Sumo (formerly known as SumoMe) is an email capturing tool that helps ecommerce businesses build their email lists, increase conversion rates, and generate more sales. While Sumo offers a number of great features, it has a few limitations.
In this article, we’ll go over the top ten SumoMe alternatives. First, let’s discuss why Sumo falls short as a list builder.
4 reasons why you might need a Sumo alternative
First, let’s discuss four compelling reasons why seeking an alternative software for Sumo might be advantageous.
1. Very limited popup design options
A key feature of any lead generation tool is the ability to create effective and attractive popups.
Unfortunately, Sumo’s free plan only comes with one, bare-bones popup design option.
And their paid version is not much better. It leaves you hanging, without the variety of templates you need to run successful and diverse campaigns.
2. Difficult user interface
Another problem with Sumo’s software is its user interface, which ironically isn’t very user-friendly.
There are a lot of customization and targeting options to go through when you create your popup campaign. You also need to manage the leads you’ve collected.
The lack of a fast and well-designed user interface makes this process difficult.
Check out this Sumo review left by a user on Capterra:
3. Some integrations are plan based
Although Sumo’s free version does integrate with some popular email service providers, other integrations are restricted to their paid plans. These include Hubspot, Klaviyo, Infusionsoft, and Salesforce—all of which are widely used by ecommerce websites.
Sumo’s Pro plan also costs $49 a month, which is a lot to pay only to use it with your preferred email marketing tools.
4. Poor customer support
According to multiple reviews, customers experience bad customer service. Users have complained about the quality of help they’ve received. The review below cites difficulties with getting answers about technical issues.
This is a real problem. Users rely on their popup software for generating the leads that are crucial to their bottom line. If something isn’t working properly, you need to be able to fix it quickly and efficiently.
10 best alternatives for the Sumo opt-in form
There are some common issues that may arise when you’re using Sumo’s service. So it’s time to look for a new lead generation tool.
1. OptiMonk
OptiMonk’s popup tool helps ecommerce stores grow their email lists, promote sales, and stop cart abandonment. With powerful customization options, you can control precisely when and how your popups appear to your visitors.
Users appreciate these options and the great results they bring: OptiMonk has over 800 five-star reviews in the Shopify App Store.
OptiMonk’s popup software is full of useful features that lead directly to higher conversion rates. Even better, all of these features are available in the free plan.
Key benefit #1: Over 300 pre-made templates
OptiMonk’s template library is full of tried and true popup templates that deliver great results. There are more than 300 popups you can choose from for various use cases. And all templates are mobile-friendly.
The template library also contains popups that have been designed for seasonal events like the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Black Friday.
Key benefit #2: Powerful drag and drop editor
Once you’ve chosen a template for your popup, you can easily customize it to match your website design. Some of the customization options include:
- Size, layout, and position
- Color
- Images
- Opt-in form fields and copy
The process is simple and doesn’t require any coding knowledge.
Key benefit #3: Lots of campaign types
OptiMonk offers many campaign types and use cases for your ecommerce store, including:
- Gamification campaign
- Sticky bar (or floating bar)
- Feedback form
- Email signup
- SMS signup
Key benefit #4: Advanced targeting features
You can tailor your messages toward different segments of visitors by using OptiMonk’s many targeting features.
For example, you can display certain popups to users who have added specific items to their cart. You can also show different popups to first-time and returning visitors. Or you can target visitors based on a specific landing page they already visited.
You can also target customers based on:
- Location
- Traffic source
- The time spent on pages
- The time spent on-site
With these advanced targeting features, you’ll only show relevant popups to your visitors—improving their customer experience… rather than annoying them.
And, as an added bonus, OptiMonk’s user-friendly interface allows you to make all these choices quickly and easily.
Key benefit #5: Stellar customer service
If you’re unsure what’s the best setup for your popup campaign or if you have any other questions, you can always reach out to OptiMonk’s professional customer support team. They’ll be happy to assist you. Check out these customer reviews below:
Key benefit #6: A wealth of integration options
OptiMonk integrates with all the most popular tools that help business owners run their online stores. Here are just a few of the many integrations available through OptiMonk (and you can see the full list here).
And as a reminder, none of these integrations require you to subscribe to one of OptiMonk’s premium plans.
Who is this tool for?
Any ecommerce store can use OptiMonk to grow their email list and boost their sales and conversion rates. The software is easy to use and offers tailored solutions for your marketing campaigns.
So if you’re running a store all by yourself, you can create popups quickly and efficiently. Or if you’re part of a big team (which includes web designers, copywriters, and designers), everyone can use their skills to the fullest extent—thanks to the deeply-rooted customizability of OptiMonk popups.
Pricing
Free, or from $39/month.
2. Picreel
Picreel is a popup builder that places a lot of emphasis on their exit-intent technology. They help keep more potential customers in your sales funnel by capturing their contact information just before they leave your website.
Picreel’s unique features
Picreel has lots of features to engage visitors and keep them on your web page. However, it has no floating bars or welcome-mat popup. Here are some features that stand out though:
AI triggering
You can send personalized and dynamic messages to individual users with Picreel’s “AI-assisted” targeting and triggering. The system will learn from what has and hasn’t worked in the past and apply those lessons automatically to your campaigns.
Collect phone numbers
Picreel has several popup templates designed to collect phone numbers from your web visitors. SMS marketing campaigns are highly effective because users open text messages more often than emails.
Who is this tool for?
If you’re seeing lots of new visitors bounce from your landing or product pages, Picreel is a good alternative to SumoMe. However, they aren’t as stellar at addressing use cases for popups that are unrelated to abandoning site visitors.
Pricing
From $19.99 a month.
3. OptinMonster
OptinMonster helps ecommerce stores generate leads by using popups and inline forms. They offer many types of popups with reliable features.
OptinMonster’s unique features
If you can make full use of OptinMonster’s many features, you’ll be able to grow your email list. However, there are no non-premium options—meaning that accessing these features requires a substantial investment.
Popup editor
Their platform has an advanced popup editor that offers a great deal of customization.
You can easily add and edit elements like a timer, contact forms, and images so your popups blend in with your store’s theme.
Targeting features
OptinMonster gives you access to tracking and targeting tools. These include geo-location, page-level targeting, and an “InactivitySensor.”
There are also options for using onsite retargeting and follow-ups to improve your conversion rate.
Who is this tool for?
OptinMonster can be a useful popup tool for generating leads. Ecommerce stores can consider using OptinMonster for advanced targeting.
Pricing
From $19/month.
4. Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is geared toward building opt-in forms for ecommerce websites and has all of the key features you’d expect from a SumoMe alternative.
Thrive Leads’ unique features
As a dedicated WordPress plugin, Thrive Leads helps users cut through the complexity of the CMS platform with its drag and drop form builder and elegant themes.
A/B testing engine
The advanced split testing capabilities of the Thrive Leads plugin come from the developer’s experience of creating “Thrive Optimize,” which is a standalone A/B testing WordPress plugin.
You’ll be able to run an A/B test easily, and you’ll get detailed data on your crucial results and insights.
Inline forms
Unlike other opt-in form tools, Thrive Leads allows you to create embedded inline forms (that are part of your page) as well as popup forms. This type of email signup form is excellent for certain use cases like blog posts and landing pages.
Who is this tool for?
Thrive Leads is among the best SumoMe alternatives for midsize and large businesses that use WordPress. Small businesses might opt to look elsewhere because there is no free plan available.
Pricing
You can’t purchase Thrive Leads as a standalone product. The Thrive Suite basic plan starts at $30 a month.
5. Sleeknote
Sleeknote is a big name in popup software and has modern capabilities. However, it’s not a great alternative for those looking to save money.
Sleeknote’s unique features
As a dedicated popup maker, Sleeknote has a functional editor with all the key features you’d need to create high-performing popups.
Here are a few of their more advanced features:
Multi-step campaigns
Sleeknote links together the different types of popups they offer into “multi-step” campaigns. This helps stores show the right popups to users at different stages of their customer journeys.
These intelligent targeting rules take a lot of the guesswork out of creating popup campaigns.
A/B testing
This software comes equipped with split testing capabilities that help you optimize your popup conversion rates. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what popups will connect with your website visitors, so it’s good to try out as many different options as possible.
Who is this tool for?
Sleeknote is one of the best SumoMe alternatives for large ecommerce operations with lots of money and expertise to devote to their lead generation tool.
Pricing
From $70/month.
6. Poptin
Poptin helps ecommerce websites add popups to capture leads. Their lightbox popup templates allow you to create sidemessages and fullscreen popups.
Poptin’s unique features
Poptin’s approach to lead generation is focused on visually attractive popups. They have lots of options to choose from, which include gamified popups like scratch cards.
Exit-intent popups
One nice feature of Poptin for smaller stores is the fact that their exit-intent popups are available on their free plan.
Built-in autoresponder
Poptin doesn’t offer a full email marketing tool, but you can automatically send “Welcome” and “Thank You” emails to new subscribers.
Who is this tool for?
Poptin is ideal for users who just want to capture contact info to send a thank you email and aren’t interested in running a full email marketing campaign.
Pricing
Free, or from $25/month.
7. Privy
Privy is a lead generation tool that offers ecommerce stores the opportunity to run their email marketing campaigns through the same application. While this is convenient, it does come with some drawbacks. The dual functionality of Privy means that their popup editor and targeting/triggering options aren’t as well-developed as “a dedicated popup maker.”
Privy’s unique features
Privy has a couple of features that differentiate it from SumoMe.
Multiple opt-in form types
Privy’s opt-in form templates come in many shapes and sizes. You can choose among forms that contain different numbers of fields as well as the type of information you’d like to collect.
Cart abandonment emails
By using Privy, you can send cart abandonment emails to customers that don’t complete the checkout process.
Who is this tool for?
Businesses that want to use an all-in-one marketing tool could consider using Privy. You don’t need to deal with both a popup maker and email marketing services at the same time. Instead, you can take care of everything within one platform.
Pricing
Free for up to 100 contacts, then from $15/month.
8. Elementor
Elementor’s popup maker is part of their general web design application, which allows you to create landing pages, blogs, and ecommerce stores.
Elementor’s unique features
Here are a few of Elementor’s unique features that revolve around their powerful editor.
Mobile-friendly editing
You can easily make your popups compatible with any device. With the click of a button, you can go from editing a popup for desktop to modifying it for mobile viewing. It’s a pretty handy tool, given the importance of being mobile-friendly in today’s ecommerce landscape.
SEO optimization
The code running behind the scenes of Elementor is quite efficient—meaning that your low page-load times will help you reach the top of Google’s search rankings.
Who is this tool for?
We’d recommend Elementor to people who are just getting their ecommerce stores up and running. That way, you can take advantage of the available features you might need.
Pricing
From $49 a year.
9. Getsitecontrol
Getsitecontrol is capable of generating great lead-building popup forms. If you decide to use them for your popups and opt-in forms, you can also use their “Getform” survey system.
Getsitecontrol’s unique features
Beyond the additional benefits that the survey tool offers, Getsitecontrol enables you to create some great-looking popups.
Sticky bar forms
Getsitecontrol offers you a unique opt-in form, called large notification bars. You can use these notification bars to collect emails without interrupting your customer’s shopping experience.
Advanced targeting on Shopify
This SumoMe alternative provides some key targeting features that Shopify users can take advantage of. You can easily set up custom popups to appear on your cart page, thank you page, and product pages.
Who is this tool for?
Getsitecontrol is a good, generalized popup creator for people who use Shopify. Unfortunately, it’s not powerful enough for WordPress sites.
Pricing
From 8 Euros a month.
10. WP Subscribe
WP Subscribe is a bare-bones, open-source solution for creating inline opt-in forms. Unfortunately, you can’t make popups using this tool.
You can use WP Subscribe Pro to create a simple email and SMS opt-in form that doesn’t appear in popups.
WP Subscribe Pro’s unique features
Since WP Subscribe Pro is just a simple bit of code that you can run through your WordPress dashboard, it doesn’t offer tons of unique features.
However, being jam-packed with features isn’t the point of WP Subscribe Pro. It’s really meant to provide simple opt-in forms to those who need them, but don’t want to pay for expensive SaaS products.
Integrations
Even though WP Subscribe Pro is an open-source software, it still can integrate with popular email marketing services like MailChimp, Aweber, and FeedBurner.
Who is this tool for?
WP Subscribe Pro is a great SumoMe alternative for a small group of people that are tech-savvy and aren’t looking to spend much on their opt-in forms. But WP Subscribe Pro doesn’t offer customer service and you need to solve all potential problems by yourself.
Pricing
Free.
Summing Up
OptiMonk is the perfect Sumo alternative for both online stores and large enterprises. That’s because of its wide range of features that balances the delicate need for ease of use and deep customizability.
Other SumoMe alternatives like Thrive Leads and OptinMonster can also help you grow your business. But keep in mind that their advanced features come with a heavy cost and limited options.
So why don’t you pick out one of OptiMonk’s freemium opt-in forms and give their drag and drop builder a try?
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