7 Best Hello Bar Alternatives for WordPress

The Hello Bar is a popular WordPress plugin by which you can create notification bars, pop-ups, or banners that appear at the top of a page(s). You can display call-to-actions, promotions, or important messages in a highly visible way with this plugin to drive attention and increase conversions.

Many users love this plugin for its simplicity and effectiveness. However, there are various reasons why you may look for alternatives to the Hello Bar plugin. A key reason might be that you are looking for a tool that offers more advanced features and customization options.

The good news is that there are numerous plugins that you can use instead of Hello Bar. So, in this article, we’ll discuss the best Hello Bar alternative for WordPress, covering their key features. Before that, we’ll cover some theoretical parts. Get started!

Essential Features to Look for in a Hello Bar Alternative

Before switching to a different popup-building tool, there are several key points you must consider carefully. Otherwise, you may fail to choose the right tool that can offer you better leverage. Take a quick look at the points below.

a. Customization and Design Flexibility

The alternative plugin you choose should allow you to design the notification bar or pop-up to align with your brand’s color scheme, fonts, and style. It should also let you adjust placement, size, animations, and effects for a great appearance.

b. Advanced Targeting and Personalization

Without advanced targeting options, like displaying messages based on user location, device type, traffic source, or browsing behavior. Personalization should include features like showing different messages to new and returning visitors separately.

c. Multiple Display Options

While Hello Bar primarily focuses on top-bar notifications, the alternative must support multiple display options, like pop-ups, slide-ins, floating bars, exit-intent pop-ups, or even full-screen overlays. 

d. A/B Testing Capabilities

A/B testing (split testing) is essential for optimizing performance. With this feature, you can create multiple variations of your notification bars and test different headlines, CTAs, or designs to see which one drives the best results. This data-driven approach helps refine your strategy and maximize conversions over time.  

e. Integration with Email Marketing Tools

If you’re planning to grow your email lists or drive leads, the alternative tools must have integrations with email marketing services like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or HubSpo.  

f. Smart Triggers

Smart triggers like exit-intent and scroll-trigger can engage visitors by showcasing popups to web visitors at the right time. These features can play a significant role in conversion. Explore the best lightbox WordPress plugins.

g. Pricing and Scalability

Cost is an important factor, especially for small businesses and startups. Hello Bar is indeed a costly tool for many small businesses. So, while looking for alternatives, choose the one that offers a relatively lower price but is stable in performance.

Best Hello Bar Alternatives for WordPress

Now, considering the above points in mind, we will list and describe the best alternative plugins to Hello Bar in this section. This will make it easier for you to research and find the right plugin in the quickest possible time. Keep reading!

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is one of the most powerful Hello Bar alternatives. It’s a prominent lead generation plugin. It has a drag-and-drop editor to create popups, floating bars, slide-ins, and exit-intent popups. With full-screen welcome mats and gamified spin-to-win popups, it allows you to engage visitors in various ways.

The tool also offers smart targeting features to display popups and notifications based on user behavior, geolocation, and past interactions, which is great for personalization. It has integration with many established platforms like WooCommerce, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and HubSpot. 

Key features of OptinMonster

Countdown Timers: OptinMonster offers static and evergreen countdown timers. These can create urgency for limited-time offers, flash sales, and special promotions to drive sales.

A/B Testing for Optimization: The built-in A/B testing feature can help you experiment with different headlines, button colors, images, and CTAs to find the best-performing campaign variations.

Exit-Intent Technology: It’s one of the most exciting features of the plugin. It can track user behavior and display targeted offers to them just before they leave their sites.

Various Campaign Types: OptinMonster offers a variety of campaign types. For example, lightbox popups, floating bars, slide-in popups, gamified spin-to-win popups, and more.

Popup Templates: OptinMonster library includes 100+ readymade templates that can save you much valuable time as you don’t have to start popup creation from scratch.

Pricing of OptinMonster

OptinMonster has a free version. Its premium version starts from $7/month with a 14-day refund policy.

Here’s a list of the best WordPress promo bar plugins.

2. Sleeknote

Sleeknote is a user-friendly popup builder. Using its intuitive drag-and-drop editor and 130+ customizable templates, you can create engaging popups, slide-ins, gamified forms, and more very efficiently in a short time. The plugin supports smart targeting.

This means you can display different messages separately to the web visitors based on their behavior, location, and other factors. You can showcase exclusive deals to return customers to prevent cart abandonment. Sleeknote integrates Shopify, HubSpot, Google Analytics, Zapier, and countless other platforms.

Key features of Sleeknote

Built-in Analytics: The built-in analytics of the plugin helps you track campaign performance in real-time to optimize them well to boost various conversion rates.

Flexible Refund Period: You can ask for a refund within up to 100 days after purchasing the plugin, which is so rare in the case of other plugins.

Integrations with 1,000+ Tools: You won’t find many other Hello Bar alternatives that offer as many platform integrations as Sleeknote.

Precise Personalization: As the plugin has a smart targeting feature, it can help you create and deliver personalized popups based on visitor behavior.

Free Custom Popup Design by Experts: Unlike the other plugins, Sleeknote maintains an in-house team that designs custom popups for free according to your needs so you can start your campaigns very quickly.

Pricing of Sleeknote

Sleeknote offers only a 14-day free trial. Its premium version starts at $49/month if billed annually with a 100-day refund guarantee.

3. WP Notification Bar Pro

With WP Notification Bar Pro, you can create unlimited notification bars, set multiple display options, and decorate them with customizable colors. The helpful set of features the plugin has can aid you in capturing leads, boosting engagement, and driving conversions.

By setting flexible display conditions, you can hide or show notifications based on based on visitor type, device, and referral sources for properly delivering targeted messages. Besides all these, you can run A/B split testing and real-time tracking of performance (views and clicks). 

Key features of WP Notification Bar Pro

Import and Export Settings: If you have multiple websites, you can easily import and export notification bar settings among the websites.

Translation-Ready: WP Notification Bar Pro works with all WordPress themes and supports multiple languages for global reach.

Priority Support & Regular Updates: You will get 24/7 customer support and updates regularly for top-notch security.

Supports Various Content Types: The plugin supports newsletter subscription forms, countdown timers, social media feeds, related posts, and embedded videos.

Integrates Email Marketing Solutions: WP Notification Bar Pro flawlessly integrates the most popular email marketing solutions to grow your email lists.

Price of WP Notification Bar Pro

The name explains that it’s a premium plugin. It charges $19/year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Check the best WordPress countdown timer plugins.

4. Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads is another premium-only plugin and alternative to Hello Bar. It has an intuitive drag-and-drop editor by which you can create a variety of form types, including popups, sticky ribbons, slide-ins, and in-content forms. You can display them based on visitor behavior, categories, tags, or even specific pages.

By leveraging the built-in A/B feature of the plugin, you can compare different form variations to decide on the best-performing one of them in the end. You will really love its in-depth analytics and reporting tools to track your form performance and optimize their strategies.

Key features of Thrive Leads

Pre-Designed Templates: Thrive Leads maintains a vast library with 420+ readymade opt-in templates. They include sticky ribbons, lightboxes, post footers, widgets, scroll mats, and more.

Email Marketing Integrations: The plugin integrates email marketing services like email marketing services like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, and more.

Mobile-Specific Customization: You can design mobile-specific popups and notification bars, so your campaign doesn’t miss out on the visitors coming from mobile devices.

SmartLinks: This feature shows different offers to existing subscribers instead of opt-in forms based on their interaction history.

SmartExit: it triggers the exit-intent popups to capture visitors before they leave just right before they leave the website.

Pricing of Thrive Leads

Thrive Leads have no free version available. Besides, you cannot buy the Thrive Leads plugin alone. You have to buy the entire Thrive Suit package, where you’ll get the Thrive Leads plugin included. So, the Thrive Suit charges $299/year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. WPFront Notification Bar

WPFront Notification Bar is a simple plugin. You can create attention-grabbing notification bars and position them at the top or bottom of the page, with options to make them sticky or appear delayed according to predefined conditions. You can also control the visibility of the bar by selecting specific pages, posts, or user roles.

This can make it easy for you to deliver messages precisely to the different audience segments. WPFront Notification Bar supports shortcodes, customizable colors, and button actions. The button can redirect users to a desired destination post or page.

Key features of WPFront Notification Bar

Flexible Placement: As already said, you can choose to position the notification bar at the top or bottom of the page. You can also make it sticky for continuous visibility.

Shortcode Support: By embedding shortcodes, you can add and display your notification bars or forms anywhere on the website.

Scheduled Notifications: You can schedule the notification bars by setting the start and end dates. This is great for time-sensitive announcements, promotions, or updates.

Dismiss and Reopen Options: Users can close the notification bar, with an option to reopen it later if needed.

Timed Display: It’s easy to set a delay by defining when the bar should appear and how long it remains visible before auto-closing.

Pricing of WPFront Notification Bar

WPFront Notification Bar has a free version available. Its premium version starts from $49/year with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Explore the best Popup Maker alternatives for WordPress.

6. Poptin

Poptin is a multi-purpose and feature-rich lead-generation plugin. You can create engaging popups, contact forms, and notification bars, enabling various useful options with this plugin. With its intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can design fully customizable lightboxes, floating bars, slide-ins, and gamified popups without coding.

It offers advanced targeting options, like exit intent, scroll triggers, time-based display, and geo-location targeting. So you can be sure your messages reach the right audience at the perfect moment. Poptin is undoubtedly great for any online business, from small to mid-sized. If you can handle large business with WordPress, Poptin could be great there as well.

Key features of Poptin

Cart Abandonment Recovery: Poptin contributes to reducing cart abandonment by showing targeted popups and notification bars with discount offers or reminders when a visitor tries to leave the checkout page. 

Geo-Targeting for Region-Specific Offers: With geo-targeting, you can display popups based on visitors’ locations. This is great for displaying region-specific discounts and promoting local events.

Template Library: Poptin offers 50+ readymade and customizable popup templates. You just have to adjust their content and design to align with your branding.

Analytics Dashboard: The comprehensive analytics dashboard lets you track performance, measure ROI, and monitor user engagement across all your popups.

Integration: Poptin flawlessly integrates with popular email marketing tools like MailChimp, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and ConvertKit.

Pricing of Poptin

Poptin has a free version available. Its premium version starts from $25/month with a 30-day refund policy.

7. Icegram

Like the above plugins, you can consider Icegram in your checklist. It includes lots of lead generation and conversion toolkit for growing email lists and boosting sales efficiently. The plugin has the caliber to engage audiences with a wide range of popups, top bars, slide-ins, and action-triggered opt-ins.

Using its advanced targeting options, you can display your messages at the right time to the audiences through exit-intent triggers, scroll-based popups, and timed campaigns. It smoothly integrates with lots of popular email marketing platforms to capture leads and instantly sync them to your email lists.

Key features of Icegram

Smart Retargeting and Personalization: You can show personalized messages based on visitor sessions, returning customers, or time-based criteria.

Mini-Games and Coupon Codes: Engage users with gamified elements like spin-the-wheel and scratch cards to offer discounts and rewards in a fun way.

Countdown Timers to Create Urgency: The plugin includes countdown timers to create a sense of urgency for encouraging visitors to take immediate action on offers and promotions.

Support Shortcode: Allows to display popups and lead-generation forms on any post, page, or sidebar widgets by respectively embedding their shortcodes.

Template Library: It comes with 100+ professionally designed and mobile-responsive templates for popups, opt-ins, and CTAs to create high-converting campaigns quickly.

Pricing of Icegram

Icegram has a free version available. Its premium version starts from $129/year with a 30-day refund policy.

Final Thoughts

According to a research conducted by OptiMonk, well-designed popups can have an average conversion rate of around 11.09% and in the case of the cart abandonment rate, it could be 17.12%. Again, gamified popups can perform 132% better than the popups without gamification.

This indicates that being able to use popups in the right way can make a great contribution in your business growth and revenue. However, without the right tool at hand, it’s impossible to create and maintain popup campaigns the right way.

Hope you will be able to select a great Hello Bar alternative for your site from the list covered above. Now, it’s your time to take action. Explore these Hello Bar alternatives, experiment with their features, and find the one that best fits your goals.