OptinMonster, Poptin, Wisepops and Privy all sell popups — but they count different things. One charges for popups actually shown, one for unique visitors whether a popup appeared or not, one for every pageview on your site, and one no longer publishes self-serve prices at all. That counting rule, not the headline price, decides what a growing site really pays.
Basic, first-year introductory price billed annually ($108/year; renews at $210/year). Monthly billing is $21/mo. Charged per campaign impression — a popup that is actually shown.
Free plan covers 1,000 unique visitors/month. Basic is $20/mo billed annually ($25 monthly) for 10,000 visitors. Charged per unique visitor, not per display.
Pop-ups & Displays plan, priced by monthly pageviews: $24/mo up to 10,000 pageviews. Email plans start at $30/mo and include displays. No free plan — 15-day trial.
Managed plans are quoted after a demo and traffic audit — there is no public self-serve price grid. A Shopify-only self-serve plan is listed at $299/mo for up to 500,000 pageviews. No free plan — 14-day trial.
| OptinMonster | Poptin | Privy | Wisepops | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | WordPress / content sites and stores that target popups narrowly | Small sites, blogs and stores starting out or on a tight budget | Shopify, BigCommerce and Wix stores wanting capture + email + SMS together | Established brands that want strategy and campaign builds included |
| What you are charged for | Campaign impressions — counted only when a visitor actually sees a campaign. Site pageviews are not billed | Unique visitors — anyone who loads a page carrying the snippet in a 30-day window counts once, popup shown or not | Pageviews (Displays plan) — every page load counts, popup shown or not. Email plans charge per mailable contact instead | Traffic-based managed plan — price set after an audit. The Shopify plan is framed as a pageview allowance (500,000/mo) |
| Free option | No free plan. WordPress plugin signups get 500 impression credits; paid plans carry a 14-day money-back guarantee | Yes — free forever: 1,000 visitors/mo, 1 domain, unlimited popups, no card | No free plan — 15-day free trial, no card required | No free plan — 14-day free trial |
| Paid plans from | Basic $9/mo intro, billed annually ($108; renews $210/yr). Monthly billing $21/mo | Basic $20/mo billed annually ($25 monthly) | Displays $24/mo up to 10,000 pageviews/mo. Email from $30/mo (includes displays) | Managed from $599/mo after a demo. Shopify self-serve $299/mo |
| How the allowance scales | 2,500 / 10,000 / 25,000 / 100,000 impressions across Basic / Plus / Pro / Growth | 10,000 / 50,000 / 150,000+ visitors across Basic / Pro / Agency | Pageview steps: 25k $48 · 50k $84 · 100k $168 · 500k $420 · 1M $600 per month | Shopify plan covers up to 500,000 pageviews/mo; managed allowances are set per account |
| Sites included | 1 / 2 / 3 / 5 sites by plan; more via Enterprise | 1 domain on Free & Basic, 4 on Pro, unlimited on Agency | Priced per store / account rather than by a published site count — confirm for multi-store setups | Not published as a tier grid — set in the plan / audit |
| Removing the vendor's branding | Badge removal starts on Pro; custom branding on Growth | Paid plans are listed as unbranded (popups & forms) | No separate branding-removal tier is published for the Displays plan — confirm in the app before relying on it | Full platform on every managed plan (no feature gating, per the vendor); no separate branding tier published |
| What happens at the limit | Campaigns are never switched off — the account is automatically moved up to the next tier (per the vendor's pricing FAQ) | All popups and forms stop showing to new and returning visitors until you upgrade or the 30-day window resets | After the trial, displays are deactivated until a paid plan starts. Paid-plan overage handling follows the pageview step you move into — confirm current terms | Not published — no public pause / overage / forced-upgrade policy was found, so get it in writing before signing |
| Trade-off to know | Headline prices are first-year introductory rates; renewals are roughly double | A second "Emails & Poptins" price ladder now shares the pricing page and bundles far fewer popup visitors — check which ladder you are on | Pageview billing charges for traffic that never sees a popup, and there is no published annual discount | No public price grid on the main site, and older "$49-style" prices still circulating online no longer appear on the vendor's own pages |
Prices checked November 2026. Prices are USD, before tax where applicable, as published by the vendors. OptinMonster's annual figures are first-year introductory prices; the same pricing page lists renewal prices of $210 / $570 / $870 / $1,470 per year for Basic / Plus / Pro / Growth. Poptin's figures are its popup-only ladder. Plans and definitions change — always confirm the current price, the billing definition and the over-limit policy on the vendor's site before you buy.
To make the billing definitions concrete, here is one worked example. Take a small store or media site with 50,000 pageviews a month from 20,000 unique visitors, where targeted popups (exit-intent plus timed offers on key pages) are actually shown 15,000 times. The figures below are simple arithmetic on the published prices listed above — an illustration of the counting rules, not a quote and not a result we measured.
| Tool | What gets counted for this site | Plan it lands on | Annual cost at published prices |
|---|---|---|---|
| OptinMonster | 15,000 impressions (the 50,000 pageviews are irrelevant) | Pro — 25,000 impressions (Plus caps at 10,000) | $444 in year one ($37 × 12); $870 at renewal |
| Poptin | 20,000 unique visitors (the 15,000 displays are irrelevant) | Pro — 50,000 visitors (Basic caps at 10,000) | $564 ($47 × 12, billed annually) |
| Privy (Displays) | All 50,000 pageviews, including pages where no popup ran | 50,000-pageview step | $1,008 ($84 × 12) |
| Wisepops | Traffic is an input to the audit; the Shopify plan's 500,000-pageview allowance covers this site many times over | Shopify self-serve, or managed from $599/mo | $3,588 ($299 × 12) on Shopify; $7,188+ ($599 × 12) managed |
Two lessons fall out of the definitions. First, display discipline only pays under impression billing: if the same site showed a popup on every page (50,000 impressions), OptinMonster would need Growth — $804 in year one, $1,470 at renewal — while narrowing the targeting changes nothing on a pageview or visitor bill. Second, the meters fail differently: Poptin's campaigns stop dead at the cap, OptinMonster's keep running and the plan steps up instead, and Wisepops does not publish its over-limit policy at all. Budget for the failure mode, not just the monthly figure.
OptinMonster is the longest-running name here: lightbox popups, floating bars, slide-ins, inline forms, fullscreen takeovers and gamified wheels, with a large template library and deep WordPress roots. Its pricing FAQ is unusually explicit about the meter: an impression is registered any time a visitor sees a campaign, and the vendor states it does not charge by website pageviews. Plans are Basic ($9/mo introductory, billed annually; renews at $210/year; 2,500 impressions, 1 site), Plus ($27/mo intro; renews $570/year; 10,000 impressions, 2 sites), Pro ($37/mo intro; renews $870/year; 25,000 impressions, 3 sites) and Growth ($67/mo intro; renews $1,470/year; 100,000 impressions, 5 sites). Monthly billing exists at $21 / $57 / $87 / $147. Features are gated by tier: A/B testing and device targeting start on Plus; Exit-Intent, revenue attribution and badge removal start on Pro; geolocation, OnSite Retargeting and custom branding are Growth-level. If you exceed your impressions, campaigns keep running and the account is automatically upgraded to the next tier.
Poptin builds popups, embedded forms and announcement-style campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor, exit-intent and cart triggers, coupons and gamified formats. Its meter is people, not displays: the vendor defines a unique monthly visitor as anyone who visits a page carrying its snippet within the last 30 days — multiple sessions and pages still count as one visitor unless cookies are cleared or the device changes. On the popup-only ladder, the free plan covers 1,000 visitors a month on 1 domain with unlimited popups; Basic ($20/mo billed annually, $25 monthly) covers 10,000 visitors on 1 domain; Pro ($47/mo annual, $59 monthly) covers 50,000 visitors on 4 domains and adds A/B testing; Agency ($95/mo annual, $119 monthly) starts at 150,000 visitors with unlimited domains. Paid plans are listed as unbranded. Two cautions: the pricing page now also carries a separate "Emails & Poptins" ladder whose included popup-visitor allowance is much smaller, and when the visitor cap is reached, every popup stops showing until you upgrade or the window resets.
Privy is an ecommerce marketing app rather than a standalone popup builder: popups, flyouts, bars, embedded forms, landing pages, Spin-to-Win, cart savers, cross-sell popups, multi-step forms and quizzes, plus its own email and SMS sending. It sells that in two ways. The Pop-ups & Displays plan is priced by monthly pageviews — $24/mo up to 10,000 pageviews, rising through published steps ($48 at 25,000, $84 at 50,000, $168 at 100,000, $420 at 500,000, $600 at 1,000,000). The Email & SMS plans start at $30/mo for up to 1,500 mailable contacts with unlimited email sends and included SMS credits, and they include the displays — so a store already paying for email is not buying popups twice. There is no free plan; a 15-day trial (no card) is the entry point, and displays are deactivated if no paid plan follows. No annual discount is published. Before committing, check the current availability and terms on Privy's own site — plan structures in this category change often.
Wisepops now presents itself as a traffic-activation service: popups, bars, embeds, an on-site notification feed, web push, quizzes and product recommendations, with a named strategist who audits your traffic, builds campaigns and reviews results against a holdout. The practical consequence for shoppers is that there is no public self-serve price grid on its main site — the pricing route leads to a demo, the vendor's own writing puts plans from $599/mo including the full platform with no feature gating, and the final figure depends on traffic volume, channels and level of service. The one self-serve exception is Shopify: the App Store lists $299/mo (or $2,990/year) for up to 500,000 pageviews with a 14-day trial. There is no free plan, and no published policy for what happens at a pageview limit. Treat any lower Wisepops prices you find on older roundups as out of date until the vendor confirms them in a quote.
Pull three numbers from your analytics: monthly pageviews, monthly unique visitors, and how many times a popup would realistically be shown under your targeting rules. The cheapest tool is whichever meter makes your largest number irrelevant — impressions ignore pageviews, visitor billing ignores repeat views, and pageview billing ignores neither.
OptinMonster's first-year prices roughly double at renewal, and every usage-based plan here has a step above yours. Work out what you would pay in month 13, and what one tier of traffic growth does to the bill, before the introductory figure anchors you.
Count your domains, then check where your must-have features sit. Badge-free OptinMonster starts at Pro; Poptin's domain count jumps from 1 to 4 between Basic and Pro; Wisepops bundles everything but at a service price. The plan you need is set by these gates as much as by traffic.
A hard stop (Poptin), an automatic upgrade (OptinMonster) and an unpublished policy (Wisepops) are three different risks. Start on Poptin's free plan or the trials, run one real campaign — a welcome offer or an exit-intent signup form — and watch which number in your dashboard climbs toward its limit.
They count different events. A pageview is every page load, whether or not any popup runs. A unique visitor (Poptin's meter) is one person in a 30-day window, counted once no matter how many pages or sessions they generate. An impression (OptinMonster's meter) is a popup actually being shown to someone. "Sessions" is used loosely in this category — none of the four vendors here publishes a pure per-session tariff; what is marketed that way usually resolves to one of the three definitions above, so read the vendor's own definition before comparing numbers.
On published prices, it depends on the other two numbers. With 20,000 unique visitors and 15,000 targeted displays, the worked example above lands at $444 for OptinMonster's first year ($870 at renewal), $564 for Poptin on annual billing, $1,008 for Privy's Displays plan, and $3,588–$7,188+ for Wisepops. Change the display count or the visitor count and the ranking changes — that is the point of checking your own analytics first.
It differs by vendor, and it matters. Poptin stops showing all popups until you upgrade or the 30-day window resets. OptinMonster states in its pricing FAQ that campaigns are never turned off — the account is automatically upgraded to the next tier instead. Privy deactivates displays when a trial ends without a paid plan. Wisepops does not publish an over-limit policy, so ask for it in writing before signing. None of these behaviors is visible in a headline price.
Possibly not. If your email service's built-in popups cover your triggers and targeting, a dedicated tool is an extra bill. The dedicated tools here earn their place when you need things like exit-intent with fine-grained page and behavior rules, gamified formats, cart-specific campaigns, or — in Wisepops' case — someone to design and run the campaigns for you. Start with what you already pay for, and upgrade only for a named missing feature.
No, and be wary of any page that promises a figure. A popup tool controls when and to whom an offer is shown; whether visitors sign up depends on the offer, the audience and the site. This guide makes no conversion or revenue claims — it compares published prices, limits and billing definitions so you can judge the cost side accurately. What a campaign earns is something only your own test, ideally against a holdout, can show.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing. We have not installed these tools on a live store, so we do not publish experience-based verdicts. Where a judgment appears — for example, that introductory pricing makes year two the real price — it is arithmetic on the published figures, shown next to the claim so you can verify it yourself.