Best popup builder for small business: eight tools sorted by what they count and what the free plan allows

Best popup builder for small business: sort by meter and free plan

This guide groups eight tools instead of ranking them, because the right pick depends on your monthly traffic, your platform and the triggers you need. Each tool was read from its own pricing or listing page on October 23, 2026, and amounts are left to those pages.

Read vendor claims with care. Every result, template count and customer number on a vendor page is the vendor's own. The FTC's endorsement guides (16 CFR 255) say advertisers can be liable for misleading or unsubstantiated endorsement claims, so this guide labels vendor figures as the vendors'.

Tools with a free plan or a free core

• Popupsmart: a free plan of 5,000 pageviews a month, one website and one live popup, with paid plans up to 500,000 pageviews, a Shopify app and a WordPress plugin or embed code. See the Popupsmart review.
• OptiMonk: a free plan of 10,000 pageviews a month on one domain. Its pricing page says every plan has every feature and no OptiMonk branding, and that plans differ in pageviews, AI credits and domains.
• Poptin: a free plan of 1,000 visitors a month on one domain, with paid tiers from 10,000 visitors a month upward. It meters monthly visitors.
• Popup Maker: a WordPress-only plugin with a free core. Its WordPress.org listing says exit-intent and scroll triggers need Popup Maker Pro.

Tools without a free plan

• OptinMonster: meters campaign impressions across Basic, Plus, Pro and Growth plans, with a 14-day money-back guarantee and exit intent from the Pro plan. See Popupsmart vs OptinMonster.
• Privy: popups and displays are priced on monthly pageviews, while its email and SMS plans are priced separately by mailable contacts. It offers a 15-day free trial and lists exit intent popups, spin-to-win and A/B testing.
• Sleeknote: priced in bands of monthly visitors, with unlimited campaigns and domains, a Gamification tier that adds spin-to-win style games, and a 14-day free trial that needs no credit card.
• Wisepops: its pricing link opens a demo booking page, and the page says price depends on traffic volume, channels and service level after a traffic audit. Its page speaks to sites with 100,000 to 10 million sessions, so check the fit before you book.

Criteria that decide the fit

• What is counted: pageviews, campaign impressions or visitors. The same site produces different numbers under each, as the OptinMonster comparison shows.
• Which triggers sit behind a paid tier: exit intent is free to use on Popupsmart, starts at Pro on OptinMonster and needs the Pro version of Popup Maker.
• How many popups can run at once on the free plan: one on Popupsmart.
• Your platform: a Shopify app, a WordPress plugin or a script that works on any site.
• Branding: whether free popups carry the vendor's name, which the pricing pages state differently.

When a free plugin or no popup is enough

A single WordPress site can start with a free plugin such as Popup Maker and move later. Some sites need no popup at all. Nielsen Norman Group's research says most overlays appear at the wrong time and interrupt users, and for newsletter sign-ups it suggests a thin, easy-to-dismiss banner or an inline form instead. If the aim is a subscriber list, a form on the page may do the job.

Choosing an email service to send to those subscribers is a separate decision, covered at Email Platform Desk. How to create an exit intent popup gives the set-up order, and the Popupsmart pricing guide shows how a pageview allowance works.