Today we welcome Phil, the owner of Capital Web Design, a Canadian web services agency based in Ottawa.

WPMU DEV: Congrats on your professional success, Phil. Please tell us straight away, how did you grow your business so fast?

Phil: I wouldn’t say the business itself grew that fast. I’ve been building websites in some way or another since the early 2000s. Either static sites coded by hand (HTML + CSS + Javascript), using frameworks (VueJS), or with WordPress.

I started my freelance web design company in 2014, after being approached to do a replacement build for what was a costly, difficult to maintain website – and that became my first client. From there I found small and medium businesses in my hometown that had old, unsupported and unmaintained websites, or who had no website at all.

As I continued my efforts, my business ethos emerged: help companies, nonprofits and individuals in my city build a web presence they can be proud of. I focused on creating bespoke WordPress web design based on well-supported multipurpose themes, WPMU DEV and other dependable plugins, and fully managed white-glove web hosting.

Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working with 20+ clients, and have built 60 websites targeting a multitude of industries and commercial sectors.

WPMU DEV: That’s awesome. Did you know about WPMU DEV at that time?

Phil: I had known about WPMU DEV since around 2016-18, back when you offered dozens of plugins for all sorts of functionality. I couldn’t justify the cost of a membership then, but I popped in every so often to check and see what progress was being made.

In 2019, Hosting was added as a WPMU DEV service – and this really caught my attention. During the Black Friday promotion that November (lifetime reduced membership cost!), I joined as a member, and I can’t see myself ever leaving.

It was a perfect storm: high-quality plugins + managed hosting + 24/7 support + highly reduced cost.

WPMU DEV: So as you were building your clientele, you were putting together your professional tool box. Can you give us a peek inside?

Phil: The tools and services from WPMU DEV have been invaluable to me.

Plugins have provided me with consistency and reliability for all of the most important aspects of WordPress websites.

Knowing that I can count on Hummingbird and Smush for performance optimization allowed me to stop using other freemium plugins such as W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, WP Super Cache and EWWW Image Optimization. I found these plugins were all good at some things, but had a lot of paywalled features that Hummingbird and Smush offered out of the box, for free.

Defender has been a great peace-of-mind addition to my repertoire, as the one-click recommended fixes are super straightforward and quite effective.

Forminator forms may be difficult at times to style with CSS, but that’s more than made up for in functionality. The drag-and-drop UI makes it much easier to build forms compared to Contact Form 7, and the amount of extras that are baked in (calculation, email routing, etc) blow other (often paid) form builders out of the water.

WPMU DEV: Aside from plugins, you mentioned our services have made a huge impact as well. Can you expand on that?

Phil: When it comes to services, it’s hard to put into words just how much The Hub and the associated Hosting have helped me throughout the last few years.

I have worked with hosting providers like 1and1, DreamHost, Media Temple, Digital Ocean VPS, and Bluehost. Each had their advantages, but in the end it always became a chore to use their services. It was clear that the quality of their offerings reflected the low cost they positioned themselves at. They were in a perpetual fight to undercut their competitors on price, at the cost of quality of service and support.

WPMU DEV Hosting came in late in the game, but out of the gate addressed two of the major concerns I experienced at other hosts: lack of support, and lack of trust in the infrastructure.

By having dedicated resources (versus shared), the web servers were consistently fast, reliable, and offered premium features such as staging, backups and WAF.

WPMU DEV: Walk us through a typical work day; what you reach for the most, and your usual workflow.

Phil: I keep The Hub open in a tab at all times, refreshing it every once in a while to keep track of ongoing community discussions, website maintenance statuses, and plugin updates.

I subscribe to key email notifications to receive alerts of technical issues on my managed sites, as well as member discussions in the WPMU DEV member forums, blogs and newsletter.

When a technical issue occurs, I’m able to troubleshoot it quickly. If I’m unable to resolve it on my own, the LiveChat support is always there to help me right away.

WPMU DEV has allowed me to optimize my workflows across the board, in areas like:

• Faster site creation with one-click managed WordPress server provisioning from The Hub.
• Easier client invoicing using Client Billing.
• More efficient website monitoring and maintenance through The Hub.
• Lower maintenance effort required with WPMU DEV plugins.
• Faster technical troubleshooting with the LiveChat support.

WPMU DEV: Outside of your own talent and determination, what would you say has contributed most significantly to your growth?

Phil: WPMU DEV has reduced my server build-out time from 30 minutes to 3 minutes (90% reduction). Over the past few years I’ve stood up well over 75 servers, so this has saved me many hours of effort.

At the time of joining, The Hub allowed me to manage about a dozen sites from a central location as opposed to manually logging in to each separate site. This was a reduction of biweekly maintenance effort from approximately 60 minutes to 2 minutes.

Client billing and streamlined invoice creation allowed me to save approximately 20-30 minutes per invoice creation, which throughout the past few years I estimate has saved me over 30 hours of work.

All of these time and effort savings have allowed me to comfortably take on more projects and clients.

Since joining WPMU DEV, my completed projects count has grown approximately 416% – with each project being more efficient to produce than the last.

WPMU DEV: As a self-proclaimed diehard fan, you know we’re constantly upping our game and adding new features and services to our offerings. What’s a newer release that you’re really getting into?

Phil: Reseller focus. I look forward to adding WPMU DEV automated site provisioning via the reseller offerings, as well as domains and email reselling.

WPMU DEV: One last question; let’s close it out with a fun one. If you could talk to yourself at the start of your career, what would you say?

Phil: At the start of my career, I often looked up to senior staff who seemed wise beyond their years. I was afraid of making mistakes or breaking something, for fear that those-who-never-broke-anything would look down on me.

I would try to explain to a younger me that wisdom comes with experience, and experience comes from doing things, failing, and working through the failure.

The more things you work on, the more you get exposed to what works and what doesn’t. Failing or breaking something isn’t strictly negative, because every failure is a learning opportunity: troubleshoot what went wrong, understand how to fix it, and implement a solution.

Do this cycle enough times and you start to pre-emptively detect patterns, plan for success, and you get faster at fixing problems. Don’t be afraid of failure because the more you fail, the more you learn and the wiser you will become.

That wraps up this premiere episode of our Member Success Stories. Thanks to Phil for his candid, insightful answers in our interview.

Phil is one of WPMU DEV’s Agency Partners, and uses his 20 years of web design experience to achieve one goal: give back to his hometown by building modern websites for businesses and nonprofits in the Canadian capital.

You can reach Phil via his agency partner listing or visit Capital Web Design.

Legal fees can be expensive, and add up quickly. Also, law is complicated, and can vary based on where you live and do business from. How does one accomplish compliance without getting their own law degree? (Or having a best friend who passed the bar exam?)

There is a way you can dot your I’s and cross your T’s, get all your ducks in a row, check all the boxes, cover your bases (this IS a post about full compliance, so one expression didn’t seem like enough ) – without draining your bank account, or losing your sanity.

Because WordPress is far and above the leading CMS, there are a good number of options when it comes to compliance regulation companion products.

We looked into the pool of offerings, picked the ones we thought were smart, solid, and sound, and are presenting them to you here.

Keep reading, or jump ahead to any section:

• Why Compliance is of Utmost Importance
  • A Timeline of Enacted Privacy Protections
• Which Components Do You Need?
  • Compliance Requirements
  • Additional Legal Protections
• Our Top 5 Picks for Compliance Companions
  • GDPR Cookie Consent and Cookie Yes (by WebToffee)
  • iubenda
  • TermsFeed
  • Complianz
  • Termly
• Better Compliance and Reliance with WPMU DEV

First up, let’s examine…

Why Compliance is of Utmost Importance

Privacy is a major factor in today’s world, and personal information is protected by a fast-growing assortment of legal rights.

Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century, collected data was relatively minimal, there were few ways to store it, and demand for its collective use wasn’t really a thing.

However, from the ’70s through today, as the inherent value of data grew – along with improved methods to collect, store, use, and profit from it – so has the need for legislation to protect it.

Living in the era of Big Data, where the sheer volume of data has increased to previously unimaginable amounts, a true premium has been put on an individual’s rights to protect it.

Non-compliance with the legal safeguards comes with steep fines and other serious penalties.

A Timeline of Enacted Privacy Protections

While data protections may have started slowly, they will continue to pick up speed as the by-product of ethical examination and pivotal litigations surrounding privacy.

Let’s take a peek at the landmark protections in the history of privacy legislation.

The Privacy Act of 1974 established the Code of Fair Information Practice on the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personally identifiable information from US federal agencies.

The Data Protection Directive was adopted by The European Union in 1995. The principles set forth were aimed at the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in the processing of personal data. This was superseded by the GDPR in 2018.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was established in 1996 to protect Personally Identifiable Information maintained by the healthcare and health insurance industries from theft and fraud, safeguarding people’s medical information from being used without their consent.

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was enacted by Congress in 1998 and requires the Federal Trade Commission to issue and enforce regulations concerning children’s online privacy. The amended Rule became effective on July 1, 2013.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for data protection and privacy became law in 2018 in the European Union (EU).

The GDPR applies to the transfer of personal data outside of the EU and EEA (the European Economic Area is the countries of Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein), and replaced the Data Protection Directive from 1995.

Shortly thereafter, State Privacy Legislations in the US started…

• California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) – signed into law 2018; effective 2020
• California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) – also known as CCPA 2.0, enacted in 2020
• Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) – legislated in 2021; effective January 1, 2023
• Colorado’s Privacy Act – will be effective July 1, 2023
• Connecticut’s Personal Data Privacy and Online Monitoring Act – will be effective July 1, 2023
• Utah’s Consumer Privacy Act – will be effective December 31, 2023

While the US does not have a single, comprehensive, internet privacy law, one is currently being proposed by federal privacy legislation: the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA). If passed into law, it will supersede all state privacy laws. Until then, it’s up to individual states to pass legislation that protects customer data.

Which Components Do You Need?

At this point you may be wondering, with so many already existing and soon-to-be-effective legal stipulations on data, which ones are you required to adhere to as a website or app owner?

That’s what we’ll lay out now in…

Compliance Requirements

To best meet overall compliance, websites should minimally have:

• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

… and …

• Consent (Record of Consent)

Let’s put a pin in Consent for a bit, and come back to it after we look at the policies.

A Privacy Policy addresses all the different ways your website or app might collect, process, and store data from users, both online and off.

A Cookie Policy specifically addresses how you use cookies and third-party services.

Because of the overlap, websites sometimes include a cookie policy in their privacy policy, as part of the overall data collection.

However, cookie policies need to be regularly updated (as cookies are dynamic and often change upon successive visits), whereas policy policies tend to be static.

More importantly, if you fall under the scope of the GDPR, your Cookie Policy must be separate from your Privacy Policy.

You can still incorporate a short Cookie Clause in your Privacy Policy, or cross-reference the agreements (for example, link your Cookie Policy to your Privacy Policy), but you shouldn’t combine the agreements into one.

Even if you don’t fall under the scope of GDPR, it’s safer and smarter to create a separate Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy, instead of merging them into one.

Let’s dive a little deeper into both of these important policies.

Privacy Policies

Most laws around the world require a privacy policy.

Privacy policies are legally required agreements when collecting any personal data from users (e.g. payment details, address and phone number, cookie data), regardless of the platform used (e.g. website, mobile app, desktop app, etc).

You may need a privacy policy to use third-party APIs and services (e.g. Instagram, Google Analytics, or Google Adsense), or to list your app in a commercial marketplace such as the Apple App or Google Play stores.

Without a privacy policy, you risk your business getting hit with hefty fines and/or having your website taken down, especially if you’re found to be in breach of privacy laws.

Key privacy policies or agencies, by country of origin are:

1. Europe/European Union – GDPR (businesses in or operating with EU/EEA)
2. United States – by state (CCPA, CPRA, CalOPPA, VCDPA)
3. Canada – PIPEDA
4. Australia – The Privacy Act 1988
5. Germany – BDSG, and DSGVO (German name for the GDPR)
6. France – CNIL (the commission overseeing privacy policies)
7. South Africa – The POPI Act (POPIA)
8. Brazil – LGPD (broadly aligns with the GDPR)

Lesser-known privacy laws exist around the world as well; the above is not to be considered an exhaustive list.

While privacy policies are generally referred to by location of origin, they can extend to any region that does business with them. Meaning, don’t assume that if you reside outside of Europe that the GDPR doesn’t apply to you.

The EU’s GDPR and US state laws (#1 and #2) are the most broadly reaching and widely followed privacy policies. But that’s not to say that the others don’t matter; it’s important to research any that might apply to your business.

Cookie Policies

Cookie policies are legally binding documents that inform website or app users how a company engages in data tracking and online privacy.

Cookie identifiers are considered to be personal data by the GDPR, so its rules apply to cookie usage as well. Also, any personal data collected by cookies falls under the GDPR’s jurisdiction.

The ePrivacy Directive (ePD) of the EU – nicknamed the “Cookie Law” – requires security measures be put in place to protect personal data. This regulates cookie usage, email marketing, data minimization, and other aspects of data privacy, and is largely responsible for the cookie consent forms that you encounter on most websites today. (Sidebar: This doesn’t replace the Cookie Law I grew up with; “Don’t ever serve chocolate chippers without milk.”)

The ePrivacy Regulation (ePR), the details of which are currently being hammered out by legislators, will replace the ePD once it’s passed into law.

Consent / Record of Consent

Taking out that pin that we placed earlier, it’s time to look at Consent.

The important distinction between Policy and Consent is this: Policy discloses details regarding the use of cookies, while Consent informs and records the allowances from users regarding usage.

Make sure you incorporate consent into your Privacy/Cookie policies. Full GDPR compliance means storing proof of Consent, and being able to demonstrate or retrieve details should they be requested.

I can’t stress this enough: having Privacy/Cookie policies without consent could cause major problems for you.

Additional Legal Protections

While protecting user data is of paramount importance, privacy isn’t the only concern for someone managing websites.

There are other important, legal considerations when it comes to engaging the public online.

We’ll take a look at them now.

Terms & Conditions

Unlike Privacy Policies, there are no laws that require you to have a Terms & Conditions agreement, though it is highly suggested to have one.

Without a T&C, it’s much more difficult to enforce your rules and community guidelines, copyright protection, or other issues that could arise from the misuse of your website/app content.

The majority of the public will act courteously, but that’s not who you’re protecting yourself from. It’s the small percentage of outliers who can sometimes do the most damage. Having explicitly stated Terms & Conditions can offer basic protections for you and your business, limiting your liability and declaring your rights over the content you create, in case anyone engages in abuse, intellectual property theft, or unlawful behavior.

The most common reasons for Terms & Conditions are to:

1. Prevent abuses
2. Protect your creative content
3. Terminate accounts
4. Limit your legal liability
5. Set your governing law

If you’ve ever seen a clause in a T&C stating where (geographic region) any dispute resolution must take place, that falls under governing law, and is quite useful if you don’t want to litigate legal matters in a country outside of your own.

Disclaimers

Disclaimers can be used to offset liability from a business to a client in ambiguous or gray legal areas, or where they are required by law.

Without them, you are opening yourself up to legal liability or the possible endangerment of others, especially on sites that share advice, DIYs, or promote/sell products (most of which come with claims).

Websites and eCommerce stores benefit from disclaimers in that they:

• Let users/customers know that the content is not legally binding advice, nor should it be solely relied on
• Limit the liability of the website/store in the event someone has an unsatisfactory result from its advice or products

Some of the most common disclaimer types are:

• Copyright
• Fair Use
• No Responsibility
• Views Expressed
• Offensive Content
• Past Performance
• Errors and Omissions
• Affiliates / Affiliate Links

While we’re on the subject, here’s an example in actual use:

Disclaimer: WPMU DEV is not a legal entity, nor does it claim to be an authority on the laws of any region, country, or the internet. While this post contains well-researched content from respected sources, it is for informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for professional legal advice. As such, we cannot be held liable for any omissions or errors contained within.

That said, let’s get to the tools and services of the compliance trade, with…

Our Top 5 Picks for Compliance Companions

Some of these are actual WordPress plugins, while others are content generated directly in the company’s website.

Regardless of how you access them, all offer plenty of bang for the buck, and value for the venue (I’m coining this phrase to mean free products and their providers ).

GDPR Cookie Consent and Cookie Yes (by WebToffee)

WebToffee has a sisterhood of plugins, with versions available on two separate websites: CookieYes and WebToffee, plus the free version on the WordPress repository.

CookieYes is one of the most used WordPress GDPR cookie compliance plugins, with 1 million+ active installations and 5 out of 5 stars.

Starting with the free WP.org plugin version, you get a goodly amount of features, including:

• a cookie consent banner with Accept/Reject options
• single click automatic scanning and categorization of cookies
• display list of cookies on your cookie policy page by using a shortcode
• adds a cookie banner to your WordPress website to show compliance with GDPR
• fully customize the cookie notice so it blends with your existing website (change colors, fonts, styles, position on page; even how it behaves when you click “Accept All”)
• has a Cookie List module so you can easily show what cookies your site uses and display them neatly in a table on your Privacy & Cookies Policy page
• can be configured to have a CCPA/CPRA ‘Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information’ control to the cookie notice

The free version also includes a connection (also free) with the CookieYes web app to access advanced features (cookie scan, consent log, etc) and manage all settings from the web app account. Note: You can still use most of the features from within the WP dashboard, without connecting to the web app.

One of the advantages here is the dashboard, which includes a Consent section. You can view or access details on user consent should you ever be audited and need to show this information. It even allows you to download this consent data in CSV format.

From the WP plugin dashboard, there’s a lot you can do:

• Check banner status (active, inactive), regulation type (GDPR), last cookie scan, language
• Customize banner
• Maintain cookie list, add new cookies
• Change/edit default banner language
• Generate a Privacy or Cookie policy for your site

Add the user guide provided for setup, along with a video walkthrough, and you can see why this plugin is so well loved.

If you want to go for a CookieYes paid plan, you have three tier options, payable per domain, monthly or annually. Each tier adds more pages per scan (600, 4K, 8K) and pageviews (100K, 300K, unlimited), plus a couple of additional features – like custom branding, and geo-targeted cookie banners.

As a third option here, we have the paid, premium version of GDPR Cookie Consent Plugin (CCPA Ready) – available from WebToffee’s website.

The final offering in the WebToffee family of compliance options, GDPR Cookie Consent remains in the territory of fastest-growing WP consent plugins, verifiable by a mass of happy users.

As far as features, most are available and common to both the GDPR Cookie Consent and the CookieYes paid plans. However, the GDPR Cookie Consent plans do not have:

• Auto-translation
• Global privacy control
• Do not track
• Monthly scheduled scan
• Privacy policy generator

GDPR Cookie Consent pricing has three tiers, based on the number of sites (1, 5, 25) you want to use it on. Each includes one year of updates and support, and a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

The primary difference between The GDPR Cookie Consent and CookieYes paid plans is the technology they rely on. The CookieYes web app is a SaaS that requires huge cloud computing, storage, and security facilities. (This is also why the CookieYes paid plans are based on scans and pageviews.)

Bonus points for their support: I reached out as a free user to clarify a few points in this section and got a detailed response in less than half a day. (High five to Mark!)

iubenda

Iubenda has been quickly rising in the ranks of compliance with their all-in-one solution, currently sitting at 100K+ active installs and a 5/5 star rating on WP.

If you’re looking for that extra layer of comfort, iubenda has it, with attorney-level compliance solutions, all of which are fully WCAG Level AAA Compliant.

The free version of iubenda compliance solutions support the GDPR, LGPD, and US State Laws (CCPA/CPRA and VCDPA).

Content is auto-updated when laws change, so it’s always up-to-date. (Their built-in site scanner runs periodic scans on your site and alerts you if it detects something that should be added to your compliance documents.)

The free version comes with the following features:

• Privacy and Cookie Policy Generator
  • a single policy, on one site, in one language
  • up to 4 (non-Pro) service clauses
  • does not include Cookie Policy
• Privacy Controls and Cookie Solution
  • up to 25K page views/month (for compliance with GDPR, LGPD & ePrivacy and US state laws)

You can get the free version of iubenda from the WordPress plugin repository.

The majority of iubenda’s standout features are found in their paid/pro versions, trusted by over 90,000 clients in more than 100 countries. These allow for multiple policies, sites, and languages, as well as Privacy Control & Cookie Solutions, a Terms & Conditions generator, a Consent Database, and more.

Privacy Control & Cookie Solutions helps you meet complex legal requirements at the click of a button, as well as create a fully customizable cookie banner.

Terms & Conditions offers powerful features like plug-and-go integrations for popular platforms and legislation monitoring. It’s customizable from hundreds of combinations, available in 10 languages, and capable of handling even the most complex, individual scenarios. Optimized for eCommerce, marketplace, SaaS, apps and more.

The Consent Database activates with one click to track, store, and manage consent and privacy preferences for each of your users all in one place, allowing you to easily upload proofs of consent and legal notices in PDF format.

They also offer an Internal Privacy Management, which documents all the data processing activity within your organization. To comply with privacy laws (particularly the GDPR), companies must record how they store and use the data they collect from their users.

Additional features in the paid plans are:

• More Compliance Laws, like DSGVO, RGPD, UK-GDPR, CalOPPA, PECR
• Cookie consent analytics provided for high-traffic sites
• Detects bots/spiders and serves them a clean page so that your SEO efforts are never compromised
• Built-in compatibility with WordPress comment form, Contact Form 7, and WP Forms; can also be manually integrated with any type of web-form

Pricing is offered as bundles with 3 tiers, based on number of license slots, with paid add-ons – Terms & Conditions, and Consent Database – available as extras.

Or, you can go with their Custom plans, with 3 tiers, broken out by options for Privacy & Cookie Policy, Privacy Controls & Cookie Solution, and Terms & Conditions.

Head over to iubenda’s website for a more in-depth read about their compliance offerings, or to purchase one of their plans.

TermsFeed

TermsFeed doesn’t have a plugin; everything is generated directly from their website. But in no way does that detract from their fantastic functions.

The TermsFeed website has an abundance of compliance offerings, most of which they charge nothing for.

Since 2012, TermsFeed’s all-in-one compliance software has helped businesses get (and stay) compliant with the law, and the multitude of glowing, five-star reviews corroborates that.

Popular free features include:

• Privacy Policy Generator
• Terms & Conditions Generator
• Privacy Consent
• Cookie Consent
• EULA Generator – gives users the right to use a copy of your product after they acquire it, through a granted license (with or without limitations)
• Disclaimer Generator
• Return and Refund Policy Generator
• Shipping Policy Template – no generator for this, but a detailed, helpful template to assist businesses in creating

They also offer these additional, not-as-common free tools:

• CCPA Opt-out – Free tool to manage opt-outs for CCPA
• I Agree Checkbox – Free tool to enforce your legal agreements and policies on web forms
• Embed Consent – Free tool to block embeds (YouTube, Twitter, Google Maps) from loading until you’ve got user consent

All of the generators operate in the same, simple three-step: 1) Create a free account. 2) Choose what you need. 3) Download and integrate.

You answer a few quick questions, and your custom policy is ready in minutes, available to download in multiple file formats – which you can link to, edit, or update.

Or, download their handy privacy policy template (available in a variety of formats: HTML, DOCX, Google Docs), and write your own.

And the output isn’t limited to just websites; you can use it to create for mobile apps, eCommerce stores, third-party tools, SaaS, and even a Facebook page.

The TermsFeed website is well organized and chock full of helpful information, making an easy task out of finding what you need.

The majority of compliance agreements and policies on the TermsFeed website are essentially free. However, they do offer some optional, premium agreements with additional clauses to protect your business interests.

Paid items are available in two ways:

• Privacy Consent Solution, which gives you access to all features, payable month-to-month, or yearly (with a discount).
• Per Policy/Agreement, which allows you to select any number of policies from their huge compliance toolbox, and pay a one-time fee, per item

Both payment structures come with a 7-day refund policy, and 100% money-back guarantee.

As far as videos, walk-through processes, and documentation go, out of all the sites I reviewed in this article, they had the most. On YouTube alone, I counted close to 200 explainer videos (on their content specifically, and policy terminology in general), plus dozens of tutorials for using on a myriad of website types (Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Webflow, Shopify, etc) in addition to WordPress.

My final thoughts: the TermsFeed website is an embarrassment of riches, with compliance offerings galore, and little to no limitations on their use. Even the premium, paid-for options won’t break the bank.

Visit the TermsFeed website for tools, tips, and custom provisions, or their YouTube channel for a ton of valuable, well-produced info.

Complianz

Complianz is another widely used compliance plugin, available for free on the WP repository: Cookie Consent – aka the Privacy Suite for WP. (They offer an additional one for Terms & Conditions as well.)

Active installations are at 600K (and climbing), and rated 5/5 stars.

Complianz is a GDPR/CCPA Cookie Consent plugin that supports GDPR, ePrivacy, and more, with a conditional Cookie Notice and customized Cookie Policy, based on the results of their built-in Cookie Scan.

Free features include:

• Cookie Notice configuration for your specific region (EU, UK, US, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, and Canada; or use one Cookie Notice worldwide)
• Cookie Consent and Conditional Cookie Notice with custom CSS and customizable templates
• Automatic configuration of your website based on wizard questions, WordPress scans, and dedicated service and plugin integrations
• Proof of Consent for user registration (respects GDPR data minimization guideline)
• Automatically detects if you need a Cookie Notice (aka Cookie Banner or popup)
• Cookie policy generation through an easy wizard
• Offers “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” (for CCPA/CPRA)

Complianz is one of the few WordPress native solutions, integrated with a wide variety of plugins and services. Once configured through the wizard, Complianz will work with most of your plugins and embedded content – right out of the box. Including our very own Forminator, Beehive, and the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin (where you can integrate Complianz to allow site visitors to reject dashboard analytics statistics cookies).

Like iubenda, their policies are drafted by an IT Law Firm, and are WCAG Level AA and ADA Compliant. They closely follow the latest developments in ePrivacy regulation, the proposed Cookie Law for the EU, and other legislation worldwide, so you can be sure the content is spot-on, legally speaking.

Complianz also has premium, paid offerings for compliance, available from their own website.

Their website has documentation, and as a premium user, you get dedicated support from privacy professionals and developers who (and I quote) “don’t quit until a solution is reached”.

Easily install the free Complianz Privacy Suite plugin from your WordPress dashboard. For the premium version, you’ll need to download from your account on Complianz.io, or use the link in your purchase confirmation, along with your license key.

In addition to the free version, paid plans are offered as 3 tiers, priced per number of sites (25, 5, 1). All include the full shebang of required legal documents, compliant in multiple regions, along with records of consent, data request processing, A/B testing and statistics, and detailed cookie descriptions.

Termly

While Termly does have a plugin on the WP.org repository, it’s outdated, and I don’t recommend using it. But that doesn’t make their compliance options any less capable or appealing.

Instead of the WP repo, head over to Termly’s website, where everything you need is easily accessible and kept fully up to date.

The Termly website comes with a host of features, ranging from a single policy to a full suite of compliance solutions.

Here’s a breakdown of Termly’s top features:

• Consent Management Platform
  • Manage consent on your website or app while providing a robust and flexible solution to compliment your business needs and regulatory requirements
• Policy Generators
  • Choose from the ever-expanding list of legally vetted policies to protect your business and meet your compliance needs
• Additional Legal Protection Generators
  • Easily create other Agreements and Notices to further protect your website (like: Terms & Conditions, Disclaimers, EULAs, Shipping Policies, Refund and Return Generators)

Termly’s free plan provides you with one legal policy, four edits, and 10K/month banner visitors, as well as their basic compliance tools, which are:

• Privacy Regulation Monitoring
• Cookie Policy & Banner
• Cookie Script Auto Blocker
• HTML Embeddable Policies
• Quarterly cookie scans

In addition to their free/basic plan, Termly offers 3 paid tiers, priced per website. The first two go by number of policies, policy edits, and banner visits, and are payable per month or annually. The third tier is a custom “contact us” option.

With 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Trustpilot, Termly is trusted and revered by thousands.

Better Compliance and Reliance with WPMU DEV

As you can see, responsible data management is not only good business practice, it’s also the law.

In today’s landscape where massive amounts of data, along with infinitely more ways to store and use it are the norm, diligence is required in its care and handling, especially if you operate an online business (your own, or as an Agency for clients).

Regardless of what kind of business it is, where it is located, or where your visitors reside, you are bound by certain legalities.

Ignorance is not a defense, so compliance can be the difference between being successfully safe or professionally sunk.

Beyond research and recommendations for meeting compliance requirements, WPMU DEV works hard to keep your websites and web development business operating at peak efficiency.

That includes our free products and services, and our premium membership offerings – a suite of pro plugins (protection, optimization, form creation, SEO, and more), five-star always-on support, and sleek all-in-one site management tool. Plus our fast, dedicated, best-value-in-the-biz Hosting.

If you’re not a member yet, you can start your 7-day, no obligation free trial today, and instantly catch up on what you’ve been missing.

Once your high quality logo is designed and ready to go, it should appear on all your branded material, including your WordPress website. Typically, there are three schools of thought as to where logos can go: in the top-left, top-middle, or top-right corners of a page. So this begs the question: which position is right for your logo?

If we’re going strictly based on UX logic, then your logo belongs in the top-left corner of your website. No questions asked. There are two reasons for this:

1. For those of us with a native language that reads from left to right, our eyes naturally look to the left first.
2. In the earlier years of web design, logos were always on the left, and that’s where most people assume they are located now.

Despite what logic says, there are some websites that have eschewed the norm for logo placements in the center or right corner of a website. Would a unique placement of your logo fit better with your brand identity?

Let’s take a closer look at what the studies show, and see if left really is right for your site.

Experts Weigh In: Where to Place Your Logo?

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, there are three purposes that logos serve on modern websites:

• They remind visitors where they are. In other words, whose website am I on?
• They allow for easy navigation to the home page since most websites no longer include a “Home” button in the navigation.
• They aid in brand recognition as the logo always remains there at the top of the site, and sometimes even follows visitors as they scroll down a page.

The NNGroup performed two studies to find the ideal logo location. Here is what they found:

• Left vs. Right
• Left vs. Center
• The Winner Is…

Left vs. Right

In the left-versus-right study, the NNGroup tested and observed the response of 128 users. Similar to an A/B test, each user was shown only one version of a website: either the original with the logo on the left or the one the NNGroup manipulated in order to place the logo and navigation on the right.

They gave the users a minute’s time to review their version of the website. They were then asked a series of questions and shown photos of 10 hotel websites. This test aimed to establish what sort of effect logo placement had on brand recall.

These were the results:

• Left-aligned logos lead to greater brand recall. Specifically, the average brand recall for left-aligned logos was 39% as opposed to 21% for the right-aligned version.
• Left-aligned logos are more likely to be labeled “unique.” Despite the traditional placement of a left-aligned logo, respondents were still more likely to label a left-aligned logo as “unique” and “stylish” than one that appeared on the right.

Left vs. Center

The Nielsen Norman Group conducted an additional study to discover what happens when users were exposed to a center-aligned logo. They conducted two different tests to determine the viability of a centered logo.

Unlike the A/B test conducted between left- and right-aligned logos, this first survey provided 50 users each with one retail website to interact with. Eight of those websites had a centered logo whereas six had a left-aligned logo. They were then asked to complete different tasks that would test their ease in using the navigation and return to the home page.

This was the result:

• Left-aligned logos are better for navigation. In the study, only 4% of users failed to navigate home in a single click when the logo appeared on the left. When the logo was centered, however, 24% of users failed to get there in one click.

In the second of these tests, the NNGroup presented 128 users with five different hotel websites. Four of the logos showed variations of a logo on either the left or in the center, while the fifth site included a right-aligned logo. Users were then asked a series of questions to determine brand recall.

This was the result:

• Brand recall is unaffected by the difference between left or centered logos. Despite presenting users with variations of the same logo in different spots, brand recall was inconsistent in this comparison between left-aligned and centered logos.

The Winner Is…

After reviewing the results from the logo placement studies, it appears that logic does prevail:

Left is best.

Here’s why:

• Many people don’t think about looking in the right-hand corner of a website for a logo, and so brand recall can be severely compromised as a result.
• Many people are conditioned to look for a navigation in one of the top corners of a site, so placing a logo and/or navigation in the center confuses the process of getting around a website.

In summary, left-aligned logos are ideal as they are located exactly where the eye is naturally drawn.

Just remember that web design’s primary concern should always be with the user experience. While a centered logo may look sleek, it probably isn’t ideal if you have more than one page on your website (and you expect people to visit those other pages). The same goes for a right-aligned logo. It may seem like you’re giving your site a unique edge, but you may hurt your brand’s recall in the process.

It’s also important to keep in mind that it’s not just logo placement that matters. Logos should be exported in a high-quality file format, created using a legible font face, and positioned on top of white space so that background imagery, shadows, and colors can’t distract from it.

Wrapping Up

If you’re trying to get creative with your WordPress site’s design, there are other ways to go about doing it. You could create a killer landing page, add push notifications, or revamp your CTA buttons.

If this study has shown us anything, it’s that you shouldn’t mess around with the placement of your logo. Left is always best.

In this post we’re going to share with you exactly how each host did.

And usually, whoever does these comparisons, wins them, right?

Well, not this time (ooooo!)……….

Here’s a quick recap of the hosting testing methodology we used, that you can replicate, for free, at home.

Basically, we…

1. Took our top 8 hosting competitors based off general popularity and our members hosting usage, and tested the performance of their base managed WordPress plan versus ours, specifically: GoDaddy, Flywheel, WP Engine, Cloudways, SiteGround, BlueHost, Kinsta, and HostGator.
2. Made an account with each host at their entry level (base) managed WordPress plan (apart from Cloudways as they don’t do managed WP) and created the same exact test website on each platform.
3. Ran each host through a rigorous load test (to see how many users they can handle at the same time) using the awesome and freely available Loader.io – you can go run your own tests right now to see how you do.
4. Put each hosts speed and Time To First Byte (TTFB) to the test with the equally free KeyCDN’s performance testing tool – again, go check it out and test your own host.
5. Established how many parallel clients (read: users visiting the site at the same time) each host could take.
6. Worked out TTFB in what we think is the fairest way (as they can vary dramatically based on server location): TTFB Average (Geo-Optimized), TTFB Average (All Locations).
7. Did all this without implementing caching of CDNs, so you get to test the actual server in real dynamic conditions (much more on that decision in our methodology post, tl;dr you can put any host behind a great CDN and serve static pages like a gun, but WP isn’t about that… although we are open to adding that as a test too.)

Alright, now you’re all caught up, let’s not delay any further.

Here’s how our base plan fared against some of the most popular managed WordPress hosting providers on the web:

The raw results:

When it came to the maximum number of parallel clients each server handled during the load test, Kinsta came out on top with 170 concurrent users – followed closely by us with 140.

As we touched on in our methodology post, these hosts are the ones (metaphorically) letting the most people into the bar at the same time thanks to their higher parallel client numbers.

So that’s great work by Kinsta, being able to cope with that many users visiting your site on your base plan is pretty impressive, although we’re pretty chuffed about our second place.

In terms of speed, Kinsta also took out the TTFB (Geo-Optimized) category with the speediest TTFB time (35.15ms) of them all… we’re betting that KeyCDN and their servers are not all that far apart.

And lastly, the TTFB Average (All Locations) crown went to GoDaddy, with an average TTFB time of 332ms over the 10 locations that KeyCDN accounted for. Nice work to the big GD!

We came 3rd and 4th respectively in both TTFB categories, which we’re pretty happy about.

Of course, we do offer a selection of geolocation options on our base plan. So if you value speed in, say, the US East Coast ,or the UK, or Germany the most – we should hopefully win that for you with our geolocated servers.

Taking price into consideration…

If cost wasn’t an issue and we had to pick an overall winner from the testing, it would have to be Kinsta, as they took home first place in two of the three hosting performance categories. Nice work Kinsta!

But, of course, if we’re comparing apples with apples we have to also look at pricing. Which, handily, we include below:

A few notes on the pricing:

• It’s accurate as of September 2020.
• All prices are in USD and retrieved via US VPN in incognito.
• We’re only listing renewal prices (no initial discounts or multi-year lock-ins) but we are including annual discounts.
• We’ve rounded up .99 (GoDaddy & BlueHost) and .95 (HostGator).
• Cloudways is not a managed WP platform but is included due to our members usage, so site limits don’t apply, we’re choosing Digital Ocean with them.

So… how does WPMU DEV hosting rate now?

Considering the cost, we’d like to think that we offer the best value for money in terms of performance and load.

While Kinsta is obviously great choice for high performance on their base plan, you’d have to realistically test them against our silver or gold plans ($18.75 and $37.50 respectively) if you’re looking at a fair comparison.

GoDaddy is clearly fast (their CDN is great too btw) but we reckon we’ve given them a good run for their money.

But probably, after all this, we’d say that the host that’s most comparable with us is Cloudways because, well, we use the same partner (Digital Ocean) and as you can see we rank very similarly.

A big advantage for some users for Cloudways would be that you can install as many applications as you like on a Digital Ocean platform, whereas with us you just get the 1 WordPress site. However, that has enabled us to build a stack that vastly outperforms them when it comes to load testing.

Overall though, we’d say that either our hosting or Cloudways is probably your best bet based on these tests… although you could do a lot worse than using Kinsta or GoDaddy.

Our take on how WPMU DEV Hosting did.

Overall, we were really pleased with how WPMU DEV Hosting fared against the competition.

But that doesn’t mean that we can’t do better. In fact it’s energized us to try harder and get you better results.

Specifically we’d like to improve:

• Our pricing… we’re working to offer you an even more affordable plan that delivers similar results (and better than our competitors).
• Our TTFB… we’re adding new locations as I type this (Australia we’re coming for ya soon) that should improve our overall speed.
• Our overall offering… in addition to all of the above, we’re hoping to provide you, by the end of the year, a managed WP platform for free on top of this.

As amazing as it would have been to take out first place and rule everything, in the grand scheme of things, we’re still new to hosting (just over a year old in fact!), and to already be up there with the best in the biz feels great, and we’re excited about doing better.

Some other key takeaways from this host performance testing experience:

1. We feel like a lot of hosts rely too heavily on caching or CDN mechanisms to save them, but that they give you an unrealistic feel for the capacity of your hosting in a genuine and dynamic sense… anyone can serve a static html page to a bazillion visitors.
2. TTFB is hard to measure fairly, it’d be great if more hosts let us know *where* they were hosting you for their base plan.
3. We reckon the number of clients your server can handle is MORE important than the speed at which you’re serving them. Back to our bar analogy: Would you rather server 140 people in a timely manner? Or serve 40 at a slightly faster pace before 41 enters, and you’re forced to close and deny more potential customers?

Check out the full comparisons of each host vs. WPMU DEV Hosting.

As touched on earlier, when comparing hosts it’s important to take EVERYTHING into account, not just performance.

So at the same time as running these performance tests, we also put together some insightful hosting comparison pages which square DEV hosting off against all the hosts mentioned above.

What’s great about these pages is that as well as the performance results (including non-averaged, full TTFB results from 10 locations), we’ve also included up to date feature and cost comparison tables you can use as reference.

That way you get a well-rounded idea of what host is going to suit you or your business best. So definitely check them out if you get a chance.

Let’s do this more often…

And that’s all there is to it.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at how we tested WPMU DEV Hosting.

Our team has taken a lot of valuable insights from this experience, and we hope you did too.

Anything you’d have us do differently? Were there some big hosting players we left off the list?

Let us know below.

The whole point of this process has been to be completely fair and transparent with all of our processes and findings. And if you think there’s a better (or fairer) way we could have tested, please let us know, we’re open to discussing anything and everything in the comments!

But in fact, you really don’t even have to take our word for it…

See how WPMU DEV Hosting performs for yourself.

If our findings have piqued your interest, feel free to run your own tests following our methodology (or any other you prefer).

Check out our hosting plans or take a WPMU DEV Agency membership (Incl. $144 free yearly hosting credit + 50% off hosting plan pricing) for a spin.

Everything WPMU DEV also comes with an automatic 30 day money-back guarantee so you literally risk nothing giving it a go.

Until the next round of hosting testing.

What started as a simple in-house exercise to see how our hosting measured up, quickly turned into a fascinating journey of self-discovery.

A journey we’ve decided to share with you, dear blog readers.

After all, we pride ourselves on honesty and integrity round these parts. And once we decided we’d bring you along for the ride – one of the main goals (apart from kicking a**!) was to be completely open and transparent. Both with the results published, and our testing methods.

That way you can trust everything is legit and nothing has been swayed in our favor (which benefits no one BTW).

So that’s what you’re getting in this article.

An inside look into how one of our in-house experts tested WPMU DEV hosting against some of the most popular platforms in the biz.

Follow along and feel free to recreate our methodology for yourself.

*BTW, all of the tools mentioned in this article are completely free!

Here’s how it all went down…

The first step was to obviously create accounts with the hosting providers we wanted to pit WPMU DEV against.

Speaking of, here are the brave hosting providers DEV battled in this comparison:

• GoDaddy
• WPEngine
• Flywheel
• Cloudways
• Hostgator
• SiteGround
• Kinsta
• Bluehost

We chose these nine hosts, both because they’re simply some of the biggest names in WP hosting, and because they’re the platforms which always seem to be on the tongues of our members in conversations and surveys.

We’re also well aware that no matter who we choose to compare WPMU DEV to, there’ll be no pleasing everyone. So if you have any suggestions of hosts we should compare to DEV in the future, let us know and we’ll try our best to include them in our next round of testing.

Moving on…

To make the testing as fair as possible, we compared the base level plans of each hosting provider.

We also used the same basic test website and added it to each hosting plan.

Here’s a peek at the test site we used (dog lovers prepare to “awwww”):

Time to get [host] testing!

Now for the fun part.

Once we’d established the basic (and fair) comparison points, it was time to start the testing process.

We wanted to see how each hosting server performed under pressure. After all, the last thing you want is your server to fail if you have a sudden influx of visitors.

We also wanted to test the speed of each host, as it’s important to serve your clients in a timely manner or they might get frustrated and click away.

So we ran two primary performance tests on each host:

1. A hosting load test.
2. A speed (TTFB) test.

Here’s how both tests unfolded, starting with the hosting load test:

Testing how many parallel users each hosting server could handle.

For this load test we used “https://loader.io/” a free load testing service that allows you to stress test your web-apps and APIs with thousands of concurrent connections.

Loader.io allows you to run three different kinds of tests:

1.”Clients per test” – You specify the total number of clients to connect over the duration of the test.

2.”Clients per second” – Similar to “Clients per test”, but instead of specifying the total, you specify the number of clients to start each second.

3.”Maintain client load” – This test allows you to specify a from and a to value for clients.

Since we were aiming to test how each hosting server coped under user pressure – we chose to run the “Maintain client load” test.

As mentioned, this test works by allowing you to specify a from and a to value.

What this means is that if you specify “0” and “2000” for example, the test will start with 0 clients and increase up to 2,000 simultaneous clients by the end.

Setting the client load test boundaries.

When running each load test, we set a max limit of 5000 clients. We found this to be an appropriate limit – as most hosts didn’t end up reaching 1000 clients anyway.

All of the tests ran for 5 minutes and the error failure was set to 1% as soon as errors started to appear. These errors include timeouts, 400/500, and network errors (all accumulating to 1%).

We chose 1% as the lowest possible value so the test would stop immediately and give the most accurate reading of max parallel clients.

This is important because if we had the fail setting at 50% for example, parallel client numbers would be a lot higher, but only because more users are being allowed (due to the higher error setting).

When in reality they shouldn’t count, as they would’ve got an error response – meaning they were essentially lost visitors.

The measurements we took into account.

With this particular test, we were most concerned with the “Response Count,” and “Parallel Client” metrics.

Response Count shows you the overall success/failed responses:

Parallel Clients measures the amount of users the server can handle at one time before maxing out:

Why is the number of parallel clients a server can handle important?

Before we continue let’s break down this idea of “parallel clients” a little further…

In simple terms, max parallel clients is the number of people who can send the first HTTP request to your site at exactly the same time.

For example, let’s say your max number of parallel clients was 50. This means 50 people can access the site at the exact same time before the server crashes.

So if 60 people try to access at the same time, the server will restart and show an internal server error for the next few minutes while it gets back up and running – meaning you will lose visitors

Here’s a good analogy we like to use:

“If you prefer to have a bar serving beer to 10 clients and then closing it down because the 11th started a fire, fine by us.”

“We’d prefer a bar that serves 140 people in a timely manner. Even if it is a tad slower.”

Basically, it’s worth having a host with a higher parallel client number (even if the response time is a little slower) because having less parallel client capability puts you at more risk of your server failing and losing visitors.

Next, we put the speed of each host to the test.

To test speed we used KeyCDN’s performance testing tool.

In a nutshell, the tool tests and measures the performance of any URL from 10 different locations from around the world.

There isn’t a lot to the test itself, simply paste in the URL you want to test and hit the button. Remember it’s also free, so you can use it for your own testing.

The results you get back then give a breakdown of the loading times and HTTP response headers. As below:

Looking at the table above, the metric we were most interested in for this test was “TTFB.”

TTFB measures the time from a client making an HTTP request, to then receiving the first byte of data from the server.

The big problem with comparing TTFB results…

The only problem is, TTFB (or the speed of a host in general) isn’t so straightforward to compare. This is because the speed will vary depending on the location of the hosts server in relation to the user.

For example, if the server you chose for your hosted site was located in The Netherlands, the TTFB reading from Amsterdam is always going to be better.

So in order to be fair to all the hosts involved, we chose to present the TTFB readings in two different ways:

1. ”Average TTFB” (Geo optimized) – This was the lowest (A.K.A best) TTFB reading out of all the locations tested.
2. ”Average TTFB” (Across all locations) – The average TTFB time across all the tested locations.

Levelling the playing field even further.

Another important aspect about our testing is the fact all tests were run WITHOUT taking caching into consideration.

Basically this means we tested the hosting servers themselves, not factoring in any caching or CDN implementations each host may have. This was done by forcing WP to be logged-in so everything is by-passed.

Why we think it’s better to test without caching (or a CDN) enabled.

In our opinion, comparing full page cache performance is not a good idea in a situation like this.

We believe this to be true for a couple of reasons:

1. Bypassing cache allows you to test the performance of the hosting servers themselves. This is important as it means you don’t have to rely on caching mechanisms (more on why this is important below).
2. Testing with cache doesn’t take “dynamic” website actions into account.

Any hosting platform can put a CDN in front of their site, tell it to cache everything, and then claim to give you insanely fast and scalable sites.

The problem is, this is not usually practical in the real world as WordPress, and many of its plugins are meant to be dynamic.

For example, caching is a great way to speed up simple sites or pages. Like an “About Page” – which seldom changes and for the most part wouldn’t have much live or dynamic action happening.

Compare this with a full-blown eCommerce store that’s constantly performing dynamic actions (live checkout process etc.) which bypass cache and hit your server directly.

That’s why you’ll often hear of (or experience) eCommerce stores having issues during big sales or promotions. Their servers aren’t prepared (or haven’t been stress tested!) and can’t handle all the simultaneous dynamic action happening.

Basically, your friend Mr. Cache isn’t always going to be there to save you, so it’s better to view it as an added benefit, and to still ensure your server is going to be able to cope on its own.

…So how does WPMU DEV fare against some of most popular WordPress hosts on the web?

View the latest test results on our hosting comparison page.

We’re always updating the above, so expect to see our most up-to-date test results.

Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you to check out our hosting plans, or consider becoming a WPMU DEV member.

That way you can see how our hosting performs for yourself and run your own tests following our methodology (or any other you prefer).

Before we get started, you should know that all of these email marketing plugins have terrific reviews, thousands of users (sometimes millions), and are up-to-date.

They also cover the full spectrum; from opting-in, to helping you create long-term loyal subscribers.

By the end of this article you’ll hopefully be able to identify the subtle differences between them all, and know which will work best for your list.

Plus, I’ll be going over what to look for in a good email marketing plugin, and various email service providers.

It will then be up to you, fellow email marketer, to decide which plugin to try.

Soon, you’ll be delivering your email more efficiently than your local postal service (if they ever delivered mail digitally, that is).

What All Good Email Marketing Plugins Should Address

Some plugins can send a newsletter directly within WordPress, others have very attractive opt-in forms, and some offer easy customization.

So… what do you look for when deciding?

A few questions you can ask yourself are:

• Will this work for the purpose I want it to?
• Is this something I can set up on my own, or will I need someone else to do it for me?
• Will the free version work? If not, how much of a budget do I have for an email marketing plugin?

Also, look at the reviews — both positive and negative. All of the plugins featured in this post have a 4.5-star or above-average reviews, which is great!

But still, dig around a bit more at some of the negative remarks. You can also ask questions on each plugin’s method of communication, whether that be with support, a public forum, or live chat.

Plus, considering these are all free, test them out first. You will discover your likes and dislikes — ultimately leading to a comfortable decision when deciding on what plugin to use.

From there, you may feel more inclined to upgrade to any pro options, if needed.

Time to Deliver

Here are ten amazing free email marketing plugins. Even though they’re all free, all offer upgrade options for advanced features. Included is a price range of the premium costs. Depending on your use, an upgrade may, or may not, be needed.

Luckily, none of these require any postage.

• HubSpot

  

  The HubSpot all-in-one marketing plugin includes all of the essentials. Everything from the striking responsive newsletters, automation, pop-ups, and more makes this plugin a distinctive choice compared to many others. This plugin is perfectly tailored to grow businesses. Plus, it has over 100K users and a 4.5 average star rating. Spot-on!

  Key Features:

  • Easily create responsive newsletters to distribute to your contact database with their drag and drop email builder. You can build your own or select from over 20 pre-designed templates.
  • You can send automated emails when a visitor to your WordPress site fills out a form or sends you a live chat message. Beyond that, all emails are automatically logged in your CRM and keep track of open and click rates.
  • Feature attractive forms & popups on your site with their drag and drop builder. Or, you can integrate with other WordPress forms and popup builders.
  • The analytics are built-in to make it easy to understand which sales and marketing actions are successful and which ones require some more work.

  Premium Price Range:

  The email plugin is free to download and use for up to 2,000 email sends per month. Upgrades are available starting at $50 and up to $3200 per month when billed annually.

• Hustle

  

  Hustle by WPMU DEV is our free email, social share, popup, and opt-in marketing plugin. Hustle allows you to quickly grow your email lists with popups, slide-ins, widgets, and shortcodes.

  This is a perfect plugin for individuals, growing businesses, or any company that wants to dance their way to having effective email marketing. It’s groovin’ to over 80K downloads and a 4.5 average user review.

  Key Features:

  • Simply integrates with all of the popular email services when you connect your account. You can then create automated email campaigns, welcome messages, or add to a specific list when a user opts-in.
  • A groovy smart exit-intent that detects when visitors are about to leave your site. It will then display a pop-up or slide-in to grab their attention.
  • It can breakdance around the block. Your pop-ups and slide-ins will still work around ad blockers.
  • You can easily measure performance and results with three metrics that help you make better marketing decisions; including stats on form displays, forms submitted, and conversion rates.

  Premium Price Range:

  You can get advanced features with Hustle Pro. It includes 24/7 support and other premium plugins with a WPMU DEV membership. Tip: Check out Hustle Pro at no cost using our free trial offer!

• Sender

  
  Sender raises the bar when it comes to WordPress email plugins. Its advanced features include email and SMS automation, smart segmentation, detailed analytics, and email builder with drag-and-drop functionality, not to mention its around-the-clock support that keeps giving.

  The plugin is super easy to install and intuitive enough for small-to-medium businesses looking to upgrade their email marketing game to start using immediately.

  With new, well-thought-out features added constantly, it has all you need to execute powerful campaigns.

  Key features:

  • Email builder with drag-and-drop functionality;
  • Mobile-friendly, pre-made email templates;
  • Broadcast of email & SMS campaigns;
  • Automated email and SMS flows;
  • High deliverability reputation;
  • Signup form & popup builder (including spin-the-wheel popup);
  • Native integration with popular CRM & CMS platforms, such as Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and more.

  Premium Price Range:

  Free for up to 2500 subscribers and even 15,000 emails per month. Once you’ve grown from the basic plan, consider upgrading for as low as $8 per month.

• Sendinblue

  

  Sendinblue Subscribe Form and WP SMTP is another all-in-one email marketing plugin.

  Everything is easy to use, clear, and organized. You can get a nice email newsletter set up in just minutes.

  It has advanced capabilities to handle small, midsize, and big businesses looking to enhance their email marketing efforts. Plus, they offer support and are regularly updated.

  It can’t be blue considering it has over 50K users and 4.5-star average reviews.

  Key Features:

  • Subscription forms that allow you to customize accordingly and integrate them into your pages, posts, or sidebars.
  • You can manage your contact lists with segmentation, which will enhance your campaign performance.
  • Email marketing campaigns are delivered with beautiful newsletters. They’re all mobile-friendly and are created with a drag and drop builder with your own customization or their template library.
  • Automation enabling in WordPress that will auto-install the script on your website.

  Premium Price Range:

  This plugin does use Sendinblue’s API to synchronize contacts, send emails, and get stats. The free plan is for up 300 emails per day, otherwise, you’ll need to upgrade. Various plans start at $25 to $66+ per month.

• MC4WP: MailChimp for WordPress

  

  MC4WP: MailChimp for WordPress by ibericode is made specifically to help grow your MailChimp lists and create better newsletters.

  Their attractive opt-in forms integrate with any existing form on your WordPress site; specifically your comment, contact, or checkout form.

  If you’re currently using MailChimp for your email lists, it’s a great option that’s catered to their service. This chimp comes in with a solid 5-star review and over a million downloads!

  Key Features:

  • Install attractive signup forms that are quick and easy to set up and use with your MailChimp account. It takes less than a minute to sync your MailChimp account and get up and running.
  • You can integrate with numerous other plugins, such as Ninja Form 7, BuddyPress, WPForms, MemberPress, Events Manager, and WooCommerce.
  • They have a knowledge base that is updated daily.
  • It’s developer-friendly for adding additional code snippets and customizing.

  Premium Price Range:

  You’ll need a MailChimp account, which is also free for a list of up to 2000 subscribers. There is an upgrade option with this plugin that features multiple forms, advanced e-commerce integration for WooCommerce, email notifications, and more. The price range for upgrading begins at $59 to $149 per year.

• Newsletter

  

  Newsletter by Stefano Lissa & The Newsletter Team is a newsletter and email marketing plugin for list building, tracking emails, and is easy to use.

  Once you have it installed, it’s practically ready to go. The main feature is the drag and drop builder. You can easily arrange your newsletters with this feature and provide attractive results.

  With over 300K downloads and average 4.5-star reviews, it makes this plugin news(letter) worthy.

  Key Features:

  • You can have unlimited subscribers without having to resort to email service (e.g. MailChimp). They’re all updated directly in your WordPress dashboard.
  • There is an unlimited amount of newsletters you can send that include tracking.
  • There’s customization with the opt-in feature. You can choose single, double opt-in, and even a privacy checkbox for EU laws compliance.
  • It is compatible with every SMTP plugin.

  Premium Price Range:

  There are premium options that include one-to-one support, WooCommerce integration, reports, and more. The costs for premium starts at $65 to $249 per year.

• MailPoet

  

  MailPoet is a marketing plugin that provides sign up forms for newsletters, subscriptions, and emails.

  What’s nice about this plugin is that you can schedule your newsletters, send them right away, or automate it to send notifications whenever there’s a new blog post.

  The plugin was developed in 2011 and trusted by over 100K poets and has a 4.5-star average review.

  Key Features:

  • The newsletter subscription options are nice to have when you’re looking for ease and automation.
  • Everything is based on WordPress and can be synced with a 3rd party email provider.
  • Includes a free WooCommerce email customizer.
  • You can view audience engagement and more. Stats provide open rates, unsubscribes, and all the vital information for your email campaigns.

  Premium Price Range:

  Free for the first 1000 subscribers. After that, you can upgrade for as low as $13 to $292+ per month (depending on the number of emails).

• Ninja Forms

  

  Ninja Forms by Saturday Drive delivers a knockout plugin for email marketing. It coins itself as the most user-friendly WordPress contact form builder — and it might be right.

  The easy to use drag and drop fields make creative a complex looking form quick to create. It’s an extremely up-to-date plugin and packs a punch with over a million downloads and a 4.5-star average rating.

  Key Features:

  • The drag and drop form builder is easy to use and perfect for someone with not much knowledge on using WordPress.
  • There are over 27 different field types for forms, which makes creating them to suit your needs very obtainable.
  • Unlimited forms and form submissions.
  • You can export and import forms as needed.

  Premium Price Range:

  You can upgrade as needed with a ton of options that start as low as $29 to $499 per year. Some of the upgrades include the ability to accept payments, user management login, advanced analytics, and more.

• SendPress

  

  SendPress is another easy to set up email marketing plugin that’s extremely customizable. You can arrange the subscription widget, page, or custom form exactly how you would like.

  It’s perfect for anyone wanting to grow their email lists and has the essentials; such as single and double opt-in, analytics, and newsletter templates.

  Though it has fewer downloads so far than the rest (8k), it’s updated regularly and is a great option to press-out your email marketing.

  Key Features:

  • You can have unlimited subscribers and unlimited responsive newsletters with tracking.
  • Everything is code free. It has a simple editor to make editing a breeze.
  • Allows for single and double opt-in.
  • Tracking is included. You can track clicks, opens, unsubscribes, and more.

  Premium Price Range:

  You can always go PRO. Some of the pro features include API sending, custom HTML templates, spam score, and one year of updates. It starts at $39 to $399 per year.

• Email Subscribers & Newsletters

  

  Email Subscribers & Newsletters by Icegram does a ton as a free plugin. It was specifically created to suit the needs of regular bloggers, website owners, marketers, and developers.

  In a nutshell, it has everything you need to build email lists and market out to them. Plus, you can subscribe to the fact that they have over 100K installations and a 4.5-star average review.

  Key Features:

  • You can create unlimited broadcasts, post notifications, email templates, and form.
  • There is a subscription spam check with domain blacklists. A good feature to keep your email lists in good standings.
  • The choice between single or double opt-in plus a privacy checkbox.
  • There is an HTML editor to create broadcasts and post notifications

  Price Range:

  They have pro options that have extras; such as premium email, high security, autoresponders, and more. If you want to upgrade, their pro version is quite affordable. It starts at $9 to $10.75 per month.

Getting Good Email Service Is Not a Disservice

At this point, you’ve now seen some plugins that can work and you’ve either started or are about to start an email marketing campaign for your site. However, how do you go about picking the best email marketing software? Hmm…

There are lots of decisions when it comes to picking an email company to work with. You want to feel at ease knowing your email lists are in good hands.

Some good reputable companies, such as MailChimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact, all have the essentials. However, there are also many other options out there.

There are a few key things to look for in email software:

• Automation: Make sure that the automation provided will work for your needs.
• Campaigns: There should be options to support a wide variety of email types. That includes newsletters, autoresponders, and A/B tests.
• Editing: You want to be able to edit your email templates easily, so a good drag and drop visual editor is best for this. Anything that eliminates coding and makes it simple.
• Support: Make sure the support they offer is effective. Check for support like live chat, phone, and email and learn of their options.
• Integration: Ensure that you can integrate with whatever plugin you decide works best for your WordPress site.

Having an email software provider is nice to have beyond just using the WordPress dashboard. It’s a way to ensure your lists are stored in a safe place and can be organized more efficiently.

Signed, Sealed, Dev-livered

When developing your email marketing strategy, there is a lot to consider. Hopefully, these options presented to you today will help narrow down some specific plugins that will work well for your needs. Also, I hope you have some good ideas for an email marketing company that will work well, too.

To deliver the goods, consider signing up for our membership free trial and get access to our entire suite of plugins (including our email marketer, Hustle), 24/7 support, security, blazing-fast hosting (including professional email hosting), and tons more.

It’s vital to have a WordPress email marketing plugin to help increase and update subscribers. Once subscribed, keep them from opting out by delivering great content, attractive newsletters, quality emails, and — yeah — not being a Spammy McSpam.

Soon, your email marketing will be tough to beat and earn a stamp of approval.

The bad news is… most themes of this nature come at a cost. :(

The good news is… after scouring through the WordPress theme directory, we’ve uncovered a bunch of great free options you can use for your coming soon or launch page. :D

In each mini review we cover what’s good about each one, their specific options/features, and which one might work best for you.

Then, when you do launch — BOOM! — the sky’s the limit.

Plugin vs. Theme: Which One Launches You Higher?

Before we continue, I recently published an in-depth article that provides useful insights on using coming soon plugins.

Inside I explain why coming soon pages are important and test several plugins. It’s worth reading as it goes hand in hand with the article you’re reading now.

In general, there are much more WordPress coming soon plugins than there are themes out there – all with varying specific features.

And as you’ll see, many of these themes do require additional help with their suggested plugins. Still, these coming soon themes have a standalone purpose.

After all, a theme might be the better way to go if you’re looking for the complete layout of your website to be geared towards launching.

Plus, a theme can work well if you’re after a simple coming soon/launch landing page – meaning you don’t necessarily have to install a whole bunch of plugin add-ons.

Use Both Coming Soon Themes and Plugins For Best Results

In my experience, both work best in unison together.

A standalone coming soon or launch theme can also be enhanced with a great plugin. Likewise, practically any theme can benefit from having a coming soon plugin.

It’s what suits your purpose the most efficiently.

What’s For Launch?

By the way, launching goes way beyond just websites.

A coming soon theme can also be a great tool to promote events like: A wedding, a new restaurant, book launch, online course, and much more!

Point is, no matter what type of site you plan to launch, a coming soon theme (like the ones below) can help you.

I’ve downloaded and tested all of the following free coming soon and launch themes. You won’t find any ‘fake’ reviews that are based solely off the theme website or description.

Let’s go through these and help you pick one that’ll put your next event/website into orbit.

• Event Press

  

  Event Press by Nayra Themes is a free announcement and counting down until the “big day” theme. What’s impressive is all of the essentials are set up for you.

  It’s suited for webinars, seminars, the launch of your website, and much more.

  Living up to its name, this theme can especially be beneficial for events. It has all the essentials to make your celebration go off without a hitch.

  Grab some punch and an hors d’oeuvre and let’s check out this event – er, EventPress.

  After activating it, all the customization options are immediately available to you. However, they recommend that you install the Evento plugin that works well with this theme.

  Evento is great for customizing your landing page for specific holidays and more.

  

  Now, let’s get this party started and check it out.

  

  The layout is great on this theme to get ready for an announcement of any kind. You’re immediately able to add a relevant header image and text.

  Directly below that is where you can add your organizer or other relevant information.

  What’s convenient is you don’t need to have a separate contact form plugin or anything else with this theme. It’s already set up for you in their system.

  That way if anyone has any questions or comments, they can quickly contact you. As you can see, even if it’s a website dedicated to sending well wishes for, let’s say a wedding, hey — that’s fine, too!

  

  And, of course, if you’re counting down; whether it be for an event, website launch, or anything else — their countdown timer is easy to configure and set up.

  

  Maybe you have a fundraising event and you need to raise some dough. You can include a donations section on your landing page and make it happen.

  This feature is included in their PRO version, so you would have to upgrade to include.

  

  The Pro version includes some additional features and support. However, for the basics, the free version might do the trick. It has all the elements of a great coming soon theme.

  I like its easy to use layout, default options, and its overall functionality and design.

  This theme can kickstart your upcoming event, build your email lists, countdown, and works great as an all-in-one theme.

  To see this theme in action, be sure to check out their live demo.

• Landing Pagency

  

  Landing Pagency by ThemeEverest is a simple theme that’s recommended if you’re a creative agency, consulting business, or startup.

  There’s not a ton of customization features (e.g. contact forms, countdown timer, etc.), but all the essentials can be accomplished with plugins.

  It comes with the blog prominent on the landing page. You can adjust everything to fit your needs for a coming soon page, product promo, or event.

  Its simplistic look might be exactly what you’re looking for and customization is simple.

  

  This theme has no recommended plugins to accompany it. For a pop-up, we recommend using our Hustle plugin.

  And for additional forms, our very own Forminator can work well here as well.

  This theme also makes for a great opportunity to put your CSS knowledge into play. Like most themes, you can tweak it as you’d like.

  The nice empty canvas on this theme can provide anyone with CSS skills a chance to add a personal touch. Maybe a happy little cloud?

  

  There is an upgrade option as well. Here’s a comparison of the FREE vs PREMIUM versions:

  

  A lot of the premium options can be accomplished with a variety of plugins, good hosting, image SEO, and more. However, it may be worth the cost to upgrade if it has all the essentials you’re looking for.

  For a simple coming soon option, I was impressed with its quick editing options, default layout, and design. Sure, it doesn’t have a ton of features, but sometimes that’s perfect.

  Be sure to view their demo to see if it’s a great match for your purpose.

What Goes Up, Must Come Down

After you launched and your event is over — what next? Does the website come down?

That depends.

Something to keep in mind is themes are more of a permanent* option, so if you don’t have repeat events or promotions, it might make more sense to use a coming soon plugin instead (since they’re easily deactivated).

However, if you have reasons for keeping a coming soon theme (e.g. recurring events), then it’ll be nice to have a more stable website layout.

Coming in For a Landing (Page)

As you can see, most of these themes work best as a landing page. Are you ready to land on one?

They’re also all a little bit different.

For free options, there are slim pickings. However, there are a lot of options out there available for purchase.

The main thing is that your coming soon theme for WordPress is engaging and effective.

Or, instead of your campaign taking off, your visitors might takeoff… to another website.

To get a working contact form on your website, it’s probably a good idea to use a plugin. However, with so many to choose from, how do you know which one is best for you?

Luckily, we’ve rounded up six of the best freebies and given you a little overview of each to help you choose the best WordPress contact form plugin for your site:

• Forminator
• Contact Form 7
• HubSpot
• Everest Forms
• Formidable
• Ninja Forms

Best WordPress Free Contact Form Plugins

Forminator by WPMU DEV

Forminator isn’t just a contact form plugin…you can create polls, quizzes, do calculations and even take payments. It also has a powerful API you can use to build your own custom extensions.

I’ve heard it’s pretty good. (OK, this one’s ours, but I’ll try not to be biased).

If you want to create a form, select it from the dashboard and then choose a template.

I chose the Contact Form and was taken to the form builder.

Just click on “Insert Fields” and you can easily add everything you need.

This is the only free plugin I’ve seen that offers such a wide range of fields (24) – you can even take payments through this form! It really is a premium plugin, minus the price tag.

Once you click to add a field, you can change the label and choose some further settings.

It’s really simple to add a label and placeholder and if you click on Multiple, you can easily add “bonus” name fields.

When you have all the fields you need, you can move onto the Appearance tab.

From here, you can really personalize your form.

You can style the fields.

Choose the font for every piece of text.

And select the color of each element.

Even if you don’t want to customize your form, the standard form is pretty easy on the eyes.

Overall, Forminator offers everything you need to create custom forms.

And with features like Integrations with popular payment portals, conditional logic, calculations, and the ability to customize every aspect of your forms – it’s hard to believe it’s free!

Something that’s also super important (especially for our European friends) is staying compliant with GDPR. Forminator’s advanced features can help you do this, there’s even a field for a GDPR checkbox.

*Want to stay GDPR compliant without Forminator? Our friends at Complianz have you covered.

Oh and by the way, if you do decide you want to make the switch from Contact Form 7, it’s also super easy to import all your data.

More details: Forminator

Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi

I’m one of the small minority of people who use WordPress but have never tried this plugin…so let’s dive right in and see how I get on.

The first hurdle I hit was that I couldn’t find where the plugin had installed.

The menu is simply labeled “Contact” – I overlooked it multiple times because it looked like it’d always been there.

When you do find the tab and click on it, you are met with this screen:

The default form comes with fields for the user’s name, email, subject, and message.

You can easily add more fields with the buttons at the top.

If you wanted to add a telephone number field, for example, this is the screen you’ll see:

You can check the box if you want the telephone number to be a required field and you can also add a placeholder.

If you’re going to want any form of custom formatting, it would be wise to add a class or ID attribute at this stage.

Once you press “Insert Tag’, the new field will appear on your form.

Unless you’re happy with an empty field with no label, you’ll need to add a label using HTML.

It’s actually quite simple to do and you can follow the pattern of the default fields that were already present.

Now it’s time to insert the shortcode into your web page and voila – a simple contact form.

There are a few more things you can customize before you launch your form – we have only explored the first tab after all.

The Mail tab will allow you to select which email address the contact forms go to as well as tweak a few more options regarding the layout of the email.

The Messages tab gives you a long list of fields where you can change the standard text for a variety of scenarios.

The last tab gives you space to add your own code snippets.

And that’s all there is to it!

Pretty simple to use but it would be easier if you could bypass having to add any form of code (maybe someday it will enter the drag and drop era), however, it is a pillar of the WordPress contact form community and with over 5 million active downloads, who am I to judge?

More details: Contact Form 7

HubSpot

Business software maker HubSpot has a WordPress plugin and you can use the plugin’s forms feature to convert your site visitors into leads.

The plus side to this option is that all the information you’re capturing with HubSpot’s forms is automatically synced to HubSpot CRM, so you don’t have to worry about exporting and importing contact lists later.

HubSpot’s forms tool also comes with pre-made templates for specific use cases or you can choose to create your own form from scratch, personalizing the form with any fields you want to include.

This choice is probably best for those who want a seamless process all the way from lead capture, to sending follow-up marketing emails to those leads, to finally turning those leads into customers–all in one piece of software.

More details: HubSpot

Everest Forms by WPEverest

Everest Forms boasts over 100,000 active installs and a 5-star rating.

The first cool thing about this plugin is that when you go to create a new contact form, you can select from a number of templates.

Most are free, but there are a couple of Pro ones too. If none of them are suitable, you can also start from scratch.

I selected the Simple Contact Form.

The fields are arranged into four categories: General, Advanced, Payment, and Survey.

You get tons of fields with the free version, including name, email, telephone, URL, and date and time. If the field you select has further options, it’s super easy to fill them in.

If you select the Choices field, you can even upload photos.

So far so good, but what about personalization?

You’ll be pleased to know it’s soooo simple. Literally click on the field and it will allow you to tweak a few things including the label, whether it’s a required field, and the placeholder text.

You can even edit the required field message text.

One of the best things about this plugin is that you don’t even need to change a single thing to get a clean, working form.

The standard template has everything you need to launch a simple contact form straight to your site. All of your received submissions can even be stored within the plugin – you can literally just copy the shortcode without making any changes and BOOM, you have a form.

The Pro version costs $99 for a five site license and comes with more templates and a ton of extra fields, including uploading files and images, credit card details, signature, and address.

All in all, this is a simple but powerful free form builder for WordPress with a cheerful interface, useful templates and basically everything you need to create a contact form for your site, without spending a cent.

More details: Everest Forms

Formidable by Strategy 11

It’s time to find out if Formidable is as, ahem, formidable, as its name suggests.

More than 300,000 active installs and a 4.5-star rating means they’re obviously doing something right.

When you activate this plugin, you’ll find there’s already a default form you can use.

I clicked straight onto it and selected Build from the tabs along the top.

This took me to the form builder, which had a nice and simple layout.

There are also a ton of premium fields that you can add but prices vary between $99 and $599:

One cool thing that Pro offers is the report function, where you can create graphs and charts based on the data your form collects and display them on your site.

So…back to creating a contact form.

A nice little feature with Formidable is that you can add a description to your form – this doesn’t actually seem to be a common feature with form builders.

The rest of the Formidable experience is pretty similar to many other WordPress form builders. You can easily add new fields and change the labels.

It also has the facility to view the submissions within the plugin as well as sending an email to an address of your choice.

Overall, it is a decent plugin that does what it says on the tin. It may not be the best free WordPress form builder, however, if you just want a simple contact form – it’ll do the job.

More details: Formidable

Ninja Forms by Saturday Drive

Ninja Forms is another plugin with a fantastic 4 and a half star rating, and with over a million active installs, there’s no doubt it belongs on this list.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of templates available when you first click to create a new form.

Unsurprisingly, any methods of taking payment are a premium feature, however some of the free ones are actually pretty useful – the job application one is a nice addition.

I selected the Contact Us form, which took me to the creation screen and presented me with the template.

You get a fully immersive experience with this plugin – the dashboard disappears and you feel like you’ve left WordPress altogether.

If you need to edit a field, you can just click on it and change the values.

If you enable Developer Mode, a few more options become available.

This allows you to add things such as custom classes, as well as change the label position, and maximum character input.

So far so good – it all seems pretty simple to get started with a template and start editing the fields.

If you want to add a new field, you click the plus sign in the bottom right corner and it opens up a new menu.

I found the use of color pretty strange – the gray text and backgrounds makes it look as though these are “grayed out” options, i.e. not available to select.

They are actually all free to add – one click and they appear on your form on the left.

You can drag the fields around and rearrange them once they are placed into the form.

Once your form is built, there are extra options to choose such as recipient’s email, error messages etc.

I added a couple of extra fields (so simple!) and published the form to my site.

Overall, a pretty good plugin. Simple to use and the only drawback in my opinion is that the interface isn’t as simple as it could be – PRO features could definitely be highlighted better and there could have been a better color choice for the extra fields.

More details: Ninja Forms

Have You Formed An Opinion?

Now that we’ve taken a look at some of the best, hopefully you now have an idea of which plugin will fulfill your contact form needs.

They’re all pretty similar in terms of use, with the main difference being the type of field you can add.

Which one would suit you depends on the purpose of your form.

Oh, and if you’re new to contact forms, our beginner’s guide to WordPress contact forms is definitely a good starting point.

With a simple form plugin, you can create basic things like a contact form or newsletter signup, whereas a more powerful form builder like Forminator becomes a data collection powerhouse that you can use to sell products, onboard clients, automate your workflows, or build apps.

Let’s say you’re running a blog about fishing and you decided to release a book or a DVD. A contact form with a payment option might be perfect for you.

However, if you’re running a store selling a variety of things, your payments would be better managed with an eCommerce plugin.

If you just need a simple contact form to allow users to send you an email, you’re really spoilt for choice. It’s only when you start requiring features like payment processing and document uploading that your choice starts to narrow.

If you’re a contact-form novice, that’s perfectly fine! We have your back…and some great tips on how to build the perfect contact form.

Whatever your goal, you’re sure to find a plugin on this list that suits your needs…and hopefully without having to open your wallet.

“In this corner, weighing in on the digital scale at 16 GB of RAM is…”

We’ll be featuring some competitive email plugins that are HTML ready (to rumble). We’ll size them up and show you some specific features of each one.

By the time you get through this match, er – article – you’ll have a good idea of what will work best for you.

Punching-out Good HTML Emails.

By default, WordPress does not send out HTML emails but sends them out as plain text. HTML emails work more consistently for your email subscribers in terms of looks and functionality.

So it’s important to have a plugin to help if you’re wanting to send your readers information via emails or newsletters that look more professional (e.g. including a logo in the signature).

Of course, to get them to opt-in in the first place, they need a compelling reason why. A well-crafted message, attractive form, and specific placement on your website can do the trick.

Then, when done right, readers will opt in to and subscribe to your content.

So yes, sending professional emails instead of generic ones is important. Especially if you want to be taken seriously.

The Ultimate (In)boxing Match.

There are different divisions out there when it comes to a great WordPress email plugin, so let’s check out tonight’s matchups.

We’ll go over four very distinctive choices.

All are a bit different, all are free, and all offer various solutions to building lists, and ultimately deliver the perfect HTML emails.

So, let’s get ready to rumble!

Ding! Ding! Ding!

• Email Posts to Subscribers

  

  The Email Posts to Subscribers by Gopi Ramasamy (aka Gopiplus) has great reviews and was made to automatically deliver a newsletter to subscribers that feature your latest blog posts.

  You can schedule the newsletter daily or weekly. It has 10 default templates available, or if you have the itch to create your own, it’s possible using their visual editor.

  It’s a nice “set it and forget it” plugin. Once you have it running, you won’t have to worry about scheduling your email. This automates all of that for you.

  I started by checking out their live subscription demo, entered my email, grabbed some popcorn and had ringside seats to see what it looked like when it arrived in my inbox.

  Sure enough, an email popped up shortly after hitting ‘submit’. Once I verified it, I received their welcome email.

  Nice.

  It got me excited, so let’s activate this bad boy (or girl) and check it out.

  The plugin comes up as Email Posts in the dashboard. From here, you can dig into everything it has to offer; including the General Settings, Confirmation Email, Welcome Email, and more.

  

  When viewing the subscribers’ area, it’s a very simple way of checking out all of your email subscribers’ information.

  

  You can create groups and organize your subscribers. It’s also nice to be able to import and export them here.

  That way, if you ever wanted to add your list to an email service like MailChimp, or add your list to your WordPress campaign, it’s very simple to do.

  Of course, to get subscribers in the first place, you need to have a way of doing that. You can manually add them into their system, or provide an opt-in box.

  The box is then added to your sidebar in the Widgets area.

  

  I made just a very simple opt-in for the sake of this demo.

  

  If you don’t want to add the opt-in as a widget, you also have the option of adding a shortcode to a post or page.

  And with that, we’re ready to start collecting emails!

  Now, let’s get into setting up email campaigns and more.

  When setting up your emails, there’s a list of nine pre-made templates you can choose from.

  

  

  You can create your own, too.

  

  In the Mail Configuration area, you can schedule your posts or newsletters to go out specifically how you would like. The Status shows you what you have set up.

  

  Assigning roles can simply be done in the Roles and Capabilities area.

  

  Once you have an email or campaign sent, they have reports worth viewing to see how they did based on open rates, status, last run, and more.

  

  Our test campaign went out okay and we received a report back saying that it was successful.

  

  For a free plugin, this one blew me away on all of the options and more that could give a major email provider a run for its money. Any automation is good, and there are even options for Google reCAPTCHA, a throttling mechanism to protect against spam submissions, and plenty more features that you’ll have to try for yourself.

• Email Subscribers & Newsletters -- Simple and Effective Newsletter System

  

  As soon as the Email Subscribers & Newsletters — Simple and Effective Newsletter System by Icegram plugin is activated, they already have you covered.

  How?

  A welcome message stating “80% done!” and a big thumbs up appears. They’ve done a lot of the work already for you to get your email subscription in shape.

  All the essentials are included in this free plugin. If you want to take it to the next level and add a few premium options, you can upgrade and Go Pro.

  They make it simple to get started (again, they already had a lot of the legwork done) and I hopped right in.

  Everything is accessible from your dashboard under Email Subscribers.

  The first section shows your audience. It provides all of the emails, subscriptions, unsubscribes, and opens.

  Here is also where you can upload/download your contacts, create lists, sync (which will automatically subscribe a person to a specific list when opting in), and manage lists.

  

  It’s very simplistic and easy to manage contacts in this area. I love how accessible it is and the straightforward information on where everything is at.

  To get contacts, we need a form for our visitors to sign up on.

  The… you guessed it – Forms section – is where you’ll go for this.

  This is the brains of the form building operations, where you can easily name, describe, adjust form fields, and more.

  

  It’s a very simplistic opt-in as is. With some CSS knowledge, it can be edited accordingly with colors, style, etc.

  When you have a form completed, it will give you a shortcode that can be used on any page or blog. You can also use the Widget and place it on your page that way.

  

  To automate emailing your newsletter and blogs, that’s another very simple feature.

  When you publish a new post, it will be emailed out automatically. It’s not quite as advanced as having weekly emails with all your posts or content sent.

  Still, it is nice to just publish a blog and know that it will go out on its own in full HTML glory.

  

  I set up a test email to myself and received exactly what I put down for what I wanted to include: Dev Man, of course.

  

  There are plenty of other functions that can be tweaked and adjusted to ensure your email marketing is flawless in the Settings area.

  

  Here, you can set up a welcome email, confirmation email, security, and more.

  In general, this is an awesome plugin that works well with any WordPress theme. Its simplicity sets it apart (in a good way), making it as easy as ever to get an email list growing and automate your blog posts to be delivered to your readers.

• Newsletter

  

  The Newsletter plugin by Stefano Lissa & The Newsletter Team is an entire newsletter and email marketing system for your WordPress blog.

  It’s great for list building and you can create, send, and track HTML emails. Once activated, it packs a punch.

  When you activate, you’re welcomed by a lavish dashboard, animations, and illustrations demonstrating all of its features. It’s a nice addition and shows that they’re not some “dull and ordinary” plugin.

  Beyond visually being nice, it has all of the essential features for subscriptions to your email and/or newsletter.

  The easy to use drag and drop composer makes building newsletters simple. And with the capability of having unlimited subscribers, unlimited newsletters, advanced targeting and more, this is worth a try.

  Just having an endless amount of contacts at no cost is an advantage over professional email services that charge you based on the number of subscribers.

  Let’s check this out!

  Everything is accessible and clearly labeled right from the dashboard.

  

  You can see that the upper tabs have all of the ingredients you’ll need to include a subscription block and get your marketing in motion.

  

  There are a lot of capabilities here. Going over every detail that is included in this plugin would lead to a rather long article (and not entirely necessary considering how self-explanatory this plugin is), so to keep things simple, I’ll break down just a few essentials.

  Let’s start with the Subscription Configuration. Like everything else, it’s very clear what the functions are and where they’re at.

  For example, if I want to edit the opt-in feature, I click the List Building tab, Subscription Configuration, and then all the features are right here.

  

  I can see why this plugin is called Newsletter, because it truly lives up to its name as the highlight of the features — creating amazing newsletters.

  The drag and drop feature streamlines the creation process, making it incredibly easy and efficient.

  You can start by choosing a preset template. There’s everything from a simple call to action, invitation, or a big announcement.

  Or, you can create your own with some coding knowledge.

  

  I’m going to just create a simple call to action newsletter.

  I dragged the header block over and an image block, uploaded my own Dev Man.jpeg, and — in less than a minute — I had a newsletter ready to be delivered (possibly by Dev Man himself).

  

  When you have your newsletter ready to go, it’s a matter of sending it. You can specify quite a bit in regards to how you want to compose the email.

  

  You can preview everything right here. It’s a simple click back to edit if you notice a change you need to make.

  To sum it all up, this is a pretty amazing plugin for the going rate of — free! There is a Premium option starting $65, which includes support, more detailed reports, and more.

  However, if you’re looking to save some money, the free version gets two thumbs (or knuckles) up from us.

• Hustle

  

  Cue the music. And let’s get our groove on!

  Hustle is our very own free plugin that we created here at WPMU DEV and it can help your email marketing campaign boogie to success.

  Sure, he can dance well, but he can also pack a punch by creating pop-ups, slide-ins, ads, and sidebar widgets for your WordPress website.

  Once visitors opt in, he can then integrate with your favorite email company, where you can then create automated HTML emails, newsletters, or whatever is your favorite move.

  Not to be biased, but the simplicity of this plugin makes it probably the easiest out of all of the other examples to set up an opt-in form, widget, or slide-in for collecting emails and then reaching out.

  When you first get started, there’s a complete walkthrough on how to get moving.

  

  From this point, you can choose what kind of form you want to create: Pop-up, Slide-in, Embed, or Social Share.

  

  For this example, we’ll use a pop-up.

  I can now pick and choose various options to include in the Edit Pop-up section. You have a TON of options here to suit your needs.

  This is where you design, add what information you’d like to collect from users, integrate your favorite email provider, edit the visibility, and much more.

  

  All the major email services provide HTML emails, so you’ll be all set in that department. They all have customizable templates, too.

  When connecting to other apps for integration, there are 1000’s to choose from.

  

  You can specify advanced features, such as animated effects on entrance and exits, delays, AdBlock, and more.

  

  And the forms look as shiny as a disco ball. Here is an example of the pop-up I just created.

  

  With over 80,000 installations, 4.5-star review, and ease of use, all we can say is that if you’re looking to start an amazing email marketing campaign — Hustle makes it a party.

  For more information, check out his funky video below.

And the Winner Is…

That will be for you to decide. Each one of these unique plugins can be a great match for your website.

Just remember that plain text is a lightweight to HTML when it comes to quality. A great HTML email comes across as more professional, they’re more adjustable, and the best way to showcase your message.

These customized WordPress email plugins are all prizefighters in our eyes and any one of them can be a champion for your website.

For more information on newsletter marketing, be sure to check out our post on the 7 Best Newsletter Plugins to Create and Send Emails in WordPress.

And, of course, make sure to use a reliable email hosting service and follow email deliverability best practices.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

And with that, this post is over.

Pop-ups that are easy on the eye, yield great results, and don’t scare your visitors off may be few and far between – but that doesn’t mean the tools aren’t out there.

There are tons of plugins to help make your pop-up-related dreams come true – and if you aren’t willing to cough up some cash, you may have to embark upon a bit of trial and error to find one which fulfills your needs.

The good news is that I’ve done a bit of the legwork for you and reviewed five of the most popular free plugins on the WordPress plugin directory.

So let’s get to it!

• Hustle by WPMU DEV
• Pop-Up Builder by Sygnoos
• Pop-Up Maker by (ahem) Pop-Up Maker
• Boxzilla by Ibericode

1. Hustle by WPMU DEV

Of course, we couldn’t finish this article without mentioning our own free plugin, Hustle.

Upon arrival you’re greeted by a lovely sleek dashboard and Hustle is the only plugin I found that has free analytical tools.

The dashboard shows you your active modules and conversions at a glance. You can either create a pop-up, slide-in, standard embed or social media embed.

Creating a regular pop-up is so easy, it’s almost too good to be true. (It isn’t though – Hustle has everything you need, completely free of charge.)

One of the coolest things about this pop-up is the extent to which you can customize the design without touching a single line of code.

You can use one of the default color palettes if you’re not too fussed about the color scheme, but you can also build your own custom color palette.

You can customize the color of everything right down to the hover on your call-to-action button.

Once you’ve designed yourself a tidy little pop-up, it’s time to explore the Visibility tab.

There are lots of conditions to choose from.

If you want to keep it simple and just show it on one page, that’s absolutely fine, but you have the freedom to tailor it to appear exactly when you want it to and in front of only your target audience.

You’ll also need to decide how your pop-up is triggered. You have lots of options, but the icing on the cake is that Hustle is the only free pop-up plugin I’ve found that has exit intent FREE of charge.

You now hold the power to stop those deserters in their tracks!

You can choose animations for your pop-ups, closing behaviors, and whether or not visitors will be able to click a link that prevents them from seeing it again.

With Hustle, you get to create three modules of each type, i.e. 3 pop-ups, 3 embeds, etc. If you find yourself needing a few more, you can always upgrade to Pro for unlimited.

Yes, it may be hard to believe that I’m not biased since Hustle is, of course, one of our own plugins.

However, you really need to try it for yourself to really understand how much you actually get for the extremely low price of zero!

Also, if you want to know more about Hustle, and for a few more handy pop-up tips, check out our other blog on how to create an effective pop-up.

2. Pop-Up Builder by Sygnoos

The first on our list is Pop-Up Builder. With 100,000+ active installs and a bold claim right at the top of its WordPress.org listing, I had to check it out.

There are five free modules to choose from, with the option of adding a gazillion more by going Pro.

I took a look at the image option first. I found that whilst it does indeed allow you to make a pop-up using an image, there isn’t a way to add text.

This is no good if you have a message you want to convey to your visitors. You could always upload an image that has text already on it, however, a lot of times including important text in an image isn’t a good idea. You can only really get away with it if you add perfect alt tags.

You can design a pop-up to fit your exact requirements using the HTML option, which takes you to the classic editor.

The styling options included in this pop-up are very limited, therefore the only way to really make your pop-up fit your brand is with code. Not ideal if your coding knowledge isn’t up to scratch.

I had a dabble using the classic editor and a bit of custom CSS and was able to produce this classy little gem within a couple of minutes.

You get the freedom to design the pop-up yourself, with the advantage of being able to use the plugin’s back-end features.

It would be convenient if there were some built-in tools to help you add color and style, but I’m reluctant to moan too much about something that didn’t cost a penny.

The free version does come with a lot of limitations though unfortunately.

Any form of advanced targeting is an added extra that you have to pay for – this includes selecting which device you want to display the pop-up on. This is bad news if you only want to display it on one type of device.

Interestingly, another thing you can pay extra for is the ability to prevent your visitors from being able to close your pop-ups. I found this “forced interaction” function to be one of the most common premium features across the plugins.

If you’re serious about pop-ups, then Pop-Up Builder may be worth coughing up the $48 a year for, as the full version comes with tons of features.

If you’re just dabbling, the free version might meet your needs – or another plugin may be more suitable.

3. Pop-Up Maker by (ahem) Pop-Up Maker

Pop-up Maker has one of the highest numbers of active installs by far – and you can see why.

It has a sleek, easy-to-navigate menu, and best of all; all the features you need to create the perfect pop-up are absolutely free.

This is what I produced without changing any design settings.

The design capabilities of this plugin are actually pretty impressive. You choose a theme for each plugin, and then you can customize each theme easily with no code required.

There are a lot of different settings you can tweak and it’s so simple to use – I clicked a few buttons and within literally a minute, I was able to give my pop-up a bit of life.

It’s so easy to customize the design of your pop-up using this plugin, so you should have no problems channeling your brand.

Once you have a fresh pop-up design, you need to select triggers and targeting.

The list of potential triggers and targeting options is definitely a decent length and you also get to choose the position of the pop-up and any animations you want to use.

I think the only criticism I have of this pop-up is that whilst more or less everything is included within the free version, one thing is missing. And it’s one of the main functions that website owners would want to use in their pop-ups.

This, of course, is exit intent.

It costs $35 a year just to unlock this one feature, however, if you think about everything you get from the plugin as a whole, it ain’t all that bad.

Other premium features include analytics, scroll-triggered pop-ups, and MailChimp integration, but you do have to pay to unlock each feature – unless you pay for the whole works (prices vary, so check on site for promos and the latest rate).

There is also an advanced theme editor to help you make your pop-ups even more unique.

Their slogan is ‘Create any popup imaginable’ – definitely possible if you ask me.

4. Boxzilla by Ibericode

Boxzilla’s active installs stand at a modest 20k – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a contender.

I’m a massive fan of this one from the get-go because it has a name that doesn’t include the words ‘pop-up’… it can get confusing when reviewing so many plugins with similar names.

You’re met with the classic editor to create your pop-up, however, there is a nifty little menu where you can select your colors and border if you’re not confident using code.

I put together a quick pop-up using these options – it was so easy.

Once the pop-up is to your taste, you need to decide who will see it and when.

You have a nice list of options, however, exit intent is again missing as it’s premium only. You can still make some pretty decent pop-ups with the options available on the free version, and it didn’t take me long at all to get my first one up and running.

My one criticism about this plugin is that there is no facility to preview your creation – you have to click publish and hope for the best. Not ideal if you’re doing this on a live site!

It’s a simple little plugin – no bells and whistles, but you can easily create something practical with the tools available on the free version.

Choose Your Own ‘Top Of The Pops’

Five pop-ups, five different ways of doing things… but also five plugins that could potentially help you to grow your sales and subscribers.

Finding a free plugin that does everything you need isn’t actually that ambitious – it’s actually pretty surprising how much is offered on the free versions.

But if you find yourself missing something, it might be that you have to bite the bullet and pay for premium…or you could be cheeky and use more than one!

Between the bunch, they really do offer a full suite of features for the keen marketer.

So you have the tools, now it’s down to you to utilize them wisely.