Although we’re using the term newsletter, you don’t necessarily need to send out regular news. You might create a short email course for new subscribers to help them get to know you better. You could also use your newsletter list to offer special discounts on your products and services.
When it comes to WordPress newsletter plugins, there are three different types. First type of newsletter plugins are associated with email marketing services which offer the most comprehensive set of features.
Second type are simple newsletter plugins that let you draft emails inside WordPress, but they rely on third-party SMTP services to help you reliably send emails to your subscribers.
Lastly, the third type of WordPress newsletter plugins are designed to help you get more email subscribers and grow your email list. These plugins integrate with all popular email marketing services and other newsletter plugins.
With that said, let’s take a look at the top WordPress newsletter plugins that you can use to build and grow your email list.
Due to the popularity of Constant Contact, leading WordPress form plugins like WPForms, offer built-in integration for Constant Contact, so you can quickly build newsletter subscriber forms.
This lets you easily build your email list from your WordPress site while relying on a powerful email deliverability platform of Constant Contact to send emails.
Constant Contact itself is a fully-featured email marketing service. It lets you easily create emails using templates. You can segment your list, set up automated emails, and much more.
If you don’t already have a Constant Contact account, they offer a generous free trial for you to get started.
There are a lot of third-party plugins like WPForms that offer native integration for Constant Contact.
Constant Contact comes with excellent support (email, chat, and live phone support).
You can also integrate Constant Contact with WooCommerce and other eCommerce platforms.
Cons
Constant Contact email marketing service lacks advanced targeting features that are available in marketing automation platforms like Drip or ConvertKit.
Pricing
The plugin to integrate Constant Contact with WordPress (WPForms Lite) is 100% free.
But you’ll need to use their email marketing service. Constant Contact has a 60-day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as $20/month.
OptinMonster is a popular marketing and popup plugin for WordPress. It lets you create personalized newsletter opt-in forms, so you can grow your email list and convert more abandoning visitors into subscribers.
OptinMonster works with all major email marketing services and popular WordPress newsletter plugins.
Pros
OptinMonster integrates with lots of different email marketing services, including popular ones like Constant Contact. It also integrates with plugins like Sendinblue and MailPoet.
You can use OptinMonster’s signature Exit-Intent® technology to create popups that appear as a visitor’s about to leave your site. That way, you won’t interrupt their experience on your site.
It’s easy to A/B test your sign up forms to see what headlines, offers, and layouts lead to the best conversion rate.
You can create segmentation rules to target specific pages on your site. OptinMonster also lets you personalize your newsletter forms based on user’s geolocation, past behavior on site, etc.
All plans include full access to OptinMonster university training. This is a whole library of plans, checklists, ebooks, guides, webinars, and more to help you grow your email list faster.
There’s a full money-back guarantee. If you don’t like the software for any reason, cancel within 14 days of purchasing and you can get a full refund.
Cons
OptinMonster doesn’t provide the actual mailing list software. You’ll need to join a separate service (such as Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc) for this.
There’s no free version of OptinMonster, and you can’t take a free trial. However, there is a full money-back guarantee.
Pricing
OptinMonster premium plugin costs $9/month (billed annually). You can upgrade to unlock the powerful features like geolocation, gamified opt-in forms, and more.
Sendinblue is another email marketing service that we highly recommend. It’s easy to use and has a free plan, as well as a simple plugin that you can add to WordPress.
The Sendinblue WordPress plugin can be easily installed through your WordPress dashboard. Once you’ve created it, you simply activate it using the API key from your Sendinblue account.
There’s a completely free plan, where you can send up to 300 emails per day to your newsletter list. You don’t have to enter any credit card details for this.
The Sendinblue customer service team is helpful and responsive. You can contact them through email or live chat.
If you’re using WooCommerce, you can use WP Mail SMTP plugin to connect Sendinblue’s SMTP and send your confirmation emails to buyers.
Within Sendinblue, there’s a range of templates to choose from. All of them are responsive, which means they’ll look good on mobile devices.
Cons
Sendinblue doesn’t have the range of templates that some other email service providers offer. It also doesn’t have such powerful segmentation and automation options.
It can be a little fiddly to import your contacts if you’ve already created a mailing list somewhere else.
Pricing
Sendinblue has a completely free plan that you can use for up to 300 emails/day. If you want more, their paid plans start at $25/month. That gives you 40,000 emails each month and no daily sending limits.
MailPoet is a newsletter plugin for WordPress that also works with your WooCommerce online store.
With the standard version of MailPoet, you’ll also need an account with a third-party email service provider such as Constant Contact.
However, you can choose to sign up for MailPoet’s “Premium + Sending” service, which takes care of sending your emails too. This is free for up to 1,000 subscribers.
Pros
It’s quick and easy to get started with MailPoet. You can simply install the plugin in WordPress and get started straight away.
With MailPoet, you manage your subscriber list and newsletter emails through WordPress itself. This means you don’t need to login to anything else.
There’s a free “Premium + Sending” plan available for up to 1,000 subscribers, making this a great option if you’re on a very tight budget.
When it comes to sending your emails, there’s a range of built in templates available.
You can easily add a signup form to your WooCommerce checkout page to collect emails and encourage repeat purchases.
The paid plans come with a 30 day money back guarantee. If you don’t like MailPoet, you can simply ask for your money back.
You can choose to use MailPoet’s own “Sending” service or you can sign up for a third-party service such as Amazon SES or Sendgrid.
There isn’t a huge range of templates, and you may find yourself doing quite a bit of customization to get something that works for you.
The analytic tools provided by MailPoet are more limited than those you’ll get with some other email marketing services.
Pricing
MailPoet is completely free. If you want to use their “Premium + Sending” service, it’s free for up to 1,000 subscribers. After that, it costs from $13/month (billed annually).
Bloom is a plugin from Elegant Themes, the Divi theme creators. Like OptinMonster, it lets you create sign up forms to encourage people to join your email list. These can appear after a certain interval or you can simply add them in specific locations.
Bloom lets you create a range of different options. These include optins that pop up, ones that fly in, ones that appear beneath your content, and more.
You can design your optins to appear after certain “triggers” take place, like after a certain length of time, or after someone comments.
Bloom easily integrates with lots of different email service providers. These include Constant Contact, MailPoet, and Sendinblue.
Cons
The range of templates for Bloom is quite limited, though there are several color variations of each layout.
Bloom doesn’t have anything similar to OptinMonster’s advanced Exit-Intent® technology. It also doesn’t offer floating bar or fullscreen optins like OptinMonster does.
Newsletter is a free WordPress plugin that you can use to send as many newsletters as you want. The premium version integrates with other plugins like WooCommerce and WPForms and offers extra features.
Pros
Newsletter is free, though you may want to pay for the Premium version to get all the extensions.
You can add an external SMTP provider to Newsletter. This is definitely recommended as it should improve your email deliverability.
You can control how fast emails go out, which is very useful if you’re sending them through your web host and they place limits on you.
There are a number of free addons available for Newsletter. You could use these to create an archive of your newsletter and lock content so that people can only access it after subscribing.
Cons
The spam prevention isn’t as good as with some other options. You might find you get some spam subscribers through your signup form.
You’ll ideally need to connect Newsletter to an external SMTP provider. They don’t provide a “Sending” option or similar like MailPoet does.
Pricing
The basic version of Newsletter is free, regardless of how many emails you send. If you want the pro extensions and priority support, it costs $65/year.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to WordPress newsletter plugins, you almost always want to use a proper email marketing platform that offers full email delivery services like Constant Contact, Sendinblue, Drip, etc.
The challenge is that most of these platforms lack powerful signup form features, and that’s where WordPress newsletter plugins like OptinMonster and too some extent form builder plugins like WPForms can help.
These plugins let you connect your WordPress site with powerful email marketing services, so you get the best of both worlds.
Most professionals and power users DO NOT use a newsletter plugin inside WordPress to manage their email list because they don’t want the hassle of using an SMTP plugin and connecting it with an email delivery service.
Your email list is too important and valuable, and its best practice to let the expert email marketing companies handle that part for your business. Even at WPBeginner and our software businesses, we use third-party email marketing companies even though we have all the technical know-how.
Sir
Great content as always.
Keep it up.
I have a question for you guys.
How you use the images of plugin logos in your blog? Do you take permission from owners. I want to use images of plugin logos but I don’t know how to use them because they must be copyrighted.
Any reply will be highly appreciated.
It depends on the specific plugin, some plugins have a media kit that you can view while others you would need to reach out to the author if they do not have something like that available.
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Sir
Great content as always.
Keep it up.
I have a question for you guys.
How you use the images of plugin logos in your blog? Do you take permission from owners. I want to use images of plugin logos but I don’t know how to use them because they must be copyrighted.
Any reply will be highly appreciated.
It depends on the specific plugin, some plugins have a media kit that you can view while others you would need to reach out to the author if they do not have something like that available.