

Intercom – Best for Conversational Lead Engagement

Intercom’s Messenger and Fin AI agent engage visitors, answer product questions, and qualify leads around the clock. The division of labor is what makes it work: Fin resolves the routine questions entirely on its own, answering from your help docs rather than a generic model, and routes the conversations with buying signals to humans while they’re still hot. A pricing question at 2 a.m. gets an answer at 2 a.m., and your sales team gets the transcript.

For SaaS and product-led companies, Intercom often ends up being the lead capture layer itself; if that’s your model, our B2B SaaS lead generation strategies cover how chat fits the bigger funnel. Users rate Intercom 4.5 stars across 3,800+ G2 reviews as of July 2026, with Fin drawing most of the recent praise.

Key features:

• Fin AI agent that answers from your content and qualifies leads automatically
• Targeted in-app and on-site messages by audience and behavior
• Shared inbox and routing for sales and support

Pricing: Essential starts at $29 per seat per month (billed annually). Fin costs an additional $0.99 per resolution.

Watch out for: the per-resolution meter. Fin’s $0.99 per outcome is the number that scales with your success, so forecast it against your conversation volume, not your seat count.

Skip it if: your site is content-driven rather than product-driven. Blog readers don’t open chat; they respond to capture campaigns and lead magnets.

Attentive – Best for SMS Lead Generation

Attentive generates a specific kind of lead most tools on this list cannot: the phone number. Its sign-up units are the direct capture mechanism, and the two-tap mobile opt-in is the clever part: a visitor taps once, their native messaging app opens with a pre-filled text, they hit send, and they are subscribed. That is dramatically less friction than typing an email into a form on a phone, which is why SMS lists grow fast when the mechanism is this smooth.

For ecommerce and consumer brands, the SMS lead is often the highest-intent contact you can capture, and Attentive is the category reference product: 4.5 stars across 1,300+ G2 reviews as of July 2026, sitting at the top of G2’s SMS marketing category. The platform then runs the channel itself: campaigns, triggered journeys, and AI tools across SMS, email, RCS, and push.

Key features:

• Sign-up units with patented two-tap mobile opt-in for SMS and email capture
• Campaigns, triggered journeys, and A/B testing across SMS, email, RCS, and push
• AI tools for audience targeting and send optimization

Pricing: custom, usage-based (message volume, list size, channels); no published tiers, free trial available.

Watch out for: SMS is a regulated, consent-driven channel, and costs scale with message volume, so the quote you get is a starting point, not a ceiling.

Skip it if: you are B2B or your customers buy once a decade. SMS earns its cost on repeat-purchase consumer brands; nobody wants texts from their CRM vendor.

Best Automation and Scheduling Tools for Lead Generation

The leads you capture are only as good as the follow-up they trigger. These tools remove the gaps where leads go cold.

Zapier – Best for Automating Lead Workflows

Zapier connects your lead generation stack to everything else, and in lead generation the seconds matter: a lead that gets a follow-up while they’re still on your site closes differently than one that waits for tomorrow’s CSV import. A Zap is a trigger plus actions: new OptinMonster lead → create the CRM contact → alert the right rep in Slack → start the welcome email, all without code and all in the moment the lead arrives.

With connections to thousands of apps, it’s the glue that lets you pick best-of-breed tools instead of settling for one bloated suite. Users rate it 4.5 stars on G2 as of July 2026, and the newer AI steps (agents, chatbots, AI-formatted data) are pushing it from plumbing toward workflow brain.

Key features:

• Multi-step automated workflows (Zaps) across thousands of apps
• Filters, paths, and formatters for branching logic
• AI agents and chatbots on newer plans

Pricing: free plan with 100 tasks per month; Professional starts at $19.99 per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: every step in every Zap consumes tasks, so a busy lead workflow burns through limits faster than you’d guess.

Skip it if: your whole stack is one suite already. HubSpot-to-HubSpot doesn’t need glue; Zapier earns its cost when your tools come from different vendors.

Calendly – Best for Converting Leads Into Meetings

Every email exchange about “what time works for you” kills momentum, and momentum is most of what a fresh lead has. Calendly turns a captured lead into a booked meeting in one click, and the team features are where it becomes a lead generation tool rather than a convenience: routing forms ask two or three qualifying questions and send enterprise leads to account executives while smaller deals book straight with SDRs, and round-robin distribution keeps the calendar fair without a spreadsheet.

It’s also the best-reviewed tool on this entire list: 4.7 stars across 2,600+ G2 reviews as of July 2026. Scheduling is a solved problem, and Calendly is most of why.

Key features:

• Scheduling links with calendar sync, time zone handling, and reminders
• Routing forms that qualify and route before the meeting is booked
• Round-robin distribution for teams
• CRM and video conferencing integrations

Pricing: solid free plan; Standard is $10 per seat per month (billed annually).

Watch out for: the lead routing and round-robin features that make it a team tool sit on the $16 Teams tier, not Standard.

Skip it if: meetings aren’t part of your funnel. An ecommerce store has no demo call; spend the money on capture and recovery instead.

Best Free Lead Generation Tools

If your budget is zero, you can still build a working lead generation system today:

• HubSpot free tools: CRM, forms, live chat, and basic email marketing
• Zapier free: 100 automated tasks per month
• Calendly free: unlimited bookings on one event type
• Hunter free: 50 email finder/verifier credits per month
• Apollo.io free: entry-level prospecting and sequences
• Typeform free: 100 form responses per month
• Leadfeeder Lite: identify up to 100 visiting companies per month
• WPForms Lite: basic WordPress forms, free from WordPress.org

The pattern across every free tier: they cap the exact thing that generates the leads (tasks, conversations, responses, credits). Free tiers are for validating that a channel works. Once it does, the paid tier usually costs less than the leads you’re leaving behind. OptinMonster doesn’t have a free tier; plans start at $7 per month, and the targeting features are the whole point.

Which Tool Should You Pick?

Start with where your leads actually are:

• You have website traffic that isn’t converting: OptinMonster. This is the fastest payback in lead generation, and it’s why on-site capture leads this list. Ecommerce store? See our ecommerce lead generation playbook.
• You’re on WordPress: WPForms for forms, OptinMonster for campaigns.
• You sell B2B and need outbound: Apollo.io for data and outreach, Sales Navigator if your buyers live on LinkedIn, Leadfeeder to catch the accounts already visiting you.
• Your follow-up is leaking: HubSpot or Pipedrive for nurturing, Zapier to connect the handoffs, Calendly to book the meeting.
• Visitors have questions before they convert: Intercom for SaaS. Your buyers live on their phones: Attentive for SMS.
• Most of your traffic is mobile: the capture tactics differ; here are our mobile lead generation strategies.

Teams get the best results from one capture tool, one nurture tool, and one automation layer. Add B2B data tools only when outbound is genuinely your channel.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Are the Best Lead Generation Tools for Websites?

OptinMonster is the strongest option for converting existing website traffic into leads, using Exit-Intent® popups, floating bars, and gamified campaigns with behavior-based targeting. Pair it with WPForms if you run WordPress, or Unbounce when a campaign needs a dedicated landing page.

What Is the Best Lead Generation Software for Small Businesses?

Start with tools that have low entry pricing and short learning curves: OptinMonster ($7/mo) for capture, HubSpot’s free CRM with its built-in live chat for nurturing, and Calendly’s free plan for booking meetings.

What Are the Best B2B Lead Generation Tools?

Apollo.io leads for contact data and prospecting in one platform, LinkedIn Sales Navigator for social selling, Hunter for email finding, and Leadfeeder for identifying companies already visiting your website. Most B2B teams combine one data tool with one outreach channel.

Are There Good Free Lead Generation Tools?

Yes. HubSpot’s free CRM, Zapier’s free plan, Calendly, Hunter, Typeform, and Leadfeeder Lite all have permanent free tiers. Expect caps on exactly the features that generate leads; free tiers validate a channel, paid tiers scale it.

Can AI Tools Do Lead Generation?

AI now runs inside most lead generation software rather than replacing it: Intercom’s Fin qualifies leads in chat, Salesforce Einstein scores them, Unbounce’s Smart Traffic routes visitors to converting pages, and Zapier adds AI steps to workflows. Buy the workflow first, the AI label second.

How Do SEO and Lead Generation Software Work Together?

SEO brings visitors; lead generation software converts them. Content that ranks pulls in search traffic, then on-site tools like OptinMonster capture those visitors with targeted offers, an effective lead magnet, or content-locked resources. Without a capture layer, SEO traffic reads and leaves.

How Do I Choose a Lead Generation Tool?

Match the tool to your lead source: on-site capture for existing traffic, B2B databases for outbound, chat for question-heavy sales, CRM for follow-up. Then check that it integrates with your existing stack, and confirm current pricing directly on the vendor’s site.

Ready to turn your traffic into leads? Get started with OptinMonster today and see why it powers lead generation for over a million websites.

Most store owners treat this as an afterthought. They drive traffic, watch 97% of it disappear, and blame the ads. The stores that actually grow do the opposite: they treat every visitor as a lead opportunity before they treat them as a buyer.

This guide covers 14 strategies that work in 2026, whether you’re running a Shopify store, a WooCommerce site, or a custom eCommerce build. Each strategy is eCommerce-specific, not recycled from generic marketing advice, and includes real results from stores that have used them.

OptinMonster is a lead generation platform used by over 1.2 million websites to capture and convert visitors through behavioral targeting, exit-intent popups, and on-site optin campaigns. Several strategies below use it directly.

What Counts as an eCommerce Lead?

An eCommerce lead is any visitor who has given you a way to contact them again before leaving your store.

• An email from a signup form or popup
• A phone number for SMS
• A cart add without purchase (trackable via abandoned cart flows)
• A wishlist save or back-in-stock alert
• A quiz completion
• A social follow tied to a retargeting audience

Casual browsing doesn’t count. Intent signals do. Everything below is built around capturing those signals before visitors leave.

Deeper guide:  What Is Lead Generation and How It Works (Complete Guide).

1. Build Your Email List With a Targeted Optin

Email still has the best ROI of any eCommerce marketing channel. The commonly cited figure is $36–$42 back for every $1 spent. The reason isn’t that email is magic. You own the list. You’re not renting attention from a platform that can tank your reach whenever it wants.

The catch is that a list is only as good as what feeds it. A “subscribe to our newsletter” form is a dead end. Nobody wants a newsletter. They want something specific in exchange for their email.

The forms that actually convert pair the signup with an immediate reason to hand over an address:

• A first-order discount (10–15% works across most categories)
• Early access to a sale or new product drop
• A lead magnet tied to what the visitor was browsing
• A spin-to-win or coupon wheel

OptinMonster’s campaign builder lets you design those forms and show them to the right person at the right moment, based on how long someone’s been on the site, how far they’ve scrolled, which product page they visited, or whether they’ve already subscribed.

More on list-building: proven ways to grow your email list.

2. Use Exit-Intent Popups to Recover Abandoning Visitors

About 70% of eCommerce visitors leave without buying. Exit-intent popups catch some of them on the way out.

OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent® technology reads when a visitor’s cursor moves toward the browser bar, the clearest signal they’re about to close the tab, and fires a campaign in that window.

Some results from stores that use it:

• Crossrope grew its email list by 900%
• SnackNation pulled in 1,200 new leads per week
• Ryan Robinson grew subscribers by 500%

What makes this work in eCommerce specifically: you can match the offer to what the visitor was doing. Someone leaving a product page gets something different than someone walking away from a full cart. OptinMonster’s display rules let you target by page, cart value, traffic source, or conversion history.

“Wait, don’t go!” converts badly. “Before you leave: here’s 15% off what you were just looking at” is a different thing entirely.

3. Create Lead Magnets Built for eCommerce Buyers

eCommerce lead magnets work best when they solve a problem that exists between the visitor’s current state and the purchase decision. The mistake most stores make is borrowing from content marketing playbooks: ebooks, webinar recordings, long PDF guides. Those work for B2B. eCommerce buyers want something they can use right now.

Lead magnets that convert in eCommerce:

• Discount codes. The simplest exchange: email for savings. Works in almost every category.
• Size or fit guides. Genuinely useful for apparel, footwear, outdoor gear. Solves a real pre-purchase problem.
• Product comparison checklists. Good for higher-ticket items where buyers are still researching.
• Care and usage guides. Useful for capturing leads still in research mode.
• Quiz results. “Find your perfect X” quizzes collect an email to deliver a personalized recommendation.

The test for a good lead magnet: what’s stopping this visitor from buying? Whatever that answer is, that’s your lead magnet.

4. Offer Discounts That Capture Emails, Not Just Sales

CouponFollow data shows 96% of shoppers look for a promo code before completing a purchase. Discounts work. The question is whether you’re capturing an email before handing one out.

The wrong way: a sitewide discount banner visible to everyone. You give away margin and get nothing back.

The right way: a discount delivered through an optin form. The visitor enters their email, gets the code in their inbox (or auto-copied via OptinMonster’s Coupon Marketing feature), and you’ve turned a price-motivated visit into a contact you can remarket to.

A few guardrails worth building in:

• Don’t run the same discount permanently. Rotate offers so buyers don’t learn to wait.
• Save bigger discounts for higher-commitment actions, like email plus phone or first purchase only.
• Use discount campaigns for new visitors. For returning customers, loyalty messaging works better.

More on structuring these: discount code ideas for eCommerce.

5. Run Limited-Time Offers With Countdown Timers

A product available indefinitely at a fixed price creates no urgency. The same product with a visible sale timer ending in 18 hours creates pressure to decide now.

OptinMonster’s countdown timer campaigns add a live, ticking timer to any popup or inline form. Cracku, an online coaching platform, used countdown timers and increased conversions by 300%.

Where they work best:

• Flash sales with a hard end time
• Holiday campaigns with delivery deadlines (“order by Dec. 20”)
• Limited-stock messaging where the scarcity is real
• First-time visitor offers that expire quickly

One rule that matters: don’t use fake timers that reset when the page reloads. Buyers notice. When they do, you lose both the sale and the trust. Only put a timer on a real deadline.

6. Use Quiz Funnels to Qualify and Capture Leads

Quiz funnels capture higher-quality leads than generic popups because they collect declared preferences alongside the email. A quiz funnel asks a question, collects answers across a few steps, and delivers a personalized recommendation gated behind an email. The visitor gets something genuinely useful. You get a lead who has already told you what they want.

Instead of capturing “someone who wanted a discount,” you capture “someone looking for hydrating skincare for dry skin with a $50–80 budget.” That contact is worth more to every email you send them afterward.

OptinMonster’s Smart Segmenter turns multi-step campaigns into quiz funnels, routing visitors to different outcomes based on their answers, without them ever needing to visit a product page.

This works especially well in categories where buyers need a recommendation before they can choose confidently: beauty and skincare, apparel and footwear, supplements, home goods. Anywhere the question “but which one is right for me?” would otherwise send someone to a competitor’s quiz.

7. Capture Leads From Your Product Pages

Product pages get the most purchase-intent traffic on a site. Someone who clicked into a specific product is closer to buying than someone browsing a category. That intent needs a capture mechanism.

Three tactics that work here:

Back-in-stock alerts. When a product is sold out, replace the add-to-cart button with a “notify me when available” email field. These are some of the most qualified leads you’ll collect. The visitor has told you exactly what they want.

Wishlist signups. A prompt to save a product (requiring an account or email) captures leads at the moment of interest, before they leave to comparison shop elsewhere.

Size or fit prompts. For apparel, an inline “not sure about sizing?” prompt that sends a fit guide collects an email from a visitor who might otherwise bounce on uncertainty.

Most stores put optins on the homepage and the blog and nowhere else. Product pages are where purchase decisions get made. That’s where capture needs to live.

8. Personalize Campaigns for Returning Visitors

A new visitor and a returning visitor who has already bought from you have different needs. Showing the same 10%-off popup to both is lazy and wastes the second impression.

OptinMonster’s Cookie Retargeting adjusts what someone sees based on their previous behavior: pages visited, whether they’ve already subscribed, what was in their cart, and more.

Expat.com used this to personalize campaigns for logged-in users based on which destinations they were browsing. The result was 30,000 new member registrations per month.

The most useful rules for eCommerce:

• Subscribers vs. non-subscribers. Don’t show an email capture to someone already on your list. Show them a product recommendation or a loyalty offer.
• Category visitors. Someone who has browsed footwear twice in two sessions is not a cold lead. Give them a footwear-specific offer.
• Cart abandoners. The highest-value retargeting audience you have. They need a different message than someone who never showed purchase intent.

9. Gate Content to Capture Qualified Leads

Gated content generates higher-quality leads than discount popups because visitors self-select based on specific interest rather than price sensitivity. It works by putting a signup requirement in front of something valuable enough that visitors trade their email to access it.

In eCommerce, the most effective gated content tends to be practical and close to the purchase decision:

• A comprehensive buying guide for a product category
• A lookbook or style guide
• A seasonal gift guide
• An exclusive sale or early access list

Photowebo used content gating with OptinMonster and increased conversions by 3,806%. Trading Strategy Guides used the same approach to add over 11,000 subscribers in just over a month.

OptinMonster’s Content Lock feature handles the technical side. The visitor sees a preview, hits a gate, submits their email, and gets access.

10. Optimize CTAs So Visitors Actually Click

The CTA is the line of text on a button. It’s also one of the most undertested elements in eCommerce.

“Subscribe” is weak. It describes an action from the store’s side, not a benefit from the visitor’s side. “Get my 15% off” is stronger because it names what the visitor gets. “Claim your free size guide” is stronger still because it’s specific about what they’re getting.

The gap between a 2% and 6% popup conversion rate is often just the CTA copy. Rich Page tested OptinMonster campaigns with improved CTA copy and increased conversions by 316%.

What works:

• First-person phrasing (“get my discount” vs. “get your discount” — test both, results vary)
• Specificity about the reward
• Urgency when it’s real (“claim offer, expires tonight”)
• No friction words: not “submit,” not “register,” not “sign up”

Test the button before assuming the form is the problem. It’s usually the button.

11. Use Live Chat to Capture and Qualify Leads in Real Time

Live chat catches leads that forms miss entirely. A visitor with a specific question who can’t find the answer doesn’t fill out a form. They leave. A chat widget can intercept that.

Research from Hiver shows 63% of buyers are more likely to purchase from a site that offers live chat. For higher-ticket items especially, the ability to ask a question before committing makes a real difference.

For lead generation specifically, live chat works because most tools collect a name and email before the conversation starts, capturing a contact even if the visitor never converts that session. It also surfaces the exact objections blocking purchases, which tells you what your product pages and campaigns are missing.

The best live chat tools for eCommerce push those contacts directly into your email platform so they flow into nurture sequences automatically.

12. Optimize for Mobile Lead Capture

Over 79% of eCommerce buyers used a mobile device to make a purchase in 2025, and Google indexes mobile-first. Mobile traffic is the majority for most eCommerce stores, but mobile conversion rates consistently lag desktop.

A popup that works on a 1440px screen becomes an unusable overlay on a 390px phone. The form fields are too small, the close button disappears, and the visitor bounces.

What actually closes the gap:

• Use scroll-based triggers on mobile instead of time-based ones. Mobile users start scrolling faster.
• One field only. Name, email, and phone on a mobile form kills completion rates. Email only.
• Make the close button large and obvious. If someone can’t dismiss it easily, they leave.
• Test fullscreen campaigns on mobile. A fullscreen welcome mat optimized for touch often outperforms a scaled-down popup.

Salt Strong built mobile-specific campaigns with OptinMonster and boosted conversions by 185%. Same offer, different format.

13. Turn Social Followers Into Email Subscribers

Social followers are not leads. They’re rented. If Instagram changes its algorithm or suspends your account, that audience is gone. An email list isn’t.

The most reliable way to move social followers into email: run paid lead gen campaigns on the platforms where they already are. Facebook and Instagram Lead Ads let someone submit their contact information without leaving the platform, which dramatically improves completion rates vs. sending people to an external landing page.

For organic conversion, the lever is a specific offer in the bio link. A link to a landing page with a real incentive (a discount, a lead magnet, early access) converts. A link to a homepage doesn’t.

“Sign up for our newsletter” as a social post is ignored. Specific offers with clear value are not.

14. Use SEO to Attract Leads Who Are Already Buying

SEO attracts leads with purchase intent because visitors arrive having already searched for what you sell, making them higher-quality than most paid traffic. The problem is that most eCommerce SEO advice is so generic it’s useless. “Do keyword research” and “write good content” are not strategies. Here’s what actually moves lead generation:

Target buying-intent queries. “Best running shoes for flat feet” has more purchase intent than “running shoes.” Product comparison and “best [product type for use case]” queries attract people close to a decision.

Optimize product and category pages. These pages get the most commercial traffic. Title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page headers should match how buyers search, not just how the brand names things.

Answer pre-purchase questions in content. “How to choose X” and “X vs Y” content attracts visitors in the consideration stage who can be captured as leads before they decide.

Link high-traffic posts to lead capture pages. Every blog post with meaningful traffic should point to a relevant product page or gated resource that collects an email.

Deeper guide:  Beginner’s SEO Guide.

How eCommerce Lead Generation Works as a System

Individual tactics get you incremental wins. Treating lead generation as a system gets you compounding growth.

The basic version:

1. SEO and paid traffic bring in visitors with purchase intent
2. Behavioral triggers catch visitors before they leave
3. Optin campaigns with specific offers turn anonymous visitors into contacts
4. Email and SMS sequences move those contacts toward a first purchase
5. Post-purchase sequences go after the second and third purchase

OptinMonster handles the middle layer (behavioral triggers and optin campaigns) across more than 1.2 million websites. It connects directly to the email platforms, CRMs, and eCommerce tools you’re already using, so the leads you capture move automatically into whatever comes next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related reading:

• eCommerce best practices: set up your business for success
• How to get started with eCommerce email marketing automation
• A 14-point eCommerce launch checklist for new store owners