This post contains affiliate links, which means I may earn some commission: More details.
Update: I wrote this post back in 2013 when Hello Bar was just a sticky notification bar displayed on top before they had any other features. So I’ve updated this list with many other tools considering the recent trends.
As you know, Hello Bar is one of the popular eye-catching notification toolbar used by many sites all over the web, but because of its high price many bloggers are not using it; their free package provides only 25 clicks/month that is not even enough for a low traffic site. And the pricing starts at 4.95 per month for 100 clicks, where the pro package is worth $49 .95 per/month for up to 7,500 clicks. Obviously, Hello Bar is not affordable for small Business owners and new bloggers.
Moreover, the installation process of Hello Bar is a little time-consuming because Hello Bar is not a plugin, it requires a couple of steps to set-up.
However, these types of notification toolbar can be very beneficial for your business. It can be used to capture high-quality leads, to guide your visitors to a specific sales page, to an eBook download page, can use as a subscription form, can use as a call-to-action button, etc. As you can see it has so many advantages.
In this article, I’m going to share some of the Premium and free WordPress Plugins that can be used as an Alternative for Hello Bar.
Hello Bar Alternative WordPress Plugins and Tools
WP Notification Bar
WP Notification Bar is a newly developed Premium Hello Bar alternative WordPress Plugin by MyThemeShop. This Plugin has all the features that Hello Bar offer, and it just costs $29.
WP Notification Bar (aff. link) is best for custom notifications and alerts that displays a sleek message bar on your website. It can help you grow your email list, manage marketing promotions, increase your social media following or grow the audience for specific pages on your website.
As you can see above, I’m using this plugin on this Blog. Even though there are lots of similar free plugins, I bought this plugin because premium products usually come with secured codes, support, and regular updates.
Another feature I like about this plugin is that I can only display Bar on specific locations and completely turn off on certain posts or pages. Also, this plugin offers a high degree of customization options from changing colors to animation. You can also use this plugin to collect emails and Split-testing!
Is it worth the money? Absolutely!
Features:
- Unlimited Notification Bars
- 18 Social Media Buttons
- Multiple Notification Types
- Custom HTML support
- Multiple Color Schemes
Update: I just noticed that MyThemeShop recently launched the free version of this plugin. However, some features like Countdown Timer is missing. So try this free plugin if you’re short of budget.
Thrive Leads
Thrive Leads is another Best Hello Bar Alternatives WordPress plugin. This plugin is recently developed by popular theme company called ThriveThemes.
This plugin offers some of the Advanced features to Get a massive conversion boost by showing relevant, highly targeted offers to your visitors based on posts, categories, tags and more. Build hyper-targeted and profitable lists.
I’ve been using this plugin on this very blog and if you’re particularly looking to grow your email list, then Thrive Leads might be the best available choice at the market.
Another noticeable feature that I like about Thrive Leads is Thrive Boxes that triggers a pop-up on the click.
Thrive Boxes Trigger click here.
Features:
- Easy to Design forms
- drag-and-drop editor
- Advanced Targeting
- A/B Testing Engine
- Actionable Reporting & Insights
- In-Line Forms
- Screen Filler Overlay
- Content Lock
- ThriveBox (Popup Lightbox)
- “Sticky” Ribbon
- Content Lock
- Multiple Choice Forms
Sumo Smart Bar
Sumo is another best tool that can be better than Hello Bar. This tools comes free as well as varies pro plans. Sumo mostly used by popular websites and the pro plans are priced a bit high, however, the free plan still offer quite a lot of features.
With the free plan, you can collect up-to 500 Subscribers, Autoresponder Email, A/B Tests, Basic Email Integrations, etc. You can easily activate and get started with Sumo by installing a plugin.
Features:
- 500 Subscribers
- Basic Email Integrations
- 1 Site
- Creative Freedom
- Autoresponder Email
- Email Your Subscribers
- A/B Tests
Thrive Architect
Thrive Architect is one of the Popular and Best Premium WYSIWYG Visual Editor WordPress Plugins. Even though this plugin is a little different from Hello Bar or notification bar on top, this thing can do a lot more than you could ever imagine.
This Architect plugin offers different Landing pages, call-to-action buttons, countdown timer, opt-in forms, etc. In other words, this plugin is an all-in-one must have plugin for WordPress.
Thrive Architect is used by over 38,942 People WorldWide. Thrive Architect provides you The Ultimate Click-to-Edit Front End Builder for Your WordPress Website.
I’ve brought this plugin some months ago and using it on this blog. This page is created using Thrive Architect plugin; see how amazing it looks.
Features of Thrive Architect
- Styled Bullet Point Lists (like this one)
- Customizable Content Boxes
- Responsive Video Embeds
- Visual HTML Table Builder
- Feature Grids (with Images or Icons)
- Content Tabs & Toggles
- Responsive Google Maps Embeds
- Star Ratings for Reviews
- Dynamic Countdown Timers
- Opt-in Forms
- Easy Table of Contents Builder
- Custom HTML & CSS
Attention Grabber Plugin
Attention Grabber plugin is one of the best free alternatives for Hello Bar, it has the same features as Hello Bar and it can be easily installed and integrated with your WordPress site.
Features:
- You can customize the look of the bar however you want
- Track the number of sign-ups or clicks you receive using Google Analytics
- Responsively show or hide content to fit comfortably at the top user’s screen
WordPress Notification Bar
WordPress Notification Bar is another free plugin which can be used as an alternative for Hello Bar. Similar to Attention Grabber, it is also can be easily installed and integrate with a WordPress site.
Features:
- Display sticky notification bar
- Easy setup
- call to action button with a custom message
- choose any color to match your site
Notification Bar plugin
It is also a similar plugin like the above one, A simple notification bar which allows you to add a notification bar on the top of your WordPress site.
Features:
- Comes up with 5 color option
- A Call-to-action link button
- Hides automatically after 7 seconds
- Use to redirect users to any specific page
Sticky Notification Bar For WordPress
Sticky Notification Bar is also a cool plugin which displays a cool bar on top when the user scrolls down your page. you can use a navigation menu if you want to show a Navigation in the top bar, or you can show a constant message that you want to convey to your users.
Features:
- Adds a cool sticky bar to your WordPress site which only shows when the user scrolls
- option to set when to display
- you can show social share icons on the bar
- Easily manageable back-end settings
- you can use a navigation menu if you want to show a Navigation
- It allows you to add/upload your own logo if you want to show your logo on the bar
- You can enable disable the Sticky notification bar for a specific post or page.
- You can add a cool scroll to a top arrow which smoothly brings the user to the top of the web page.
- you can add the bar at the bottom or at the top.
Fluid Notification Bar
The Fluid Notification bar is another simple plugin which displays a nice responsive bar at the top. you can use this bar to display any messages to your visitors.
Features:
- You can display specific post/page link
- Display a welcome message to your website visitors
- You can display a link to sales or something important
- Use it as a call-to-action button
Notify Bar
This plugin adds a bar across the top of some or all pages on your WordPress website. The bar displays a headline and a paragraph which can be used to display important announcements.
Features:
- Customize bar color with a color picker
- Optional jQuery slide-Up feature that allows the user to hide the bar
- Display link of any sales page or important page
- Display any popular post or page
Promo Bar by ZotaBox
Promo Bar by ZotaBox is another Hello Bar type plugin that comes with similar features. The Best thing is about this plugin is its free.
Promo Bar easily lets you customize the color, text background, font size and height within the dashboard.
GetSiteControl
GetSiteControl is another Hello Bar competitor tool that offers several features like email subscription forms, contact forms, survey forms, live chat, social media share buttons, etc.
This tool is very easy to use on any type of website and it also has a free WordPress plugin. The free plan offers all the widget features but has a limit of 50,000 monthly views per site, which is more than enough.
Features:
- Freemium
- Opt-in form
- Contact widget
- Notification bar
- Follow buttons
- Share buttons
OptiMonk
OptiMonk does a very good job to avoid losing leads from your visitors with its exit-intent technology. OptiMonk claims that you can recover up to 15% of abandoning visitors.
With the help of this tool, you can detect visitors who are about to leave your site and display the special offer to boost your conversion rates.
OptinMonster
OptinMonster can be the best replacement for hello bar. This tool offers many similar features and used by many popular websites.
With OptinMonster, you can grow your email list, reduce cart abandonment, onsite retargeting, increase sales, etc. One noticeable feature of OptinMonster is its full-screen Welcome Mat which known to be effective.
The basic pricing starts at $19/mo for 1 site, which is affordable for even small business owners.
Sleeknote
Sleeknote is another tool that will help you engage with your audience and increase your conversion rates. With Sleeknote, you can collect email addresses, guide your visitors, increase product sales.
This tool also has features like smart triggers, real-time analytics, A/B testing, etc.
Unbounce
Unbounce is a landing page builder that is known for its conversion optimization features. With Unbounce, you can create landing pages, popups, sticky bars, etc.
You can get more leads from the PPC campaigns to a dedicated landing page built with Unbounce.
Picreel
Picreel is a tool that’s known for the exit offers that can help you boost conversions by 25%. With Picreel, you can collect emails by integrating with popular marketing platforms like MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse, etc.
Talking about pricing, basic plan starts at $19/mo with a limitation of 30,000 pageviews for 1 site.
SiteKit
SiteKit is another free tool that offers features like Smart Bar, Exit-intent popups, Multi-forms, etc.
More importantly, SiteKit is completely free of cost with unlimited campaigns for unlimited sites.
Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means I earn a little commission if you purchase any products using my links.
Conclusion
Above I have listed out some of the Premium and free Hello Bar Alternative WordPress Plugins and tools.
Great List Adithya,
Hellobar is a great Plugin launched by Neil Patel. and it is great to grab users attention. Other plugins are also great and useful. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Nkhil 🙂
Hi Nikhil,
Yep, it is great creation by Neil. .
thanks for reading! 🙂
Hello,
Wow great list of free plugins, actually I haven’t used hello bar till now. But I’m gonna surely try the listed plugins.
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Jijin,
These plugins are very useful to capture visitors. . thanks for reading! 🙂
I was completely unaware about all the plugins. Surely I’ll try one of them. Thanks for the share.
Hi Lakhyajyoti,
Glad you found it useful, thanks for
reading! 🙂
Hi,
I am newbie on wp.I just installed WP for my one blog.And these are the very useful post about alternative WP plugins for hello bar thank you for sharing.
Hi Sameer,
thanks for reading! 🙂
cool alternatives,
For me I like to keep it very, very simple.
I don’t what any distraction on my blog, no pop ups, shiny banners, nothing none-static.
I have one banner on a black and white site that pops.
perhaps down the line I’d incorporate some add ons though.
thnx for the share, Adithya
Akos
Hi Akos,
I don’t think these small static bars at the top will distract anyone! I agree pop-up and ads will be irritating. . .
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Hello,
Attention Grabber plugin is my favorite and great plugin which is absolutely alternate for hello bar. I’ve used for my tech blog.
Thanks Mate!
Hi Samir,
Attention Grabber is best alternative for Hello bar!
thanks for reading!
I must thank you for this awesome post.
I honestly didn’t know that there was so much floating bar available for WordPress blogs.
Currently I am using one that I bought called Attention Grabber. I am loving it so much because it is so easy to use and customize. Can also track clicks.
Thanks for sharing the others as well.
Hi Kharim,
Glad you liked it!
yes attention grabber is good plugin!
thanks for reading! 🙂
Hey Adithya,
Great list there. I personally love Foobar and great to see alternatives too.
Thanks for sharing and keep it up.
Hi Reginald,
Didn’t knew about Foobar. . .
thanks for reading! 🙂
This is great collection of notification bar. Thanks for posting this list. Keep in touch
Hi Rakesh,
thanks for reading! 🙂
Hi,
Thanks for the post.
I must be confused. I see nothing on the Hello Bar site about payment plans.
Does it just show up once you get 25 new subscribers in a month?
And I do love that it integrates with MailChimp!!
I have also purchased and used FooBar.
Hi Mitch,
Hello bar pricing starts
at 4.95 per month for 100 clicks,
where the pro package is worth $
49 .95 per/month for up to 7,500
clicks.
I think you need to register to see the pricing and plans!
Weird, I am registered and have a Hello Bar on my site yet there is absolutely nothing about pricing or any plans.
It made me wonder how they operated without a paid plan of any kind.
That’s what I was searching for when I found your post.
oh! read their FAQ page, you might find solution!
The hello bar / top navigation popup really helpful if you have to do any announcement or you have any product/services to promote.
These 6 free alternatives are useful, and in long term increases quality of each product.
Hi sadek,
yes, hello bar like toolbars are very helpful to attract readers attention!
thanks for stopping by!
I totally agree that “hellobar” plugin can not be afforded by small businesses and new bloggers.
The list of alternatives which you have mentioned are really good. I too think that attention seeker plugin will be great among all others.
Anyway thank you for the list and moreover thank you for sharing this post.
Hi Sagar,
Yes, Hellobar is little expensive for new bloggers.. . that’s why i listed out these alternatives. . .
Thanks for reading!
That’s a good list Adithya. Nice to see that you are proactively monitoring and replying the comments too. 🙂
I’d like to introduce you our new wp plugin which allows you to run “behavioral based” notifications on the site.
Please take a look at http://wordpress.org/plugins/visitorengage-feedback-button-push-notifications-surveys/
Thanks,
Hi Jagan,
I will definitely check your plugin out!
thanks!
That’s one really informative article, Adithya. You keep to the point, I really like that.
I though you might be interested in checking our new service called GetSiteControl (http://getsitecontrol.com/) which offers different types of website widgets all managed easily from a single dashboard. We have alerts similar to the ones you have described too, but GetSiteControl set uncludes much more than that: a subscription and contact forms, follow and share social buttons. And we have developed a WordPress plugin to make installation easier for WordPress users. It would be great if you could find time to check it out.
Hi Adithya,
Would like to add value to your list by including icegram plugin into it. What is your take?
Regards,
Lucky.
Hey Lucky
Just tried Icegram plugin and it’s awesome. Should be in the list!
Nice article and I would like to contribute our product ChatNox LiveChat. We also have a built-in StickyBar (What we call) that is bundled with our Live Chat Software.
Just once piece of code to paste and you can have both LiveChat and the StickyBar on your website. You can also turn either one off. StickyBar is free for upto 5000 contacts each month.
Thank you
Peter
Note : I work for ChatNox
Thanks for share the great list, many peoples just using the free plugin including ME :-p
this is a must have plugin to double the requirements.
it could turn very useful if put up properly.
regards
vinayak
Hi Adithya,
Your reviews are excellent and I have been wanting to buy the hello bar for awhile now. I decided to read some reviews on an alternative solution as I know many of my own clients don’t want to spend big dollars and I like to use what I promote!
So I am going to buy the WP Notification Bar on your recommendation (and through your link…I cleared cookies so you should get a commission in a few moments.)
Thank you again for a thorough review on the possible alternatives to a great little plugin!
Have a great day,
Susan
Hi Susan,
WP Notification Bar is a great alternative for HelloBar; hope you enjoy this plugin.
And yes, I think I got the commission. Appreciate your help. Thanks a lot! 🙂
I have installed it already and love it! I’m glad you got the commission too! 😉
Thanks again!
Great to hear that, Thanks again! 🙂
Hi Adithya, thank you for mentioning our Fluid Notification Bar WP plugin over here. Looks nice to see it here.
You’re Welcome! 🙂
Thanks Adithya for providing these alternative plugins of hello bar.
Hi Adithya, this is a very useful blog. You may want to check out our free promo bar (and other very useful on-site marketing tools) at http://www.zotabox.com.
All our onsite marketing tools are high quality, completely customizable and easy to use. I would appreciate your opinions and suggestions.
Thank you very much for your time.
Hi Adithya,
Have you had an opportunity to look at our suite of website marketing tools that include 2 alternatives to the Hello bar as well as pop-ups and other original tools to help boost store owner sales? I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Half of our tools are completely free. Thank you for your consideration.
Hi Paul,
I’ll check and add your plugin to this list! 🙂
Thank you Adithya. I hope you and your followers find our collection of free and paid marketing tools beneficial to your sites. Best of luck in your blogging career.
Hi Adithya.
May our plugin be considered for to be added to this list? It’s a call to action plugin which allows users to create stunning floating Calls To Action on WordPress.
Many thanks.
Hi Richard,
I’ve just added your plugin to this list! 🙂
Hey Adithya,
helpful Post. I will try the WP Bar after I am done with my workout 🙂
Could you tell me what plugin you use that shows the subscribe field on the bottom and the About me box bellow it?
Hi Alex,
The plugin is called “Genesis eNews Extended” to add subscriber form below content. I guess this plugin only works with Genesis themes, not sure, though!
Alright. Thanks Adithya. Maybe you write a Post about that 😉
Have a great day
Haha, I’ll try!
Thank you! 🙂
We really thank you for this post. But we would like you indicate please which one of this plugins do you recommend because it’s not easy to make a test all of them. We try a lot of free versions but they do not much our need enough.
I use Premium WP Notification Bar, it offers features like; display different bars on different pages, hide on certain pages, etc.
Hi Adithya,
Nice listing, but there is another free tool that offers more than what Hellobar is offering, and main problem with hellobar is their “H” appears over the screen when connections are bit slow.
tool Im using is Optingun https://optingun.com
here are some of the key features that I prefer it for
#1 Scheduling forms to display between a period of time or from a scheduled time
#2 count-down timers on the forms, and closing the form once the timer goes off
#3 subscribing using facebook, google accounts, so visitors dont need to type name email, its fast and friction-free, sweet thing is we dont have to create facebook/google apps to use this features, it runs out of the box
#4 no branding/links/logos on forms for free accounts
and all the other regular features that any other product is offering
Thanks for the wonderful post
Nice,
These all most powerful items mentioned in this post, thanks for providing useful information on your blog.
Thanks again
Thank you so much! I was just googling pricing on Hello Bar since someone referred me and I found your helpful article and I so appreciate it!
You’re welcome, Julie! I’m glad you found it helpful!
Hi Adithya,
I thought you maybe interested in knowing we have added 15+ more free tools to our header bar from Zotabox. We will also be releasing a new free landing page builder soon. Our 15+ free forever tools include popups, contact forms, social buttons, Facebook live chat, push notifications etc. included in your Zotabox package. We hope you get a chance to check us out at https://zotabox.com. No catches.
Hi Paul,
Will check it out, Thanks!
Thanks Adithya. I think you will LOVE our new landing page builder. There will be a free version too. It is so easy you will be able to publish a new landing page in 5 minutes or less.