Best Opt-in Plugin: Why I Use ThriveLeads (Updated: March 2024)

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A blog without subscribers is like friendship without old friends. If you are looking for the best opt-in plugin for your needs and budget, or just want to see the advanced features that an opt-in plugin may have, then you will find my review very useful.

Below I will show you the details that I’ve discovered about very powerful but still underused by bloggers opt-in and lead-generation plugin ThriveLeads that helps you get more email subscribers in the most versatile ways.

I’ve chosen it for my use among many other opt-in plugins and services such as OptinMonster, Elegant Themes Bloom, Popup Domination, SumoMe, Optin Ninja, Pippity, Optin Revolution, OptinSkin and others. And will tell you why.

I’ve written this post for the following main purposes:

• I’ve made this article a comprehensive place where you can see live examples what ThriveLeads can do.
• Also, in this post you can find links to educational materials (ThriveLeads‘ howto’s and marketing advice).
• I share my strategic thoughts about this opt-in plugin.
• And finally I’m an affiliate of ThriveLeads (I use this plugin and recommend others using it for the reasons I emphasize in this article).


This post is pretty long, but you can learn a lot from it if you are a beginner in blogging or online entrepreneurship. And if you are already experienced and have used opt-in plugins before, then have a look at least at these three parts:

1. What are the strategic arguments why I’ve chosen ThriveLeads
2. What ThriveLeads opt-in plugin can do. Live examples
3. Conclusion

You may also use the table of contents below for easy navigation.


Do you have to use best opt-in plugin?

If you have doubts, read this section 🙂

The internet works the way that your potential regular readers (you fans or just people who learn something from you) need to distinguish you among other millions of bloggers.

Great content or products that you offer are necessary. But this is often not enough for your blog or online business to succeed. It’s obvious that if you have a blog or a website, then the most dedicated readers and thankful buyers are your subscribers, who spread the good word about you.

That’s why you need an efficient tool that will help you to turn your visitors into subscribers. Otherwise, your progress will not be as fast as it could be and in some niches without email list your success will not be possible at all.

So, technically, do you have to use the best opt-in plugin after all?

Actually, no.

It’s probably not the answer that you may have expected, but in order to have subscribers, you don’t need to use opt-in plugins at all. It’s technically enough to have some html code to get opt-in fields or a free plugin so that users could enter their email to subscribe.

Some bloggers find it enough even to use just a RSS feed.



But blogosphere rapidly expands, competition increases heavily and more convenient options are at hand now. So a passive or boring way of getting subscribers or regular readers like some time ago has become extremely inefficient.

Moreover, in some niches where the competition for readers is already very tough, opt-in plugins and lead generation tools are actually must-have. Otherwise your competitors will simply have huge advantage over you.

In future the competition in the Internet and particularly in blogging will become tougher and tougher. And the question now is not whether you should use opt-in plugin, but what opt-in plugin is the most efficient and how well you can use opt-in plugins to convert visitors into subscribers.

If the best opt-in plugin can do all the necessary work for your success?

Unfortunately, no. But it can tremendously assist.

Even the best opt-in plugin is still a tool in its basis. A tool can be very efficient and the best out there, but it still needs your marketing creativity to use to be much better that millions of other bloggers who use or will use this or similar products.

Some time ago it was enough simply to have a popup window or a nice looking sidebar widget that captured visitors’ attention well to convert them into subscribers. But then everyone started using it like crazy. And conversion rates dropped (the same effect as banner blindness).

And now more and more tricks are needed to make your visitor subscribe. And just software, even if it’s the best out there, can’t be enough to bring a huge success automatically for a long time. And it’s not just because of software. The point is how efficiently and creatively you can use the software.

That’s why a company that brings the best opt-in plugin to the market should care that its plugin is not simply a piece of software. Competition is constantly increasing and the company should treat it now as a whole infrastructure that combines top-notch software, technical support, continuous plugin enhancement, plugin-related tutorials and educational materials to boost your marketing efficiency.



ThriveThemes (a company that develops ThriveLeads plugin) does a very good job on all the parts (more about it in the next section).

That’s why the only missing part of your success in getting more subscribers is you. You need to take this powerful and versatile email opt-in plugin and let it work on your website the way you want it.

What exactly can ThriveLeads do and is it better than other opt-in plugins or services? I will cover these questions in the further sections.

Why ThriveLeads does a very good job?

The ThriveLeads plugin is a great piece of software. Apart from the fact that it can replace many other opt-in plugins and services, it’s very flexible from a design point of view. Although there are already dozens and dozens of ready-to-use designs for forms, the design of each form is very customizable. So with its WYSIWYG editor you can let your design creativity go wild and adjust or build your unique design from scratch without coding just using easy drag-and-drop operations. You can read more details in this section below where I describe ThriveLeads‘ functionality.

Although ThriveLeads is already an outstanding opt-in plugin, ThriveThemes (the developing company) is constantly adding new features to the plugin (that’s the only way to succeed long-run in the business of best opt-in plugins and the company goes this way).

Its support and educational materials are very good not only to learn how to use the opt-in plugin very efficiently, but how to leverage your marketing skills as well.

Next section contains some strategic arguments in addition to the above arguments why ThriveLeads does a very good job.

What are strategic arguments why I’ve chosen ThriveLeads?

1. Unmatched functionality

ThriveLeads is already a great opt-in plugin that combines functionality of other opt-in plugins and services. I could use more than one commercial plugin to get what I wanted with some limitations. But I would not get as many possibilities as I get with ThriveLeads.

In particular, the following options make ThriveLeads the most powerful opt-in plugin:

• It has the most complete set of opt-in options (forms, ribbons, slide-ins, screen fillers etc) – no need to buy several plugins and services.
• The design of forms can be totally (not just partially like with some other plugins) customized with drag-and-drop content builder with no coding. The content builder has an advanced user interface and design elements (lists with icons, call-to actions, animated progress bars, countdowns, any WordPress content and many others). And coding is also possible (e.g. useful for copying a part of a form, also for using custom css or php code).
• It supports many email autoresponders and email marketing services (including free FeedBurner).
• It has option not to annoy already subscribed visitors with opt-in forms (this feature is not supported for FeedBurner though).
• Alternate content of forms for different audience groups (e.g. show opt-in forms for new visitors and show special offers for the visitors who have opted in before).
• Advanced triggering options (e.g. show forms with delay, on a certain part of the content, periodically, e.g. each 7 days).
• Advanced targeting (show forms on specific pages, posts, categories etc – very flexible with rules and exceptions).
• It’s fully mobile responsive.
• Multiple step forms (allows to interact with visitor and build scenarios depending on user ‘s actions).
• Exit intent trigger (show form when user intents to leave your site, including handling this for mobile users).
• It has advanced A/B testing (including multiple variants i.e. A/B/C/D/etc tests, automatic winner choosing, testing against different triggers and forms).
• It has 22 different types of animation (applicable both to whole forms or just single elements, plus animated taskbar, typewriter animation, animated counters, countdowns etc).
• Opt-in to unlock content (subscribe to see locked content).
• Opt-in bribes (e.g. subscribe to download free e-book etc).
• Can embed responsive videos (YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia).

No other plugin has such plenty set of features.

ThriveLeads has more features than I’ve mentioned above, but the above ones were the most important for me. They are more than enough to consider ThriveLeads the best opt-in plugin.

That’s why I chose ThriveLeads.

Besides, I show in details and with live examples what ThriveLeads can do in this section below.

2. Pricing

Starting from February 2021 ThriveLeads is offered on a subscription basis within Thrive Suite. It’s not pay-once-get-unlimited-updates of the plugin anymore. Read more about it above.
You get updates and technical support only if you renew your Thrive Suite subscription. But if you don’t want to renew the subscription you still can continue using the Thrive themes and the Thrive plugins.

3. It’s fast

The plugin works amazingly fast – all forms and popup windows open up and appear fast and smoothly as I wanted it. And it is simply unnoticeable from website loading speed point of view. And this is expected because ThriveThemes pay special attention to this. You can see live examples how different ThriveLeads forms work in this section.

4. Even more potential to be realized

There’s a successful company (ThriveThemes) behind this plugin that develops and maintains a whole infrastructure specializing in conversion aspects (email list building, conversion-focused themes, custom content builders, landing pages etc).

There’s a good synergistic effect – the tools and features developed in one product can be available in other products if they are related. New features and products are being added. Support is efficient. That’s why other plugins with limited development or even without further development and support are no comparison to ThriveLeads.

No other plugin could satisfy me with these parameters. ThriveLeads is definitely my pick, at least until a new generation of opt-in plugins appear. But I hope by this time ThriveThemes will continue to thrive to stay a leader in this niche.

Why ThriveLeads’ prices look too affordable?

When looking for the best opt-in plugin for myself, I found out that I had to buy several plugins or services if I wanted to get all kinds of opt-in options (forms, windows, bars, widgets etc) with advanced features such as A/B testing, customization and compatibility with all the popular mailing services (MailChmp, Aweber etc) including HTML integration option (I need it for FeedBurner that I still use at the time of writing this, but will probably switch to a more advanced service sooner or later).

I didn’t like the idea to have multiple plugins and services because of high costs, possible conflicts and all the mess (different user interface, statistics, design assets, shortcodes etc).

Having looked through many plugins I’ve encountered ThriveLeads. This was exactly what I had been looking for because it contains not only all possible opt-in options and features I needed.

By the way, ThriveLeads is just one of the plugins that you get with Thrive Suite subscription.

Is any opt-in plugin really worth it from a cost-effective point of view?

This question was really the stumbling block for me when I wanted to buy one or several opt-in plugins some time ago when my traffic was less than a thousand visitors per month.

My concern was that opt-in plugins with the functionality I wanted did not come with one-time payment. I had to subscribe to regular payment plans.

So yes, subscribing to the Thrive Suite is an investment if you have little traffic.

However, if you are an agency or have a website with potential, Thrive Suite is apparently attractive.

And here’s an interactive example that I also made with thrive Leads. Play with it if you are not an agency:


Best opt-in plugins comparison

Best opt-in plugins or services are not just different windows or forms on your website. They are a full-fledged software that do a lot of stuff including visitors targeting, A/B testing, actions triggering, reporting, visitors involving, rich user interface and user experience enhancements and so on.

Before deciding which opt-in plugin to go with, I have looked at all the popular and most powerful opt-in plugins on the market. And my choice was definitely ThriveLeads. The main reason is that it’s the most powerful tool which has the most versatile set of options.

At the same time, to some extent ThriveLeads may seem a little bit more complicated (i.e. has a bit longer learning curve) than other simple opt-in plugins, because it has more options and more flexibility. ThriveLeads is not just a set of templates where you can only change colors and text (although you can do just this if you want).

ThriveLeads lets you modify the content and design of the forms without coding (or with it if you need) as much as you want. It includes a drag-and-drop editor inherited from Content Builder (another ThriveThemes‘s product). You can build very rich forms with many different user interface elements, not just text and images. Other plugins are pretty limited from this perspective.

Also, it allows to A/B/C/ etc test forms and triggers (e.g. showing a popup window after some delay or events) against each other, so it adds up some more option in ThriveLeads. This is not just a split test to choose between A and B variants like with other plugins. This is much more powerful and advantageous set of options.

One of the very useful features that other plugins are missing at all or partly is modifying the content of opt-in forms or hiding the forms for visitors who are already subscribers. This is one of the main reasons why ThriveLeads has become my choice.

Another very important advantage of ThriveLeads is paying just once for the plugin, I will get all the new version so the plugin forever. That’s simply bargain and absolute deal killer, especially considering what this plugin can do.

I’ve just touched the most important aspects of Thrive Leads plugin which are important for myself. You can also see what other products and features go with Thrive Suite (ThriveLeads plugin is a part of it).

Also, I’ve looked at other plugins (Bloom, Optin Ninja + its addon, Pippity and Optin Revolution Pro). And nothing can beat ThriveLeads comparing both functionality.

Having compared the opt-in plugins, I could easily see that ThriveLeads has made a good jump ahead of other plugins.

In the next chapter I’ll explain what ThriveLeads can do in more details and show you live examples. Also you will see there also some unique features that ThriveLeads have.

What ThriveLeads opt-in plugin can do. Live examples

You have already seen some examples of the ThriveLeads forms that I’ve easily made and used in this article. And in this chapter I will show you more live examples of form types and some features of ThriveLeads. Please note that this does not demonstrate you all possible forms and features, but just gives you an overview of what you can do with this opt-in plugin. Check out ThriveLeads resources starting from this page to get more information.

Forms behavior settings

A form (by the way, it can be opt-in form, or just some information or special offer window) has the following settings which affect its behavior:

Trigger

Trigger determines when a form appears or what causes it to appear:



Forms of different types (e.g. lightboxes aka popups, ribbons, widget forms, slide-ins etc) may have slightly different set of triggers.

Display Frequency

It sets how often the same form is shown to the same visitor; it’s useful to make the form less annoying:



Applicable for any form type (currently except Post Footer forms, which always appear at the pages/posts according to the targeting rules).

Animation

It sets how a form appears. At the time of writing there are 22 types of animations, including zooming, rotating, bouncing, bluring, sliding, slipping, in 3D etc. Applicable currently for Lightboxes (popups), Screen-fillers.

Besides, there are some animated elements such as animated taskbar, typewriter animation, animated counters, coutndowns.

Position

It sets in what part of a screen a form appears. Applicable currently for Slide-ins, Ribbons.

Types of forms

Lightbox forms (Popup windows)

Lightbox is a popup window that appears in the center of the screen. It can appear (triggered by) immediately on page load, with delay, after scrolling to some place or % of a page, when user intents to exit page or after other events.

See live examples: one-step popup and two-step popup.

Slide-In forms

Slide-in is a form that appears on a left or right side of a screen.

See live examples: one-step slide-in and two-step slide-in.

Ribbon forms

Ribbon is a site-wide form that appears on the top or the bottom of the screen.

See live examples: one-step ribbon and two-step ribbon.

Screen-Filler forms

Screen-filler is a full-screen form which is impossible to ignore.

See live examples: one-step screen-filler and two-step screen-filler.

Scroll Mat forms

Scroll mat form is a full screen form that appears on page load moving the content of your page down. When a visitor is done with the form it scrolls down automatically. It looks pretty interesting and impossible to ignore.

See live examples: one-step scroll mat form and two-step scroll mat from.

In-Content forms

In-content form is a form which is placed automatically in the content of your post(s) or page(s) after a certain number of paragraphs. You don’t need to use short codes or alter the content of your post(s) or page(s) in any way.

See live examples: one-step in-content form and two-step in-content form.

Widget Area forms

Widget area form is a form that is placed in WordPress widgets (e.g. on a left or right sidebar).

By the way, there’s a little but efficient trick you can do with this kind of form. You can make it floating, which is very cool in many ways.

Here’s an example of how it’s done on my website at the time of writing:



Also, like with other types of ThriveLeads forms it can target any combination of posts and pages (targeted within Group Lead). Widget area forms can also be one-step or multi-step.

Post Footer forms

Post footer form is placed automatically at the end of your posts or pages which you specify in the targeting rules for a certain form.

See live examples: one-step post footer and two-step post footer.

ThriveBoxes

A form of this type appear as lightbox (popup window) by clicking on a link, menu item or triggered by event in ThriveLeads (e.g. if user clicks on a button in another ThriveLeads form).

See live example on this page.

Some special features and options

This is not complete list of features. I have just selected the ones which are powerful enhancements and caught my attention. There are many other features that are available in ThriveLeads (for example, there’s a whole bunch of features that are available as elements in Content Builder.

Alternate Content for Subscribers (e.g. not to show subscribe forms for existing subscribers)

This is very useful feature that allows you to make a big step forward your visitor differentiation, targeting and engagement.

A core of this functionality is Smart Links. It is a tool that allows you to build URLs to your content with parameters. With these parameters you can set what kind of content in Thrive Leads forms to display for a visitor who visits your website (page, post, specific URL etc). You can show different content or different users: forms, offers, opt-in options etc can be different or even hidden if you don’t want to annoy your visitor with popup windows, email subscription forms etc.

Here are some simple examples how you can use this functionality:

• You display opt-in forms for your ordinary visitors, but you don’t show the forms to the visitors who are already subscribed (subscribed visitors are those who have visited your website at least once through a special link in your newsletter).
• You show opt-in forms for ordinary visitors and special offers to your subscribers.
• You show different offers to different groups of visitors. Different groups of visitors are determined by which link they have come to your website. And you may give people different links to your website: in webinars, in ads, in newsletter, in specific forums etc in order to segment visitors which allows you to target the visitors much better. Depending on a link your visitors will see the same website posts or pages but different content of ThriveLeads forms placed on those posts or pages.

Behind the curtains ThriveLeads’ SmartLinks use cookies to segment your visitors depending on what URL parameters you add to your website page link that you give to your visitors.

Basically this is quite simple concept but very powerful implementation and results.

And here are the screenshots of SmartLinks settings wizard for you to get a clearer idea what it is about.







Then you just take the URL with generated parameters and use it in newsletters, promotions, on forums, on specific landing pages or regular pages /posts and so on . And your readers will see different content of ThriveLeads forms or will not see some or any forms if you want.

Exit Intent Trigger

This feature will allow you to show your visitors a form when the visitor is about to leave your website (i.e. user moves a mouse cursor out of the browser window).
See live example here.
A form which is triggered can be one-step opt-in, multi-step or not an opt-in at all (e.g. a special offer or discount code etc).

SmartExit feature allows you to combine exit intent trigger and ordinary time-delayed trigger in one for your desktop visitors. In other words, if user will want to leave your site before time-delayed trigger fires, exit intent trigger will be fired for the same form.

And since on mobile devices there’s no mouse cursor, SmartExit feature allows you to show your mobile users a form which is triggered by a time delay instead.

2-Step or multi-step Opt-In

Some tests show that ordinary 2-step or multi-step opt-in forms may convert better than an ordinary opt-in form. Whether more conversions happen due to your visitors’ curiosity or engagement improvement effect, it makes sense to try and test two-step or multi-step opt-in forms.

Here’s a light box (a popup window) example with two-step opt-in process: click here. You can find more two-step opt-in examples with other types of forms in the previous chapter.

Content lock (or Subscribe to see the content)

This feature allows to lock (hide or blur) some content (text, images, media etc) for a visitor and show it in exchange for the visitor’s email. In other words, you make your visitors become your subscribers if they want to see the content you have locked.

Here’s how it looks like.

Segue Feature or Avoiding double opt-in when inviting your visitors opt-in to your webinars (improve conversion)

This is a useful feature that improves opt-in rates when your visitors are invited to register for a webinar.
A typical way how your visitor register for your webinar is that he or she has to enter his/her email to get an invitation to the webinar. But if you already have your subscribers’ emails, there’s no sense in making them enter their emails again. This is just redundant and reduces conversion dramatically.

And here comes into play ThriveLeads with Segue feature. With its functionality your subscribers get a link to a webinar without making them go through a ordinary boring registration process. Very efficient trick.

A typical process of signing up to webinars (50% conversion loss according to ThriveThemes’ data). And ThriveLeads improves sign-up conversion to webinars.


A typical process of signing up to webinars (50% conversion loss according to ThriveThemes’ data). And ThriveLeads improves sign-up conversion to webinars.

Using shortcodes to place forms in any part of your website

Using a shortcode (which look like [thrive_leads id=’123’]) you can place a form in any part of your content. It’s very convenient.

Fully Mobile Responsiveness

Mobile traffic increases. And ThriveLeads forms, in order to treat mobile users properly, look on mobile devices perfectly. ThriveThemes has developed other products that allow creating fully responsive content and landing pages. So, behind ThriveLeads plugin which allows you to create fully responsive opt-in forms, there’s a full arsenal of other tools that have made its positive impact on this plugin’s functionality.

A/B/C-etc Testing with automatic winner choosing

You may be aware of split testing, also known as A/B testing. It’s a good experimenting approach that allows you to vary anything (e.g. colors, call-to actions etc) to find a better converting combination.

ThriveLeads goes further and allows you to create not two, but multiple variations that you would like to test against each other.

When creating a new variation of a form, you are not limited to a specified set of options (such as colors, call-to-cations or images). You are free to alter anything using WYSIWYG drag-and-drop tool.

Moreover, not just a form design, but the type of opt-in forms, triggers, positions and their combinations can be tested.

In addition, there’s a nice functionality that allows you to automatically choose a winning combination. It means that you set up A/B/C testing (say, you’ve made 5 forms), you run it, and after a certain number of displays the best performing form is automatically chosen and since that moment only the winning form is shown to visitors.

Dozens and dozens of ready-to-use form templates

There is a good choice of beautiful templates of each form type (popups, ribbons, slide-ins etc). I would not say there’s a HUGE amount of templates available currently, but there’s definitely enough.

At the time of writing there are 10 ribbons, 46 popups (plus 17 multui-step popups), 36 widgets for sidebars, 35 post footers (plus 12 multi-step post footers), 12 slide-ins, 35 in-content forms, 11 screen-filling forms (plus 14 multi-step screen-filling forms), 6 scroll mats (plus 6 multi-step scroll mats).

You can see some live examples in this section above.

Also you can very easily create multi-step forms of any type of form with any number of states (or steps), even if there are no templates for them.

And you can take any template and alter it according to your needs (e.g. change an image, colors, size, location of elements – everything is easily editable).

Visual Editor and 100% Editable Design

One of the very nice options that ThriveLeads has is fully editable design. You can take a form template and use it as it is, or edit it as you want with easy WYSIWYG drag-and-drop tool. ThriveThemes has also another product (ThriveArchitect) which allows to edit design of your WordPress pages easily. And the functionality of this tool was used in ThriveLeads product. Very powerful addition.

You can have a look at this article to see some examples what you can do using ThriveArhitect page building tool inside ThriveLeads. So, you can use ThriveLeads not just for building lead-generating and opt-in forms, but also for enriching your page content.

 
And here are the screenshots of how design editing tool in ThriveLeads looks like (the panels in ThriveLeads editor):



ThriveArchitect – The Editor in ThriveLeads


Panel with elements you can add to your form:




The elements you can add building your opt-in Form or website blocks

The editor of element properties is a modern and neat:




Example of editing the element (text) properties

Besides, you can also watch some videos in tutorials if you want to see editing process in action. But there’s nothing special – quite intuitive stuff.

This powerful editing system allows you to easily create your unique forms.

Is ThriveLeads only for email opt-ins?

No, ThriveLeads is not just for getting email subscribers. Since all the forms are freely customizable, you can use it also for showing different content such as messages, advertisement, video, call-to-actions, social sharing buttons, Facebook and Disqus comments, links, promotions, special offers etc in responsive popup windows, other forms or inside your website content to everyone or to specifically targeted audience.

A simple example of such non-email usage of ThriveLeads I’ve made as a title for this post that you can see in the very beginning. All informational forms in this post, as well as a couple of images, I’ve created using ThriveLeads form templates and its in-built content builder.

Education materials for ThriveLeads

ThriveLeads not only provides you with tutorials and how-tos, but also teaches you the best practices of conversion marketing. After purchasing the plugin I started getting ThriveLeads newsletter email, which are very useful not only for easy and quick start with the plugin, but they also bring actionable marketing ideas and conversion-focused case studies.

Below I’ve put together some of the articles and tutorials available on ThriveThemes.com website regarding the ThriveLeads plugin. This list may be not complete, but it’s good for reference and getting a good understanding of what you can do with ThriveLeads and how you can do it. Even if you don’t use the plugin, these articles can be also useful, because it has good marketing advice and conversion improvement practices.

Do you have to read these articles to start using ThriveLeads? Absolutely not. But some introductory articles that explain the basic concepts (particularly about lead groups) are very helpful. And then when you forget anything or stumble at some point, this reference list can be helpfully at your hand.

All necessary information actually goes to you in newsletter after purchasing the plugin. It’s like a short educational course that lets you start using ThriveLeads right away and then use it more efficiently utilizing its powerful features.

Besides, when I played with the plugin and prepared this post, I looked at some other articles for deeper information about the plugin.

ThriveThemes’s website has a searchable knowledge base, so in addition to my list of articles you can simply use the search there.

So, enjoy my list of ThriveLeads articles and how-to tutorials!

But before all, I suggest going to the main ThriveLeads page and watching a video introduction, then click a link under the video (“Learn more…”). There’s also a short video overview that will help you to grasp a good idea of ThriveLeads user interface options.

After that you will be ready to understand easily other how-to articles and marketing tricks described in the articles presented below that you can do with ThriveLeads.

And here are the articles categorized for your convenience.

Is there a room for ThriveLeads improvement?

Of course, any software in our rapidly developing world has place for improvement, however complete and awesome it already is.

At first you are not likely to notice what you may miss in ThriveLeads because there are already a lot of things what you can do with this opt-in plugin. But as they say, appetite comes with eating and after some time you may find out what you would love to see more in ThriveLeads.

Also, in the beginning you may be a bit puzzled why some forms do not appear when you expect them to. The reason is in correct order of display of the forms and working correctly with display rules in Group Leads which determine what forms to show and where. I’ve seen on the support forum such questions arise quite often. Probably, ThriveLeads could have some more in-context help for the most frequent user possible issues like that. Anyway, it already has very useful in-context video help for interface elements of the plugin available right from the plugin dashboard.

Being a scrutinizer in my nature, after playing with the ThriveLeads for several days, I’ve found out that I would love to include in this plugin different libraries or collections with graphical elements (more icons, more images, more in-built designs for many UI elements which already exist).

Also I’d happy to see not dozens and dozens but hundreds and hundreds of pre-built designs of forms (although it already allows you to freely customize the design of any form or create a form from scratch). In addition, I wish there were one more trigger – show popup forms after a certain number of page views (I guess no opt-in plugin offer that!).

(Update: The guys keep adding new templates for content design and it makes a lot of sense, since there are page builder and a whole theme builder developed by the ThriveThemes team – see their full list of products on the ThriveThemes site)

Also, I’d like to track conversions not only with subscribing but with any action with UI elements (e.g. clicking on a link).

But these additions are absolutely not critical. And they are not available in other plugins anyway. By the way, you are free to request more features. ThriveLeads‘s team is very actively working on making the opt-in plugin even better.

Apart from that, there are some glitches that are subject to be corrected. For example, editing re-do and undo commands did not always work for me as expected. Not a very big deal and II guess it will be corrected sooner or later, but anyway, I’m telling you about my experience as it is.

There’s a thing that I believe may help you working with ThriveLeads content editor. Don’t be afraid of playing with margins and paddings for elements. They are used to place form elements wherever you want or make blank spaces around elements. And these values can be negative too (e.g. if you want to overlap elements)!

In addition, I’ve noticed that copying the custom forms is not very straightforward. You actually do not copy a form, but you save it first in a special directory with your own templates. You can use your templates any time later to create a new form. Nothing bad with this and it’s actually not the thing to improve, but it’s just a feature that you may miss when you just start working with ThriveLeads and want to copy your forms.

By the way, there is a cool form cloning tool within just one lead group (lead group is targeting your forms within this lead group to specific pages/posts etc). You just click a button and a form is duplicated.

Copying form or its parts can be leveraged with copying and editing HTML code that ThriveLeads let you access for its forms. However, this is bit limited because it’s not a pure HTML but code with ThriveLeads shortcodes. By the way, I’ve had great results with copying if both source and target forms are based on the same starting template.

Also you can’t copy elements from one form to another with a click of a button which is not very convenient. Anyway, I’m not aware of whether any other opt-in plugin allows this.

But again, if you need copy forms, just use your templates directory.

Overall, it may seem that I’m too critical and want too much. But when you get a great thing, after some time you understand that you are ready even for something even better, right? 🙂 Although it’s hard to get totally satisfying product for any kind of users, ThriveLeads is much closer to this ideal product than any other opt-in plugin. And as I see, ThriveThemes have made a great job on ThriveLeads opt-in plugin. Also, I expect this plugin as well as other products from this company to continue turning into an interactive rapid content developing suit and highly targeted audience management system.

Conclusion

ThriveLeads has more than enough features and options to be called the best opt-in plugin. Before purchasing it I already saw clearly that it’s the best opt-in plugin on the market. But when I got it and played with it I understood that it even stands a head above others (and continues to develop).

I can make with this one plugin what I could not do even with several opt-in plugins or services.

After working with ThriveLeads for a while I’ve seen even more new potential which are open for website owners with this opt-in plugin.

Moreover, I’m happy to know that ThriveThemes continues working on adding more whistles and bells to ThriveLeads.

ThriveLeads is the opt-in plugin of the next generation. It’s sooner a conversion generating system rather than a simply better opt-in plugin. With its functionality including combination of its features such as SmartLinks (determining already subscribed visitor and visitors segmentation), LeadGroups (opt-in forms management), variative form states, multi-step forms, event handling and thorough A/B/C/etc testing, it raises a much higher bar on treating, targeting and converting visitors as well as visualization and presentation of your content.

ThriveLeads is not just the powerful tool to convert visitors into subscribers, it’s the system to deeper convert subscribers (or any specific audience, e.g. visitors clicking certain links) into further targeted actions (e.g. special offers).

At the same time, ThriveLeads is not complicated. Simple things that you can do with other plugins can also be done easily with ThriveLeads. And using advanced features also becomes intuitive after playing with it or once you read a couple of short tutorials or watch how-to videos.

Future of ThriveLeads is very bright as I see it. Although this opt-in plugin is already way ahead of others, it has a lot of potential thanks to its extendable infrastructure and ThriveThemes‘s products compatibility.

ThriveThemes‘ team continues working on the plugin and I’d say that in future we are likely to see even more ready-to-use user interface features, as well as graphical and interactive elements.

This is a very worthy product that goes as a part of Thrive Suite subscription.


P.S.: Although I’m an affiliate of ThriveLeads product, this post (as well as any other articles and posts on my site) is not sponsored. Also, ThriveLeads is the only commercial opt-in plugin I use. I’ve chosen it above others for the reasons I’ve described in this post.

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