8 Email List Building Tools to Increase Your List [2024]

Popups, forms, quizzes, surveys, landing pages, website bars—email list building tools can give you every possible channel to grow your customer base.

If you're wondering what's the best tool for your business, here are eight top options for you to choose from.

In this post:

• How to choose an email list building tool?

• List of email list building tools

How to choose an email list building tool?

You have three main options to go with: dedicated list building software, email marketing apps with built-in email capture forms, and landing page builders.

Here are a few tips on how to choose the best email list builder:

➡ But if you need to accelerate lead generation at your ecommerce store, consider a dedicated list building tool. It gives you all the possible lead capture campaign types as well as the freedom to do deep A/B tests for lead gen experiments.

➡ If you're a new online business needing email marketing and lead capture features, both dedicated tools and email marketing apps could work for you.

➡ But if you're running a B2B or a service business and creating highly customized signup pages is necessary to get appointments and bookings, then a dedicated landing page builder is probably the best option.

Email list building tools

Wisepops

Wisepops is one of the best list building tools for ecommerce businesses and B2B.

You get an entire lead generation suite (popups of all types, embedded forms, website bars, and onsite notifications), powerful analytics, and revenue tracking.

Review of Wisepops

Let's start with the campaign editor. With Wisepops, creating any email signup popups and forms for websites is simple.

The editor is drag-and-drop, so all the options appear once you click the element you want to change. You can create email and phone number capture forms just by adding the corresponding signup fields to the campaign.

In terms of list building features in campaigns, you have many powerful options to experiment with.

You can share discounts (including unique codes from your Shopify), make personalized offers based on targeting rules (like, when a visitor adds a product to the cart), and collect info like preferred product categories with extra signup fields.

For example, here are the audience targeting options alone:

Besides popups and forms—

You also get a unique email list building feature: onsite notifications. They are a social media-style feed... that you can add to any website! They appear as a small bell in your website's header and, if clicked, open a feed with messages.

You can generate leads with onsite notifications in several ways: use them as a newsletter signup form, drive visitors to landing pages from your homepage, and share discounts:

List building features:

• Convert visitors with welcome popups, newsletter signup popups, SMS popups, discount popups, exit popups, wheel popups, and mobile popups

• Gather extra data (names, product category preferences, etc.) for customer segmentation with multi-step popups

• Onsite notifications: a non-intrusive website feed with signup forms

• Embedded customizable signup forms (embeds) that you can add to any page

• Website sticky bars with email signup forms, buttons to drive traffic to signup pages, and copyable discount codes with usage tracking

• Powerful targeting options to help you create contextually relevant campaigns (target visitors by the number of visits, viewed products, geolocation, traffic source, and even Klaviyo segments)

• Add phone numbers signup fields to your campaigns to collect leads for SMS marketing

• Integrate with Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and other popular email marketing apps (see all integrations)

• Monitor email list building and revenue goals with built-in goal tracking

• Validate new signups to collect real emails only

• Deep A/B testing of campaigns

• Full GDPR compatibility

Wisepops pros:

• No-code campaign builder

• Lots of pre-built email list building templates

• Onsite notifications: a unique feature to convert website visitors

• Many display rules to create contextually relevant campaigns

• Powerful analytics (top pages, campaigns, devices)

• Native Shopify integration (Wisepops Shopify app)

• Built-in Shopify properties for personalized email list building campaigns

• Campaign goal and revenue tracking

Wisepops cons:

• No free plan (but 14-day free trial available)

Who uses Wisepops for list building?

Mostly ecommerce stores, but also SaaS businesses and nonprofits.

Here are some examples of businesses using Wisepops as an email list builder:

• emoi emoi captured 8,000 emails with one campaign

• YesPark added 4,737 emails with popups and bars

• Springly accelerates email list building by 50%

Pricing:

You can use all Wisepops features for free with a 14-day trial.

Paid plans begin from $49/mo., but you can get two months for free with an annual subscription: see Wisepops pricing

A special offer is available for enterprise users: Wisepops One

Start building your list today:

No cc needed, unlimited free trial with all premium features

Sumo (BDOW)

Sumo (now called BDOW) is a free email list builder. It's a great alternative to dedicated paid list building apps for small ecommerce stores with low traffic as well as content creators.

Our experience with Sumo

The free version of BDOW gives you all the basic features you need to start getting emails on your site. You can customize the form to fit your website design, add the page to show it on and connect your email provider (the most popular ones like Klaviyo are paid, though):

In our experience, Sumo is a good app for content creators, as you don't have a lot of advanced ecommerce features in the free version. Besides, the targeting is pretty basic, so creating personalized offers for shoppers will not be possible.

But if you just need an email form on your site that looks natural and sends the emails to ESP like MailerLite, ActiveCampaign, or Constant Contact, Sumo is an option to consider. Besides, you get some nice options to speed up campaign creation like Smart targeting mode (which, in our experience, turned out to be exit-intent detector).

Features:

• Collect leads with popups, scroll boxes, embeds, and bars

• Fully customizable campaigns

• Basic targeting settings (page targeting, device type, location)

• Connect your campaigns to Shopify and WooCommerce

• Built-in email marketing features

Sumo pros:

• Basic email list builder with a free plan

• Essential ecommerce features like shopping cart recovery and upsell

• Free email marketing features included

Sumo cons:

• Stats for signup forms are removed after 30 days

• Very basic popup form design

Pricing:

You can use this email list building tool for free. If you choose to take advantage of its email marketing features, you'll have to upgrade when you reach 10,000 sends per month.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is an email marketing platform with decent built-in forms, so it's a good option to consider for large businesses.

Our experience with Klaviyo

Klaviyo comes as close as possible to a perfect email marketing & email list builder combo. But its email marketing features are much more impressive than the email capture forms.

The form editor in Klaviyo, although has all the necessary features, feels a bit outdated because of a lack of features like video and two-button popups. And it's totally designed to work for folks using Klaviyo (but there's nothing wrong with that, of course):

In our experience, we can say that you'll be able to design nice-looking popups that target the visitor groups you need. This email list building tool is good for email capture popups, giving you (almost) everything you need to target thousands of visitors.

But if you'd like a dedicated email list builder that also includes expert-level analytics and non-signup campaign options, I'd advise you to look further. Klaviyo's focus is first and foremost on email marketing, so its signup forms feel like a work in progress.

Like, these analytics in Klaviyo are surprisingly basic, giving you only the views, CTR, and submissions:

For example, Wisepops, which is a dedicated email list building tool, has deeper analytics, more campaign display rules, better Klaviyo popups, revenue and goal tracking, and other formats such as spin-to-win popups and sticky bars.

That's why many online stores combine Klaviyo and Wisepops to cover the entire customer journey: Wisepops vs Klaviyo forms comparison.

Features:

• Traditional popup forms, flyouts, and embeds

• Above-average targeting and customization features for forms

• Static and unique coupons in forms

• Basic campaign analytics (views, clicks, CTR)

Klaviyo pros:

• Good campaign customization and audience management features

• Useful ecommerce features (coupons, page-level targeting, dropdown menus, mobile optimization)

• Essential signup form campaign performance analytics (basic engagement data and day-to-day submit rate)

Cons of Klaviyo:

• No goal or revenue tracking for popups and forms

• Too expensive for smaller businesses (the cost could get up to $100/mo as quickly as a few months)

• Limited popup campaign formats (no spin-to-win wheels, on-click popups, video popups, and website bars)

• Free trial is more like "get-started-with-our-app" kind of deal, as you can get support only for the first 60 days

• Signup forms functionality feels a bit like an afterthought because Klaviyo is more focused on email marketing-related features

Pricing:

The free plan only includes 60 days of support and 500 monthly sends. The paid plans begin at $45/mo for 1,500 email contacts.

Omnisend

Omnisend is another popular email marketing app for ecommerce stores. It's more affordable than Klaviyo ($25/mo vs $45/mo), with a comparable range of features and better support (according to reviews from Capterra and Shopify App Store).

Our experience with Omnisend

With Omnisend, you get a decent email list building functionality, including popups, teasers, flyouts, and spin-to-win wheels. The customization is fairly simple, and you can also upload your brand assets to have your popups automatically designed with your brand colors:

Upon a deep dive into popup formats, I found that Omnisend gives you more of them than Klaviyo (wheel popups, for example) as well as campaign templates. On the other hand, it lacks website bars, which are also a good way to get emails.

You also get some good targeting. Although not as deep as in dedicated popup software, you still can create contextually relevant campaigns:

Features:

• Traditional popups, small teasers, spin-to-win wheels, and embedded forms

• Custom landing page builder for ecommerce stores

• Essential list building analytics (views, signup rate, collected emails)

• Good targeting options for contextual list building

• A/B testing

Pros of Omnisend:

• Simple campaign editor

• A wide range of popup formats

• Plenty of campaign templates (that are also updated regularly)

• Campaigns for email and phone number capture

• Good campaign customization options

Cons of Omnisend:

• Basic popup performance analytics

• Limited targeting

• No sticky bars

Pricing:

Omnisend is an email marketing app, so the pricing is based on email sends. For 500 emails/mo, you can use this tool for free. Paid plans begin at $16/mo. All subscriptions, including the free one, include signup forms.

Typeform

With Typeform, you can make interactive and customizable forms that provide a conversational user experience, making it a good choice for surveys and quizzes. While it may not be dedicated solely to email list building, its features make it a strong contender for lead capture and customer feedback collection.

Our experience with Typeform

If your goal is to build your email list with a product quiz or a customer survey (say, you're running a skincare business looking to give personalized product recommendations based on customers' feedback), then Typeform is a great option.

In terms of creating quizzes and questionnaires, you can add just about any type of question possible, from multiple-choice to product opinion scales:

What you will also find helpful is the sheer number and variety of templates for membership applications, booking, consultations, registrations, and more.

The templates will definitely help you get good forms created quickly, whether you're running a gym, a job website, a travel blog, or a nonprofit:

Email list building features:

• Lead generation forms for websites

• Survey forms to collect feedback and emails

• Product recommendation quizzes to facilitate lead generation and sales

Pros of Typeform:

• Create forms and quizzes like a pro without experience

• Easy and simple customization to make forms feel like a natural part of your website

• Hundreds of survey and form templates for just about any business type

Typeform cons:

• Limited free plan; allows only 10 responses per month

• The entry-level plan costs $25 per month, which may pose affordability challenges for smaller businesses that have limited resources to allocate to a survey tool

Pricing:

You can try Typeform for free for 10 monthly responses. A paid plan for 100 responses/mo costs $25 (but buying a yearly subscription reduces the price to $21/mo).

Jotform

With Jotform, you can create just about any web form there is. What we're interested in the most is the email collector feature, which, along with quiz and survey makers, makes one powerful automated email listing software.

Our experience with Jotform:

Jotform is more than just email list building software. The primary objective is to gather lead information for segmentation, as indicated by 10,000+ detailed templates for data collection.

If you're running a service business and need a tool for getting appointments, collecting feedback, collecting payments, you'll be glad to discover that Jotform has everything to add such forms to your website:

Using the campaign editor might take a bit of getting used to, but it's only because of the sheer amount of features and elements available. Overall, the editor is pretty intuitive, and allows you to make forms to collect a lot of different data:

Features:

• Embedded forms, popups, surveys, quizzes, tests, and subscription forms

• Quick and easy campaign creation thanks to useful template search and drag-and-drop builder

• Hundreds of integrations with productivity, data storage, and payment apps to improve efficiency and lead generation workflows

• Mobile notifications for new form submissions for faster lead management

• A dedicated WordPress email collector plugin

Pros of Jotform

• You can create any type of signup form for your website

• Thousands of form templates for service businesses

• Better free plan compared to Typeform (you get up to 100 monthly submissions)

• Industry-unique form elements like unique ID checker, data grid, digital signature, and weekly appointment planner

Cons of Jotform:

• Beginners might find using this email list building software challenging

• Could get very expensive fast, which makes it a better fit for large businesses

• Jotform branding on all forms in the free plan

• User interface feels outdated

Pricing:

You can 100 monthly submissions with five forms for free. If you'd like to upgrade, paid plans begin at $39/mo.

Landingi

Landingi is a relatively new landing page platform that comes with impressive email list building capabilities. The tool specializes in creating high-converting landing pages which directly contribute to growing an email list.

Our review of Landingi

Once you start your free trial with this email list building tool, it will guide you through a quick onboarding checklist to personalize your experience, which is very useful:

Landingi is great at simplifying landing page creation, even for those with little technical background like me. Its intuitive drag-and-drop editor is simple enough to allow making good-looking pages right away. The templated designs are also a plus, of course, offering numerous starting points that can be tailored to reflect your brand.

Pros of Landingi:

• User-friendly interface suitable for beginners

• A wide selection of customizable templates to kickstart your landing page design

• Built-in A/B testing to optimize your email list buildng effort

• Responsive designs ensuring pages look great on all devices

• Integration with popular email marketing tools to streamline your lead generation process

Cons of Landingi:

• Limited customizability for advanced users wanting to make more significant changes to templates

• Higher-tier plans are required to access advanced features which can be cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses

Pricing:

Landingi offers a free account, but only to test its features. After that, plans start at $29 per month for the basic features, and prices increase with additional features and higher traffic limits.

Umso

Umso is a very good alternative to expensive landing page builders that you can use for free. It's a pretty cool one, too, as you get a lot of design work done by AI. If building landing pages with AI sound good, then definitely consider this email list building tool.

Our experience with Umso

Registering for this app was a breeze. No credit cards, long onboarding, or anything like that—in a mere 15 seconds, I found myself greeted by a sleek dashboard that looked a search engine:

Since Umso uses ChatGPT 4 Turbo (as of June 2024), creating a landing page was as easy as telling the instructions and waiting for the result to be generated in a few seconds.

Although the first result was not perfect, it won't take a lot of time to get better at training Umso to create exactly what you need (or something close).

The overall customization process was quite easy and beginner-friendly. When the first version is generated, the menu appears, letting you get started with customizing the images (so the editor is not drag-and-drop, but that was not a problem at all)...

...and then the text and links:

Features:

• Landing pages and signup forms

• Automatic generation of landing pages based on your AI input

• Simple landing page editor

Pros of Umso

• Create and publish a website for free

• Make a landing page design in seconds thanks to AI—no need for a developer

• Super easy design customization

• No tutorials or training is needed

Cons of Umso:

• Training AI to create exactly what you need might take a while

• Editing is possible only in the menu, not on a page itself

• Customizing signup forms is a bit restricted in terms of adding custom fields

• Further customization requires custom HTML code

Pricing:

You can publish one website with landing pages for free. More professional features can be found in a paid plan for $25/mo.

Summary

I hope this list of email list building tools helped you choose an app for your business. Each tool on the list has been carefully chosen, taking into account our personal experience with them, user ratings, and their distinctive features.