Are you looking for a way to insert an effective email opt-in form in your sidebar? The good news is: it’s easy and you have plenty of great options. But selecting the right solution can be confusing if you don’t really know what you need.
Sidebar Opt-in Widgets of Email Marketing Services
Most email marketing services provide solutions to help you collect subscribers, which include sidebar widgets.
For example, if you use one of the popular email services, such as AWeber, GetResponse or MailChimp, then you already have access to hundreds of sign up form templates. You can copy the code for those templates and simply paste it in a WordPress sidebar text widget.
The nice thing about these services is that they provide you with plenty of designs and options. And with these services, you’ll have access to some interesting solutions, like the Optin Form Adder, which allows you to easily create an opt-in form that works across several email service providers. And the Danny van Kooten Newsletter Sign-Up plugin, which does a similar thing and works with MailChimp, YMLP, iContact, AWeber, and PHPList.
But you’re not required to use such plugins–most email service providers have specific WordPress plugins to facilitate the process. Here’s a list of the plugins:
Honestly though, I think your best approach is to get the code from the provider directly and simply paste it in your sidebar as a text widget. It’s simple, flexible, and it works. If you need help with the process, just post in the comments.
Sidebar Opt-in Widgets of Email Management Plugins
Alternatively, if you use a full newsletter plugin to manage your email and subscribers in-house, then you probably also already have an opt-in widget built-in, as most of them have that feature. However, most newsletter plugins provide very basic opt-in widget–it is your job to style and modify their appearance.
Here are some newsletter plugins with an opt-in widget:





Hey there. Thanks for this list; you’re probably the only one in a list of clutter on line where email plugins for WordPress are consolidated in such a practical and thoughtfully laid out.
I really appreciate your taking the time to do this – finally someone who gets it!!