OptinMonster and SumoMe are popular marketing tools for collecting emails.
In this article, you’ll read a review detailing OptinMonster vs. SumoMe.
They help you convert your website visitors into leads.
In case you’re wondering what a lead means, below is a definition.
“A lead is someone who has indicated interest in your company, product or service.”
If someone visited your website and spent some minutes reading your page, they are probably interested in buying your product or service.
Since this visitor hasn’t given you their contact information (name, email address and phone number), they are not leads.
Collecting their details through a conversion tool like OptinMonster or SumoMe turns them into leads because you can now always reach them.
Now, that you know what a lead means, it’s about time you start collecting a lot of leads on your website.
So, let’s start the debate:
OptinMonster vs. SumoMe. Which one should you choose?
Features | Growth Funnel | OptinMonster | SumoMe |
---|---|---|---|
Price | $17/monthly | $29/monthly | $119/monthly |
Easy form builder | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Landing Page Builder | No | No | |
Pop-up forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
In-line forms in blog posts | Yes | Yes | Yes |
On-click triggered forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Mobile-friendly forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Sidebar/Widget forms | Yes | Yes | No |
Full-screen pop-up forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Exit-intent forms | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Ready-made form designs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Use multiple forms at the same time | Yes | Yes | No |
Tracking and stats | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Page level targeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
A/B testing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Social Proof | Yes | No | No |
Push Notification | Yes | No | No |
Unlimited campaigns | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Email platform integration | Integrate with most email marketing services | Works with major email services | Works with major email services |
Google Analytics integration | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Support | Live chat, knowledge base and email | Live chat and knowledge base | Knowledge base and ticketing system |
Price | 10 | 8 | 7 |
Ease of use | 10 | 7 | 8 |
Features | 10 | 5 | 9 |
Overall rating | 9.5 | 8 | 9 |
Get Started |
Below are the features you’ll be getting from OptinMonster or SumoMe.
OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology lets you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.
A marketing study found that 70% of people who visited your website will never return.
That means 95 – 98% of your marketing efforts going to waste.
OptinMonster lets you set the exit sensitivity on your website.
They have three options:
- Low
- Medium
- High
The “high” option lets you display your popup immediately the visitor is about to leave.
The “medium” option is a little bit slow. It waits to ensure that the visitor is really about to leave.
The “low” option could make you lose some potential subscribers (leads) because it’s the slowest to detect when the visitors want to leave.
The “Medium” option is my favorite on OptinMonster.
SumoMe’s exit-intent technology is much more different.
You’ll have to set the time when your popup should display before a user leaves.
You have the option to “always show” your popup if you want.
You can also select the time-based minute, hour, day, month or year
OptinMonster’s dashboard is a little bit beginner-friendly than SumoMe. SumoMe gives you more freedom to select when exactly you want your exit form to display.
You’ll have to know a little bit of what you are doing and how it impacts conversions to be effective using SumoMe’s exit-intent option.
Mobile-friendliness
Both OptinMonster and SumoMe are superb when it comes to mobile-friendliness.
OptinMonster lets you create mobile-specific popups. That is something you can achieve in SumoMe too.
All you need to do is select “Mobile Popup” when creating a new campaign in your OptinMonster dashboard.
Please do keep in mind that OptinMonster’s mobile-specific forms are only available to users on their “Pro” plan, which costs $29 per month
Also, in SumoMe, you can create forms that target specific devices visitors are using.
Both OptinMonster and SumoMe are incredibly mobile friendly.
So, which one wins when it comes to mobile-friendliness?
I’ll choose SumoMe here because it lets you create mobile-specific forms on free plans.
That is not possible in OptinMonster. You’ll have to be on their “Pro” plan, which costs $29 per month.
Floating bar
Floating bars attached themselves to the top or bottom of a visitor’s screen as they scroll along your website.
They are friendly ways of getting visitors to give you their email addresses without intruding their browsing experience on the site.
OptinMonster calls it “Floating Bar,” which is the most common name for it. SumoMe calls it “Smart Bar.”
When creating a campaign in OptinMonster, you’ll see the option to select Floating Bar in the campaign options.
You’ll see the option to choose “top” or “bottom” for your floating bar in OptinMonster.
It’s straightforward creating a Smart Bar in SumoMe.
All you have to do is choose “Smart Bar” in the “Form Type” section of SumoMe on your website.
Floating bars is one of the places the “OptinMonster vs. SumoMe” debate starts to get more interesting.
SumoMe is more popular in this aspect. So it’s a win for SumoMe.
Scroll box
If you want to grow your email list without being pushy about it, using scroll box is one of the best ways to do that.
With scroll box, you’ll have a form that is highly noticeable by everyone who lands on your website. The cool part is that it wouldn’t disrupt your site’s user experience.
Scroll box appears on the right-bottom corner of your website as visitors scroll down.
Scroll box is known as Slide-in form in OptinMonster.
You’ll have to be on the “Plus” or “Pro” plan, which cost $19 and $29 per month respectively before you can use it in OptinMonster.
SumoMe allows you to use Scroll Box for free on your website.
You can even set when you want Scroll Box to show on your website. You can choose after a visitor has seen a specific percentage of the content on your page.
That could be 40%.
SumoMe is the clear winner for Scroll box.
Inline Forms
Inline forms are forms that are on your content page.
Visitors who’ve spent enough time reading your content are your most engaged prospects. They might be interested in filling a form within your page.
SumoMe and OptinMonster both allow the use of inline forms.
The issue with OptinMonster as with most other features is that you can only use Inline Forms if you’re on their “Plus” or “Pro” plans.
Select “Inline/After Post” option in OptinMonster to begin using this service.
SumoMe lets you create Inline forms for free.
After creating an inline form, SumoMe can automatically add it to your content pages without you touching code.
This option isn’t available in OptinMonster. You’ll have to embed the code in a specific location in your content.
While there’s nothing wrong with this, sometimes, you don’t want your pages to be filled with codes.
Switching to a new service in the future would be difficult. All the codes all your web page might become obsolete.
SumoMe gives you the option that let them automatically embed your inline form for you instead of manually putting the code on your website.
When it comes to displaying inline forms on your website, SumoMe is the clear winner.
Sidebar option form
Sidebar forms are the most common forms for collecting visitors’ emails because sidebars are built to most sites’ design templates.
SumoMe doesn’t offer any sidebar form option. Perhaps, this could be because you can add sidebar forms using your email marketing service provider.
But the problem with most sidebar forms from traditional email marketing services is that they give no conversion data.
OptinMonster allows you to create sidebar forms and provides conversion analytics that shows you how well your forms are converting.
But to use this service in OptinMonster, you’ll need to be a “Plus” or “Pro” user.
If you use WordPress, OptinMonster has a plugin that will help you add your sidebar form to your widget in the WordPress editor.
OptinMonster recommends plugins like Dynamic Widgets, Conditional Widgets, and Widget Logic to help you control where the Sidebar form appears on your site.
If you don’t use WordPress, you’ll have to add the code to your site’s sidebar manually.
OptinMonster wins when it comes to collecting emails through your site’s sidebar.
Full-screen popups
Full-screen popups are call-to-actions that cover the entire page of your visitor’s browser.
In OptinMonster, this is called Fullscreen Welcome Gate.
In SumoMe, it’s called Welcome Mat.
To use Fullscreen Welcome Gate in OptinMonster, you’ll have to be a “Pro” user which costs $29 per month.
SumoMe allows you to use Welcome Mat as a free user. But the “Sumo” brand logo will show on your form.
If your website receives less than 5,000 visitors per month, you’ll have to pay $29 per month, which also gets you more features like “Pro Insights” and “Advanced Display Rules” in SumoMe.
Both tools let you set the display rules for your forms.
Timing is everything when trying to capture visitors’ emails.
It’s not a good practice to forcefully ask visitors to subscribe to your email list using Welcome Gate or Welcome Mat when they haven’t spent much time on your site.
I’ve come across sites that requested my email immediately after landing on their pages. Such tactic annoys web users like me.
Both tools are quite good with this feature. They make it so easy to use.
Form Builder and Page Level Targeting
OptinMonster and SumoMe have beginner-friendly form builders and exceptional page level targeting.
OptinMonster asks you to select from seven opt-in types:
- Lightbox popup
- Fullscreen welcome gate
- Slide-in form
- Floating bar
- Mobile popup
- Inline/After post
- Sidebar form
OptinMonster form builder is also easy to use.
SumoMe form builder dashboard is also easy to use and understand.
There are six form types you can create:
- Popup
- Scroll box
- Inline form
- Click Trigger popup
- Welcome Mat
- Smart Bar
Designing the forms is also easy:
OptinMonster and SumoMe give you the complete freedom to create and customize your forms to suit your brand.
They both offer remarkable page level targeting options. That means that you can create opt-in forms that can only display on specific pages on your website.
You can locate “Display Rules” in the form builder while logged in on OptinMonster.
SumoMe allows you to set where and when you want your opt-in form to display.
You can target specific pages, visitors, referrers, URLs – you’re given 100% full control over where and how your form appears.
Inside the SumoMe dashboard, click on “Forms,” then “List Builder.”
After creating your opt-in form, scroll down and click “Visibility.”
While there, you’ll see “Display Rules,” which allows you to set where and how your form displays on your website.
Both tools are well designed for beginners, and their page targeting options give you complete control of your opt-in forms.
There’s no favorite when it comes to choosing which one has the best form builder and offers the best page targeting options.
Pricing
Choosing the best out of OptinMonster and SumoMe is a tricky task.
OptinMonster has three paid plans.
To really enjoy most of the features that were mentioned in this review, you’ll have to choose the most popular plan which is “Pro” and costs $29 per month if you pay annually.
On the other hand, SumoMe lets you use all the features mentioned on this page starting from their lowest paid plan which costs $29 per month when you billed yearly.
The drawback is that you’ll only be able to use SumoMe as long as the number of visits to your website stay below 5,000.
If your website receives more than 5,000 unique visits, you’ll have to pay $59/month. Your unique visits must also stay below 50,000.
Although, you can host up to 3 sites on this plan.
When you consider the costs, OptinMonster is cheaper than SumoMe.
SumoMe is the best if you want more functionalities than what you’ll get from OptinMonster.
But if you want something affordable while still collecting emails on your site, OptinMonster is the ideal.
But GrowthFunnel is a better option than OptinMonster and SumoMe
If you want a lead-gen tool that offers you more at an incredible price, GrowthFunnel is your best option.
The great thing about GrowthFunnel is that it gives you personalization functionalities you won’t get in SumoMe and OptinMonster.
GrowthFunnel is more than just a tool for collecting emails.
It also helps you build your social media followers and increase your reach on social media.
We let you use our tool for an unlimited number of visitors. That is something our competitors can’t beat.
You’ll pay an amazingly cheap $17 per month to use GrowthFunnel when you pay yearly and have access to all features in our tool.
(We also plan to release more powerful features in the future, and you’re qualified to use them for free).