Optin plugins are an excellent solution to expand your email list and increase conversions on your WordPress website. They allow you to collect email addresses from your visitors and transform them into loyal subscribers. 

However, choosing the right opt-in plugin can be challenging, considering the numerous options available. This article will discuss the best opt-in plugins for WordPress, highlighting their features and what sets them apart from the competition.

How to Choose the Right Opt-in Plugin for Your WordPress Site?

1. Determine Your Goals: To choose the right opt-in plugin, you must determine your goals. For instance, you may want to increase your email subscribers, offer your visitors content upgrades or lead magnets, or display pop-ups, slide-ins, or header bars on your site. Clear goals will help narrow your options and find an opt-in plugin that fits your needs.
2. Consider Features: Once you have decided on your opt-in plugin goals, it’s time to think about the specific features that will help you achieve them. Popular features to consider include the ability to customize your opt-in form’s appearance, test different versions of your form to see which is most effective, track analytics to measure your form’s success, and ensure mobile responsiveness. Hence, your form looks good on all devices and integrates with popular email marketing services to manage your subscriber list.
3. Check Reviews: Before adding any plugins to your WordPress site, checking what other people say about them is a good idea. Look for reviews of the plugins you’re thinking of using. These reviews will tell you how well the plugin works, how easy it is to use, and how good the customer support is.
4. Test the Plugin: To ensure that you select the best opt-in plugin for your website, it’s recommended that you test it out first on a separate test site or staging environment. This helps you better understand how the plugin works and whether it can effectively meet your needs. By testing the plugins in this way, you can confidently choose the best option for your website and avoid any potential issues or problems in the future.
5. Consider Pricing: When choosing an opt-in plugin, it’s essential to consider the price, as it can vary from free to hundreds of dollars per year. Before deciding, you should evaluate your budget and determine how much you are willing to spend on an opt-in plugin.

Top Optin Plugins You Can Choose for a WordPress Site

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a plugin for WordPress that helps you make great opt-in forms, pop-ups, and other forms that help you gather leads. It’s well-liked and has many features, so you can make your forms look and work exactly how you want them to. 

With OptinMonster’s drag-and-drop builder, you don’t need to know how to code to make great forms.

Features:

• A/B Testing: You can create different versions of your opt-in forms and test which performs best, so you can use the most effective one.
• Exit-Intent Technology: This detects when a visitor is about to leave your website and shows them an opt-in form, which can encourage them to stay or give you their information.
• Page-Level Targeting: You can customize your opt-in forms for different pages on your website, so you can show the right message to the right audience.
• Integrations: OptinMonster works with all the major email marketing services, like Mailchimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact, so you can easily connect with your existing email marketing platform.

Pricing:

Depending on what you need, there are different pricing plans for OptinMonster. The Basic plan costs $9 per month, the Plus plan costs $19 per month, the Pro plan costs $29 per month, and the Growth plan costs $49 per month.

2. ConvertPro 

ConvertPro is very similar to OptinMonster.Convert Pro is designed to be very fast and efficient, so it won’t slow down your website or negatively impact the user experience.

This optimization also positively impacts your conversion rates, as visitors will be more likely to engage with your opt-in forms when they load quickly and smoothly. 

Features:

• Drag and drop builder: You don’t need coding skills to create your forms. You can drag and drop elements onto your form and customize them as you see fit.
• Pre-made templates: ConvertPro has a variety of pre-made templates to choose from, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
• Multiple opt-in form types: You can choose from different types of opt-in forms, such as popups, slide-ins, and more.
• Targeting options: ConvertPro allows you to target your opt-in forms to specific visitors. For example, you can show a different form to visitors who have already subscribed to your newsletter or only to visitors who have spent a certain amount of time on your website.
• Integrations with popular email marketing services: ConvertPro can integrate with popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and Campaign Monitor. This makes it easy to sync your new subscribers with your email list.

Pricing:

You can get Convert Pro, which comes with support and updates, for $99 per year. If you’d rather pay once and not worry about renewals, you can get Convert Pro for a one-time fee of $399. Alternatively, if you want a bundle of different tools, you can pay $249 for a package that includes Convert Pro along with Astra Pro, Schema Pro, and WP Portfolio.

3. Thrive Leads 

Thrive Leads plugin helps you create and display different types of opt-in forms easily. With its drag-and-drop editor, you can design the perfect form for your website. 

It also has advanced targeting options that let you show personalized offers to your visitors based on their interests, like what pages they’ve visited or what topics they’re interested in. This can help you get more sign-ups and build more profitable email lists.

Features:

• Multiple opt-in form types: The plugin offers various types of opt-in forms, including pop-ups, slide-ins, sticky ribbons, and more, to help you choose the perfect form for your website.
• A/B testing: Thrive Leads allows you to test different variations of your opt-in forms to see which ones perform better and improve your conversion rates.
• Integration with email marketing services: Thrive Leads integrates seamlessly with all major email marketing services, including Mailchimp, AWeber, ConvertKit, and more.

Pricing:

Choosing the quarterly plan costs $149, and you’ll get lots of cool stuff to build your website. You can use all 9 Thrive Themes WordPress Plugins like Thrive Architect, Thrive Quiz Builder, and Thrive Leads. 

You can also use Thrive Theme Builder with Bookwise, Shapeshift, Ommi, and Kwik. You can use it on up to 5 websites, get support all the time, and have access to Thrive University. You can get your money back if you’re unhappy with it in the first 30 days.

4. Bloom

With Bloom, you can collect the email addresses of people who visit your site. This way, you can build relationships with them and turn them into dedicated fans and buyers. Not only does Bloom perform well, but it also looks fantastic doing it. 

There are six ways to display the opt-in form: pop-ups, fly-ins, and inline forms. This means you can choose the style that best fits your website’s design. Bloom is also compatible with many different email marketing platforms. This lets you connect your email list easily with your preferred email marketing tool.

Features:

• Customizable design: Bloom allows you to adjust the opt-in form’s appearance to align with your website’s style and branding. You can personalize the form’s layout, colors, fonts, and images to make it more attractive and engaging to your visitors.
• Targeted display: With Bloom, you can show the opt-in form to particular website visitors who match specific criteria, such as their location, browsing behavior, or the pages they’ve viewed. This targeted display helps you reach out to those most likely to be interested in your offer.
• Analytics: The built-in analytics tool lets you track your opt-in forms’ performance. You can see how many visitors have seen your form, how many have filled it out, and how it performs over time. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas for improvement and adjust your strategy.
• A/B testing: You can compare the performance of different form designs, messages, and call-to-actions to see which version performs better. You can optimize your conversion rate and increase your email list sign-ups over time by making tweaks and improvements based on these tests.

Pricing:

Pricing for Bloom starts at $89/year, which gives you access to all Elegant Themes products, including Bloom and their popular Divi theme.

5. Icegram 

Icegram is a suite of marketing tools that includes a form builder for WordPress. It offers different themes that you can personalize to match your website’s branding and design. 

Additionally, Icegram works seamlessly with popular email marketing services such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, GetResponse, and InfusionSoft.

Features:

• Various form types: Icegram offers a range of form types, including pop-ups, header and footer bars, slide-ins, and more.
• Customization options: You can customize the appearance of your forms to match your website’s branding, including changing colors, fonts, and backgrounds.
• Headline generator: Icegram has a unique headline generator that creates engaging headlines, which can give you a head start with your copywriting.

• Multiple display positions: Icegram offers options for opt-in forms, including top, middle, bottom, left, right, and center.
• Targeted display options: You can choose where and when to show your campaigns and opt-in forms, such as on specific pages, categories, or posts, to certain users, on specific schedules, via shortcode, and more.

Pricing:

As for pricing, Icegram offers a free version with limited features and premium plans starting at $97 per year for a single website.

6. Optin Forms 

Optin Forms are forms used to collect information from website visitors, often for email signups and lead generation. If you’re looking to create such forms for your website but don’t have a lot of money to spend, the Optin Forms plugin is a great choice.

 It’s affordable and lets you create attractive, professional-looking forms that can help you capture visitors’ attention and enhance your marketing strategy.

Features:

• Simple opt-in forms: Optin Forms lets you create forms that are easy to customize to match your website’s look and feel.
• Customizable form fields: You can add or remove form fields to gather the information you need from your visitors. This way, you can tailor your forms to fit your marketing needs.
• Integrations with email marketing services: Optin Forms works with popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, GetResponse, and InfusionSoft. This makes collecting and adding email addresses to your email lists easy.
• User targeting: You can show your opt-in forms only to certain users or groups of users. This helps improve the relevance and effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

Pricing:

Best of all, Optin Forms is free! So you can start collecting valuable visitor information without spending a dime.

7. MailOptin

MailOptin is a widely-used plugin for WordPress that can help you expand your email list and transform website visitors into subscribers. You can create different types of opt-in forms, such as popups, slide-ins, and notification bars, and personalize them to fit the design of your website. 

Whether you’re operating an e-commerce store, a blog, or a business website, MailOptin is an effective tool to help you expand your email list and boost your company’s growth.

Features:

• Targeting: With MailOptin, you can aim your opt-in forms at specific pages or posts on your website, making visitors more likely to find them relevant and engaging.
• Triggers: MailOptin offers a range of triggers that you can use to display opt-in forms at the perfect moment, such as when a visitor is about to leave your site (exit-intent), when they’ve scrolled to a certain point (scroll-depth), or after a set amount of time.
• A/B Testing: By conducting A/B tests with different opt-in forms, you can compare their performance and make informed decisions about which form is most effective in growing your email list.
• Integration: MailOptin can seamlessly integrate with popular email marketing services and CRMs such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and HubSpot, so you can easily manage your email subscribers.
• Analytics: MailOptin provides detailed analytics and reporting that enable you to track the performance of your opt-in forms and gain insights into how they can be improved to boost conversions.

Pricing:

MailOptin offers three pricing plans – Standard, Pro, and Agency. All plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee, and users can easily upgrade or downgrade their plan at any time according to their needs.

The Standard plan is priced at $99 per year and is ideal for those who only need to use it for one website. This plan includes lead generation tools, email automation, and newsletters.

The Pro plan, which is priced at $249 per year, is suitable for those who need to use MailOptin on up to three websites. It also includes lead generation tools, email automation, and newsletters.

The Agency plan, priced at $499 per year, is designed for agencies or individuals who manage multiple websites. It provides unlimited access to all of MailOptin’s features, including lead generation tools, email automation, and newsletters.

8. Hustle 

Hustle is a handy WordPress plugin that WPMU DEV makes. It’s perfect for website owners who want to make their email marketing and lead-generation efforts more effective.

What’s excellent about Hustle is that it comes with many helpful tools, like opt-in forms, popups, and templates. These tools are easy to customize and set up, so you don’t need to be a tech wizard to use them.

One of the coolest things about Hustle is that you can design wonderful and responsive opt-in forms that match your website’s branding. You can also target specific users based on their behavior, which means you’ll reach the right audience at the right time.

Features:

• Customizable Optin Form Types: Hustle offers over 12 different opt-in form types that can be customized with your branding, colors, and messaging.
• Integration with Email Marketing Services: Hustle also integrates with major email marketing services like Mailchimp, AWeber, and Constant Contact. This makes managing your email lists and connecting with your subscribers easy.
• Analytics and Reporting: Hustle provides analytics and reporting features that allow you to track the performance of your opt-in forms and optimize your lead generation strategy.

Pricing:

Hustle’s free version allows you to use the plugin on one site and create unlimited opt-in forms. You can choose from over 12 different form types and use advanced targeting options to reach your audience.

If you want even more features, Hustle offers a premium version that starts at $49 per year for one site. The premium version includes A/B testing, custom fonts, priority support, and more. 

This means you can test different variations of your opt-in forms to see which ones perform best and get help from Hustle’s support team when needed.

Conclusion

If you’re currently searching for the best opt-in plugin for your WordPress site, then you should look at our list of the top 8 options. Each plugin comes with unique features and pricing plans, so you can find the one that works best for you.

We hope that our guide has provided you with valuable insights and helped you make an informed decision in choosing the perfect optin plugin for your website.

If you want to display images, videos, or other media types on your website, a Lightbox plugin can make it look more attractive and user-friendly. Essentially, it’s a tool that uses JavaScript code to create a pop-up window that displays the media when a user clicks on an image or thumbnail.

When the lightbox appears, the website’s background is dimmed, which helps draw attention to the media being displayed. Some lightbox plugins also offer additional features, such as zooming in or out, scrolling through multiple images, or navigating using your keyboard.

Lightbox plugins can be used in many ways, such as creating image galleries, displaying product photos, or showcasing portfolio items. 

In this blog post, we will explore the best WordPress lightbox plugins and provide some key factors to consider when choosing the right one for your site. 

The Best Top 10 Lightbox Plugins for WordPress

1. FooBox

FooBox is a popular WordPress lightbox plugin among website developers and designers. It is known for its many features and customizable design options that allow you to create an engaging and visually appealing media display on your website.

FooBox supports various media formats, including images, videos, and HTML content. This means that you can display a wide range of media types within the same lightbox, making it easier to organize and present your content in a unified and visually appealing way.

Features

• FooBox offers a responsive design that can adapt to any screen size, ensuring your media content is displayed correctly on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. 
• It’s easy to set up and requires no configuration so that you can use it on your website immediately.
• FooBox integrates seamlessly with WordPress galleries, making it easy to create galleries and display your media content in a unified and visually appealing way.
• You can enhance your WordPress website by displaying captioned images in a more appealing and user-friendly manner. The plugin works seamlessly with WordPress captioned images, allowing you to showcase your images and captions visually pleasingly.
• With FooBox, you can choose when to include or exclude its JavaScript and CSS assets, giving you greater control over your website’s performance and load times.

Pricing

You can choose to opt-in for three different plans. The personal plan costs $49 annually and lets you use it on one website. You’ll get all the plugin’s features and one year of updates and support.

If you want to use the plugin on multiple websites, you can choose either the business or developer plans. The business plan costs $99 annually and lets you use it on up to five websites. The developer plan costs $199 per year and lets you use it on as many websites as possible.

These plans also come with all the plugin’s features and one year of updates and support.

2. WP Featherlight

WP Featherlight is a responsive and high-performance jQuery lightbox plugin you can install on your site. It is a Featherlight jQuery lightbox plugin wrapper, offering a minimalistic and straightforward interface. 

Once installed, WP Featherlight automatically displays standard WordPress images and galleries in a clean and straightforward lightbox popup.

Features:

• WP Featherlight automatically resizes your images to fit the user’s screen, ensuring they look great on any device.
• This plugin supports captions for your images, which you can add using the WordPress caption field.
• It also supports galleries, allowing you to create beautiful image galleries that open in a lightbox.
• WP Featherlight comes with a range of customization options that allow you to tailor the design of your lightboxes to match your website’s branding.

Pricing:

You can download it for free. This makes it an excellent option for those looking for a simple, easy-to-use lightbox plugin without any added costs.

3. Modula Image Gallery

Modula is a lightbox highly rated plugin by users, allowing you to create stunning and personalized image galleries on your website. 

With its responsive design and customizable features, Modula makes it easy to add unique and professional-looking galleries that enhance your website’s visual appeal.

Additionally, Modula Image Gallery supports various media formats, including images, videos, and audio, making it a versatile solution for all types of content.

Features

• Modula Image Gallery is compatible with popular website builders such as Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Divi Builder.
• This lightbox plugin offers three types of galleries, Creative, Custom grid, and Masonry. You can choose the one that suits your website’s style and design.
• This plugin customizes the settings of your images and galleries, such as gutter size, width, image size, height, border size, border radius, border color, shadow size, and shadow color.
• You can choose to display or hide the image title and caption. You can also customize the caption color and font size.
• Modula has social buttons allowing visitors to share your images on popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and email.
• The plugin offers an import/export tool that makes it easy to move your galleries to another site.
• You can also add your own custom CSS to personalize the appearance of your galleries further.

Pricing:

It has three pricing plans to choose from. The Basic plan costs $29 annually and lets you use Modula on one website. You’ll get all the basic features, support, and updates for a year.

The Pro plan costs $69 per year and lets you use Modula on up to five websites. This plan gives you access to all the basic and pro features.

The Agency plan costs $129 per year and is the most comprehensive. It lets you use Modula on as many websites as you want, and you’ll get access to all the basic, pro, and agency features, plus support and updates for a year.

4. Simple Lightbox

Simple Lightbox is another plugin tool that you can use to display images, videos, or other media on your website.

Simple Lightbox offers many customization options, including the look of the pop-up window, choosing the background color, the size of the window, and whether or not to include social media sharing buttons. That’s a lot of features for you to play with the lightbox on the front end. 

Features

• This plugin will automatically detect the items on a page to trigger the lightbox effect.
• The pop-up window is responsive. 
• You can choose from different pre-designed looks for the pop-up window, called “themes”.The themes are mobile-friendly and will look good on different screen sizes.
• You can customize how the pop-up window opens and closes with different animations.
• Extra features can be added using add-ons, making it more customizable.
• It works with links to images that are uploaded to WordPress and also works with links in widgets.
• Media metadata, like captions or descriptions, can be displayed in the pop-up window.
• You can enable the pop-up window on specific website pages, such as the home or archive pages.

Pricing

It is an entirely free and open-source WordPress plugin. All of its features are available to everyone.

5. Responsive Lightbox & Gallery

The Responsive Lightbox & Gallery plugin is valuable for creating galleries and lightboxes on your WordPress website. It’s easy to use and includes a Drag & Drop Gallery Builder. This plugin lets you showcase your images and create a better visitor experience. 

It’s a popular choice, with over 300,000 active users who rely on it daily, and it’s been downloaded over 3 million times.

Features

• The gallery builder is user-friendly and easy to install and set up.
• You have the option to customize the appearance of your galleries and lightboxes to match your website’s design.
• There are a variety of layouts to choose from for your galleries and lightboxes.
• The lightbox feature adjusts automatically to the screen size of the device.
• It’s optimized for mobile devices and provides a seamless experience.
• Your visitors can navigate through galleries using their keyboards.
• Social sharing buttons can be enabled to make it simple for visitors to share your images on social media.
• The gallery builder is translation-ready, allowing it to be used in different languages.

Pricing

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery offers both a free and premium version. The free version includes basic gallery and lightbox features and customization options, which can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository.

On the other hand, the premium version comes with more advanced features like more options for gallery and lightbox customization, support for videos, and priority support. You can buy the premium version starting at $29 for a license covering one website and up to $199 for an unlimited site license.

6. Meow Lightbox 

Meow Lightbox is another lightbox plugin designed to be lightweight and fast, so it won’t slow down your site. The plugin is optimized for mobile devices, so your galleries look great on smartphones and tablets. 

Meow Lightbox offers a wide range of customization options, including changing the lightbox size, background color, and transition effects.

Features

• The images in your galleries will automatically adjust their resolution to match the screen and device used to view them. This ensures that your photos look their best, no matter how they’re considered.
• Meow Lightbox also allows you to display detailed information about your images, including EXIF data such as shutter speed, aperture, camera, and lens. This can be especially useful for photography websites or other sites where image information is important.

Pricing

Meow Lightbox has both free and paid versions. The paid version ranges from $19 to $299, which includes all the features available in the free version, including slideshow, location map, and deep linking

7. OptinMonster

Optinmonster is a plugin you can use to grow your email subscriber list, increase your sales, and expand your online business.

By utilizing Optinmonster, you can create personalized lightbox popups that will grab the attention of your website visitors and encourage them to sign up for your email list. This, in turn, will help you to develop a relationship with your audience and keep them engaged with your brand.

You can easily customize these popups to fit your brand’s unique style and preferences. 

You don’t need to be an expert designer to use it because it’s user-friendly and saves you time.

Features

• User-friendly drag-and-drop builder for creating custom popups and forms
• Multiple types of popups are available, including exit-intent, floating bars, slide-ins, and gamified opt-in forms
• Targeting rules and behavior triggers to display popups to the right audience at the right time
• A/B testing functionality to optimize campaigns for maximum conversions
• Integration with popular email marketing services and CRM tools
• Detailed analytics and reporting to track performance and measure ROI
• Mobile responsive designs that look great on any device
• Built-in page-level targeting to display relevant offers based on the content of a specific page
• Customizable templates to match your website’s branding and style
• Constantly updated with new features and improvements to stay ahead of the curve in lead generation and conversion optimization.

Pricing

OptinMonster offers a limited free plan, which includes access to basic features and allows you to create up to one campaign per website. 

If you want to go for the basic plan, it is the most affordable option, starting at $9 per month. It provides access to the user-friendly drag-and-drop builder, unlimited popups and forms, page-level targeting, and direct email marketing services integration. 

You can upgrade to the Plus plan for more advanced features, starting at $19 per month. This plan includes all the features of the Basic plan, plus A/B testing, exit-intent popups, and attention activation. And If you require even more advanced targeting and engagement tools, the Pro plan starts at $29 monthly. This plan includes everything in the Plus plan, gamification, countdown timers, and advanced targeting rules.

If you want the most comprehensive option, the Growth plan starting at $49 per month is the way to go. This plan includes all the Pro plan features plus on-site retargeting, device-based targeting, and priority support.

8. WordPress Gallery Plugin – NextGEN Gallery

Another alternative lightbox add-on you can use is the NextGEN Gallery which manages and displays the images in galleries. This plugin offers many features and customization options to help you create beautiful and engaging galleries on your website.

Features

• NextGEN Gallery allows you to upload and organize your images into albums or galleries. You can easily add, delete, or edit your images as needed.
• With NextGEN Gallery, you can choose from various display options such as thumbnail grid, slideshow, or mosaic gallery. Each option provides a unique way to showcase your images to your website visitors.
• You can customize the look and feel of your galleries by adjusting various settings such as thumbnail size, border, and spacing. You can also choose from different display styles, transitions, and effects to create a unique and engaging gallery.

Pricing

NextGEN Gallery offers both a free version and a paid premium version. 

The premium version offers features like eCommerce integration, image protection, and the ability to add watermarks to your images. It’s available on the NextGEN Gallery website and is priced at $79 for a lifetime license with one year of support and updates included.

9. Easy FancyBox

Easy FancyBox is another lightbox plugin that helps to showcase your images, videos, and other media in a stylish and customizable lightbox. It is a simple, user-friendly tool that can help improve your website’s user experience. 

With Easy FancyBox, you can easily display your media content in a visually appealing way that matches your website’s style.

Features

• Supports images, videos, and other media types in a customizable lightbox
• Various customization options for the lightbox, including size, animation, and styling
• Responsive design for optimal viewing on different devices
• Compatible with popular WordPress plugins, such as Jetpack and NextGEN Gallery

Pricing

This plugin offers both a free and a paid version. To access additional features, you can opt for the Easy FancyBox Pro version, which costs $19.99 per year. This version includes social sharing buttons, Google Maps integration, and advanced customization options.

If you want to use Easy FancyBox on an unlimited number of sites and have access to all the Pro features, you can go for the Agency version, priced at $99.99 per year.

10. Smash Balloon

The Smash Balloon Lightbox Plugin is a user-friendly tool that enables your media to look stunning on all devices, including mobile devices. The plugin effortlessly integrates with social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, making it easy for you to showcase your social media content attractively and engagingly.

You can use this plugin to create a stylish and interactive gallery that displays your social media content seamlessly.

Features

• You can rest assured that your media will look great on any device, including mobile devices, as the plugin is designed to be mobile-friendly and responsive.
• The plugin is super easy to set up, making it a hassle-free option for anyone.
• You can tailor the plugin to your preferences by adjusting various settings, including the width, height, number of photos, number of columns, image size, background color, image spacing, and more.
• It comes equipped with lightbox functionality, meaning images and videos open in a pop-up window when clicked, providing a more immersive viewing experience.

Pricing

The Smash Balloon Lightbox Plugin has two pricing options. The first option costs $39 per year and allows you to use the plugin on one website. This option provides access to all features, updates, and support. 

The second option is the Plus license, which costs $99 per year. It allows you to use the plugin on up to five websites and includes advanced customization options and priority support.

Conclusion

In conclusion, using a Lightbox plugin for your WordPress website can significantly enhance the user experience and make your website look more attractive. With plenty of lightbox plugin options, selecting the one that best suits your unique needs and preferences is crucial. 

Whether you want a straightforward and easy-to-use plugin or a complex plugin with advanced customization options, a lightbox plugin can cater to your requirements. By implementing one of the top 10 best lightbox plugins for WordPress, you can display your images and videos in a stunning and captivating manner, which can help create a lasting impression and a pleasurable experience for your site visitors.

If you have a website and want to take it to the next level, then video content is the way to go. It’s great for increasing engagement and keeping your visitors on the page longer than text content. WordPress makes it easy to embed video content with its Youtube embedder or shortcode embed system, but if you want more control, you’ll need a video plugin.

Video plugins make it easier to add videos and offer advanced video controls such as video playback, customization options for video display, and integration with popular video-sharing platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. They can help you create product demos, showcase your portfolio, or simply share educational videos.

If you’re looking for the right video plugin for your website, there are plenty to choose from. This is a list of the best WordPress video plugins explained, along with their features, pros, cons, and pricing options.

That being said, let’s start with what you should consider when picking a video plugin for your website.

What to consider before choosing the perfect video plugin for your site?

1. Consider your goals

Before you choose a video plugin to add to your WordPress website, it’s essential to think about why you want to add videos in the first place. Understanding your goals for adding videos will help you choose a plugin that best suits your needs.

For example, to increase user engagement, you might want a plugin that includes features such as autoplay, looping, or the ability to add interactive elements like quizzes or polls. If your goal is to showcase your products or services, you may want a plugin to add product information or links to purchase pages directly in the video player.

Similarly, to create tutorials or educational content, you might want a plugin that supports closed captions or transcripts or that integrates with a learning management system. Some plugins even offer features like video analytics or split testing that help you measure the effectiveness of your videos and optimize them for better results.

2. Compatibility

Compatibility is great when combining or extending your WordPress’s ability with a plugin. Some plugins might work just perfectly, while others might trigger some issues that can later lead to a drawback in the mid-term where you may have difficulty changing into a different video management plugin. 

This compatibility may come into place with your other plugins, theme code or PHP version. So you need to make sure the plugin you will use is flexible and fits perfectly to align with your project. 

In addition, using incompatible plugins can slow down the website’s performance. To avoid such unsuitability the best way is to test your plugins before deciding to keep one on the site. The testing will immediately identify any potential issue and therefore you have the opportunity to select the best-suited plugin for your site. 

3. Ease of use

We all like easy-to-use utilities, so you must consider a video plugin that makes it effortless to run your video project. You don’t want to spend a lot of time and effort trying to figure out how to use the plugin, especially if you don’t have much technical knowledge.

An ideal plugin will let you manage the videos, such as uploading, enabling and disabling specific video options, providing a user-friendly interface, embed videos from a wide range of networks without hassle through many complicated steps or processes.

Choosing a user-friendly plugin will save you time and allow you to focus on creating great content rather than struggling with technical issues so that you can get the most out of your video content.

4. Features

Features are the tool to achieve your goals, so you must be decisive when considering your plugin’s features. For example, if you want to create a video gallery to showcase a collection of videos, you’ll need a plugin that offers gallery functionality.

Again for adding popups to your videos, you’ll need a plugin that supports this feature. Popups are a great way to encourage users to take a specific action, such as signing up for a newsletter, purchasing a product, watching a relevant video, or suggesting reading another article on your site.

Displaying videos in a slider will require the plugin to provide that functionality. Sliders are great for displaying multiple videos in a visually appealing and interactive way. There are numerous other features, such as customizing video playback settings, adding captions or subtitles, or supporting different video formats you might want to consider while choosing your plugin.

5. Support and updates

You want to use a plugin that is well taken care of and hence receives frequent updates from the developers. This ensures that the plugin remains compatible with the latest WordPress versions and that any potential problems or errors are addressed quickly.

By looking at the latest update and compatibility test with the WordPress version for the plugin you can ensure that it’s well suited for your WordPress environment and secure as well.

A plugin that does not receive frequent updates may indicate the plugin developer is not actively supporting it, and no one to address any issues that may arise, leaving your website vulnerable.

Once you choose your plugin aligned with these criteria,, you can install it on the website and start your video management project from your WordPress.

Top WordPress Video Plugins You Can Try On Your WordPress Site

So now you know what you want to install as a video manager extension, here are our top picks you would love to have on your website. 

Read through the plugins and their features, advantages, and disadvantages and how much they will cost you. Hopefully, you will find the right plugin from this list for your site.

1. Envira Gallery

Envira Gallery is a highly customizable and easy-to-use plugin for WordPress that provides various features to help you create engaging and professional-looking images and video galleries. 

It was first released in 2014 and has since become popular for WordPress users who want to create visually stunning galleries.

With its drag-and-drop gallery builder, you can quickly create beautiful and responsive galleries without coding skills. Envira Gallery also offers pre-designed templates, a variety of display options, social media integration, and much more to enhance your gallery’s appearance and functionality.

Pros:

• The plugin includes customizable lightbox popups, which can be used to showcase your images and videos in a sleek and modern way.
• You can add custom watermarks to your images to protect them from theft or unauthorized use.
• The plugin comes with social sharing buttons, which allow your viewers to share your galleries on various social media platforms easily.

Cons:

• The free version of the plugin has limited features and may not meet all of your needs.
• Some of the more advanced features are only available in the plugin’s premium version, which may require a subscription fee.
• The plugin may not integrate seamlessly with all WordPress themes and plugins, requiring additional customization.

Pricing:

This is a freemium plugin that you can download from the WordPress plugin repository. If you want to access premium features go for the basic plan that costs about $29 per year up to $299 per year classified into 3 different premium plans. 

The pricing justifies the functionalities available on the plugin and is still an affordable deal you can get for a video management plugin.

2. Video Gallery WordPress plugin

The Video Gallery is a WordPress plugin by Total-Soft. This plugin is user-friendly and responsive. It let people search for related topics and videos on platforms like youtube, Wistia, or other search engines.

You can customize the galleries with 9 different layouts, hover effects, animations, text colors, pagination, and more. It also supports YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, and MP4 videos, as well as allows you to add custom links for single videos.

If you’re looking for an efficient way to showcase video content on your WordPress website, a video gallery plugin is the perfect solution. 

This software tool empowers you to easily create and display video galleries, enabling you to organize your content and present it visually appealing and engagingly. 

Pros:

• Usually comes with a range of customization options, including different layouts, colors, and styles.
• May include features like video previews, light boxes, and autoplay options to enhance the user experience.
• Many video gallery plugins are optimized for performance, ensuring that your website loads quickly and smoothly.

Cons:

• Some video gallery plugins may require a paid license or subscription to access all features and support.
• Depending on the plugin, a learning curve may be involved in setting up and customizing your video galleries.
• If you have a lot of video content, your website may experience slower load times or performance issues.

Pricing:

This is a free plugin to use. If you want additional premium features, you can upgrade to the business plan, which ranges from $15 to $29. You can opt-in for the developer plan for more advanced features, which costs around $50.

3. All-in-One Video Gallery

This plugin allows you to quickly and easily add videos to your website as posts and create galleries optimized for search engines and easily searchable.

This custom video player can play files in MP4, WebM, and OGV formats. It also supports embedding videos from other sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Rumble, and Facebook. 

This is a feature-rich plugin that comes with a play/pause, timer, progress bar, quality switcher, speed control, volume button, fullscreen button, share buttons, an embed button, download button, subtitles control, autoplay, loop, muted, and preload options, and the ability to embed videos from other sites. In addition, this plugin supports GDPR compliance.

It offers a responsive front end to ensure your video gallery looks great on all devices, to provide a seamless viewing experience to your website, and visitors.

Pros:

• Easy to use with a drag-and-drop interface for creating and organizing video galleries.
• Comes with pre-designed templates for quick and easy customization.
• Includes features such as video previews, light boxes, and autoplay options to enhance the user experience.
• Optimized for performance, ensuring that your website loads quickly and smoothly.
• The plugin includes social sharing buttons, making it easy for viewers to share your videos on social media.
• You can track your video’s performance with the built-in video analytics feature.

Cons:

• Some advanced features require a paid license or subscription to access.
• May not be as flexible or customizable as other video gallery plugins.
• Limited support documentation was available.
• The plugin may not integrate seamlessly with all WordPress themes and plugins, requiring additional customization.

Pricing:

All in one video gallery is another freemium plugin you can try that comes with additional features, which would cost you $39 for the basic plan, $69 for the plus plan and $149 for the advanced plan comes with unlimited site access, including all features, and premium support.

4. WP Video Gallery

WP Vido Gallery is a cool plugin you can utilize to create and showcase video content with custom layouts, styles, colors, and customization options. 

This plugin makes it easy to stream videos on your WordPress website and customize them to your liking. You can connect your catalog, use your API key or URLs, and pick from different options to organize and customize your video gallery. 

You can also use CSS to customize the gallery further, although you can achieve this by adding CSS on the WordPress customizer.

Pros

• The plugin is designed to be responsive, ensuring that your videos look great on all devices, including desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones.
•  Supports multiple video sources, including YouTube, Vimeo, and self-hosted videos.
• The plugin allows you to create video playlists, which enables you to group and display your videos in a more organized manner.
•  SEO-friendly features, such as the ability to add video descriptions and tags to improve search engine optimization.

Cons 

• Premium plugin, 
• Not suitable for small websites.
• It can be slow when loading multiple videos.

Pricing:

The basic version of this plugin is available for free. However, you can get the premium bundles of features within the starter, developer, and ultimate plan that starts from €59 and goes up to €199.

5. FV Player

FV Player is a free video player for WordPress that is easy to use and has lots of features, like the ability to remember video position for both guest users and members, built-in video stats, API for custom video fields, AB looped playback for your visitors, improved playlists, and automated checking of video encoding for admins. It’s responsive on all devices.

It has many customization options such as changing the player’s colour scheme and style and adding personalized branding. With FV Player, you can create visually stunning video content that will captivate your audience.

Pros

• FV Player is a plugin that allows you to embed FLV or MP4 videos into your WordPress site easily. It works well on mobile devices too.
• Custom start and end screens are built into FV Player, so you can design your own screens to show before and after the video.
• FV Player doesn’t have expensive add-ons, as all advanced features are included in the standard license. This includes Google Analytics, Cue points, Native fullscreen, Keyboard shortcuts, Subtitles, Slow motion, Random seeking, and Retina ready.
• It supports Amazon S3, Cloudfront, and other CDNs, so you can easily use it with these services.

 Cons

• While the basic version of the plugin is free, some of the more advanced features are only available with the paid version.
• Although the plugin is designed to be user-friendly, it may take some time to learn how to use all of the customization options.
• Hosting self-hosted videos can require a lot of server resources, so it’s important to ensure that your hosting plan can handle the additional load.

Price

The plugin comes in a free basic version, but if you need more features, paid options are available. The paid version for one domain costs about $75 and is suitable for websites, blogs, or projects. 

The five domains paid version is for developers, groups, or organizations and costs around $195. If you need the plugin for 20 domains, which is ideal for large corporations, organizations, or web hosts, it will cost about $500.

6. YouTube Showcase

YouTube Showcase is a tool that helps you display YouTube videos on your website in a neat and organised way. It is easy to use and customisable. 

It also has features that allow you to change the size of thumbnails and enable WordPress comments on each video. There are two different ways to display the videos – a gallery page and a grid gallery page.

Pros:

• With its intuitive interface, you don’t need coding skills to use the plugin. You can effortlessly create video galleries and embed them onto your website quickly.
• Offering many customization options, you can choose from various gallery styles and layouts and even personalize the colors and fonts to match your website’s aesthetic.
• The plugin is optimized for cross-device functionality to work seamlessly on desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones.
• The plugin includes SEO-friendly features, such as adding video descriptions and tags to improve search engine optimization.

Cons:

• The plugin doesn’t offer advanced video editing options, so you may need to edit your videos elsewhere before adding them to your website.
• Adding videos to your website can slow down the loading time of your pages, especially if the videos are large or hosted on a slow server.
• If you embed YouTube videos using this plugin, you won’t have complete control over the ads that appear in the videos.

Pricing:

The plugin has a free basic version that you can use, but there’s also a paid pro version that offers more features. For $99.99 a year, you’ll get features like Drag & Drop Ordering, custom video comments, Advanced Video Galleries, Video Statistics, and many more.

7. WP Video Lightbox

This plugin allows you to easily add videos to your WordPress site, which can be viewed in an overlay display when clicked. It supports videos from YouTube, Vimeo, iFrame, and more and is also compatible with iPhones and iPads. 

It has various options, such as allowing autoplay, adjusting the animation speed, and changing the opacity.

This plugin allows you to embed a YouTube video into a lightbox on your website, ensuring it is secure and private. You can use either a shortcode or HTML code to show the video, and it will automatically get the thumbnail for you. It also prevents suggested videos from being shown at the end of the video.

Pros

• The plugin is user-friendly and doesn’t require any coding skills to use. You can quickly and easily embed videos onto your website using the plugin.
• You can customize the look and feel of the lightbox to match your website’s design. 

This includes the option to choose different skins and styles for the lightbox.

• Easily create and embed video galleries on your website with the plugin’s user-friendly interface.
• Customize your gallery with multiple styles, layouts, colours, and fonts to match your website.
•  Enjoy seamless cross-device functionality on desktops, tablets, and mobiles.

Cons

• While the plugin offers some customization options, it doesn’t have as many features as some of its competitors.
• WP Video Lightbox doesn’t offer a free version, so you’ll need to pay to use it.
• Some users have reported compatibility issues with certain WordPress themes and plugins, although these are relatively rare.

Pricing: 

You can download this plugin from the WordPress repository for free.

8. Videopack

The Videopack plugin allows you to easily upload videos to your WordPress Media Library and create a player to embed, with various options to customize the appearance and functionality. 

This one lets you create video galleries, and if you have an optional FFMPEG installed, you can generate thumbnails and automatically select video resolutions. Additionally, you can purchase an add-on to add advertisements to your videos.

Pros:

• The plugin supports various video platforms, including YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion.
• The plugin generates custom thumbnails for your videos, allowing you to choose the best image to represent your video.
• The plugin is designed to be user-friendly, even for those without technical knowledge.
• The plugin generates SEO-friendly code that helps search engines to index your videos and improve your website’s search engine ranking.

Cons:

• It doesn’t offer a lot of video editing options, so you may need to edit your videos elsewhere before adding them to your website.
• Adding videos to your website can slow down the loading time of your pages, especially if the videos are large or hosted on a slow server.
• The Video Embed & Thumbnail Generator plugin is designed specifically for WordPress websites, so it may not be compatible with other website platforms.

Pricing:

The plugin is free to use, but if you want to add advertisements to your videos, you can do so with the Videopack Ads premium add-on. You can purchase this add-on on the Add-ons tab of the Videopack Settings page or on the Videopack website. It costs $5.99 per year, or if you want to use it for a lifetime, you can pay $24.99.

9. Easy Video Player

This plugin allows you to easily embed MP4 videos into your website, with responsive video for a better user experience on mobile devices and HTML5 video compatibility for all major browsers. 

You can customize the video player with classes and use the MediaElement player or the default WordPress video player. It offers autoplay, loop, muted options, and poster images. It is an AMP-compatible plugin. 

The plugin is simple to set up and configure, allowing you to embed videos quickly.

Pros

• The plugin includes a customizable video player that you can use to display your videos on your website. You can change the player’s colors, add a logo, and more.
• The video player is designed to be responsive, automatically adjusting to fit different screen sizes and device types.
• You can embed your videos on your website using various methods, including shortcodes, HTML, and JavaScript.
• The plugin includes built-in analytics that allows you to track how often your videos have been played and how long people have watched them.
• You can use the plugin to protect your videos from unauthorized access by setting up password protection or IP address restrictions.

Cons

• The plugin doesn’t offer a lot of video editing options, so you may need to edit your videos elsewhere before adding them to your website.
• The Easy Video Player video plugin is designed to work specifically with WordPress, so it may not be compatible with other website platforms.
• Adding videos to your website can slow down the loading time of your pages, especially if the videos are large or hosted on a slow server.

Price

The plugin is free, but there are additional add-ons available for the Easy Video Player plugin that can make it work even better on your website. 

One of these add-ons costs $29.99, and it will create a clean player with a media element template. With this add-on, the player will load without a control bar background, giving your website a sleeker look.

10. Wonder Video Embed

WonderPlugin Video Embed is a handy and user-friendly plugin for WordPress users, allowing them to quickly add videos to their posts, pages, and sidebar widgets. 

It supports YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, iFrame, and self-hosted MP4/WebM video formats. It is compatible with mobile devices, tablets, and all major web browsers such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Edge. 

Additional features include a lightbox popup, auto lightbox popup on page load, and auto close video popup when the video ends, making it suitable for use with the Gutenberg editor.

Pros: 

• WonderPlugin Video Embed is easy to use and set up, making it perfect for anyone who wants to quickly and easily embed videos into their WordPress site. 
• You can embed videos in posts and pages, and it supports both self-hosted and externally hosted videos. 
• It supports popular video sites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion, so you can easily embed videos from any of them. 
• You can customize the look and feel of your embedded videos with custom colors, sizes, and other settings. 
• It is mobile-friendly and responsive, so it looks great on any device. 
• The plugin is regularly updated with bug fixes and new features, so you can always stay updated with the latest version. 

Cons:

• There is no free version of the plugin, and the cost of the plugin can be a barrier for some users. 
• It does not support live-streaming videos. 
• It does not have an analytics feature, so you cannot track the performance of your embedded videos.
• It does not support video playback on mobile devices.
• It does not offer a wide range of customization options.

Pricing:

The plugin is free, but you can upgrade to the pro version of Wonder Lightbox. This version comes in three options: Standard, Multiple, and Unlimited. The Standard version costs $49, the Multiple version costs $79, and the Unlimited version costs $149. When you upgrade to any of these versions, the watermark will be removed, and all limitations will be lifted. You’ll also receive support and updates for one year. 

The number of websites you can use the plugin on varies depending on your chosen version. The Standard version is limited to one website, the Multiple version can be used on up to five websites, and the Unlimited version can be used on as many websites as you want.

Additionally, there’s a Wonder Mega Bundle that includes all 10 premium Wonder Plugins: Wonder 3D Carousel, Wonder Audio Player, Wonder Carousel, Wonder Gallery, Wonder Grid Gallery, Wonder Lightbox, Wonder Popup, Wonder Slider, Wonder Tabs, and Wonder WooCommerce Quick View. This bundle costs $99 for the Standard version, $159 for the Multiple version, and $299 for the Unlimited version.

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed a variety of excellent WordPress video plugins available to help you display videos on your website. Whether you’re looking for a lightweight plugin with basic functionality or a feature-rich plugin with a wide range of customization options, there’s sure to be a plugin that meets your needs. 

Before making a decision, consider the pros and cons of each plugin and evaluate which features are most important for your specific use case. With the right video plugin, you can enhance your website with engaging and informative video content that will keep your visitors returning for more.

I hope that this information has proven useful to you. Thank you for taking the time to read and consider it.

Additional posts you can read:

1. How to Speed Up a WordPress Website Running Ezoic Ads
2. 5 Best WordPress Speed Optimization Services You Can Hire
3. Top 10 Best Typography WordPress Themes

LCP is essential to the user experience. People don’t like to wait for a page to start loading or see a blank page before the main contents load when they could immediately get a faster experience elsewhere.

Page performance analysis tools tell your LCP metrics per page, and as a website owner, you should be concerned with keeping the LCP below 2.5 seconds to load your main content as fast as possible. 

In our previous article, we discussed good and bad LCP, reasons that can harm your page LCP, and typical methods to reduce your LCP timing. Today, let’s talk about the featured image, its impact on LCP for your post-type pages, and ways to fix it because they usually receive the most traffic.

Impact of the Featured image in LCP

The featured image is loaded above the fold of your page, which means the browser has to load the image file, and if the file is large in size or your server response time is not fast enough, your page may suffer an LCP issue. 

The above-the-fold image asset can be a hero image, a banner, or a carousel. Google considers <img> or <image> element inside an <svg> element for the Largest Contentful Paint. Hence you must optimize these images for a better LCP.

A size of 100+kb image above the fold usually requires a couple of milliseconds and often appears to be the primary reason for LCP. When you need your LCP metrics to remain under 2.5 seconds, every millisecond count, you should consider optimizing it.

Here is an example of a site with a featured image above the fold. The featured image file is the source of LCP, but because all the assets are well optimized and served via CDN, the pages are able to get a much lesser LCP 1113ms than the critical point.

So, if the featured image is causing LCP, does removing it help?

Removing the featured image improves the LCP metric by reducing the couple of milliseconds required to render the image file. If your featured image was heavy in size, say > 500kb, you should get a decent upgrade in terms of LCP after removing it from above the fold. 

Then when it comes to mobile devices, where the network and compilation are usually slower, it becomes even more difficult to tackle LCP issues with an image of large-size loading in the first print. 

It’s not that after removing the featured image, your site will eliminate the LCP issues. The texts will cover the space and featured image used to cover, and you will still need to optimize your fonts. However, it’s easier to serve optimized fonts than a featured image in terms of performance. 

A featured image makes your page look better and adds a nice touch for the visitor to get an idea of what they will find on the page. But when you have to balance performance and design, you could opt for a solution that maintains both conditions. 

1. Drop the featured image from above the fold.
2. Have the featured image on your page, but below the fold.

Shifting your featured image below a few paragraphs (I usually add it below the 2nd paragraph) has helped many sites we have worked on. It maintains the visual image that describes the page and allows the font to load as the largest contentful paint. Then we preload the most important fonts for the browsers to load them as soon as possible.

Is there a way we can keep the featured image for desktop devices and remove it on mobile?

Yes, keeping the featured image above the fold on desktop (if LCP is not an issue on desktop) and removing or shiting it below the fold on mobile can be an excellent solution to tackle your site’s LCP issue. 

This will require a simple CSS selector to be used: 

@media (max-width: 480px){ .entry-content img {
         display: none;
     }
}

The @media (max-width: 480px) will trigger for all devices with screen width =< 480px, and then it will select the featured image with .entry-content img and set the display rule to null.

You can try to shift the featured image with the same selector and replace the display:none with the right CSS code to display it below a couple of paragraphs to ensure it appears below the fold.

Note: here, we are discussing the impact of featured images on LCP, so by no means this piece of content intended to say that featured images are responsible for LCP issues on your site. There are many other reasons why a page is suffering from LCP. I have added a couple of other reasons that help LCP to rise. 

Here is a test report for a website where we have not changed anything else but dropped the featured image below 3rd paragraph, and that resolved the LCP issues it had by a couple of milliseconds.

Additional reasons for poor LCP

Apart from the featured images on most pages, there are other things that are responsible for LCP. Anything that slows down the page rendering process could be the reason for the LCP issue on your pages. 

These elements usually take a lot of specs, unoptimized assets, assets with loading delays, assets with 3rd party connections, advertisements, lots of unoptimized javascript on the head section, etc. We can’t forget about the core server’s response time.

1. Slow Server Response Times

Server response time is a critical factor of LCP. If your server is not fast enough, it might fail to serve above-the-fold assets in under 2.5 seconds. Hence while considering your website host, it’s important to avoid hosts that are not reliable and fast enough.

Bad server back-end infrastructure, unoptimized databases, and longer time to resolve API requests are often the reasons for slow server response time. Always go for a performance-optimized host if you want your website to be fast, web vital compatible, and favorites of search engines with good quality content.

2. Render blocking Javascript and CSS

Javascript and CSS help improve your site design and functionality, but it’s important to optimize them for your host to serve them per request in a way that does not prevent the loading of primary content.

Loading too many Js and CSS codes at the head might increase render-blocking issues. Render blocking is directly proportional to page LCP; hence, you should reduce render blocking as much as possible without breaking your site’s functionality.

3. Slow Resource Load Times

If you have resources loading above the fold that are large in file size, have dense visual elements, are not optimized, videos & gif files, or have lots of text contents, it will affect the page LCP. Consider optimizing those assets or removing/reducing them from the top of your page.

4. Client-side Rendering

Client-side rendering can be another reason for LCP issues. Client-side rendering involves the browser collecting and loading javascript before rendering primary content on the page. If the process is complex and device hardware unable to perform memory management, your webpage might struggle on people’s browsers, increasing the chance of LCP.

So consider optimizing or avoiding client-side rendering if possible.

Introducing a new case study: A fully outsourced AI content + expired domain + Ezoic content site portfolio.

I have a portfolio of sites that had been mostly neglected, but I have decided to put on an effort to rebuild them. Most of these sites are built on expired domains from LightningRank.com and content created using GPT-3 tools, then significantly human-edited, similar to how RocketContent.ai produces content.

I have hired a manager, given them access to tools, and had them build out procedures that I reviewed. This has been going now for about 6 months and its time to start providing a monthly income report.

Overall I am really happy with the progress of the sites, the content quality being useful, and the cost/article we are currently producing. 

My plan is that each month we are going to share the traffic, revenue, expenses and overall PnL for a portfolio income.

Why Expired Domains? The power of backlinks in the eyes of google is undeniable. Building relevant sites on expired domains continue to be a SEO “hack” we see work.

Why AI Content? AI content with a human editor to spot-check and fact-check produces solid quality content that is useful at unbeatable prices.

Why EZoic? Ezoic is the simplest way to monetize sites successfully. It Beats Adsense all day! When it makes sense, some sites have affiliate monetization, but the focus is on traffic and display ads. 

Why Fully Managed? In this case study, I have a manager assigned to the portfolio managing everything! From the sites to the writers to ezoic. 

The aim is marginally profitable solid growth.  

Everything below is prepared by the manager (who is awesome!). Finding management to run a portion of the business has always been the key to success for my businesses whether it is affiliate or FBA.

Here’s how our portfolio of AI-driven content has performed in October 2022 with Ezoic. 

1. Traffic & Earning Overview (Ezoic)

Our portfolio sites get the most traffic from search engines, and Google is the primary source.

After the latest updates from Google, we noticed positive and negative impacts on the AI content sites. While some sites significantly improved their SERP rankings, others lost a substantial portion of top-ranking keywords, creating an unrelaxed fluctuation in the overall traffic for the portfolio. 

The overall portfolio traffic in October lost 9.62% in total visits (75,570 compared to 83,610 in September 2022) and 9.27% in terms of page views (88,413 vs. 97,448 in September 2022).

Regarding revenue, the portfolio sites show similar statistics to traffic, a 10.90% drop compared to the previous month (September 2022) and a tiny drop in ePMV of 1.42%. It’s pretty obvious not to maintain a higher total revenue while there’s a 14,000 fewer page views gap than the previous month.

While the October traffic and revenue outcome of the portfolio is not successive to September, we have a much better result for an entirely AI-driven portfolio than the same month of the last year.

The portfolio growth data (Oct 2022 vs. Oct 2021): 

1. Total Visits (+147.70%)
2. Pageviews (+141.43%)
3. Revenue (+182.53%) 
4. ePMV(+14.06%)

2. Traffic Overview By Site

Traffic data per site on the portfolio has had frequent ups and downs following the Google algorithm updates in the last couple of months. Some of the major sites’ traffic dropped a little bit, while other new sites have evolved into a major contributor to the portfolio’s overall traffic, and some other sites tanked.

Here are October traffic data from a couple of prominent sites in the portfolio: (compared to September 2022) 

The portfolio obtained a total of 75,570 traffic in the month of October across all sites, 36,244 being the maximum and 164 being minimum traffic for a site. We found an overall change of -8,040 visits to the previous month and -9,035 that of page views.

The maximum pageview gained by an AI content site in Oct was 41,515, and 174 was the minimum. That would be average traffic of 5894 across all sites in the portfolio publishing AI content.

3. Revenue Data Per Site

The portfolio’s revenue stats are directly proportional to October’s visits and page view stats. The total revenue for the portfolio was $738.51 in Oct 2022, with $467.32 as the highest revenue for a site with an average ePMV of $7.19 compared to $7.31 of the previous month (September) across all sites. 

The maximum ePMV during the month was $21.03 and registered the minimum ePMV of $1.45 for a site with the least page views.

The changes in terms of ePMV and Revenue are -1.69% and -9.46% from the previous month (September), respectively. 

4. Expense

Running a website portfolio with multiple sites publishing regular content can be quite expensive. Having a functional, well-managed AI content machine was the plan to reduce the cost of content creation. 

To produce content with an AI copywriter tool, we have a team of human writers who follows specific guideline, take care of the content creation, does fact check for AI-generated texts, and does the optimization to ensure output quality and authenticity. 

So we have a combined monthly expense of the editorial team and AI copywriter tool (our primary AI copywriter is Jasper.ai), which generates texts for a fixed price per word.

Here’s the portfolio October total expanse compared to revenue generated with Ezoic Ad revenue (excluding other revenue sources) looks like:

Key data:

1. Total expanses: $652.00
2. Total Revenue: $740.73
3. Profit (with Ezoic revenue): $88.73 
4. % of profit Ezoic revenue brings in: 13.61% 

5. Changes & Focus:

The unpredictability of website performance in terms of traffic and revenue has always been a part of content-based websites, especially those that get the most part of their traffic from search engines. 

To publish content that is written with AI support and still do well in Google SERP, we need to put great effort into content quality and optimization. That being one of the primary focuses, we also need to ensure delivering an optimized experience to the reader. 

Apart from maintaining the content quality, our objectives for the sites in this portfolio are, 

1. Delivering simplicity: a simple and easy-to-understand approach to delivering information people are looking for and letting them access something without having to deal with complex elements on the site.
2. Visual Hierarchy: we attempt to organize the website elements so that the visitors naturally see the most important elements first.
3. Navigability: All the sites have navigations that are well organized, allowing visitors to have an idea about the clusters quickly and letting people find what they are looking for.
4. User-centricity: we believe in the idea and build & update the websites in the portfolio to convey smoother usability and experience to the users. After all, it is the users who will experience the website and explore its contents.
5. Accessibility: we try our best to reduce anything that can prevent users from accessing the website and can break the functionality.
6. Responsivity: the sites are 100% responsive to be compatible with many different devices our visitors use. 
7. Maintain a Good site health score: ensuring the site does not have minor issues such as abuse of headings, metadata, or links is vital because they can be decisive when you are pushing for the SERP position and want your pages to be 100% ready to compete with a quality piece of content. If done right, it’s quite possible with AI copywriting tools.
8. Site speed and web vitals: site speed and maintaining good web vitals is one of our primary objectives. Our internal data states that with speed upgrade, portfolio sites led to a much better crawling experience for the Google bot and resulted in ~ 6x daily crawling requests compared to before. 

Not only that, fast-loading sites improve the browsing experience and provide us peace of mind after having passed web vitals matrices on the google search console. We also improved our visitor’s time on the page and page depth on the site with the speed upgrade, thanks to Ezoic’s CDN and performance tool (LEAP).

1. The addition of a new site to the portfolio

With a plan of smoothly running currently available sites on the portfolio, we look forward to adding potential sites to grow within our strategy. Having a functional setup to publish regular AI content and a plan to optimize them makes bringing new sites to the portfolio easier. 

Once a new site arrives, we scale the site’s current traffic, design, performance, and other elements to come up with a plan that can lift up the overall quality and experience. Once the site is ready – we strategically prepare a content plan to execute in the upcoming months. 

That being said, not every site we added to our portfolio has had a great time and better output. Some sites tanked and lost a significant portion of the traffic – but most of those threats arrived after the recent Google updates. It brings in the debate of Google penalizing AI content sites which does not hold TRUE for other AI content sites in the portfolio. 

Sites that lost a major portion of traffic lately were the sites ranked well for previously created content. It is safe to say those were not the best quality documents available on the internet for a particular search query. We are still putting our effort into better content updates to see and test how those pages perform as we advance. 

Number of sites added to the portfolio in October: 2

2. Nameserver connection for Ezoic

Ezoic recommends the nameserver connection method to integrate your site with the platform for better site performance and revenue boost. Earlier on, we had many sites integrated with the Ezoic plugin now all of them switched to the nameserver method. 

With the nameserver connection, the site performance has improved a lot. Almost all sites in the portfolio are passing or close to passing web vitals… although we needed to bring some visual and technological changes to the site. 

The improvement in performance and loading of the primary page elements faster helps the ads load faster. Pages and ads that load faster can improve your ad revenue by a decent margin and definitely help our sites to increase Ezoic ad revenue.

3. Seasonal decline & monitor performance

Seasonal interest and demand for products and services affects sites and is a perfectly natural, annoyingly unavoidable aspect of websites, even in any business. Quite obviously, our sites in the portfolio aren’t independent of seasonality. 

There are unpredictable ups and down in terms of traffic for the sites. Having to maintain lots of sites in the portfolio and smoothly take care of other aspects of the sites, it becomes quite challenging to keep a close eye on each site individually. 

Semrush and Ahrefs help us by providing the traffic overview and keywords found in organic searches for each site. It gives us an idea of the ongoing traffic state of a site compared to what could be a scenario for the site in the coming months based on the trajectory of organic keywords. 

In addition, we can analyze the organic keywords situation, and based on their latest form; we can decide to improve the content if required. 

Conclusion: It is fun to manage multiple sites and have a proper plan to run them all together while still making some decent profit with provisions to increase revenue in the future. This could easily be a project that consumes most of our time, but a well-designed plan and ready-to-use tools + the right people in the right place, make it much easier to manage the portfolio.

This income report serise is aimed at sharing our growth and the fundamentals that helped us reach here, minor details that can help you build your AI-driven website’s portfolio at a significantly lower cost.