Thrive Leads vs. OptinMonster
Trying to decide between Thrive Leads and OptinMonster? Read this first.
Key Differences: Thrive Leads vs. OptinMonster
These products have a lot in common, but you’ll soon notice they are fundamentally different.
OptinMonster is a hosted solution, while Thrive Leads is a WordPress plugin.
This means that you’ll be able to use OptinMonster on any CMS such as Shopify, Prestashop, Drupal,... while you can use Thrive Leads only when you have a self hosted WordPress website.
For the sake of this comparison, we are going to assume you have a self hosted WordPress website and that you’re looking to find the best solution for building your email list.
In case you’re using another CMS, OptinMonster is probably a good solution for you.
You’ll find out the features of the different products, what they both can or cannot do, we’ll compare pricing and more in the hope you’ll be able to make an informed buying decision.
Pricing
Thrive Suite - Quarterly
Thrive Suite - Annual
Thrive Leads
$99
$299
$97
- Access to Thrive Theme Builder
- Access to all Thrive Themes plugins
- Activate on 5 sites
- Updates Included
- Support Included
OptinMonster Basic
OptinMonster Plus
OptinMonster Pro
$108/Year
$228/Year
$348/Year
- Features depend on subscription level
- Activate on 1, 3 or unlimited sites
- 1 Year Unlimited Updates
- 1 Year of Unlimited Support
Feature Comparison
General Features | Thrive Leads | Basic | Plus | Pro |
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Integrates With All Major Email Services | 
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Connect With Any Custom HTML Form |
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1 Year of Customer Support |
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Lifelong Updates |
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Money Back Guarantee | 30 days | 14 days | 14 days | 14 days |
Opt-in Form Types | Thrive Leads | Basic | Plus | Pro |
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Lightbox |
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Ribbon |
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After content forms |
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Opt-in widget |
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Content lock |
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In line forms |
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2 step opt-in forms |
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Slide in |
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Screen filler |
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Scroll mat |
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Yes/No forms |
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Social Media lightbox |
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Multiple choice forms |
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Asset delivery |
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Mobile specific lightbox |
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Custom ecommerce lightbox |
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A/B Testing Features | Thrive Leads | Basic | Plus | Pro |
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A/B testing design |
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A/B testing different opt-in types |
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A/B testing triggers |
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Set and forget automatic A/B test winner option |
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Integrated analytics |
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Automatic traffic optimization during tests |
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Triggers and Targeting | Thrive Leads | Basic | Plus | Pro |
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Exit intent |
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Smartexit |
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Targeting by category |
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Targeting by page/post |
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Targeting by tag |
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Targeting by referral source |
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Time triggered opt-in form |
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Scroll % triggered opt-in form |
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Reaches specific content triggers opt-in form |
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Real time behaviour automation |
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Cookie content triggers opt-in form |
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Campaign scheduling |
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Hide Lightboxes for newsletter subscribers |
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Hide all opt-in forms for newsletter subscribers |
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Show different offers to newsletter subscribers |
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Design | Thrive Leads | Basic | Plus | Pro |
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Templates |
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Drag & Drop form builder |
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Custom confirmation message |
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Custom confirmation page |
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Mobile Responsive Opt-in forms |
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Opt-in form animations |
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Conclusion
When looking at these comparison tables, it is fair to say that the only really useful comparison is between Thrive Leads and OptinMonster Pro.
So let’s dive in a bit deeper and compare some of the most important features of any list building solution.
Conversion Optimization
You want as many visitors as possible to become subscribers, right?
That’s why conversion optimization is super important. By optimising your conversions, you’ll be able to get more leads with the same amount of traffic.
Conversion optimization is at the core of Thrive Themes and Thrive Leads is no exception.
Testing what works is the only way to make sure you’re always optimizing your opt-in forms that’s why Thrive Leads was built to make A/B testing super easy.
You can not only test different design elements, but also different opt-in form types, triggers and more against each other.
The integrated analytics show you immediately what’s working best for your business and the automatic winner option allows you to set up an A/B test and let the plugin decide when to start showing only the best one.
OptinMonster is more concerned with offering a personalized experience to the visitors, (which we will go into detail in the next section) than with optimizing the conversion rate of the opt-in forms.
They offer the basic options to help you get better results such as A/B testing the different elements on your opt-in form.
This is easy to set up. You can copy the original form and change the text and the images.
To show opt-in statistics, OptinMonster integrates with Google Analytics.
This allows you to see conversion rates without having to connect to your Analytics account but will not help you make an informed decision about the results your opt-in form A/B test is getting.
Personalized Visitor Experience
The fundamentals of sales are to sell the right product to the right people at the right time. The same is true for your opt-in forms.
If you can show a specific opt-in offer to the right visitor at the right time, you’re guaranteed to get better results.
Because Thrive Leads is a WordPress plugin, installed on your website, you can target any content in any way.
You can show opt-in forms based on pages, posts, tags, categories, specific parts of the content, etc.
These targeting and trigger options give you the power to show relevant opt-in offers when your visitor is ready to sign-up.
Once a visitor becomes a subscriber, you can use the Smartlinks feature to make sure you’re not showing the same opt-in offer to your subscribers anymore.
Smartlinks allows you not only to hide light boxes and other opt-in forms from your current subscribers, it even allows you to show something else instead.
You could chose to show a special offer, a webinar subscription, a Facebook like button, and more.
This will give you full customization over the experience of your subscribers and visitors to your website..
OptinMonster has many advanced targeting options that are cookie based.
This means you’ll be able to customize the visitor experience based on his behavior as long as he’s using the same computer and didn’t delete cookies.
You can to set up rules to show an opt-in form that targets visitors after a certain number of pages visited, after visiting specific pages, first time visitors vs returning visitors and more.
OptinMonster has page, post and category targeting through the WordPress plugin and allows you to hide the light box for current subscribers.
The cookie based targeting options will give you a wide range of options to personalize the experience of each individual visitor on your website.
Customization & Design
You probably want your opt-in forms to match your website and brand, right?
And what about showing social media like buttons, coupons or event invitations instead of an opt-in form?
That’s where design and customization will come into play.
Thrive Leads has a full blown drag & drop visual editor integrated with the plugin.
This allows you to build any opt-in form design you like in minutes without coding.
You can start from scratch or use one of the many templates to customize.
The visual editor also allows you to use the opt-in form area from any type of opt-in form to create other types of content.
You can add video, social media elements, coupon codes, webinar registration forms and much more.
OptinMonster allows you to point and edit the different elements on the template and has the Canvas function if you want to start from scratch.
Canvas is available for some types of opt-ins such as light boxes and slide-in.
To customize the form, the user needs to add custom CSS, HTML, embeddable code or shortcodes to create your personalized opt-in form or other type of content.
Conclusion
OptinMonster Basic and Plus level are missing many of the features you need if you’re serious about lead generation.
Having a (very) limited choice in opt-in form types, triggers and targeting will quickly get in the way of your list building growth.
OptinMonster Pro comes with most of the features you need and has behavioral trigger options that can become interesting when you’re running an ecommerce store on a platform like PrestaShop, Shopify or Magento.
But if you’re really serious about growing your email list, you’ll need data.
Accurate data is the difference between thinking an opt-in form is working and knowing an opt-in form is working
.Which post is bringing in leads? Which opt-in form converts most subscribers? What opt-in offer is working best? Etc.
This is where Thrive Leads excels.
The A/B tests you can run from within your own website will inevitably help your opt-in forms convert better.
While both solutions offer professionally designed templates, the visual editor included in Thrive Leads opens up a whole new world of customization options without coding.
Finally, if you’re using OptinMonster you host your opt-in forms on their platform. This means you don’t own them so when you cancel your subscription, no opt-in forms will be shown on your website anymore. And at a yearly subscription fee of 199$ (which is more than double of the one time fee you would pay for Thrive Leads) this can become very expensive over time.
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