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OptinMonster v/s Icegram Engage

Find out the differences between OptinMonster and Icegram and speed up your email marketing game.

OptinMonster vs Icegram

Last updated on November 29, 2022

Optin Monster is one of the most popular email optin and subscription form plugins for WordPress. Over the last few months, many people have asked us: How does Icegram Engage compare to OptinMonster?… Which one is better? Optin Monster or Icegram Engage? I am already using Optin Monster on my site, why should I switch to Icegram Engage?

So here’s a feature by feature comparison of OptinMonster and Icegram Engage.

Focus – Optins vs Engagement

As the name suggests, OptinMonster is focused on email optins. It promises to convert visitors to subscribers and customers. Everything in Optin Monster plugin is centered around getting more subscriptions for your email list.

On the other hand, Icegram Engage serves to a much larger purpose. Icegram Engage can be used not only for email optin forms but also for promotional messages, welcome messages, announcements, notifications, special offers, user engagement, conversion optimization and much more. Icegram Engage is a flexible framework giving all the power to reach out to your visitors and engage them to take action.

Price – Free or Paid?

Both Icegram Engage, Optin Monster are both well known WordPress Lead Generation plugins.

However, Optin Monster is primarily a Saas service and thus even after downloading it’s WordPress plugin you still need to create an Optin Monster account to start using it. Optin Monster allows you to choose one of the three plans while creating the account- Basic ($49), Plus ($99) and Pro ($199). Thus, nothing is really free in this case.

On the other, Icegram Engage provides you lots of free stuff (without even asking you to subscribe let alone create an account!). Once you download Icegram Engage on your WordPress website, you can straightaway start creating unlimited campaigns, use it’s 4 free message types ( Popups, Actionbars, Messengers, Toast Notifications), try free themes and also make use of powerful targeting rules. Icegram Engage too has premium addons which increase the functionality of the free version. However, it doesn’t force users to buy these addons in any way.

Optin Types

Originally OM just provided a lightbox popup, but over time they have added more optin types to their package.

Icegram Engage includes four message types in the free, core package. And can be extended with many premium addons.

Message TypeOptin MonsterIcegram Engage
PopupsYesYes
Slide InsYes (Pro version)Yes (Messenger)
After Post WidgetYes (Plus & Pro version)Yes (Inline, addon)
Side BarsYes(Plus & Pro version)Yes
Footer BarYes(Plus & Pro version)Yes (Action Bar)
Header BarYes (Plus & Pro version)Yes
Notification MessagesNoYes
Overlays (addon)Yes (Pro version)Yes
Stickies (addon)NoYes
Badges (addon)NoYes
Ribbons (addon)NoYes

Display Positioning

Optin Monster has fixed position for each of its message types. Icegram Engage messages can be positioned at different places on the screen.

Message TypeOptin MonsterIcegram Engage
Floating Action BarBoth Header & Footer position (Plus and Pro version)Both Header & Footer Position
Slide In/ MessengerOnly Right Bottom CornerBoth Right & Left Bottom Corner
Inline PostsOnly After the Post EndAnywhere on the page

Hyper Targeting for niche message delivery

Both OptinMonster and Icegram Engage provide excellent targeting rules – you can show your messages throughout the site, or on specific pages. OM allows showing messages by blog categories also. Icegram Engage allows embedding messages anywhere on the site using shortcodes.

Design Customization – the editor

OM provides a simple and handy visual editor. This makes design customizations easy for beginners. Icegram Engage has sufficient options for design customization, and offers the native WordPress editor for further customizations. This is the same editor you’d use for writing blog posts and pages. And it’s great for most purposes.

If you wanted full control, you can customize messages with your own CSS and JavaScript if you like. But this advance customization will seem complicated to people who don’t know HTML/CSS.

Pricing – Paid vs Free + Premium Addons

Optin Monster is paid plugin – prices are $49/yr- Basic version, $99/yr- Plus version, $199/yr- Pro version.

Icegram Engage is free. Premium add-ons – that add many useful features are priced in the range of $7-$27.

Split Testing – Icegram Engage got it too!

OM for sometime now had a notch over Icegram Engage on account of the Split testing feature. But I’m happy to break the news that Icegram Engage has launched that feature as well. Check Icegram Engage Split Testing add-on right away.

Note: If Icegram Engage has blown you away… the Split Testing add-on just makes it better.

Conclusion

You’d see that Icegram Engage is a great alternative to OptinMonster.. Better in many aspects and catching up in the rest. OptinMonster has been around for a while, and has an edge in some aspects. Icegram Engage is a new entrant and is trying to innovate in a highly crowded market.

And honestly, we like a lot of things from Optin Monster. But we built Icegram Engage because Optin Monster didn’t do a lot of what we wanted…

Our intention is to incorporate best features from all similar solutions into Icegram Engage, take out all the crap, and finish it up with our own value additions!

What’s your take?

17 thoughts on “OptinMonster v/s Icegram Engage

  1. One of the most important features are the split tests… Does icegram offer that too.

    1. Split testing is in final stage of development. We expect to release it by the end of Jan 2015. 🙂

      1. Great news! 😉

  2. Icegram has already released it’s Split Testing Add-ons..
    Kindly have a look http://goo.gl/gcu2yS

  3. FYI – OptinMonster has had a lot of updates lately, including being able to work on non-WordPress sites. You may want to check it out for your latest review: http://optinmonster.com

  4. Thanks for comparing the 2 products. I’ve found comparing both programs quite difficult to understand the difference between the two. Thanks for the explanation.

  5. The best feature you could add that optinmonster does not have is a one click optin.

    For example as a config option you could capture email and name PLUS you could specify using Facebook, Google Account or Linkedin account which would authenticate against those systems ask for access to personal details and then add that info to the signup.

    I don’t know why you guys don’t offer it. Everyone has a FB G+ or LND account now days and its WAY faster and provides a method of updating the email details as the user changes them too.

    1. Hey,

      That’s a really great feature add. Right now Icegram does not provide something like this but if such feature is available in some social connect plugin that you use or maybe within the email subscription forms HTML embed code you can easily use it with Icegram. Nevertheless, we will be taking this up on our roadmap. Thank you for the suggestion. Appreciated!

  6. I was aware of optin monster but reading this great post today i am going to install icegram ….

    1. Do try Icegram out. And also share your experience with us 🙂 Thank you!

  7. Does Icegram integrate with Mailchimp?

    1. Yes Icegram integrates with MailChimp.

  8. hey @icegram, have you started allowing users to sign up thru FB, G+?

    1. Hi,
      Icegram doesn’t provide direct integration with FB and G+.
      But you can use any third party plugin and use it with Icegram.
      Hope this helps you.

  9. Thank You.

  10. I might be interested. So, my objective is to increase our company’s blog subscribers and to plug them into a SendinBlue list directly after they subscribe. So, I’ve 2 questions:
    1. Are intent-based triggers available in the free plan? (Stuff like pop-up on ‘x’ % read, time-based pop-ups, slide in pop-ups when completing the blog)
    2. Can I integrate the subscribers into a list in SendinBlue? If so, how?

    1. Yes, you can easily integrate your SendinBlue mailing list to Icegram using a simple HTML integration, here are the steps.

      Also, the free version of Icegram only provides one free trigger that is to show a popup after ‘X’ time. For getting the other triggers you will have to take the Icegram Engage Pro Plan.

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