A fintech startup is preparing to host its first-ever networking event for professionals within the industry. Over the course of their journey, the company has engaged in email communication with industry experts, partners, and clients. Now, they aim to collate a directory of these email addresses to send personalized email invitations.
Extract Email Addresses from Gmail
The primary challenge is to extract all these email addresses from the company’s Gmail account and download them in a compatible format, like CSV, that can be easily imported into Google Contacts or a mailing list service like MailChimp.
This is where Email Address Extractor can help. It is a Google add-on that sifts through all email messages in the company’s Gmail account, extracts the email addresses and saves them in a Google Spreadsheet. It works for both Gmail and Google Workspace accounts.
The Gmail address extractor add-on can mine email addresses from specific Gmail folders (labels), emails that have been sent or received in the last n months, or for the entire mailbox.
You can choose to extract email addresses of the sender and the recipient fields, including those in the CC field. Additionally, it can parse the email’s subject line and message body and capture email addresses from the text. This is useful for extracting addresses from, say PayPal invoices, where the buyer’s email addresses are often written in the message body.
How to Extract Email Addresses in Gmail
You may follow the step-by-step guide on how to extract email addresses from Gmail messages using the Email Address Extractor add-on.
Install the Gmail Extractor add-on and grant the necessary permissions. The add-on needs access to Gmail and Google Sheets for saving the extracted email addresses.
Launch the add-on inside your Google Spreadsheet and specify the search criteria. You may use Gmail search operators and any matching emails will be processed by the extractor.
Next, select one or more message fields (to, from, cc, bcc) that should be parsed for extracting emails. The add-on can also pull names of the sender and recipients if they are available inside the email headers.
Click on the Save and Run option to extract all the email addresses from the emails that match the specified criteria. The entire process may take some time depending up on the size of your Gmail mailbox.
The extracted email addresses will be stored in the current spreadsheet. You will notice that two sheets have been added to your active Google Sheet.
The first sheet contains the list of all the unique email addresses that have been extracted from the matching emails. The second sheet contains the complete details of the emails that have been processed. These include the message date, the sender’s detail, the subject line and a link to the original email message in Gmail.
The Google sheet should remain open and the computer should be online during the extraction. If the connection is lost, or if the extraction process is interrupted for some reason, you can simply click the “Resume” button and the extractor will pick from where it left off previously, avoiding the need to start the entire process over again.
The add-on applies a label, titled Extracted, to all the emails that have been processed and extracted. If you wish to re-extract the email addresses from the same set of emails, you can do so removing the label from the emails and running the extractor again.
In a previous article, we played with CSS masks to create cool hover effects where the main challenge was to rely only on the <img> tag as our markup. In this article, pick up where we left off by “revealing” the image from behind a sliding door sort of thing — like opening up a box and finding a photograph in it.
This is because the padding has a transition that goes from s - 2*b to 0. Meanwhile, the background transitions from 100% (equivalent to --s) to 0. There’s a difference equal to 2*b. The background covers the entire area, while the padding covers less of it. We need to account for this.
Ideally, the padding transition would take less time to complete and have a small delay at the beginning to sync things up, but finding the correct timing won’t be an easy task. Instead, let’s increase the padding transition’s range to make it equal to the background.
The new variable, --h, transitions from s - b to -b on hover, so we have the needed range since the difference is equal to --s, making it equal to the background and clip-path transitions.
The trick is the min() function. When --h transitions from s - b to s - 2*b, the padding is equal to s - 2*b. No padding changes during that brief transition. Then, when --h reaches 0 and transitions from 0 to -b, the padding remains equal to 0 since, by default, it cannot be a negative value.
It would be more intuitive to use clamp() instead:
That said, we don’t need to specify the lower parameter since padding cannot be negative and will, by default, be clamped to 0 if you give it a negative value.
We are getting much closer to the final result!
First, we increase the border’s thickness on the left and bottom sides of the image:
Notice the semi-transparent black color values (e.g., #0008 and #0004). The slight bit of transparency blends with the colors behind it to create the illusion of a dark variation of the main color since the gradient is placed above the background color.
And lastly, we apply a clip-path to cut out the corners that establish the 3D box.
Let’s do the same thing with the linear gradient. We need to decrease its size so it covers the same area as it did before we introduced the depth so that it doesn’t overlap with the conic gradient:
We are getting closer! The last piece we need to add back in from earlier is the clip-path transition that is combined with the box-shadow. We cannot reuse the same code we used before since we changed the clip-path value to create the 3D box shape. But we can still transition it to get the sliding result we want.
The idea is to have two points at the top that move up and down to reveal and hide the box-shadow while the other points remain fixed. Here is a small video to illustrate the movement of the points.
See that? We have five fixed points. The two at the top move to increase the area of the polygon and reveal the box shadow.
And we’re done! We’re left with a nice 3D frame around the image element with a cover that slides up and down on hover. And we did it with zero extra markup or reaching for pseudo-elements!
This last demo is an optimized version of what we did together. I have written most of the formulas using the variable --h so that I only update one value on hover. It also includes another variation. Can you reverse-engineer it and see how its code differs from the one we did together?
One More 3D Example
Want another fancy effect that uses 3D effects and sliding overlays? Here’s one I put together using a different 3D perspective where the overlay splits open rather than sliding from one side to the other.
Your homework is to dissect the code. It may look complex, but if you trace the steps we completed for the original demo, I think you’ll find that it’s not a terribly different approach. The sliding effect still combines the padding, the object-* properties, and clip-path but with different values to produce this new effect.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this little 3D image experiment and the fancy effect we applied to it. I know that adding an extra element (i.e., a parent <div> as a wrapper) to the markup would have made the effect a lot easier to achieve, as would pseudo-elements and translations. But we are here for the challenge and learning opportunity, right?
Limiting the HTML to only a single element allows us to push the limits of CSS to discover new techniques that can save us time and bytes, especially in those situations where you might not have direct access to modify HTML, like when you’re working in a CMS template. Don’t look at this as an over-complicated exercise. It’s an exercise that challenges us to leverage the power and flexibility of CSS.
Do you want to add a recent comments page to your WordPress website?
Displaying all of your most recent comments on one page is a great way to highlight the discussion happening on your website. With WordPress, creating a page like this is easy, thanks to the Latest Comments block.
In this guide, we will show you how to create a recent comments page in WordPress.
Why Make a Recent Comments Page?
Comments play an important role in building a community around your WordPress website. They allow readers to participate in discussions and interact with you.
With a recent comments page, new and returning visitors can see the ongoing discussions and keep up with them across your site.
Comments are also a great engagement signal and social proof for new visitors. Through the recent comments page, users can see that you have an active and passionate community. This can encourage them to stay longer on your website and perhaps even join the conversation.
Many WordPress blogs choose to display their most recent comments in a widget area, like the sidebar. However, the recent comments widget can be a bit narrow and difficult to read.
That’s why we recommend creating a recent comments page. If you want, you can even link this page at the bottom of the recent comments widget on the sidebar. This way, visitors can read the comments in more detail.
In this step-by-step guide, we will show you how to create the recent comments page using two methods: WordPress’ built-in Latest Comments block and SeedProd, the best WordPress page builder on the market.
You can use the quick links below to navigate through this tutorial:
After that, you need to add a title to the page. You can use something like “See the latest discussion on our blog” or “Read our most recent comments.”
Once that’s done, just click the ‘+’ add block button below the title or in the top left corner and locate the Latest Comments block. You can drag and drop it wherever you want on your page.
By default, the block editor will display the comment author’s name, the comment excerpt, the comment date, the commenter’s gravatar, and a link to the post where the comment is.
Here’s what it looks like:
If you want to customize the block’s appearance, then you can click the ‘Align’ button in the block toolbar. This button lets you adjust the block’s alignment settings.
You can choose between using no alignment, wide width, full width, or aligning the block to the left, center, or right.
Additionally, you can click the ‘Settings’ button in the top right corner and switch to the ‘Block’ tab.
Here, you can choose to display or disable the gravatar, the comment date, and the comment excerpt. You can also select how many comments you’d like to display on your page.
If you open the block’s ‘Styles’ tab, you can edit the block’s Typography, which controls the fonts being used in the block. You can also modify the Dimensions, which control the block’s padding and margin.
Feel free to play around with these settings to make the comments more readable and attractive with your WordPress theme.
Once you are done, you can click the ‘Preview’ button in the top right corner to see what the page looks like on a desktop, mobile, or tablet device.
Then, click ‘Save draft’ to save the page without publishing it. Or you can click ‘Publish’ if you want to make the page publicly available right away.
And that’s it! You’ve successfully created a recent comments page in WordPress.
Method 2: Create a Custom Recent Comments Page With SeedProd
If you are looking to create a completely custom recent comments page in WordPress, then we recommend using a page builder plugin like SeedProd.
SeedProd comes with tons of customization options that the built-in block editor doesn’t have, like animated effects. That’s why we recommend this method if you want to make your recent comments page truly unique and stand out.
Note: For this tutorial, you can use the premium SeedProd version or the free SeedProd version if you are on a budget. We will use the first one because it comes with more templates and page blocks to customize the page.
Next, you want to go to SeedProd »Landing Pages. After that, click the ‘+ Add New Landing Page’ button.
On the next screen, you can choose a landing page template for your recent comments page.
In this case, we will use the ‘Video Squeeze Page.’
Now, go ahead and give your new landing page a name and URL.
We have named our landing page ‘See Our Latest Comments’ and given it the URL ‘/latest-comments’ to keep it simple. Once you’ve completed this step, just click the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button.
You will now arrive at the page builder interface. Before you add the latest comments, you may want to customize how the page looks overall first.
Here, we have deleted some of the elements from the original landing page template and adjusted the copy to suit the purpose of this guide.
Now, in the left-side block panel, look for the ‘Recent Comments’ widget and drag and drop it wherever is appropriate.
After you drag and drop the widget to the page builder, go ahead and click on the widget itself. The left-hand panel will then show you some settings to modify how the widget looks.
In the ‘Content’ tab, you can change the title of the widget and how many comments to show. Once you are happy with it, click ‘Apply.’
If you switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab, you’ll see more settings for the block’s typography, spacing, CSS attributes, device visibility, and animation effects.
At the top, we’ve adjusted the heading’s font size for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. This way, the text looks good no matter where it’s viewed.
Tips to Optimize Your Recent Comments Page in WordPress
We’ve shown you how to display the latest comments from your WordPress posts on a separate page. Now, let’s discuss how to make your comments section even better.
One method to always moderate your comments. Remember that the Latest Comments block and the Recent Comments widget will automatically display any new comment that gets approved.
Let’s say you don’t moderate these comments, and the block unintentionally shows a harmful message sent by a user. That comment can negatively impact your brand and community.
The purpose of comment moderation is to make sure that no inappropriate or spammy comments are displayed. This way, your comment section can always be a safe space for users to share their thoughts with each other.
Another thing you can do is use a WordPress comment plugin. It can boost your comment engagement and make users explore more of your content.
For this, we recommend using Thrive Comments, which is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that can improve your comment section. It comes with features to encourage quality comments and manage discussions, like comment upvotes/downvotes and likes/dislikes.
Additionally, Thrive Comments lets you add a post-comment action. After users leave a comment text, you can show them a related post, encourage them to share the blog post, or ask them to fill out a lead-generation form.
Here are some guides showing how you can use Thrive Comments in your comments section:
HubSpot is a popular customer relationship management (CRM) software that offers popular solutions for all your marketing and sales needs. However, it can be very expensive to use as your business grows.
In this article, we will share some of the best HubSpot alternatives for your website.
Why Do You Need a HubSpot Alternative?
HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM software that offers powerful tools for your marketing, sales, customer service, and content management needs.
However, one of the biggest drawbacks of using HubSpot is its price. The premium plans can get very expensive very fast.
Plus, there are multiple packages, which can be overwhelming and confusing for many users. For instance, there are separate prices for their marketing and sales tools, content management system (CMS), operations features, and others.
While HubSpot offers free versions of its tools and the Starter plan for individuals and small teams starts from $20 per month, most of its powerful features are locked away in the higher-priced plans.
For example, you’ll need at least a Professional plan if you want to use omnichannel marketing automation, custom reporting, A/B testing, dynamic personalization, and blog creation.
This will set you back $890 per month (billed annually). Not to mention, there is also a one-time Professional Onboarding fee of $3,000 that you’ll have to pay if you subscribe to the Professional plan.
HubSpot is great for large organizations, but higher pricing rules out smaller businesses. That said, let’s look at some of the best HubSpot alternatives that are cheaper and more reliable.
Constant Contact is one of the best all-in-one digital and email marketing services. It is a perfect HubSpot alternative because it offers a wide range of tools at lower prices.
For instance, Constant Contact offers a drag-and-drop email builder, marketing CRM, social media marketing tool, marketing automation, landing page builder, A/B testing, SMS marketing, and more.
Pros:
Use drag-and-drop email campaign builder
Choose from hundreds of email templates
Set up marketing automation
Conduct A/B testing
Get detailed analytics and reports
Seamless integration with 300+ apps
Cons:
There is no free version
Why We Choose Constant Contact: It is ideal for startups, small businesses, and individual marketers who want all the features of HubSpot but at affordable prices.
Pricing: Constant Contact prices start from $12 per month, and you get a 14-day free trial.
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is the next HubSpot alternative on our list. It is a CRM suite that offers basic features that you’ll also find in HubSpot. You get a marketing platform that helps set up email marketing, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, marketing automation, and more.
Besides that, Brevo comes with a sales platform that comes with automated deal tracking, call recordings, pipeline management, and sales reporting. With Brevo, you can also improve custom support. It lets you add live chat, chatbot, phone calls, and more using its platform.
The marketing automation feature is not as powerful as HubSpot
Lacks a CMS solution that’s available in HubSpot
Why We Choose Brevo: If you’re looking for a HubSpot alternative that’s easy to use, offers basic CRM and marketing automation features, and isn’t expensive, then Brevo is for you.
Pricing: Brevo offers a free version that lets you send 300 emails per day. Its premium plans start from $25 per month.
Omnisend is a great HubSpot alternative for eCommerce store owners. It lets you create engaging newsletters, automate emails, create landing pages and popups, set up SMS marketing, segment your customers, and more.
What sets Omnisend apart from HubSpot is the email marketing features it offers. With solutions built with eCommerce businesses in mind, it makes it very easy to promote your products.
Pros:
User-friendly omnichannel marketing platform
Use drag and drop email editor and landing page builder
Limited social media marketing features compared to HubSpot
HubSpot offers more CRM capabilities
Why We Choose Omnisend: In our experience, there are not many beginner-friendly email marketing services focused on eCommerce users. Omnisend is the best HubSpot alternative if you have an online store and send transactional messages.
Pricing: Omnisend offers a free plan that lets you send 500 emails per month and store 250 contacts. However, if you want more features and higher email and contact limits, then there are premium plans that start from $16 per month.
OptinMonster is the best lead generation and conversion optimization software in the world. It helps you grow your email list, get more leads, and boost sales.
You can use OptinMonster as a HubSpot alternative for creating personalized messages and targeting the right audience. OptinMonster comes with a drag-and-drop builder for creating stunning optin forms. Plus, it offers powerful display rules that display your campaigns based on user behavior.
Pros:
Drag and drop campaign builder
Choose from pre-built templates and campaign types
Powerful display rules
Seamless integration with email marketing tools and plugins
Get detailed analytics
A/B test your optin forms
Cons:
Focuses on creating popups and optin forms
Why We Choose OptinMonster: We highly recommend OptinMonster to anyone looking to create personalized campaigns for their audience. It is super easy to use and helps increase conversions.
Pricing: OptinMonster pricing plans start from $9 per month (billed annually). There is also a free version of OptinMonster that you can use to get started.
Zoho is a powerful marketing platform, just like HubSpot. It offers all the popular features for marketing, sales, customer service, emails, and project management.
Zoho goes a step further than HubSpot and even offers tools for finance and accounting, human resource, legal, security and IT management, and more. With all these features, what makes Zoho a great alternative to HubSpot is its price.
Pros:
Complete marketing platform
Easily integrates with third-party apps, plugins, and tools
More affordable pricing plans compared to HubSpot
Powerful filters to segment users, tasks, and other activities
Generate different reports and custom dashboards
Cons:
Limited customer support options (no live chat support)
Why We Choose Zoho: If you’re looking for a like-for-like replacement or HubSpot alternative, then Zoho is the closest option in the market. It offers a complete CRM and lots of features for every department at affordable prices.
Pricing: Zoho prices each tool differently. For instance, its CRM prices start from $14 per user per month. Plus, there is also a free trial you can use to try the software.
ActiveCampaign is another HubSpot alternative that offers powerful features. Just like HubSpot, you get marketing automation, email marketing, eCommerce marketing, and CRM tools. Plus, it easily integrates with over 900 apps, WordPress plugins, and other platforms.
Pros:
Easily automate email and marketing tasks
Create forms, landing pages, popups, and more
AI-powered predictive sending feature
Set up split automation
Conduct A/B testing
24/7 chat and email support
Custom reporting option
Cons:
There is no free version
It can be difficult for beginners to navigate and use ActiveCampaign
Why We Choose ActiveCampaign: What makes ActiveCampaign different from others is its AI-power predictive sending feature and superior reporting features. It uses AI to send emails when users are most likely to engage. Besides that, most of the features it offers are cheaper than HubSpot.
Pricing: ActiveCampaign premium plans start from $29 per month (billed annually). If you want the Predictive Sending feature and advanced reporting options, then you can upgrade to higher pricing plans.
Drip is a popular email marketing platform that allows you to create automated email sequences and release them based on users’ actions. It offers pre-built templates and a visual builder. Plus, it integrates with over 200 tools. Plus, you can create different segments in your contact list.
Pros:
Easy-to-use email automation tool
Use pre-built templates and visual builder to customize emails
Lacks other features offered by HubSpot like a CRM, marketing and sales platform, and more
Why We Choose Drip: If you’re looking for a HubSpot alternative that’s great for email marketing automation, then Drip is the best option. It’s very easy to use, and you can create automated workflows with ease. Plus, there are different email templates and customization options to choose from.
Pricing: Drip will cost you $39 per month, and you get a 14-day free trial.
GrooveHQ is the best help desk plugin for WordPress and small businesses. It is a great HubSpot alternative for customer service and offers features like shared inboxes, live chat, knowledge base, and more. GrooveHQ also integrates with popular CRMs, apps, and payment platforms.
Pros:
Complete customer support solution
Add live chat and email support to your site
Receive support requests in shared inboxes
Manage your customers from a beginner-friendly dashboard
Cons:
Lacks other CRM and marketing automation features
There is no free version
Why We Choose GrooveHQ: If you’re looking for a HubSpot alternative just for your customer support tasks, then GrooveHQ is for you. It streamlines your support workflow and offers robust features at affordable prices.
Pricing: GrooveHQ pricing plans start from $4.80 per user per month.
Freshsales by Freshworks is a sales-focused CRM that is another HubSpot alternative you can consider. It is beginner-friendly to use and offers features like live chat, email, phone, social media management, marketing and email automation, custom reports, and multiple AI-powered tools.
Pros:
Easily manage and organize contacts
Send personalized messages across multiple channels
Use built-in chat, email, and phone to connect with customers
Create custom reports and dashboards
AI-powered contact scoring
Get insights and the next best action through AI
AI-powered forecasting
Cons:
The free version doesn’t offer reporting features
You get more features with HubSpot’s CRM, even in the free plan
Why We Choose Freshsales CRM: After going through multiple HubSpot alternatives, Freshsales is great for sales teams. It offers affordable pricing plans and basic features.
Pricing: Freshsales CRM is available for free. There are premium plans starting from $15 per user per month that offer more features.
FunnelKit Automations is one of the best marketing automation plugins for WooCommerce stores. It helps you create automated workflows, launch email and SMS campaigns, create drip sequences, and more. You can use it to reduce abandoned carts, nurture leads, send automated coupons, and more.
Pros:
Use drag and drop builder to create campaigns
Set up automated email workflows
Send personalized emails and SMS messages to your audience
Segment customers into different lists or categories
Conduct A/B tests with different variants
View detailed analytics and improve campaign performance
Cons:
Limited customer support options
The free plugin offers basic features compared to HubSpot
Premium plans can be expensive for small businesses
Why We Choose FunnelKit Automations: It is the best marketing and email automation solution for WooCommerce store owners. All its features are designed specifically for WooCommerce, which makes it easy to increase retention and boost sales.
Pricing: FunnelKit prices start from $99.50 per year. There is also a free FunnelKit WordPress plugin you can use to get started.
Pipedrive CRM is the next HubSpot alternative on our list, and one of the most affordable. It is a sales-driven CRM solution that helps manage your sales pipeline, set up sales reporting, track activity, sales forecasting, and more. Pipedrive also easily integrates with email marketing services and other WordPress plugins.
Pros:
Simple and easy-to-use interface
Easily monitor your sales activities and communications
Set up marketing automation
Get metrics customized for your business
400+ integrations with tools, plugins, and apps
Affordable pricing plans
Cons:
There is no free version
Lacks advanced reporting and automation features
Why We Choose Pipedrive CRM: If you’re looking for an affordable CRM for your sales needs, then Pipedrive CRM is the best HubSpot alternative.
Pricing: Pipedrive offers 5 different pricing plans that start from $9 per user per month.
FluentCRM is a self-hosted CRM and email automation plugin for WordPress. What makes it different from HubSpot is that all the data is stored in your WordPress database instead of a cloud service. Plus, it offers features like email campaign management, email sequencing, and more.
Pros:
Beginner friendly interface
Store your data in the WordPress database
Set up email automation
Create email drip campaigns
Get in-depth reports
Easily integrates with eCommerce WordPress plugins
Cons:
The free plugin offers limited features compared to HubSpot
Lacks social media and CMS features
Why We Choose FluentCRM: It is a great HubSpot alternative if you have a WordPress site and want to manage customers, email campaigns, and automated workflows from your WordPress dashboard. Plus, it keeps your data secure and doesn’t rely on a third-party cloud service.
EngageBay is a powerful all-in-one platform for your marketing, sales, and customer support needs. It is a great replacement for HubSpot, as you get almost similar features even in the free version. For instance, you can create email broadcasts, access CRM, helpdesk, live chat, and more.
Pros:
Store and manage contacts in CRM
Set up marketing automation
Use email builder and choose pre-built email templates
Why We Choose EngageBay: EngageBay is a like-for-like alternative to HubSpot. The free version offers similar features, and even its paid plans are more affordable than HubSpot.
Pricing: You can get started with EngageBay for free. Its paid pricing plans start from $12.74 per user per month.
Which HubSpot Alternative Should You Use?
After testing multiple software and plugins, we believe that Constant Contact is the best HubSpot alternative.
It is a complete marketing and email automation solution that offers powerful features at affordable prices compared to HubSpot. You can easily create email campaigns, conduct A/B tests, get a marketing CRM, manage social media, set up SMS marketing, build landing pages, and more.
On the other hand, you may also want to check out Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) and Omnisend. Both of them offer similar features as HubSpot, but in lower prices.
We hope this article helped you learn about the best HubSpot alternatives. You may also want to see our ultimate guide to WordPress SEO and the best WooCommerce plugins.
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