Most pop-ups ignite a raging fire within us that makes us click that back button before we’ve even had time to blink. In a world full of unwelcome interruptions to our browsing, you need to put the work in if your pop-ups are going to pay off.
Pop-ups that are easy on the eye, yield great results and don’t scare your visitors off may be few and far between – but that doesn’t mean the tools aren’t out there.
There are tons of plugins to help make your pop-up related dreams come true – and if you aren’t willing to cough up some cash, you may have to embark upon a bit of trial and error to find one which fulfills your needs.
The good news is that I’ve done a bit of the legwork for you and reviewed five of the most popular free plugins on the WordPress plugin directory.
So let’s get to it!
1. Pop-Up Builder by Sygnoos
The first on our list is Pop-Up Builder. With 100,000+ active installs and a bold claim right at the top of its WordPress.org listing, I had to check it out.
There are five free modules to choose from, with the option of adding a gazillion more by going Pro.

I took a look at the image option first. I found that whilst it does indeed allow you to make a pop-up using an image, there isn’t a way to add text.
This is no good if you have a message you want to convey to your visitors. You could always upload an image that has text already on it, however, a lot of times including important text in an image isn’t a good idea. You can only really get away with it if you add perfect alt tags.
You can design a pop-up to fit your exact requirements using the HTML option, which takes you to the classic editor.
The styling options included in this pop-up are very limited, therefore the only way to really make your pop-up fit your brand is with code. Not ideal if your coding knowledge isn’t up to scratch.
I had a dabble using the classic editor and a bit of custom CSS and was able to produce this classy little gem within a couple of minutes.
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This article was written by Kirstan Norman and originally published on WPMU DEV Blog.