Are you looking for the best email plugins for WordPress?
With effective email plugins, you can fix and enhance email deliverability, grow your subscriber list, send notifications, and even power your email marketing campaigns.
| Email Plugin 📧 | Best For 👍 | Pricing 💰 |
|---|---|---|
| WPForms | Customizable form notifications | Free or $199.50/yr |
| WP Mail SMTP | Fixing email deliverability, tracking emails | Free or $49/yr |
| OptinMonster | Growing your list with lead capture on Exit Intent | Free or $9/month |
| MailPoet | WordPress email automation | Free or $10/month |
| Postie | Creating WordPress posts by sending email | Free with paid addons |
| Newsletter | Sending newsletters from WordPress site | Free or €69/year |
| Subscribe2 | Blog post promotion via email | Free |
Create Customized Form Confirmation Emails
Best Email Plugins for WordPress
Let’s dive into the features and capabilities of our favorite email plugins in more detail.
1. WPForms
WPForms is one of the most powerful plugins for sending emails originating from your WordPress forms.
Let’s consider basic email customizations in WPForms first. These involve editing your sender details, selecting one or multiple email recipients, and writing a custom subject line and content for the email.
But WPForms goes further than that in a few ways. For one, WPForms makes it easy to use dynamic placeholders in any part of your email. These are called Smart Tags.
So if you need any part of your email to include information directly from the submitted form entry, you can use Smarts Tags to achieve that.
It’s pretty common for WordPress sites to need multiple email notifications for the same form. With WPForms, you can create as many notifications as you need.
This is very handy if you want to send one email to the person submitting the form and another email to your admin email address for record-keeping.
Online sellers will also appreciate the ability to add order summaries that work like receipts inside form confirmation emails. This functionality is usually only supported by full-fledged eCommerce solutions, so WPForms is one of the rare form builder plugins to have this.
Finally, WPForms also sets itself apart from the competition by letting you choose from various email templates.
You also get easy controls for choosing a color scheme for your emails, changing the header image, and editing typography styles without any code.
Overall, WPForms makes it easy to customize your form notification emails, making everything almost entirely code-free and beginner-friendly.
Key Features:
- Dynamic email notifications
- Multiple email notifications with unique sending criteria and message
- Ready-made email templates and style customization
- Support for emails in dark mode
- 2,000+ form templates
Cost: WPForms Lite is free and supports one email notification per form along with basic templates and style customization. You can use the basic plan for $49.50 for the first year or upgrade to Pro for $199.50 for the first year to unlock the complete range of email templates and customizations.
2. WP Mail SMTP
WP Mail SMTP is one of the best WordPress SMTP services. Why? If you’re having issues with WordPress not sending emails or emails going to spam, WP Mail SMTP is the solution.
WP Mail SMTP is different from the other plugins on this list as it doesn’t focus on creating emails. Instead, it focuses on improving the deliverability of emails that you send on your site. These are called transactional emails, and these emails are for contact form submission notifications, password resets, welcome emails, order confirmations, etc.
WP Mail SMTP bypasses the default WP Mail function and forces your site to use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) settings instead. Because WP Mail SMTP adds authentication to the emails, the deliverability of your site’s outgoing emails is greatly improved.
You also get the ability to control WordPress notifications with this plugin. In fact, you can even change WordPress admin email and override the From Email settings for other plugins using WP Mail SMTP.
Key features:
- Replace WP mail with a dedicated email sending service
- Dedicated API integrations
- SMTP option to connect to any SMTP server
- Test email function
- Use any Gmail account to send emails from WordPress
Pro features:
- Email logging
- Open & click tracking
- Email reports
- Weekly email summaries
- White glove setup
Without WP Mail SMTP, your site’s outgoing email could be blocked or marked as spam. WP Mail SMTP ensures your emails are authenticated properly and sent via trusted third parties like SendLayer, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), or SMTP.com.
The best thing about WP Mail SMTP is the Setup Wizard: it walks you through the entire process.
Cost: There’s a free version of WP Mail SMTP that lets you use popular email providers such as Gmail, Brevo, and SMTP.com. The Pro version unlocks all advanced functionality and costs $99/yr. A Developer and Agency version exist for business applications, ranging from $199-$399/yr.
3. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the #1 email subscription plugin for WordPress. It allows you to capture emails anywhere on your site with popups, notification bars, and forms. If you want to pair it with your newsletter signup or lead capture form, you can easily embed forms from WPForms in your popups.
It also helps you create various different opt-in form types including full-screen welcome mats, notification bars, and slide-in notifications. This allows you to adapt your marketing tactics to suit your site and the way your customers respond.
For example, OptinMonster has exit-intent popups. These popups automatically appear when users move their mouse to click off your site. They’re useful to help gather those final email list signups by offering a special incentive, discount, or product.
OptinMonster also makes it easy for you to see the campaigns and pages that generated the best conversion rates. The best thing about OptinMonster is its ability to show the right message at the right time, helping you to grow your email marketing list faster.
Key Features:
- Beginner-friendly
- Dedicated WordPress integration plugin
- A gamified “spin the wheel” opt-in
- Integrates with multiple email marketing services
- Dozens of pre-built templates
- The visual drag-and-drop builder
- Powerful analytics and A/B testing
OptinMonster optimizes over 2 billion sessions each month by offering a wide array of targeting and personalization options, and that’s why marketers prefer using this tool.
Cost: You can start using OptinMonster for free. The paid plans range from just $9/month for the Basic plan (billed annually) to $49/month for the Growth plan. The most popular option is the Pro plan which runs at $29/month. Remember, all plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee.
4. MailPoet
MailPoet is a WordPress-focused email automation tool that lets you create newsletters inside WordPress.
It includes a full drag-and-drop editor for easy newsletter creation and intuitive subscriber management tools.
It also integrates directly with WooCommerce, so adding products to your newsletters in its editor is a breeze if you have an online store. Updating subscribers on your latest blog posts and news is also hassle-free due to MailPoet’s automation.
Key features:
- Easy list management
- Drag and drop builder
- Handles one-off or automated email campaigns
- Dedicated WooCommerce integration
Cost: The free plan comes with unlimited emails, which you can send to 1,000 subscribers. Premium plans are available from $15/mo, or purchase the premium plugin for $149 and connect it to your chosen plugin.
5. Postie
Postie is a very handy plugin that can convert emails into WordPress posts. Basically, it lets you create a WordPress post by simply sending an email. You can create, edit, and send the intended post via email using your regular email client.
Posting blogs by email is helpful if you want to write posts wherever you go. WordPress has its own post-by-email feature, but Postie has many more options. If you want to create a post without having to log into your WordPress site, this plugin is for you.
Key Features:
- Supports IMAP or POP3 servers
- Control settings for status, post format and type, category, and tags
- Edit headers and footers from email
- Gallery support
- Templates for images, videos, and audio files
- Email replies can be posted as comments on your blog post.
Cost: The core plugin is free. Download Postie from WordPress directly and if you like it, there’s an option to send donations. Additional addons are available from $5 – $49.
6. Newsletter
Newsletter essentially does exactly what it says on the tin. It creates and sends newsletters directly from your WordPress site. With it, you can expand your subscribers to lists, create opt-in forms, and use their simple drag-and-drop creator to send emails.
The free subscription includes unlimited subscribers with statistics, unlimited newsletters with tracking, subscription spam check with domain/IP black lists, and archive and locked content addons.
Upgrading to a premium account unlocks a variety of pro addons. You can integrate WooCommerce, Amazon SES, and Contact Form 7, add the geolocation capability to target subscribers by location, and track newsletter links with Google Analytics.
Cost: The standard plugin is free. Paid plans start at €69 per year.
7. Subscribe2
Subscribe2 is a WordPress email plugin that allows you to automatically send emails once new content has been published on your blog. You can either send your email subscribers 1 post at a time or create an email digest containing multiple posts.
Important: use this plugin with WP Mail SMTP so that you can send your emails through a transactional email provider. Why? Subscribe2 sends all notifications at exactly the same time, and, by using it with WP Mail SMTP, you won’t run into sending limits. Of course, this depends on the email provider you choose; we recommend SendLayer.
Cost: Subscribe2 is free to download.
Next, Stop Spam Form Submissions
Spam form submissions are a nightmare and an overall online nuisance.
However, more users these days have reservations about using reCAPTCHA, and many ask, is there a way to avoid using reCAPTCHA? There are plenty of reCAPTCHA alternatives to stop spambots harassing your email subscription forms.
Also, if you’re trying to pick an email marketing service, see our MailerLite vs Constant Contact comparison for a quick review of two super popular email services. If you’re looking to send a lot of emails, also check out this guide on the best bulk email plugins.
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