5 Best Push Notification Plugins for WordPress
Attracting an audience to your website is one thing and maintaining that audience’s attention and keeping them coming back to your site is something else entirely. The success of any type of website depends largely on how good you are in both of these fields. While attracting an audience may require a more flashy and bold approach, more discreet and unpretentious communication methods are usually more successful when it comes to retaining the audience.
That is where push notifications come into play.
What Are Push Notifications
More discreet than a standard popup, less intrusive than a typical ad, push notification is a different yet powerful way to interact with your visitors. While many other communication methods rely on some sort of exchange like “give me your email address, and you’ll get my ebook,” push notification is as simple and straightforward as it can be.
Push notifications serve to inform visitors about the news, offers, updates, and similar relevant content on the website even if they are currently not on your website. The visitor always has a choice whether he wants or not to receive push notifications. The opt-in prompt for these notifications usually shows up in the top left corner of the page. Push notifications engage only the audience that has already visited and perhaps engaged with your website and is interested in your niche. And what makes them even more effective is the fact that once the visitor agrees to receive them, they show up whenever he uses a web browser, not only when he is on your website. Simply put, they remind someone already interested in your content about all the news related to it whenever he is browsing the internet – no wonder they bring excellent results.
Types of Push Notifications and How They Are Used
Now that you have a general understanding of what push notifications are, let’s take a brief look at the types of push notifications you can use, and how you can benefit from them. There are generally three different purposes for which you can use push notifications: content marketing, retargeting, and retention. In line with that, there are many different types of push notifications, and we’ll name just the most common ones to give you an idea of how you can practically use them:
Bulk Web Push Notifications
This is the type of notification most often used to communicate about the deal of the season, special offer, new feature launch, new content on your site, and similar. The notifications like these are sent to the entire user base. Ecommerce websites abundantly use them, though, of course, they can be customized and useful for any other type of site.
Segmented Web Push Notifications
It’s not very likely that all your users will have the same preferences. There is always a variety of reasons why certain types of users come to your pages. Addressing those different motivations is the key to building your audience and keeping them coming back to your site. Segmented web push notifications, sent to specified sets of visitors based on factors like age, gender, online behavior, lifecycle stage, and similar, can help you receive higher click through rates as these notifications are more targeted and more personalized.
Recurring Web Push Notifications
This type of web push notifications is very handy as it doesn’t require constant manual intervention from your side. You simply set the notification frequency, and it will automatically repeat in the established time – daily, weekly, or monthly. This way, you can regularly inform your users about monthly deals without having to set a new web push campaign every month. They are mostly used to improve customer engagement in eCommerce, media and entertainment, food and delivery, etc.
Like with all the other communication methods, the question of good measure is essential. Too many push notifications are just as ineffective as too little. In the first case, the visitors might get irritated, and in the latter, they may forget about your site.
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Best Plugins for Adding Push Notifications to Your Website
Now that you know how useful push notifications can be, let’s see how to add them to your WordPress site. The best way to go about it is to use the appropriate plugin. To help you narrow your choice we made a selection of the best web push notification plugins:
When a plugin is as popular as OneSignal is, it can mean only one thing – that it answers the needs of many in just the right way. Let’s see exactly how it does that.
This plugin allows you to create all sorts of push notifications, from announcements to abandoned cart notifications and everything in between. The plugin lets you set the exact moment when you want the prompt to show up – it can be after a certain number of page views or after a certain period spent on page, measured in seconds. Since timing is very important in setting push notifications, this is a valuable option.
Another useful functionality that comes with this plugin is the possibility to run A/B tests and gain actionable insight into your users’ behavior based on analytics. Segmentation options that allow better targeting are also very handy since the more personalized notification is, the better results you’ll get. What also makes this plugin excellent and is not typically included in this type of tool, is that it lets you create in-app messages and emails.
One Signal currently supports Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers. It offers four pricing plans. The free plan is available only for those who have more than 10,000 subscribers and includes all the essential functionalities, though with limited personalization options. Paid plans start from $9/month and naturally offer more advanced features. There is also the possibility of creating a custom plan for your enterprise with a custom price and functionalities that you choose to have.
If you feel like this plugin is the best choice for you, check out our guide on adding push notifications to WordPress for more details about how OneSignal works and how to set it up.
The PushEngage is another popular plugin with excellent reviews, and the fact that it is trusted by big brand names like TUI, Harvard Business Review, and Dominos, among others, gives it a lot of credibility. The reason for the popularity of this plugin is the level of personalization it provides. Its powerful segmentation functionalities let you create more specifically targeted notifications based on user behavior on your site. You can segment the visitors who visited a specific page, bought a specific product, or added a specific item to the cart. Then you can create a triggered campaign that allows for automatically generated abandoned cart notifications, price drop alerts, and more. This way you give your visitors a second chance to make the purchase. The goal-tracking feature allows you to track the performance of every campaign and calculate the revenue generated. The plugin also includes A/B testing functionality, which provides you with useful analytics and insights.
The simplicity of use is another reason behind the popularity of PushEngage. It is perfectly suitable both for beginners and advanced users and supports all devices and browsers.
As for the pricing, if you have up to 2,500 subscribers, the free plan may be a good solution for you. The free plan allows for 120 notifications per month, smart opt-in reminders, targeted opt-in triggers, and good but limited support. There are three more paid plans with prices starting from $25/month. Enterprises also have the option to create a customized plan.
The Fire Push plugin offers great value for money. In just a couple of years on the market, it earned an excellent rating and lots of promising reviews. It is a lightweight, affordable, and effective solution that lets you easily add HTML5 web push notifications to your WordPress website. Plus, it is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
The feature that many users find valuable when it comes to this plugin is the ability to send both live and background notifications. Live notifications are handy when you want to take advantage of a certain moment and push the visitor a bit more towards taking a specific action. For example, if a background push notification about some promotion or discount brought a visitor to your site, a timely live notification about the offer expiry can propel the visitor to make the purchase.
Fire Push also includes plenty of customization options. You can customize icons, text, or feature specific imagery. It supports WooCommerce and integrates well with any WooCommerce-powered online store. With Fire Push, you can also create custom and automatic push notifications and style them to fit your branding.
Plus, the plugin authors provide excellent and timely support, which is always desirable. This is not a free plugin but does come at a very affordable price that includes an unlimited number of push notifications and access to all the features.
WonderPush is another quality plugin that has many features in common with the above-mentioned plugins. However, what makes it different is its unique pricing model – no matter how much you pay for it – you get access to all of its features while the price depends on the number of subscribers. The more you have, the more you pay, and the lowest price is €1 per month for 1,000 subscribers.
What also makes it popular is the simplicity of use and fast setup. Its most prominent feature is the excellent segmentation functionality based on the powerful built-in custom criteria that let you create automated, targeted notifications based on user behavior patterns. You can restrict a push based on tags, language, or events.
E-commerce push notifications are also supported. You can use them to recover abandoned carts by sending a reminder to the customer that the cart with the selected product is still waiting for them. You can also create media push notifications with relevant tags, sports push notifications, real estate push notifications, and many more depending on the type of your site. Thanks to access to real-time analytics, you can easily monitor how effective your notifications are.
WonderPush is compatible with Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Edge thus providing you with access to a very wide audience. Though not free, it does include a 14 days trial period, which is just enough to estimate if the plugin works for you or not.
Webpushr is a very practical solution in many aspects. It supports Chrome, Firefox Safari (but only on Mac OS), Microsoft Edge and Opera web browsers, and includes a collection of different prompt templates.
A variety of options for sending push notifications are at your disposal. You can create and set automated push notifications whenever you publish a new post. You can also create and send messages about new products, sales promotions, price drops, and abandoned carts, event-triggered as well as scheduled notifications, and a lot more. Transferring subscribers from some other platform is also easily achievable with Webpushr.
As for the look and style,Webpushr allows you to add emojis and images to your push notifications, which usually makes them more clickable. You can also style and brand your opt-in prompt.
Additionally, the plugin lets you see useful user reports like browser and device type. It also offers more advanced features like user segmentation, HTTP support, and automatic web push, advanced user analytics, and customizable opt-in prompts. It integrates well both with WooCommerce and WordPress. It can provide strong support for any sort of online store.
As for the pricing plans, Webpushr comes in free and premium plans. The free plan is available for those who do not have more than 60,000 subscribers. It does not impose any limit to the number of notifications you can send per month, and unlike many other plugins, all features are available in all plans. The paid plans start from $19/month, and enterprises have the option of creating a custom plan for their needs.
Final Thoughts
User retention is always an important issue when it comes to the long-term success of any website. Push notifications for WordPress are one of the most simple ways to get visitors to return to your site and keep them engaged with your content. As we have shown in this article, there are many excellent tools that can help you improve user engagement using push notifications. Big brands usually opt for premium plugins like PushEngage as they need to be sure they can rely on expert support in case of any issue. Others opt for more affordable yet scalable solutions like Wonderpush.
However, as it is often the case with this type of plugins, the number of subscribers dictates the price, and you can only go for free until you reach a certain number of subscribers. But, not all free plans are the same. Some plugins like Webpushr and Wonderpush allow access to all the features in all plans, whereas OneSignal’s free plan offers a limited number of features. So, there is no definitive answer to which of the plugins is the best. It is on you to decide which plugin answers your needs, fits your budget, and serves your goals the best.
