7 Best Free WordPress Countdown Timer Plugins

A countdown timer plugin is an application that incorporates a clock on your website that counts down to a specific date or time. It shows how much time is remaining until the respective event begins. It creates a sense of excitement, urgency, and anticipation among the users. 

Countdown timer plugins can serve various purposes for a website. This is why they are widely used in different types of websites, like eCommerce, agencies, service platforms, etc., to emphasize flash sales or discounts available for a limited time to boost sales.

Today, it has become an important marketing feature for most websites. In this blog post, we’ll talk about the best free WordPress countdown timer plugins, explaining their key features and pros & cons. Let’s begin.

How to Choose the Best Free WordPress Countdown Timer Plugins

Like any other plugin, there are several points you must consider before finally deciding on a countdown timer plugin. Take a quick look at them below.

a. Different Types of Countdown Timers

It’s important to have different types of countdown timers. Because it will give you more flexibility in deciding which one to display on your website based on their designs, features, functionalities, and event type.

b. Design and Customization Options

Without customization, it’s impossible to align the design of your countdown timer with your website. So, check if the plugin offers enough customization options like layout, color, fonts, animation, and templates.

c. Performance and Speed

The countdown timer should be able to increase engagement with traffic and users without compromising the speed of the website. Heavy plugins can cause slow loading speed, resulting in a negative impression.

d. Mobile-Friendliness

Since a large percentage of users browse websites using their phones, your countdown timer needs to be responsive. The plugin should adjust the layout of your countdown timer in such a way that it automatically fits any screen size.

e. Availability of the Premium Version

Most free plugins offer only a few basic features. So, although you may start with the free version, after a few days, you might be looking for its premium version for advanced features. If it’s not available, you’ll surely suffer. So, choose a plugin that has a premium version as well.

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Best Free WordPress Countdown Timer Plugins

Today, you’ll find a vast collection of WordPress plugins offering the countdown timer feature. Researching and exploring all of them will take you a lot of time. So, we’ve shortlisted the best ones of them so that you can make a quick decision right away with confidence. Keep reading!

1. Ultimate Blocks

Ultimate Blocks is a popular Gutenberg block plugin. It includes 25+ feature-rich custom blocks by which you can create and present your content in captivating ways on your web posts and pages. Among them, the Countdown is a useful block to create countdown timers to build anticipation for upcoming events.

The plugin offers two styles for the countdown block – odometer and circular. You can display five different time units – weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. You may show all or just a few selected ones. The block is highly responsive, meaning it automatically adjusts its layouts on all devices and screen sizes.

You can customize the layout and elements of the block with an extensive palette of colors. In addition to Countdown, the most popular blocks of the plugin are rating, review, table of content, call-to-action, tabbed content, button, progress bar, etc. So, having the plugin in your hand will remarkably enhance your content creation capabilities.

Key features of Ultimate Blocks:

Gutenberg-optimized: All the blocks of the plugin have been built specifically for the Gutenberg block editor. So it easily integrates with any Gutenberg-friendly themes and plugins.

Highly Customizable: The plugin offers extensive customization options so you can adjust colors, layouts, typography, and styles to match your website design.

Multiple Countdown Styles: As said, the block offers two countdown styles. The Odometer is like a classic watch that just rolls up or down the time. The Circular displays time units (weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds) in a circular format.

Regular Updates: Ultimate Blocks frequently releases updates to ensure the plugin seamlessly works well and no bug, error, or security issue can ruin your website.

Lightweight and SEO-Friendly: The plugin is designed to load quickly and efficiently without affecting the site’s speed. Besides, it includes schema markup for the review block to give you SEO leverage and improve your site’s ranking.

Pricing of Ultimate Blocks:

Ultimate Blocks has a free version available. Its premium version starts from $49/year with a 14-day refund guarantee.

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2. HurryTimer

HurryTimer is a versatile countdown timer plugin. It is particularly effective for event-based sales or limited-time offers. With its user-friendly interface, you can create various countdown campaigns, from one-time events to ongoing promotions. 

In its Lite version, HurryTimer offers features like cookie and IP detection for evergreen campaigns, WooCommerce integration, and customizable expiry actions (like hiding the timer, redirecting users, or updating product stock). 

It also supports multiple display options, such as recurring campaigns, where timers automatically repeat based on your pre-defined rules. The PRO version offers options for advanced design customizations, managing recurring campaigns, sticky announcement bars, and more.

Key features of HurryTimer:

Manage Recurring Campaigns: You can schedule timers to repeat minutely, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly for running automated promotional cycles.

Detect User Session: It ensures countdown timers remain unique per logged-in user. This makes it perfect for exclusive member-based deals and limited-time offers.

Set Expiry Actions: When the countdown ends, the plugin automatically hides the timer, redirects users to a URL, displays a message, or changes WooCommerce product availability.

WooCommerce Integration: It displays countdown timers on product pages, triggers expiry actions like hiding the ‘Add to Cart’ button, and updates stock status when the timer runs out.

Live Design Customizer: You can customize the countdown’s appearance in real-time, including labels (days, hours, minutes, seconds) and colors.

Pricing of HurryTimer

HurryTimer has a free version available. Its premium version charges $39/year with a 14-day refund warranty.

3. Countdown Timer Ultimate

Countdown Timer Ultimate is a feature-rich plugin that creates urgency and scarcity by creating countdown clocks. It allows you to create unlimited timers, customize expiration settings, and style the countdown to match your brand. 

The plugin flawlessly integrates with major page builders like Elementor, Divi, and WPBakery. So you won’t face any struggle placing countdown timers on your web posts and pages. The premium version comes with 12+ stunning designs, including recurring timers and advanced customization options.

Key features of Countdown Timer Ultimate:

Gutenberg and Shortcode Support: You can easily add timers to posts/pages using shortcodes or Gutenberg blocks.

eCommerce Integration: It’s compatible with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads for limited-time sales.

Coupon Expiration: Coupon is a great way to boost sales. When the countdown timer reaches zero, the coupon will automatically be deactivated.

Set Clock Expiration Events: You can set it to display custom text or actions when the campaign ends, or the timer reaches zero.

Manage Recurring Countdowns: Easy to set up daily, weekly, and monthly repeating countdowns based on your requirements.

Works with any Page Builder: As the plugin generates shortcodes for each countdown timer, you can easily embed them on your posts/pages using any page builder plugin.

Pricing of Countdown Timer Ultimate

The plugin has a free version available. Its premium version starts from $99/year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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4. Countdown, Coming Soon, Maintenance

Countdown, Coming Soon, Maintenance is a simple and completely free-to-use countdown timer plugin. It offers various styles to create and display countdown timers for any activity, like special events, sales, flash hours, website launches, coming soon messages, and more.

The most popular countdown types of the plugin are Circle Countdown, Digital Timer, Flip Clock, WooCommerce Countdown, and even Coming Soon pages. The plugin generates for each countdown timer you create. By embedding them, you can display the countdown timers anywhere on your web posts and pages. 

Key features of Countdown, Coming Soon, Maintenance:

Multiple Countdown Types: Includes Circle Countdown, Digital Timer, Flipclock Countdown, and more.

WooCommerce Countdown: Flawlessly works with WooCommerce for product sales and coupons.

Supports Shortcodes: As it supports shortcodes, you can use this plugin both with Gutenberg and any page builders.

Coming Soon Page: You can set up a ‘Coming Soon’ page with a countdown timer for upcoming events or site launches.

Popup Countdown: Allows you to display countdown timers in popups to grab user attention.

Pricing of Countdown, Coming Soon, Maintenance

The plugin doesn’t have any premium version available. It’s completely free to use.

5. Countdown Timer

With the Countdown Timer plugin, you can create unlimited timers and add them to your web pages, posts, and widgets. This is a perfect plugin for anyone looking to add urgency to their website or highlight important events, sales, or promotions. 

It’s fully responsive and looks great on all devices. You can customize the day, hour, minute, and second labels of the timer. Furthermore, you can choose from various actions to take once the timer expires, like displaying a message or redirecting to another page.

Key features of Countdown Timer:

Customizable Text Fields: Allows you to personalize the text in the day, hour, minute, and second fields to match your event or promotion’s theme and style.

Customize Expiry Action: You can choose the action that should happen once the countdown expires, like redirecting to a new page, displaying a message, or hiding the timer.

CSS3 Animation Effects: It lets you add stylish CSS3 animations to your countdown timer, creating an eye-catching display that engages your visitors.

Premium Support: Being a pro user will give you access to their dedicated support to address any plugin issues or questions whenever you face.

Widget Integration: You can add countdown timers to the sidebar of your website by simply dragging and dropping the widget into your theme’s widget area.

Pricing of Countdown Timer

This plugin has a free version available. Its premium version starts from $13/year with no clear refund policy.

6. Sales Countdown Timer

The Sales Countdown Timer plugin is designed to boost sales by creating urgency and excitement in WooCommerce stores. You can add countdown timers to product pages, category pages, and even the shop page to motivate customers to purchase before time runs out. 

With a simple shortcode, the plugin can display a timer on various product pages to alert customers when sales will end or how many items are left in stock. The plugin also enables store owners to schedule sale campaigns with specific start and end times, which provides flexible timing for promotions.

Key features of the Sales Countdown Timer:

Display Upcoming Sale Message: You can display a customizable upcoming sale message on product pages to let customers know when the sale will begin.

Show Sale Ends Message: You can also show a message when the sale will end to create a sense of urgency and drive conversions.

Progress Bar for Sale: It exhibits how many products are sold and how many remain in stock, with customizable messages using shortcodes.

Sale Timer in WooCommerce: Set countdown timers based on specific sale times or scheduled campaigns, even including WooCommerce sale timings.

Checkout Countdown Timer: Allows to place a countdown timer on the checkout page with offers like free shipping or discounts based on cart total.

Pricing of Sales Countdown Timer:

Sales Countdown Timer has a free version available. Its premium version charges $20/year with a 30-day refund policy.

7. Easy Timer

Although Easy Timer isn’t very popular, it has enough number of features to create good-looking countdown timers. Its count-up timers show how much time has passed since a chosen date or how long a visitor stays on a webpage, helping to track time and manage content.

In addition, the plugin can automatically modify content (dynamically update sections) based on scheduled times. It’s available in many languages. This ensures the accessibility of a wide range of users to the plugin’s content.

Key features of Easy Timer:

Countdown Timers: Show the time left until the specific date appears or the time reaches zero.

Count-up Timers: Track the time that has passed since a selected date or the time a visitor spends on a webpage.

Shortcode Support: You can easily display the timers by embedding shortcodes on the Gutenberg editor or page builders.

Customizable Timer Display: You can design how the timer should appear with various formatting options for date and time.

Pricing of Easy Timer

Easy Timer doesn’t have any premium version. So it’s completely free to use.

Conclusion

Hope you’ve enjoyed this in-depth discussion on the best free WordPress countdown timer plugins. We have carefully picked the plugin in this list based on popularity, ratings, and reliability to ensure you get the most effective solutions for your website. 

It’s now your time to choose the one that aligns with your goals, budget, and business needs. We request you to let us know through the comment box which plugin you have selected for your site. Your comments and feedback will inspire us to cover more helpful articles like this one in the future.