Exit-intent popups recover an additional 8-12% of abandoning visitors. Cart abandonment popups reclaim up to 30% of lost sales. Yet most WordPress site owners either use no popup plugin at all or chose one years ago without comparing alternatives. The popup plugin market has shifted dramatically, and the gap between a well-chosen tool and an outdated one translates directly into lost subscribers and revenue.
This comparison breaks down the five leading WordPress popup plugins across pricing, features, performance impact, and real-world conversion results so you can pick the one that actually fits your site and budget.
Quick Comparison Table
| Plugin | Starting Price | Free Plan | Exit-Intent | A/B Testing | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OptinMonster | $9/mo (billed annually) | No | Yes (patented Exit-Intent®) | Yes (all plans) | Serious lead generation and eCommerce recovery |
| Popup Maker | Free ($87/yr premium) | Yes | Yes (free + premium) | Premium only | Budget-conscious sites and developers |
| Thrive Leads | $299/yr (Thrive Suite) | No | Limited | Yes (advanced) | Marketers already in the Thrive ecosystem |
| Bloom | $89/yr (Elegant Themes) | No | No | Yes | Divi users wanting integrated opt-in forms |
| Convert Pro | $87/yr | No | Yes | Yes | Astra theme users and agencies |
OptinMonster: The Conversion-Focused Powerhouse
OptinMonster operates as a cloud-based SaaS platform rather than a traditional WordPress plugin. That architectural difference matters: popup scripts load from OptinMonster’s CDN instead of your hosting server, which means minimal impact on page speed. Independent testing clocks OptinMonster-equipped pages at 1.03 seconds, the fastest among major popup plugins.
The headline feature is Exit-Intent technology, a patented system that tracks cursor movement toward the browser’s close button on desktop and detects upward scroll behavior on mobile. When a visitor is about to leave, the popup fires at exactly that moment. Real-world case studies back up the marketing claims: Shockbyte doubled their sales conversions with a single exit popup, and Storytelling grew their email list by 45% while increasing overall conversions by 80%.
OptinMonster ships with over 700 templates spanning nine campaign types: lightbox popups, slide-ins, fullscreen welcome mats, floating bars, scroll boxes, inline forms, content lockers, spin-to-win wheels, and countdown timers. The drag-and-drop builder gets most users from template to live popup in about ten minutes.
Where OptinMonster genuinely separates itself is targeting. Page-level targeting lets you show different popups on different posts. Referral detection serves different offers to Google visitors versus Facebook traffic. Geolocation targeting (Pro plan and above) customizes popups by visitor location down to the city level. OnSite Retargeting recognizes returning visitors and adjusts offers based on their previous popup interactions.
The catch is pricing. The Basic plan starts at $9/month billed annually but limits you to 2,500 monthly impressions. Most growing sites need the Pro plan at $49/month for geolocation targeting and 25,000 impressions. Renewal pricing doubles after the first year, so factor that into your budget.
OptinMonster Verdict
Best for eCommerce stores recovering abandoned carts, content sites building email lists at scale, and anyone who needs enterprise-grade targeting without hiring a developer. The SaaS pricing model adds up, but the conversion lift typically covers the cost within weeks.
Popup Maker: The Free-First Workhorse
Popup Maker has earned over 700,000 active installations by doing something unusual in the popup space: giving away genuinely useful functionality for free. The free version includes unlimited popups, exit-intent triggers, click triggers, scroll triggers, time delays, and basic page-level targeting. That alone handles what most small business sites need.
The premium tiers add scheduling, analytics, WooCommerce integration for cart abandonment popups, and advanced targeting. Pricing follows a per-site model: $87/year for one site (Start), $147/year for three sites (Grow), and $247/year for five sites with full features including WooCommerce integration (Optimize). Agencies managing multiple client sites save significantly compared to OptinMonster’s per-account pricing.
Popup Maker’s builder runs natively within WordPress, which means the interface will feel familiar if you already know your way around the WordPress admin. The tradeoff is setup time. Creating a polished popup takes 15-20 minutes versus OptinMonster’s ten, and complex configurations with multiple extensions require more manual wiring.
As a self-hosted plugin, Popup Maker runs on your server. Performance testing shows page loads at 1.50 seconds, roughly 450 milliseconds slower than OptinMonster’s CDN-delivered approach. On a well-optimized host, that difference is negligible. On shared hosting under load, it can compound.
One standout feature: Popup Maker supports combining multiple elements within a single popup, letting you build multipurpose campaigns that handle email capture, announcements, and product promotions in one unit. That flexibility appeals to developers and agencies who want pixel-level control without template constraints.
Popup Maker Verdict
Best for WordPress developers, agencies managing multiple sites, and budget-conscious site owners who want functional popups without monthly subscriptions. The free version genuinely works for basic lead capture, and premium tiers remain the most affordable option for multi-site management.
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Thrive Leads: The A/B Testing Specialist
Thrive Leads is not available as a standalone plugin. It comes bundled with Thrive Suite ($299/year introductory, $599/year on renewal), which includes Thrive Architect, Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Theme Builder, and several other conversion-focused tools. If you are already running Thrive Suite for page building, adding Thrive Leads costs nothing extra. If you are buying Thrive Suite solely for popups, the math gets harder to justify.
Where Thrive Leads earns its reputation is A/B testing depth. The platform lets you split-test not just copy variations but entirely different form types, trigger mechanisms, and offers presented to different audience segments. An “automatic winner” feature continuously monitors performance and hides underperforming variations once results reach statistical significance. Users have documented 163% conversion improvements over control treatments with 98% statistical confidence using this system.
The design flexibility is unlimited because Thrive Leads inherits Thrive Architect’s full drag-and-drop builder. You can create any layout imaginable, but that power comes with a learning curve. First-time users typically spend 45-60 minutes building their first popup compared to ten minutes with OptinMonster. The extensive video tutorial library helps, but Thrive Leads rewards long-term investment over quick deployment.
A notable gap: Thrive Leads does not prominently feature exit-intent technology. It emphasizes content upgrade triggers, scroll-depth targeting, and time-based triggers instead. For sites where exit-intent recovery is the primary use case, OptinMonster or Popup Maker will serve better.
Thrive Leads Verdict
Best for marketers who obsess over systematic optimization and are already committed to the Thrive ecosystem. The A/B testing capabilities genuinely exceed most competitors. Skip it if you only need popups and do not plan to use the rest of Thrive Suite.
Bloom: Elegant Simplicity for Divi Users
Bloom ships as part of Elegant Themes’ membership ($89/year or $249 lifetime), which also includes the Divi page builder and Extra theme. If you are already an Elegant Themes member, Bloom is included at no additional cost.
The plugin offers over 100 templates across six opt-in form types: pop-ups, fly-ins, inline forms, below-content forms, widget area forms, and content-locked forms. The template designs lean toward visual polish, and the builder keeps customization straightforward with preset layout options rather than freeform drag-and-drop.
Bloom connects to 19 email marketing platforms including Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, and Drip. A/B testing is available for comparing form variations. However, Bloom lacks exit-intent triggers, geolocation targeting, and the advanced behavioral targeting that OptinMonster and Popup Maker provide. Display rules are limited to page-level, post-type, and category-based targeting.
Performance-wise, Bloom runs as a self-hosted plugin and adds moderate weight to page loads. Sites already running Divi will absorb Bloom’s overhead within the existing Elegant Themes framework without significant additional impact.
Bloom Verdict
Best for Divi users who want clean opt-in forms without adding another plugin vendor to their stack. It handles basic email capture well but cannot compete with OptinMonster or Popup Maker for advanced conversion optimization.
Convert Pro: The Agency-Friendly Middle Ground
Convert Pro, built by the team behind the Astra theme (Brainstorm Force), positions itself between Popup Maker’s affordability and OptinMonster’s feature depth. At $87/year for unlimited sites, the pricing model appeals to agencies and freelancers managing multiple WordPress installations.
The drag-and-drop editor uses a grid-based system that provides more design freedom than template-only builders while remaining easier to learn than Thrive Architect’s full-canvas approach. Convert Pro includes exit-intent triggers, scroll triggers, time-delay triggers, and click triggers. Multi-step popups let you qualify leads before asking for contact information, which typically improves conversion rates over single-step forms.
Integration support covers major email marketing platforms and connects with Zapier for additional automation. The plugin includes a referral detection system and device-level targeting (desktop vs. mobile), though it lacks the granular geolocation targeting that OptinMonster offers.
Convert Pro runs as a self-hosted WordPress plugin with a relatively lean footprint. Users report minimal performance impact on well-optimized hosting environments, though the same shared-hosting caveats that apply to Popup Maker and Thrive Leads apply here as well.
Convert Pro Verdict
Best for agencies and freelancers who need unlimited-site licensing at a flat rate with solid features. Budget $87/year.
Performance Impact: How Each Plugin Affects Page Speed
Page speed directly affects both search rankings and user experience. If your site already has borderline Core Web Vitals scores, adding a heavy popup plugin can push you below passing thresholds. Here is how these five plugins compare in independent testing:
| Plugin | Architecture | Page Load Time | Performance Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| OptinMonster | Cloud-based SaaS (CDN-delivered) | 1.03s | Minimal (async loading) |
| Thrive Leads | Self-hosted WordPress plugin | 1.23s | Low-moderate |
| Popup Maker | Self-hosted WordPress plugin | 1.50s | Moderate |
| Bloom | Self-hosted WordPress plugin | ~1.4s | Low-moderate (within Divi ecosystem) |
| Convert Pro | Self-hosted WordPress plugin | ~1.3s | Low |
OptinMonster’s CDN architecture gives it a measurable speed advantage. For sites where Core Web Vitals scores are already borderline, that difference could matter for search rankings. For most sites on decent hosting, any of these plugins will perform acceptably. If you are also running a caching plugin, the popup overhead is further minimized.
Which Plugin Should You Choose?
The decision comes down to four factors: budget, technical comfort, existing tool stack, and how seriously you approach conversion optimization.
Choose OptinMonster if you run an eCommerce store recovering abandoned carts, need enterprise-grade targeting and analytics, or want the fastest performance impact. Budget $348-$1,044/year depending on plan and renewal.
Choose Popup Maker if you want functional popups at zero cost, manage multiple client sites on a budget, or prefer full design control within WordPress. Budget $0-$247/year.
Choose Thrive Leads if you are already a Thrive Suite user and prioritize rigorous A/B testing over exit-intent technology. Budget $299-$599/year for the full suite.
Choose Bloom if you are an existing Divi/Elegant Themes member wanting basic opt-in forms without adding another vendor. Budget $89-$249/year (includes Divi).
Choose Convert Pro if you are an agency needing unlimited-site licensing at a flat rate with solid features. Budget $87/year.
For WooCommerce stores specifically, consider how the popup plugin integrates with your checkout optimization strategy. Cart abandonment popups work best when paired with an already-streamlined checkout flow.
For most WordPress site owners starting from scratch, Popup Maker’s free version offers the lowest-risk entry point. Test it, measure your baseline conversions, and upgrade to OptinMonster or Convert Pro when you have data showing that advanced targeting would pay for itself.
If you are building forms alongside your popups, make sure your form plugin integrates well with your popup tool. Most popup plugins support embedding forms from Gravity Forms, WPForms, and other major builders directly inside popup campaigns. If you are running Gravity Forms specifically, our Form Analytics Pro plugin gives you conversion rate and field-level abandonment data that complements popup analytics, helping you identify whether low conversions stem from the popup trigger or the form itself.