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Let’s cut to the chase, SMS messages and texts are the same thing. The only difference is that text messaging …
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We recommend Nextiva as the best VoIP phone system for most businesses due to its call quality, flexibility, and reliability. Save up to 28% when you sign up today.
Every business needs a phone solution. Historically, most companies just used a traditional landline because there weren’t any alternatives. But today, organizations have more options to choose from, and most are torn between two choices—PBX and VoIP. This in-depth guide will break down the key differences between PBX and VoIP phones so you can determine which one is right for your business.
As you compare the differences between PBX and VoIP, you also need to find a business phone service that aligns with your needs. These are our top recommendations for different business types and use cases:
One of the most significant differences between PBX and VoIP is how each service is delivered. This delivery method directly impacts the quality of the calls and the reliability of the phone service.
PBX (private branch exchange) systems rely on traditional PSTNs (publicly switched telephone networks) to facilitate calls. PBX phone systems are similar to traditional landlines in the sense that they use copper wiring and circuit switching. While traditional landlines are typically used to connect two parties, PBX phones allow businesses to operate a private phone network.
As a result, PBX systems are often highly reliable and provide high-quality calling.
VoIP (voice over internet protocol) phones rely on stable internet connections to work. When there’s a strong and fast connection, the quality and reliability of the calls are excellent—especially if you’re using a top VoIP phone provider. In most cases, nobody on the call will even be able to tell that VoIP technology is being used.
With that said, if the internet goes down, VoIP phones can have problems. This won’t be an issue for most businesses. But if you’re in a rural or remote location with spotty internet, then PBX might be more reliable.
One quick way to check your connection is by running a VoIP speed test.
This can help you determine if your current internet connection can support the VoIP calling capabilities that you’ll need on a daily basis.
VoIP phone systems are significantly less expensive than PBX systems.
While your total costs will depend on your business size, required lines, employees, and other factors, you can almost always expect to pay more for a PBX system than a VoIP service.
A business with around 20 users can expect to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 on hardware and equipment alone. Software licensing fees are an additional $2,000 to $3,000, and you’ll typically pay around $1,500 for installation. Ongoing maintenance for your PBX phone can cost around $3,000 annually.
Business VoIP services typically start around $20 per user per month.
Your dollar also goes much further when you use a VoIP phone. That’s because many of the best VoIP phone providers include features that go beyond basic telephone calling.
Depending on your provider and plan, you can access features like internet faxing, SMS messaging, video calling, and more, all included with your flat monthly rate.
For smaller businesses on a limited budget, VoIP systems are a no-brainer. They also work well for larger organizations, as you typically get better per-user rates based on volume and contract length.
Cost aside, setting up a PBX network for your business can be complex. This is not something that most businesses will handle on their own, and it typically requires IT assistance and installation from your PBX provider.
The process involves lengthy steps for KSU wall attachments, circuit cards, and connecting your private branch to a telephone network. PBX vendors provide the cables and cords that are required for the private branch, and these act as the main line for your PBX system. All of the individual phones need to be connected to the system as well.
Deploying a PBX system for your business may include drilling some holes in your walls and running new wires through the ceilings. It’s definitely not a DIY job.
Conversely, VoIP phones are ultra-easy to set up and deploy. There’s virtually no installation process, and you likely already have many of the prerequisites handled.
In some cases, setting up your VoIP phone system can be done on the same day. This is especially true if you don’t need any additional hardware and your calls are being made from existing laptops, smartphones, and VoIP phones.
The only thing that may need to be installed is a piece of software for each device. Beyond that, all you need to do is get your users onboarded to the system, which is not something that requires any IT assistance.
So for those of you who don’t have dedicated in-house IT support, a VoIP phone system will make your life much easier.
Since PBX systems rely on on-premises hardware and connectivity, scaling them is not easy. For example, if your company is opening a second office in a different location, you need to build a PBX infrastructure there as well.
Even if you’re adding new devices and users at an existing location, you may need to replace certain modules with something that can handle the increased capacity.
Scaling your VoIP system is much easier. Whether you’re adding new employees to one location, opening completely new locations, or wanting to onboard remote staff, scalability is achieved with just one or two clicks.
You can manage all of your users, phones, lines, extensions, and features from a simple admin portal. You won’t have to send a technician out to an employee’s home if you want to add a new remote user. Everything is handled from the cloud.
You can only go so far with a PBX. The ability to add more features is much more limited compared to a VoIP system.
VoIP phone providers typically don’t lock you into strict contracts either. So if you want to upgrade your plan to support new features or new users, you can do so without having to jump through hoops. The only thing that might change is your monthly subscription rate.
PBX systems typically tie users to specific desk phones. An employee couldn’t take calls on the road or answer calls from home. The calls must be made from the phone associated with their extension.
VoIP systems are highly flexible—allowing users to make and receive calls from virtually anywhere. Someone could start a call on their computer at work, then transfer it to the mobile app while they’re leaving the office, and transfer it again to a laptop when they get home.
VoIP phone systems have minimal hardware requirements.
You really only need to have internet access and a router. Beyond that, calls can be made using existing smartphones and computers. You don’t have to purchase any actual phones to use a VoIP system.
However, you do have the option to use traditional-style phones with a VoIP subscription. You just need to make sure the phones are VoIP-enabled, so it’s best to get them directly from your VoIP provider.
You can also get VoIP cordless phones, conference calling phones, headsets, and more. There are even VoIP adapters that transform traditional analog phones into VoIP phones. This will help keep your costs low if you don’t want to purchase more hardware.
PBX hardware is more involved.
You need to get desk phones, cables, splitters, modems, circuits, and wall jacks. These systems also require on-site PBX servers; most businesses need backup power sources.
PBX phones don’t really come with any advanced features. A PBX is a phone system that comes with everything you’d expect in a high-quality business phone system, but it ends there.
VoIP systems take basic business calling to the next level. Depending on the provider and plan you select, your VoIP phone system is included with an entire business communication suite.
Some examples of advanced VoIP features beyond call capabilities include:
You won’t find these in a PBX solution.
PBX phones typically charge high rates for international calls. But with a VoIP phone system, you can make international calls for just a few cents per minute.
These rates vary by location, but they’re often extremely flexible. This means that you won’t necessarily have to get an international calling plan that’s separate from your monthly subscription. Any international calls will just be added to your bill.
For businesses with global branches, VoIP phone systems make it possible to communicate with users on the same network at no additional cost. For example, your New York office can communicate with your London team if the calls are made directly through the same VoIP platform.
While PBX and VoIP phone systems have several differences, the two also share some common ground.
First and foremost, these are the two top options to consider for business phones. Both VoIP and PBX systems have options for basic local calls and domestic calling. You’ll have the ability to keep your existing phone number, add new phone numbers, and set up custom extensions and new lines for your staff.
Both systems come with basic business phone features. This includes voicemail, call holding, call transfers, overhead paging, conference calling, and more.
It’s also worth noting that both PBX and VoIP phones are both highly secure. There’s sometimes a misconception that VoIP systems can have security problems because it uses the internet for calling. But this is a non-issue if you’re using a reputable VoIP phone service.
For example, Nextiva offers 24/7 monitoring, call encryption, and biometric checkpoints to access their servers. The network also has HIPAA-compliant and PCI-compliant solutions, meaning businesses in every industry can rely on Nextiva for security.
PBX and VoIP phone systems are very different. PBX solutions are better for businesses in rural locations that can’t rely on internet connectivity for calls. They also work well for organizations with on-site IT teams and offices that won’t be scaling beyond a single location.
VoIP phone systems are much more cost-effective than PBX phones. They’re easy to use, highly flexible, mobile, and can be deployed anywhere. A VoIP system will be much easier for you to scale and maintain if your business has multiple offices or remote workers.
Another standout of using a VoIP phone system is that you can often get an entire suite of communication tools with your subscription. This includes video calling capabilities, team chat, collaboration features, SMS messaging, and so much more.
Recently one of our readers asked us for our suggestion on the best Google Optimize alternative?
Google Optimize is a tool that lets you conduct experiments on your website. However, Google recently announced that the Optimize tool will be sunset in September 2023, and your experiments will stop after this date.
This has left many business owners and marketers scrambling to quickly find a Google Optimize alternative for their A/B testing needs.
In this article, we will share the best Google Optimize alternatives, so you can choose the solution that works for your needs. We will also share what we’re going to be switching to as well.
Google Optimize is a free tool by Google that allows you to split test pages on your WordPress website and improve user experience.
You can set up conversion experiments using the tool and see if making changes to a landing page increases conversions. For example, you can A/B split-test two versions of a sales page, use different headlines, or change the color of the call to action (CTA) buttons to see which one works the best.
However, Google announced that they will sunset Google Optimize on September 30, 2023. After this date, the tool will no longer be available, and all your experiments and personalizations will end on that date. Besides that, you won’t be able to access data after the sunset date.
You can use a Google Optimize alternative to continue experimenting and testing your site. There are many tools in the market that let you conduct A/B tests with ease, require no coding to set up, and offer powerful features.
Let’s look at the best Google Optimize alternatives especially the ones that works seamlessly with WordPress websites, but several of these Google Optimize competitors will work on all website platforms.
Thrive Optimize is the best Google Optimize alternative for WordPress that is super easy to use. It is part of the Thrive Theme suite, which includes an ecosystem of WordPress plugins focused on boosting conversions on your site.
With Thrive Optimize, you can conduct experiments and A/B test landing pages without editing code. Unlike Google Optimize, the plugin is beginner friendly, as there is no need to add code snippets to your site.
You can get started in no time. Simply create a landing page using the visual builder and then create a variant. After that, pick a conversion goal, which includes page visits, opt-in form submissions, and revenue. Once that’s done, go ahead and run the test.
The best part is that you don’t have to switch between tabs or windows to view the results of your experiments. If you’re using Google Optimize, then you’d have to jump back and forth between tabs to see the results.
Instead, Thrive Optimize shows a report inside your WordPress dashboard. You can quickly view which variant is converting the best. Besides that, you can create as many variations of a landing page for testing as you want. The plugin also picks a winner and shows the best variant.
Pricing: Thrive Optimize is part of the Thrive Themes suite which costs $299 per year and includes 9 other powerful conversion tools. You can also purchase Thrive Optimize bundle for $199 / year.
OptinMonster is the best WordPress popup plugin and lead generation software in the market. You can create campaigns like floating bars, welcome screen mats, and popups to grow your email list, increase conversions, and get more leads.
OptinMonster offers an A/B testing tool that lets you test different popup and modal campaigns. It makes a great Google Optimize alternative because it’s very easy to use. You can customize and create different variants using the drag-and-drop campaign builder.
Once you’ve created a split test, OptinMonster will randomly show the variations to your visitors and pick a clear winner. You can then see in-depth stats about conversions inside your WordPress dashboard and find out which campaign performs the best.
Pricing: You will need the OptinMonster Plus or higher plan to use the A/B testing feature, with prices starting from $19 per month.
VWO Testing is a popular A/B testing tool and a great alternative to Google Optimize. You get more features than Google Optimize, as it allows you to run multiple experiments on your website, products, apps, and server side.
It comes with a visual builder to change different elements on your webpage, like text, images, shapes, backgrounds, and more. After making the changes, you can run split tests and see which variant performs the best.
VWO Testing offers an AI-power copywriting tool. This way, you can automatically select different headlines, CTA copies, and product descriptions to test.
It also lets you run tests based on user segments and behavior. For instance, you can select a target audience based on time spent on a page, scroll depth, exit intent, and when someone clicks on elements.
Pricing: VWO offers a free plan that you can use for up to 50 thousand users per month. If you have more users, then you can upgrade to their premium plans.
FunnelKit, formerly known as WooFunnels, is the best WordPress and WooCommerce sales funnel plugin. You can use the plugin to create funnels to generate leads, offer seamless checkouts, 1-click upsells, and more.
FunnelKit is another Google Optimize alternative that comes with an A/B testing feature specially for WooCommerce. You can split-test your product prices, page layouts, messages, designs, and funnels without editing code.
The plugin is beginner friendly and helps you set up experiments within minutes. You can test headings, images, prices, product descriptions, and every other component on a page. FunnelKit also helps declare a winner once there’s enough data to see which funnel converts the best.
Besides that, FunnelKit also offers other features. For example, it offers FunnelKit Automation which allows you to set up automated emails and SMS campaigns.
Pricing: FunnelKit offers multiple pricing plans. To use the A/B Testing feature, you’ll need the Plus plan. It will cost you $179.5 per year.
Convert.com is a proven A/B testing tool to help you boost conversions. It provides fast & flicker free A/B testing experience and is known for their speed.
They are a perfect Google Optimize alternative because it gives you access to all the features you’re accustomed to with Google Optimize and then some more.
Convert also let you seamlessly integrate your tests with Google Analytics as well as other tools like Hotjar, Heap, Segment, HubSpot, and more.
Their onboarding is a bit slow, but once you’re up and running, you can create unlimited tests and quickly deploy changes.
Pricing: Convert.com prices start from $99 per month, and you get a 14-day free trial.
Crazy Egg is a popular heatmap tool in the market. You can use heatmaps to see how users behave on your website, where they click, and how they move the mouse cursor and scroll through pages.
Crazy Egg offers an A/B testing tool that you can use to run experiments on your website and boost conversions. What makes it a great Google Optimize alternative is the features it offers along with A/B testing.
You get heatmaps, recordings of visitors using your website, error tracking, surveys, and traffic analytics. Plus, you can configure it without editing code, which isn’t possible if you’re Google Optimize.
Crazy Egg offers a multivariate engine where all you need to do is choose the elements you want to test and add your ideas. The engine then does the heavy lifting and conducts the test for you.
The best part is that it is easily integrated with website builders, including WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and more.
Pricing: Crazy Egg offers different pricing plans starting from $29 per month. You get unlimited A/B tests in each pricing plan, and there is also a 30-day free trial to get started.
Adobe Target is an enterprise-level solution to run split tests on their website and is part of Adobe Marketing Cloud. It is more powerful than Google Optimize and offers an omnichannel approach to the A/B test.
What this means is that instead of running isolated experiments, Adobe Target lets you run tests on every channel. This way, you get to see how users behave with different variants coming from other channels, like social media, organic traffic, paid search, and more.
The software is easy to use and set up. Plus, its AI-powered automation helps you test multiple experiences and then personalize them for each visitor.
On the downside, Adobe Analytics is only available for users that have Adobe Analytics. If you’re looking for a complete marketing solution with an A/B testing feature, then you can use Thrive Optimize instead.
Pricing: You will need to request a quote and get Adobe Target pricing according to your business needs.
Optimizely is one of the most popular Google Optimize alternatives in the market. Their digital experience platform allows you to create every kind of A/B testing experiment for your website.
You can use their visual editor along with advanced targeting features to optimize your A/B testing campaigns. Optimizely works on all website platforms and is a platform of choice by many large brands.
We have used Optimizely in the past when they had a free plan, and it’s an extremely powerful tool for what it does, however the prices are no longer small business friendly.
Pricing: Optimizely does not reveal it’s prices anymore and require that you submit a form to request a quote.
Kameleoon is the next Google Optimize alternative on our list. It offers powerful solutions and lets you conduct different types of experiments.
For starters, you can run web experiments and A/B test your website and mobile apps. You can assign a business goal to your tests and see which variant is increasing conversions, retention, or engagement.
Kameleoon also offers A/B testing features to advanced users and developers. You can run server-side experiments to improve your product. It easily works in different development languages and frameworks, like PHP, Java, Ruby, Flutter, and more.
Besides that, it offers AI-power personalization. You can provide unique experiences to each visitor, target different segments for testing, and comply with privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA.
Pricing: You will need to request a demo and get a quote for Kameleoon pricing.
The best Google Optimize alternatives are Thrive Optimize, VWO Testing, and FunnelKit.
If you’re looking for a WordPress A/B testing tool, then Thrive Optimize is our first pick. It gives you all the powerful features, and it’s very affordable. Since it’s part of the Thrive Suite, you also get other solutions like a quiz builder, popup form builder, WordPress page builder, and more.
If you’re looking for an all-around SaaS alternative for Google Optimize that works on all platforms, then we recommend using VWO Testing. They have a generous free plan that should work for most small business owners.
And if you are an eCommerce store owner looking for the best Google Optimize alternative for WooCommerce, then we recommend using FunnelKit. They have deep integration with WooCommerce and allow you to customize every step of the funnel including adding custom 1-click upsells, order bumps, and more to help boost your average order value.
We hope this article helped you find the best Google Optimize alternative. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide to improve your SEO ranking, and see our comparison of the best push notification software with A/B testing features to boost your traffic.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post 9 Best Google Optimize Alternatives (Free and Paid) first appeared on WPBeginner.
The best Mailchimp alternative is Constant Contact because it offers the best value for most users. You can access Constant Contact’s Plus plan, worth $40, for 30 days free.
Mailchimp is a well-known email marketing platform. It offers plenty of useful features that help small businesses grow faster. However, like any other platform, Mailchimp also has some drawbacks, which is why it didn’t make it onto our top list of email marketing services.
There are plenty of other options you can look into and choose the best-suited platform for your needs.
The Quicksprout research team carefully analyzed several email marketing platforms based on a detailed set of criteria. Here are the top 10 email marketing platforms that we recommend.
The best Mailchimp alternative is Constant Contact, as it is ideal for most users and offers overall best services. It is an easy-to-use platform ideal for beginners. You can access Constant Contact’s Plus plan, worth $40, for 30 days free.
Constant Contact is the most recommended email marketing platform for most users. Experienced email marketers applaud it for its time-saving features, and new email marketers love how easy to use it is.
It offers a drag-and-drop email builder that enables you to create brand-specific emails without any coding knowledge. It equips you with various tools to add videos, polls, texts, and images to any email. Furthermore, it provides hundreds of in-built mobile optimized templates that non-techy people can easily utilize.
Automation is another major benefit of Constant Contact. Through automation, you can easily set up welcome messages for new subscribers. Moreover, you’ll get detailed data reports about each subscriber’s preferences.
Both platforms offer excellent reporting and analytical tools. But maintaining an organized mailing list in Constant Contact is far easier than in Mailchimp. Mailchimp also offers customer support to premium plan subscribers only, while Constant Contact offers better and more efficient customer services to all subscribers.
Mailchimp does provide a wider variety of affordable pricing plans. On the other hand, Constant Contact provides more value and higher ROI on the money invested in its pricing plans. You can choose a suitable pricing plan through its website.
Sendinblue allows you to upload your content and provides you with excellent tools to successfully launch your email marketing campaign. A live chat feature is also provided to help you gain the email addresses of new people visiting your website and turn them into potential customers.
Sendinblue has plenty of unique templates that can be customized based on the needs of your business. Several simple and complex tools are available to help you build smooth workflows and grow your contact list.
It offers smooth integration of Facebook ads, retargeted ads, sign-up forms, and landing pages.
Eye-catching forms and landing pages help turn website traffic into potential customers. Embedding a form in Sendinblue is exceptionally easy because of its intuitive interface.
Sendinblue and Mailchimp offer automation and workflow editing tools. However, Sendinblue allows you to customize your workflow only if you are a standard plan subscriber, and Mailchimp allows all its users to customize their workflows. Sendinblue allows you to send automatic SMS, though, while Mailchimp lacks this feature.
Sendinblue offers unlimited contact storage options and affordable pricing plans, including free, lite, and premium plans, each costing $0, $25, and $65 a month, respectively.
MailerLite offers all the baseline tools required for email marketing. You can easily test it because it’s free for up to 1000 subscribers. It’s a straightforward email marketing platform that allows you to start and maintain a marketing campaign without a hassle.
MailerLite is considered an ideal email marketing platform for small teams of professionals with no in-house IT department. Anyone with little to no knowledge of code can easily navigate and utilize the tools offered by this platform.
The core features of MailerLite include automation tools, surveys, pop-ups, and landing pages. It also has a drag-and-drop editor that allows you to craft an impactful email. Features like A/B testing further enable you to personalize and optimize your marketing campaigns for different consumer segments.
MailerLite is the easiest-to-use email marketing platform. It offers far more diverse and beautiful templates than Mailchimp. MailerLite’s analytics reporting dashboard is simpler than Mailchimp’s, however, which provides more elaborate reports.
The prices of subscription plans offered by MailerLite depend on the number of subscribers that you have. For businesses with up to 1000 subscribers, it offers its services for free. However, it charges higher prices as your number of subscribers increases.
Omnisend is a customizable email marketing solution for ecommerce websites. Its features, like SMS, messaging, and automated emails help convert leads into customers. It enables you to connect to the maximum number of customers by offering various other features like Google Customer Match, web browser push notification, Facebook ad retargeting, and more.
Moreover, it allows you to create segmented campaigns to target specific customers in need of your services or products.
Another excellent feature offered by Omnisend is the automation of emails for expected actions that your customer might take. For example, welcome emails, cart abandonment emails, and other similar action emails.
Omnisend offers more visually detailed templates than Mailchimp. Moreover, Mailchimp reserves most of its templates for paid plan users, while Omnisend offers its templates to all users. Omnisend also allows you to design interesting and gamified forms that catch the attention of your website visitors, while Mailchimp does not.
However, when it comes to third-party integrations, Mailchimp offers more options than Omnisend.
The pricing plan for Omnisend, unlike Mailchimp’s, depends on the number of people you send emails to. Therefore, each pricing plan can cost a different amount of money. It offers three basic plans, namely:
Or you can start with the free plan and upgrade your plan as your business grows.
Moosend is another excellent email marketing platform for online business owners — new or veteran. It has all the features required to run a successful marketing campaign, like a drag-and-drop builder, a segmentation tool, and real-time data analytics reports.
Moosend employs artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze customers’ shopping habits. Using the accumulated data, it displays targeted ads or sends targeted emails to customers about similar other products.
Moosend provides customized reports, whereas Mailchimp doesn’t provide this feature. Moosend also provides real-time customer support and enables you to create a campaign within 5 minutes. On the other hand, Mailchimp offers limited customer support.
Another advantage of Moosend over Mailchimp is that it allows you to add two similar email addresses to two separate mailing lists, whereas Mailchimp charges you for adding a similar email address to two different mailing lists.
In terms of pricing, Moosend charges far less than Mailchimp. It offers three pricing plans, with the pro plan starting at only $9 a month.
AWeber is a reliable and affordable email marketing service. It is a traditional platform ideal for small businesses with 500 or fewer subscribers. However, the pricing plans offered by AWeber are among the best and most reasonable plans offered by any email marketing service.
No matter which plans you choose or how many subscribers you have, AWeber allows you to avail most of its features.
The selling point of AWeber is its email deliverability rates. It ensures that your content is optimized and reaches the maximum number of subscribers. Other features it offers include beautiful in-built templates, analytical reports, A/B testing, automation, third-party integrations, and many other useful features.
AWeber provides seamless integration with several platforms like Shopify, Etsy, PayPal, and more. You can access the template database provided by AWeber, or you can create your own HTML templates. AWeber allows Canva integration, which further makes it easier to design beautiful templates. Mailchimp’s integrations are much more limited and less seamless.
AWeber also offers you to start for free, similar to Mailchimp. However, it charges you according to the number of subscribers when you reach a specific number, ranging from $16 a month to $146 a month.
GetResponse is a specialized email marketing service. Its features like autoresponders, advanced analytics, webinar software, and landing page builders help you gain more organic traffic, which you can turn into potential customers.
Autofunnel is a unique, automated, and easy-to-use tool offered by GetResponse. It allows you to create funnels. These funnels can include exit pop-ups, Facebook ads, ecommerce integration, and more. You can use these funnels to grow your list of contacts and monetize them.
GetResponse allows you to create an unlimited number of mailing lists, whereas Mailchimp limits that based on your subscription plan. Both platforms offer plenty of features like automation, analytics reports, and more.
However, GetResponse has several features that are not found in Mailchimp, including webinars, conversion funnels, push notifications, and chat functionality.
GetResponse has separate pricing plans for individuals and companies. Mailchimp and GetResponse have a very similar price range.
HubSpot helps you create, optimize, and personalize your emails even without any knowledge of design or code. It offers fantastic automation features ideal for all types and sizes of businesses.
Its automated workflows are one-of-a-kind that allows you to set alerts for your email subscribers and gain more organic customers. Its A/B testing tool is also top-notch and allows you to compare the performance of two different emails.
HubSpot combines excellent marketing tools with the power of a content management system, to give you an insight into how your marketing efforts are influencing your customers. However, Mailchimp is an email marketing tool that helps you reach more audiences.
HubSpot offers some free tools. However, the subscription plans of HubSpot are pricier than Mailchimp, with the starter plan starting at $45 a month.
Not sure if HubSpot is the right platform for you? Read our full review of HubSpot to make an informed decision.
Drip is ideal for new ecommerce business owners. Its goal is to provide small businesses with similar and powerful automation and segmentation tools available to large businesses.
It allows you to track customer intent and understand customer purchase behavior. Moreover, it allows you to segment new and returning visitors from your website traffic. It enables you to target the right people with lucrative offers to turn them into customers.
Mailchimp offers segmentation, but only for its premium plan users. Drip enables you to easily segment your customers based on different factors, and offers this feature to all users. Moreover, Drip is better for advanced marketing automation.
The pricing plan of Drip also depends on the number of subscribers. However, its subscription plans are pricier than Mailchimp, with the starter plan starting at $39 a month.
ConvertKit is the perfect email marketing platform for creators of all niches, like artists, musicians, bloggers, and more. The various features offered by ConvertKit focus on increasing engagement on your landing page, membership sites, or ecommerce platform.
It also allows you to build affordable email funnels to turn casual visitors to your blogs, videos, pages, and more into customers.
ConvertKit is an equally popular email marketing platform to Mailchimp. Both platforms provide the option to automate emails, design marketing campaigns, and other features. Moreover, both these platforms have a similar success rate. The subscription plans offered by ConvertKit are quite affordable and start at only $9 a month for creators.
Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for Constant Contact and start growing your list today.
Having a big email list can lead to more sales, followers, and market research.
But with so much competition, it’s hard to convince people to part with their email addresses.
If you can learn how to get people to subscribe to your list, you’ll have a growing database of potential customers or followers that can’t be taken away from you.
Email marketing also has one of the highest ROIs of any marketing, and you can use your list to do market research for better content and products.
If you want to grow your email list, you’ll need to start with a great email marketing service that helps you manage your subscribers. Here are our top recommendations:
You can read our full review of each email marketing platform here.
The more subscribers you have, the higher your chances of achieving goals – whether you want more sales, more followers, or better audience insights.
Here are the best ways you can grow your email list organically:
Believe it or not, the easiest part of growing an email list is sending out the emails.
People tend to panic about what they should write, but there are plenty of templates, guides, and even copywriters out there to help you. Plus, the key to a good email is writing easy-to-read content that sounds conversational, which is often easier than you might think.
People also think that they need to have lots of design skills to send out good emails. However, most emails work better when they’re just text, and when they’re kept short. And if you do want to add images or even a gif or a meme, there are dozens of great email marketing platforms that include templates to help you.
Our personal favorite is Constant Contact. It has hundreds of templates to help you write and design your emails. And, it comes with tons of automation and segmentation features to help you organize your lists and plan out your email campaigns.
It also offers list-building features that allow you to create opt-in forms for different social media platforms and pages.
There are two parts to growing an email list that most people find hard: getting people to join the list and getting people to stay.
With so many people using email marketing, people guard their emails a lot more closely than they used to. That means that if you want someone to give you their email and join your list, you need to give them something good in return. This could be something free, or the promise of valuable information.
Then, you have to get subscribers to stay. Again, because most people receive so many emails every day, keeping someone from unsubscribing from your list is tough. You need to send really great emails to earn your place in someone’s inbox. Figuring out the right content to send and living up to your promises can be a struggle.
Luckily, there are lots of templates and email marketing tools to help you keep subscribers once you’ve won them. And, in this post, we’ll go through the best ways you can grow your list and get new subscribers.
The best way to grow your email list is to give people something in exchange for their emails.
If you think about every time you’ve joined an email list, chances are that it was to get a free download or to join a service. Getting access to someone’s email is a privilege and people want to be rewarded for it.
If you can give people a reason to sign up for your list AND a reason to stay, you’re winning.
Here are some ways you can incentivize people to join your list:
The fastest and best way to get people to join your list is to create a “freebie.” This is a free piece of content your subscribers will get access to if they join your list.
This could be the link for an exclusive video training, or a downloadable guide—whatever you think would be valuable and interesting to your audience.
You will have to spend a little time creating this freebie, like recording a video or designing a graphic, but it’s worth it when it’s done. You can then post about your freebie on your social media, add it as a pop-up on your website, or offer it in networking groups.
Another powerful way to get lots of subscribers fast is to run a giveaway. You also don’t have to offer anything of really high value here—it could be a giveaway of your freebie or a free 15-minute consultation call. Even if it’s something small like an Amazon gift card, getting lots of subscribers will make it worth your while.
Simply make one of the requirements of the giveaway to subscribe to your email list. Then, choose an email at random to give the winner the prize.
The main thing to remember with giveaways is that you MUST actually give away a prize. You can get in a lot of trouble with internet regulators if you run fake contests.
It seems obvious, but just asking people to join your list can work wonders.
Many people have a fear of asking for conversions—they’re worried about coming across as desperate or begging. But there is an art to getting subscribers. You just have to ask in the right way.
Phrasing your invitation as if you’re inviting people to something valuable or exclusive will make people want to join your list. And as long as you communicate the value of your list and give people a good reason to join, asking at every opportunity will help you grow faster.
Here’s where you should start asking for sign-ups:
An easy way to ask people to join your list is by adding a pop-up box to your website.
You can add a pop-up directly to your site that’s triggered after someone is on a page for a few minutes. You can then offer your freebie in exchange for their email, or invite them to the list by promising value.
You can also create a pop-up or sign-up page to collect emails by using an email marketing platform like Constant Contact.
As part of its list-building features, Constant Contact can help you build a sign-up page linked to your site. This includes templates and integration to make your sign-up page as personalized and easy to implement as possible.
Constant Contact also has tools to help you add sign-up pages to your social media, build custom landing pages, and manage your email lists.
You can try Constant Contact for free here.
People forget that if you don’t tell your audience what to do, they won’t do it.
Adding a Call to Action (CTA) inviting people to join your list anywhere you can makes it more likely that you’ll grow subscribers after.
You can add a CTA in the captions of your social media posts, in a box at the end of your blog posts, or even as an announcement at the end of podcasts. Just make sure that the CTA is offering them something in return for their email and is interesting enough to get them to sign up!
Social Media is another great way to let people know about your list, and then ask them to subscribe.
You can add CTA’s to your captions, and you can promote your list on your Instagram stories, or pin your invite to your profile. This also works for Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
Twitter is an especially great way to get new subscribers because you can share short snippets from your newsletter, or create threads out of your email content. Then, add a CTA to your tweets with something like ‘Found this useful? Join my email list to see more content like this!’
You can either add a subscribe link directly to your social media bio, or use a link in bio tool like Linktree.
A webinar is a great way to constantly add new leads to your list.
Just like offering a freebie, your webinar should promise some sort of value that would interest people to attend. And the best thing about a webinar is that you can pre-record it, and then play it in a loop so people keep joining.
The most successful webinars do have a tried and tested structure, usually requiring people to sign up and get an email invitation. You then use the webinar to share a few key pieces of value to help you build trust with your audience. If you get this right, it will inspire people to join your list to keep learning from you and get more content.
Remember that a good webinar doesn’t just give you the chance to grow your email list – it also gives you the chance to sell or make an offer!
You can run ads, and announcements on social media or post in groups to let people know about your webinar. Once you have someone interested in watching, you should ask them for their email to send them a confirmation link to join.
Just remember that if you do this, you MUST comply with email laws about consent. If you are using a platform like Constant Contact, they’ll help you include the right information in the small print and the pop-ups to make sure you are compliant with internet laws.
You can then email your new subscribers an invite to the webinar, and then tag them, ready to add them to your welcome automation.
If you didn’t send an email invite, you can still get your webinar attendees to sign up for your list. You can offer them your freebie at the end of the webinar, or invite them directly using some persuasive language.
If the goal of the webinar is to get more subscribers and grow your list, make sure you mention it often so people don’t miss it. And make sure you make it clear that the content you share with email subscribers is as valuable as what you are sharing in the webinar.
If they’ve joined a webinar about a certain topic, then that’s what they are interested in, and they’ll only join your list to get more content like that.
Another way you can add a lot more subscribers to your list is by creating exclusive groups or communities that require an email sign-up to join.
You may have seen this in action if you’ve ever tried to join a private Facebook group or a LinkedIn group. One of the best things about starting groups like this is that they’re usually based on you sharing value and exclusive content with members.
So, if someone is interested in joining your Facebook group or private mastermind, they are already interested in the type of content you share and are more likely to want to join your list.
Here are a few group options that may work well for you.
Starting a group exclusively for people in your industry or niche, and making the mastermind invite-only, will give people a reason to give you their emails. You can make it a requirement that you receive an email invite to join the group, for instance.
This is a great way to make sure that you are getting high-quality subscribers, because it will only be people in your niche, and they’ll all be excited to receive emails from you. Just make sure that anything you do share in the mastermind lives up to the value you are promising.
Remember, running a group can be a lot of work. This step might not be for you if you’re short on time.
A little like creating a mastermind or a freebie, you can create a private Facebook group where you share exclusive content, information, and value.
Again, you do need to make sure that you are offering real value when you start a group like this, but the idea of belonging to anything exclusive will get people to sign up.
Especially if people think they are getting value without having to pay money, you’ll easily convince people to give up their emails and join your list. You can also then use your Facebook group to generate content ideas for your emails and campaigns.
Want to just get started? Click here to sign up for Constant Contact and start creating your campaign today.
Email marketing is so valuable that the average ROI is $36 for every $1 spent. But when it comes to email marketing campaigns, most people don’t know what to write, or how to structure one.
If you DO know how to set the right goals and send emails to the right people, campaigns can be an evergreen way to make sales and connect with your subscribers.
Once you learn how to create a great email campaign, you’ll be able to convert subscribers into customers or followers on autopilot and get invaluable insights into your target audience.
Plus, you’ll be able to reuse your campaign over and over and keep improving it to get better results every time.
If you want to create and send out successful email campaigns, you’ll need to have a reliable email marketing service to help you. Here are our top recommendations:
You can read our full review of these email marketing platform here.
Following the right steps will help you create campaigns that get you results and that your audience actually wants to receive.
We’ve put together a list of the most important things you need to do when crafting your next campaign:
The easiest parts of creating an email marketing campaign are the technical aspects.
They may be time-consuming, but actually plugging in the content, choosing who to send it to, and deciding on send times are a lot easier than getting the content right. Especially with all the great email marketing software out there, you can have all the technical stuff done for you in less than a day.
Our top recommendation for an email marketing platform is Constant Contact because it makes this setup process so easy. Not only does it include plenty of templates, but it also comes with automation and segmentation features to make it easy to manage email campaigns.
It also comes with A/B testing features, which make it easy to monitor whether your campaigns are working and improve them as you go.
One of the most difficult steps you’ll face is creating content that converts your subscribers to paying customers. You’ll have to write powerful copy if you want to see results, and that’s not as easy as it sounds.
Another part of creating an email campaign that can be hard for many is analyzing the results to create a better campaign. There are so many pieces of the email marketing puzzle that it can be difficult to tell which one(s) to change to get better results and which ones to leave alone.
Even email marketing experts struggle to know how to improve open rates and sales at times! You may want to rely on the help of an email marketing professional and/or good email marketing software to help you navigate these pitfalls, especially if you don’t have much experience in email marketing.
Before you can even think about creating your campaign, you need to know why you’re doing it.
What do you want your campaign to achieve? Do you want more sales? Do you want people to sign up for your next event? You need to have a clear vision of this before you start creating your campaign, otherwise, you’re wasting your time.
Email campaigns usually have a big goal for the end, and are designed to move people through a conversion journey to achieve that goal. Perhaps you want to welcome people to your list or to sell a new product.
Think about what you would like to convince people to do by the end of your campaign. This will determine what kind of campaign you choose and how you structure your copy.
Now that you know the goal of your campaign, you can decide on the type.
Do you want to convince new subscribers to buy your course? Then you need a welcome sequence that moves them from unaware to product aware.
Do you want to offer a discount to people who have abandoned a cart? Then you might want to send a re-targeting email.
You should research some of the different types of campaigns out there and try to choose the one that will best help you achieve your goal. Here are some of the most common ones:
You can also subscribe to some other lists from people you admire to get inspiration for structuring your campaign.
Once you know what campaign you’re creating and why, you can decide on who will receive the campaign emails.
You can choose a small section of your list to receive the campaign. For example, you could send only the most engaged subscribers a campaign to sell them your new ebook.
Or you can trigger an automation to send a campaign to users after they take a certain action, like joining your list or leaving your landing page.
Constant Contact includes plenty of segmentation and automation tools to make this really easy. You can choose who you send your email to and when, and set up rules to make this easy to repeat with each new subscriber. You can also trigger specific campaigns like welcome emails or holiday sequences using their library of templates.
You can get started with Constant Contact here for free.
Once you have the groundwork done, you can start planning the campaign.
Here’s what you’ll need to consider when you’re putting together an outline:
Most campaigns have between 4-7 emails.
How many you need will really depend on how many you think it will take to achieve your goals. This will depend on how warm your audience is and what stage of their journey they are on.
If you are just creating a campaign to get people to attend a free event, it will take fewer emails than convincing people to buy a high-ticket product.
For the best results, your emails should just do one thing. Email marketers like to refer to this as “the rule of one.”
You want to make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to complete each task or move from email to email without becoming overwhelmed.
If you set a clear goal for them in each email in the campaign, you make it easy for them to move through their journey. Otherwise, they can be overcome by too many choices and won’t take action at all.
This is one of the most challenging parts of creating an email campaign. Especially if you are selling anything, it will take real skill to get the copy on point to see results.
The best way to make this work is to hire an email copywriter, but you can also try writing your emails yourself. Here’s what you’ll need to do to have compelling content:
If you want to write the copy yourself, it’s a good idea to use templates. You’ll get editable copy that is primed to psychologically move your subscribers through the campaign journey and uses marketing tricks to convert better.
Just make sure that if you use templates, you have permission. Do NOT try and copy emails others send to your inbox—it’s not worth getting caught!
Surprisingly, subject lines are the hardest part of the email to write.
You are competing with all the other emails appearing in someone else’s inbox, so you need to stand out, without resorting to clickbait.
There’s a fine line between catching someone’s attention and tricking them, so think long and hard about what would get someone to open an email, but that still reflects exactly what’s inside the email.
You can also find suggestions and templates online for subject lines that consistently perform well. You may also be able to find suggestions directly from your email marketing platform of choice.
Not all email marketing software tools have templates, but many do.
They’ll be able to give you an idea of where to add content, how to structure your emails, and what to include to get results. You can use them to help you structure your campaigns, add CTA’s in the right places, and improve your chances of getting your emails opened.
If you really want to boost your chances of getting your emails opened, you should hire a copywriter.
Email copywriters will know how to write subject lines that get clicked, and how to write content that gets people to take action. They’ll be able to use marketing formulas and the right language to get you results.
It’s a skilled job for a reason—it takes a lot of learning and practice to write a good email campaign. If you want to see good ROI for your emails, this is the best way to go.
Once you have your content, you’re ready to actually add it to your email marketing software.
If you are using the right software, this should be easy. You’ll just need to add in your text, play with the formatting, and decide on the elements you want to add.
Here’s what you’ll need to set up:
With some email marketing platforms, this is as easy as just copying and pasting your content into your email marketing platform.
With other platforms, you’ll then have to reformat things like italics, links, bullet points, and bolded texts.
You should check everything carefully to make sure it’s spelled correctly, and send yourself a test email to check for any errors.
Images aren’t necessary (and honestly, will just raise spam rates for most emails)
However, sometimes adding a meme or a screenshot can be useful – like a screenshot of a client testimonial. Most email marketing platforms let you easily add in images, gifs, or even emojis.
Try playing around with what feels right and what fits your brand. Just remember that the more photos or large images in your emails, the more likely you will end up in the spam folder.
You should also add buttons here to help make your CTAs clearer and easier to find.
The next thing you’ll want to do is check that any links or downloads are working.
You can add these directly through the email editor. Again, remember to send yourself a test email when you’ve finished editing to check all the links work and go to the right places.
You’ll also want to choose and add recipients to your campaign.
If you’ll be setting up a triggered automation based on behavior, skip to the next step. But if you want to send it to a segment already on your list, now’s the time to select them and get them set up to receive it.
How you do this will depend on your email marketing software. If you’re lost, you can usually reach out to most email marketing platforms directly for support or read their FAQs.
Usually, though, you can select Send To and then choose the list or the tag you want your campaign to be sent to.
If you want to get the most out of an email campaign, you should try to set up automation.
This just means that your subscribers will be tagged based on how they interact with your emails. You can then use this to trigger more emails, or just understand your audience better.
Here are things you should think about setting up:
If you’re sending out emails to a specific segment of your list, you can automate anyone with a specific tag to receive emails. If you want everyone who behaves a certain way to receive an email, you should automate your email to be triggered by behavior, such as subscribing to your list.
This helps you save time and makes sure no one misses an email. If you’re sending all your emails manually, it’s easier to make a mistake or forget one of your subscribers.
Something else you can do with your email campaigns is to use them to segment your list.
Segmentation of your list allows you to send more relevant emails to your subscribers, which boosts conversions and brings down spam rates.
You can segment them with things like Interested in Free Training if they click the link, or VIP Subscribers if they open every email. This might not help you get sales or achieve your campaign goal immediately, but it will help you have more successful campaigns in the future.
Another way you can automate your campaign is by triggering emails or actions based on how they interact with your campaign.
For instance, if someone clicks through a link to buy your course, then clicks away without purchasing, you can automate them to receive a retargeting email.
To get the most out of a campaign and make it as successful as possible, you should test and analyze it to see if it’s working.
When you test your campaign and try different things, you should hopefully be able to boost your open rates and tweak your campaign until it’s as successful as possible. This includes changing subject lines, CTAs, or even images.
The great thing about email campaigns is, unlike newsletters, you can send them out multiple times and keep seeing results. So, it’s important to optimize them as much as possible so that every time you send them out, they convert better.
The first step to testing your emails is to assess how well they are working.
This includes looking at open rates, click-through rates, how far through the sequence people are getting before they stop opening emails, and looking at unsubscribe rates.
It’s a good idea to research the normal rates for your industry, so you have a benchmark to measure whether your emails are underperforming or overperforming. You can also look at each email in the campaign and see which ones are getting more opens and which ones aren’t.
Once you have an idea of what’s working and what isn’t, you can start testing different things to try and improve your results.
A/B testing is available on most email marketing platforms, and just means trying one thing with half your subscribers and another with the other half. After you’ve sent out enough emails to see whether option A or B works best, you can start using the most successful one with all your subscribers.
This is a good way to look for patterns, and you can use it with everything, including CTAs, subject lines, and formatting.
Disorganized customer service can quickly lead to lost business, dissatisfied consumers, and points against your reputation. To create a positive experience for everyone involved, your team needs a solution that boosts their confidence in handling customer issues while directing customers to the right places.
With a contact center or call center, your business gets a tool that ensures customers speak to the right person to resolve their problems. However, these solutions work differently, even though they serve a similar purpose. Before you buy one, know which services work best for your business.
The right call center or contact center service can transform your business and allow you to help more customers than ever. Explore these options to see which one matches your customer service needs.
You can read our full reviews of each call center service here.
A call center handles incoming and outgoing calls from customers to a business. Call centers are generally limited to voice communication. Call center agents typically handle customer questions and support, telemarketing, market research, and similar types of communication.
A contact center serves a similar purpose, but instead of being limited to phone calls, it uses omnichannel support. In other words, customers can contact agents by phone, chat, social media, email, or website contact forms, depending on which channels a particular business uses.
Call centers can prove a valuable tool for keeping your team organized and efficient. Here’s what you need to know about how they can help your business.
Voice calling is the primary feature of most call center services. It allows agents to answer incoming calls and make outgoing calls. For example, a call center’s voice calling feature lets an agent accept calls from customers who have questions, as well as make telemarketing calls for the business.
With this feature, customers have a direct connection with someone who can help them. It increases trust between customers and your brand when the customer knows someone is available to help them with their problem, whether they have a technical issue or want to return their purchase.
While voice calling once meant picking up the phone, today’s VoIP services make voice calling even simpler with the cloud. This method of voice communication allows for more flexibility among call centers, so they can handle multiple lines and create more efficiency with one-click calling systems.
Ideally, call centers come with the ability to direct customer calls, too. When calls go to the person who has the knowledge to handle specific questions or problems, customers walk away satisfied with their experience.
With call recording, you can store previous calls made with your call center. It allows you to reference previous inbound or outbound calls when necessary and save them as long as you have enough storage.
Call recording isn’t available with every call center, but it’s a critical feature for improving the customer and agent experience. Agents and customers can rest assured that should something go wrong on their call, there’s evidence of what happened.
Additionally, call recording helps train new agents. When they can listen back over their previous calls, they can understand where they can improve and where they did well. That allows them to refine their script and help customers more effectively.
Video conferencing helps you connect with your team through video and audio. It improves collaboration by allowing you to make a call within your organization or to a client outside it. This feature can come with helpful tools, including screen sharing, that make it easier to communicate ideas and information.
Video conferencing can be hit or miss with call centers, and you may want to go with a contact center for this option. Contact centers often have more comprehensive services, whereas some call centers focus more on the phone aspect without giving other types of communication the attention they require to be useful.
Call centers and contact centers typically have voicemail service as an essential component. Many businesses can’t offer 24/7 customer service, especially by phone. With a good voicemail system, customers can leave messages so that agents can return their calls and help them when they are available.
Many call and contact centers can transcribe these messages to email or SMS. However, this depends on the service, and the transcriptions aren’t always accurate. If a customer has poor cell phone reception, for example, it can be difficult to understand whether you listen to or read their message.
Both contact and call centers usually have email and SMS services. Along with voicemail to email, these services typically allow you to send text messages to your customers for business communication. For example, with a contact list with customer emails and phone numbers you can send out promotions, deals, sale information, and more without interrupting their day with a phone call.
Many contact and call centers also let you use SMS in-house. The software allows you to open a new chat to get in touch on any device, even if they work from home. It creates more efficient communication so that not everything has to be a meeting.
Many businesses use social media to promote their products and engage with their audience. You won’t typically find social media channels in a call center service, but contact centers offer more text-based options, like chat and social media.
Most customers interact with and discover brands on social media. Whether through ads or the brand account, having a reliable contact center that lets you answer customer questions and comments in one place increases engagement. It allows you to show customers you’re paying attention, and a contact center can condense your social media operations so that you don’t have to jump between each account.
Call center services have limited self-service options, and they’re usually limited to finding basic information on your business. Contact centers allow customers to use keywords, frequently asked questions, and other scripted elements to get the information they need without contacting a customer service representative directly.
A self-service option in your contact center reduces the workload on your agents, resolves questions and issues faster, empowers the customer, and creates a more inclusive and convenient way for customers to get what they need. Self-service contact centers also lower costs, shorten call queues, and let your agents focus on answering complex, in-depth questions customers can’t find on their own.
Improving your contact or call center may mean choosing a call center service to support your agents. These solutions all have excellent capabilities for creating more efficiency and reducing overwhelm while boosting customer satisfaction.
Nextiva earns the best overall spot for enhancing your contact center. It uses the cloud to connect your team, so your agents can work from home and from anywhere in the world.
Its VoIP system is a quick setup, and it’s affordable at $14.95 per user per month for its Essential package. That plan comes with unlimited voice calling, unlimited video calling, and free local and toll-free phone numbers. Plus, if you want to automate your service, you can do that with this plan.
Even the Professional package at $20.95 and the Enterprise plan at $26.95 are fairly cheap for what they offer. Professional adds collaboration tools, business texting, and voicemail to email and SMS. Enterprise offers call recording and voice analytics, so you have tools to help you train your agents and satisfy customers.
When your team isn’t around to field calls and messages, Go Answer is. Outsourcing your calls and messages to them means that no matter what time of day your customers need help, they can find it by phone, chat, SMS, and email. Go Answer has options to help your business no matter your industry, including:
Go Answer customizes their help to your business, and they can handle large call volumes. With Go Answer’s free trial, you can try the solution for 30 days, and the company gives you a free quote tailored to the services you need.
TeleDirect specializes in managing reservations, order processing, and technical support. They work across varied industries and they handle outbound calls as well as inbound ones.
With TeleDirect, you can conduct market research and generate leads as well as register customers for events. TeleDirect works for businesses of all sizes, whether you need after-hours support or a 24/7 team to field calls. The company doesn’t publish its prices online, so you have to call to get a custom quote.
Five Star Call Center works for businesses that handle B2B and B2C calls. Its agents can generate leads, perform quality assurance, send payment reminders, and follow up on previous calls.
While Five Star Call Center offers a wide range of outbound call services, they specialize in:
These specialties make them work well for many different businesses, but if yours falls outside of those listed, you may want to try another service. The company is based in the United States, so it may not work well for all international businesses.
When you only need to handle overflow or after-hours calls, Signius may be the best choice. The company works to learn about your business before its agents handle your calls to become a more impactful part of your team.
They offer services that include setting up hotlines, customer care, taking orders, and functioning as a help desk. Signius makes it worth your while as a small business owner and offers a free consultation to determine your needs and pricing.
When you want to improve your call center or contact center, you can take some quick, simple actions to make sure you and your agents have all the tools for success.
Before you put your agents on a call, make sure they have all the training materials they need to understand their role. When you onboard clients correctly, you set them up to help customers effectively while maintaining their confidence in their role. Giving proper training can include:
By giving agents these materials from the start, they can do their jobs better. After all, even if you use tools to improve your call center, the tools are only as good as the team behind them.
With call center software like Nextiva, you give your team the necessary tools to reduce overwhelm and manage calls and messages appropriately. Call or contact center software can direct calls to the right person, provide self-help resources for customers, record calls, and enable your team to efficiently solve customer problems.
It reduces team workload while allowing you to help more customers in a shorter amount of time. Some software has a shorter learning curve than others, but by implementing it, you save your team stress and time in the long run.
Recording calls is one of the easiest and fastest ways to improve customer satisfaction and raise agent confidence in their calls. This practice should be part of your agent training, but it can help agents to listen over their previous calls to:
Most call center software has the capability to record calls, including Nextiva. While it protects your agents and customers, you can use it for training and reviews to maintain and boost your company’s reputation and service.
A script helps novice and experienced agents excel at their jobs. It sets the expectation for your business while allowing the agent to feel more comfortable with a model to refer to while on their call.
Have agents practice their script and even run through practice calls with more seasoned members of your team. Offer feedback on how to improve the script and incorporate it so that each agent has the best possible tools for communicating with customers.
Running a successful business goes beyond having a capable call or contact center. To get the most out of your contact center, you may want to look at how to run an email campaign, managing your online reputation, and how to market online.
Knowing how to use your call center to get the word out about your business will help you grow and improve how your team functions. Meanwhile, pay attention to your business analytics to help you understand what your audience wants and how your team can give it to them.
This article is part of our ongoing series on design patterns. It’s also a part of the upcoming 4-weeks live UX training 🍣 and will be in our recently released video course soon.
Authentication is a tricky subject. There are so many terms floating around us, from 2FA to MFA to OTP — and it might be difficult to make sense of what we need and when we need it. But authentication is everywhere, and sometimes it’s extremely frustrating, and sometimes it’s seamless. Let’s explore a few patterns to create experience that are a bit more seamless than frustrating.
Now, nobody wakes up in the morning hoping to finally identify crosswalks and fire hydrants that day. Yet every day, we prompt users through hoops and loops to sign up and log in, to set a complex enough password or recover one, to find a way to restore access to locked accounts and logged-out sessions.
Of course security matters, yet too often, it gets in the way of usability. As Jared Spool said once, “If a product isn’t usable, it’s also not secure.” That’s when people start using private email accounts and put passwords on stick-it-notes because they forget them. As usual, Jared hits the nail on the head here. So what can we do to improve the authentication UX?
1. Don’t Disable Copy-Paste For PasswordsIt appears only reasonable to block copy-paste for password input to avoid brute-force attacks. Yet when we do so, we also block users who copy-paste passwords from password managers and text documents. As a result, they need to repeatedly retype complex, lengthy, cryptic strings of text — and it’s rarely an exciting adventure to embark on.
In fact, that’s slow, annoying and frustrating. In her talk on Authentication UX Anti-Patterns, Kelly Robinson explains that this is a common anti-pattern, often causing way more frustration than remedy, and hence best to be avoided.
Also, double check that your password fields include the attribute autocomplete="new-password", so browsers can prompt a strong auto-generated password. And the best bit: users without password managers don’t have to come with a password of their own — because usually that’s a recipe for disaster.
Passwords are problematic. For example, only 34% of users in the US use a password manager, and everybody else relies on their good ol’ memory, sticky notes, and text files on the desktop.
Good passwords are hard to remember. As a result, users often choose easy-to-guess passwords instead, including names of their pets and loved ones, their birthdates, and their wedding dates. That’s far from secure, of course.
Still, we often forget our passwords, sometimes recovering passwords 4-5 times a week. So no wonder many of us still reuse the same password across multiple accounts, often favoring convenience over data safety. In fact, allowing users to choose their own passwords is a recipe for trouble. To fix that, what if we nudge users away from passwords?
Any kind of 2-Factor Authentication is better than passwords, and ideally, we could use a cookie that users can opt-in for to avoid frequent log-ins. Data-sensitive sites might want to log out users automatically after every visit (e..g online banking), but simpler sites might be better off avoiding aggressive log-outs and allowing users to stay logged in for 30 days or even longer.
3. Drop Strict Password RequirementsSince users are very good at twisting and bending password rules (just to forget them shortly after the task is done), what if we change our strategy altogether? What if we do support lengthy and complex passwords with all the special characters unique delimeters but keep rules relatively friendly?
This surely would come at the cost of security, of course. So to protect user’s data on their behalf, we use new-password to prompt secure passwords to be generated during sign-up, and nudge users aggressively towards a 2FA setup, e.g., providing 30% off for the first month for turning 2FA on.
The only thing required would be to connect the account with a mobile phone or Google Authenticator, type in a verification code, or verify with a Touch-ID, and that would be it. Thus, we avoid endless and expensive password resets, which often cause abandonment and frustration.
4. Social Sign-In Isn’t For EveryoneThe more sensitive the data stored, the more attention users expect from the interface to security. Usability sessions hint that log-in hurdles seem to be accepted as long as they are considered to be “reasonable”. But what’s reasonable to us, as designers, isn’t necessarily what’s reasonable to our customers.
Social sign-in is a good example of that. Some users love it because it’s so fast, yet others are generally opposed to it due to privacy concerns. Plus, we need to comply with GDPR, CCPA, and similar legislation when using them.
Also, remember that some users forget what they signed up with last time, so it’s a good idea to indicate their previous choice based on their previous log-in (as illustrated above). Essentially, social sign-in is a great option for people who just want to get things done, but it can’t be the only option that we provide.
5. Replace Security Questions With 2FAIn an ideal world, security questions — like the ones we are being asked by a bank on the phone to verify our identity — should help us prevent fraud. Essentially, it’s a second layer of protection, but it performs remarkably poorly both in terms of usability and security. Questions about favorite pets, maiden names, and the first school can easily be discovered by scrolling a Facebook stream long enough.
Knowing that, users sometimes reply to these questions with the very same answer (e.g., their birthday or a location of birth) and sometimes even use the same password that they’ve entered initially. This isn’t really helping anybody. Magic links and push notifications are much more secure, and there is no need to memorize the answers at all.
6. Users Need Options For Access RecoveryNothing can be more frustrating than being locked out at just the wrong moment. As designers, we can pave deliberate ways out in our interfaces with multiple alternate ways to restore access (access recovery stacks) and avoid these issues for good.
We often think of password recovery to help users restore their access, but perhaps thinking about recovering access is a better perspective to look at the issue. If a user can’t log in at a given moment, they aren’t really interested in defining a brand new secure password, or finding an email or special characters that they haven’t used before. They just need to log in. And we need to help them do just that.
Of all the techniques for access recovery, surely, magic links will be a part of the access recovery stack. Users seem to appreciate just how fast they can get back in once they are locked out. Usually they work flawlessly unless the email doesn’t arrive, or the account is linked to an outdated email, or the email inbox or phone aren’t available.
Still, to use magic links, users need to switch context, jumping from browser to the mail client and then back to the browser. It might have been faster to prompt users to type in a code on their phone to get in instead. One way or the other, to avoid lock-outs, we provide multiple options to guarantee a speedy recovery, and a mix of options works best:
Send a magic link for log-in via email.
Don’t require users to retype a password, or set a new one. Users might not have access to email, or it could be hacked.
Send a magic link for log-in to a secondary email.
Unfortunately, the secondary email is often outdated, or the user might have no access to it.
Send an SMS verification URL/code to a mobile phone.
This option won’t work for users who have purchased a new phone, or don’t have access to their SIM-card (e.g. when travelling abroad).
Send a push notification via OTP/2FA.
This option won’t work for users who have purchased a new phone and haven’t set up OTP/2FA just yet, or don’t have access to their old phone.
Biometric authentication via a dedicated app/Yubikey.
This option won’t work for users who don’t have an OTP/2FA setup yet, or have purchased a new phone/Yubikey.
Type backup recovery codes.
Not every user will have backup recovery codes nearby, but if they do, they should always override account lock-out. Sometimes backup recovery codes are sent via a postal service, but they could be lost/stolen.
Phone call verification.
Users could be called on their (new) phone, and they’d need to answer a few questions to verify their idemtity. Ideally, it would be something that they know (e.g. latest transactions), something that they have (e.g. credit card) and something that they are (e.g. face recognition via a video call).
Customer support inquiry.
Ideally, users could restore access by speaking to an agent via live chat, WhatsApp/Telegram, video call or email (which is usually the slowest).
It’s not a good idea to send randomly generated passwords via email and require a new password setup when a user finally manages to log in. That’s not secure, and it’s always a hassle. Instead, yet again, nudge users towards a 2FA setup, so they can recover access by accessing a code from the app installed on their phone or SMS (which is less secure, however.)
Wrapping UpAuthentication is always a hurdle. Yet when the interface is difficult to deal with, users become remarkably creative in bending the rules to make it work and forget the password the moment they complete a transaction.
Perhaps we should give our users at least a chance to get to know our website or app before creating too many barriers for them. Ideally, we need a 2FA setup for everyone, but we need to get there first. And a path there is paved with a seamless, good authentication UX — without complicated rules and restrictions, and preferably the one that users won’t even notice.
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If you find this article useful, here’s an overview of similar articles we’ve published over the years — and a few more are coming your way.
Are you looking for a small business cell phone plan to stay in touch with your customers and team members?
A business cell phone plan gives you the freedom and flexibility to answer calls, communicate with your team, and attend meetings while on the go. It helps you stay connected from anywhere in the world.
In this article, we’ll share the best small business cell phone plans with pros and cons, so you can pick the best solution for your needs.
A business cell phone plan is important for many small business owners, so they can keep their business phone separate from their personal phone and easily coordinate with other team members.
With the right cell phone plan, your customer support staff will be able to help out customers and respond to their questions while on the go. This way you can improve retention and create a long-term relationship with your customers.
Similarly, if you have a remote team spread across different locations, then a cell phone plan can improve business communication since you can hold webinars and meetings to keep everyone connected.
As a business owner, you have a lot of choices when it comes to selecting a cell phone plan for your company. There are traditional wireless carriers, business VoIP services, and virtual calling systems that provide a business cell phone service.
That said, let’s look at some of the best small business cell phone plans in the market.
Nextiva is the best VoIP and virtual business phone service in the market. It’s a cloud-based business phone system that offers a powerful set of features, and it’s super easy to set up.
This is what we use for our business here at WPBeginner.
Nextiva is often referred to as a UCaaS (unified communication as a service) because it brings separate communication channels like video, text message chat, voice, and collaboration tools together in one place.
There are Nextiva apps for mobile phones, tablets, desktop, and even desk phones, so your team can use a separate business phone number or extension without needing two separate devices which helps reduce cost.
Some of the features you get include an auto-attendant feature, HD video conferencing option, nationwide unlimited calling and SMS messages, free number porting, voicemail to email notifications, toll-free numbers, a cloud-based VoIP call center, cloud PBX, call pop with caller ID details, and more.
The VoIP service also helps your team improve communication and automate different workflows. For example, you can set up email automation and create automated replies to quickly respond to business customer queries that come in through your WordPress website.
Another benefit of using Nextiva is that it easily integrates with other communication tools and CRMs like Salesforce, Google Contacts, Zendesk, Oracle Sales Cloud, Zoho, and more.
Nextiva offers 3 business cell phone plans that you can choose from.
If you’re looking for a small business cell phone plan that doesn’t require getting a separate device and allows for sharing the business phone number with multiple team members, then Nextiva is the way to go.
This is what we use for our business, and many other top organizations like UnitedWay, TacoBell, YMCA, Stanford University, and others also use Nextiva for their business phone.
RingCentral is also one of the best business cell phone services that you can use for your website. The VoIP phone service provider allows your support team to handle customer support from anywhere using its Android and iOS mobile app and desktop app.
This way, you can also implement a bring your own device (BYOD) policy and allow your team members to use their own devices to handle work-related tasks from any place at any time.
With RingCentral, you get unlimited phone calls within the US and Canada, voice-to-text features, video conferences, business SMS, internet fax, toll-free number, and more.
There’s also an auto attend feature in RingCentral and advanced call handling features where support agents can see the caller’s interaction history, get real-time analytics, and allow managers or another team member to take over a call.
RingCentral offers 4 business cell phone plans that you can use, and the best part is that you get a 14-day free trial.
Ooma is an all-in-one virtual phone service for small businesses. With Ooma, you get amazing features to keep you connected with your customers and remote team members.
The phone service offers HD audio, video conferencing, messaging, virtual receptionists, free 1-800 toll-free numbers, and free local phone numbers. The best, you get mobile apps that let you receive calls and answer your customers’ queries on the go.
Besides that, there’s also an Ooma Office suite that works out of the box and is very easy to set up. With Ooma Office, you can attend meetings and video conferences to keep your team connected with each other.
Other features offered by Ooma include voicemail transcription, online fax, enhanced call blocking, call recording, call forwarding, unlimited calling in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, affordable international call rates, and more.
Ooma offers 2 pricing plans for small business cell phones.
Grasshopper is a top virtual phone service for small businesses that’s affordable and packed with valuable features.
Using Grasshopper, you can get a toll-free number, a local number, a vanity number, and transfer users to an existing virtual number easily. The cloud-based phone service offers a desktop and mobile phone app, so you can take calls and respond to messages from anywhere.
Other than that, you can set up custom greetings to welcome callers and ensure that you never miss a call by routing customers to another phone or team member. The service also offers virtual fax, voicemail, incoming call controls, analytics, and more.
The only downside is that Grasshopper is only available in the USA and Canada. That said, you get a 7-day free trial with 3 premium plans.
Phone.com is a versatile virtual phone service that’s great for small businesses and startups. It offers affordable pricing plans and lets you mix and match plans based on your business needs.
The VoIP service offers business mobile and desktop apps so that you can handle customer support from an office or on the move.
With Phone.com, you get additional functionality like audio conferencing, call analytics, call recording and screening, call forwarding, text messaging, fax-from-phone option, and much more.
Phone.com offers 3 pricing plans with a monthly billing cycle, and you can combine these plans according to what you need. Plus, each plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
AT&T is one of the largest wireless carriers in the United States, and it offers unlimited domestic mobile data usage, talk minutes, and text messages. It’s a great alternative to VoIP business cell phone plans and you get exceptional call quality.
With AT&T, you get no roaming charges along with unlimited talk time and instant messaging for Mexico and Canada. There are also shared data plans where you can make the data shareable for up to 25 phones, tablets, and other devices.
There is also an international addon that lets you make calls and send messages to over 210 countries. Each mobile plan also comes with 5G and 5G+ access, so you won’t worry about slow internet speeds.
Other than that, AT&T offers a video streaming feature, but the video quality will depend on your plan. It also offers powerful security measures to protect your business. For instance, you get spam and fraud call blocking, identity monitoring, safe browsing, and more.
There are the 3 business cell phone plans offered by AT&T, and you get to choose up to 10 lines per plan. However, the prices go down if you select 6 to 10 lines per plan. Also if you exceed the data limit, then your internet speeds are slowed down to 128 Kbps.
We’ll show you prices for 6 – 10 lines.
Verizon is another wireless carrier that you can use for your business cell phone needs. It also offers some of the best cell phone plans and features like unlimited calling, texting, and data plans within the US.
With Verizon, you get extended high-speed data coverage across the USA and selected international countries. It even offers flexible plans for adding unlimited data for tablets. However, you’ll need compatible devices and ensure that 5G coverage is available in your area.
Besides, the wireless carrier offers different security measures. For instance, you can use its call filter to block spam, protect your device against phishing and web risks, Wi-Fi protection notice, and more.
Verizon offers 3 different pricing plans, and you can choose the number of lines you require. The more lines you add, the lower will be the overall prices.
Google Voice is the last business cell phone plan on our list, and it’s a virtual phone service that you can use for your business. With Google Voice, you can work from anywhere, as it works on your mobile device, laptop, and supported desktop phones.
Google Voice also offers ease of use with a simple interface that helps manage your workflows, assignments, and billing from a single platform.
Currently, the cell phone service is only available in the US. However, you get free calling to the US from any country, free calling to Canada from the US and unlimited SMS in the US.
A few other features offered by Google Voice include spam call blocks, voicemail transcriptions, and integration with Google Workspace. You can easily use Google Voice with Google Meet and Calendar.
You can choose from 3 monthly plans for Google Voice.
If you’re looking for a VoIP business phone service that offers lots of flexibility and features, then we recommend Nextiva.
It’s simple to use, and you can stay connected with your customers and team from anywhere. Plus, it offers mobile, desktop, and tablet apps, so you handle calls, take meetings, organize workflows, and provide a great customer experience while on the go.
RingCentral and Ooma are great alternatives for Nextiva, and they round out the top 3 providers in our list.
On the other hand, if you want to use a traditional wireless carrier, then you can consider using AT&T. It offers unlimited text, talk, and data, along with an addon to include international calling and messaging. Plus, if you’re an Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phone user, then are no limits to 5G wireless service when using traditional carriers.
We hope that this article helped you find the best small business cell phone plans. You may also want to see our comparison of the best email marketing services and best push notification software for small business.
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The post 8 Best Small Business Cell Phone Plans for 2022 (with Free Option) first appeared on WPBeginner.
Want to get going right away? Sign up for SimpleTexting and start texting from your laptop today.
Texting and cell phones usually go together like peanut butter and jelly. But if you want to leverage the power of text messaging to market your products or services, reach prospects quickly, or alert your workforce to time-sensitive information, it’s actually really hard to do from your phone. That’s why business text messaging services exist.
With these services, you can easily use your laptop to send a text message to a single recipient or a group text to larger audiences. This type of quick and efficient outreach can play a big part in your company’s success. Read on to learn how to quickly and effectively text from a laptop.
Whether you want to send bulk texts to your entire customer database or an individual message to a high-value contact, SimpleTexting is software that makes it easy to do both. Sending a text to a single contact takes just two steps.
First, sign up for a SimpleTexting account. There are a variety of plans available there, with pricing determined by how many texts you plan to send each month.
There’s also a 14-day free trial, so you can test the waters with no obligation. You don’t even need to provide a credit card. Once you create your account, you’ll be assigned a toll-free number and taken to a home screen like this:
Next, send an individual text. Now that you have your account, sending a text couldn’t be easier. Just select Inbox from the menu on the left, then click New and type in the telephone number of your recipient. If you already have created a contact for this person in SimpleTexting, their information will auto-fill. After that, you can type your message in the box at the bottom of the screen and select Send SMS. That’s it! Your message is on its way.
It’s equally as easy to use SimpleTexting to send group texts to all of your contacts or to specific subsets that you can define.
With a business text messaging service, it’s never been easier to reach your customers or employees with just a few clicks. Here’s how:
I’ve selected SimpleTexting for this how-to guide because it’s one of the best all-around services on the market today. Depending on the business text messaging service you choose, the instructions that follow may be different.
First, create an account with SimpleTexting. You can begin with their 14-day free trial, and you won’t even have to provide any credit card information to get started.
To activate your free trial account, you will need to provide some basic contact information and answer a few questions about how you plan to use SimpleTexting. With no credit card requirement, this is a truly no-commitment way to try out a business text messaging service.
Before you can send group texts, you’ll need to create a list of contacts. When you activated your free trial account, SimpleTexting automatically created a list called, appropriately, My First List. Feel free to add records to that list or create a new list with a more informative name.
For this tutorial, I’m going to create a brand new list. Here’s how to do it.
Select Contacts from the menu on the left of the home screen, then click the + New list button.
Choose a name for the new list. Here, I chose Customer List, since I eventually plan to send a group text to current customers alerting them to an upcoming sale. Then click Create list.
You will then see the newly created list on the Contact screen, as shown below.
Of course, at this stage, your new list is empty. You’ll need to populate it in order to send a group text. The next step shows you how to get that done.
If you sign up for a monthly SimpleTexting subscription that includes 7,500 texts per month or higher, you unlock SimpleTexting integrations. This allows you to easily import your contact list data directly from your CRM or another source. You’ll actually get access to more than 400 apps, including some of the most popular CRM tools, including Salesforce, HubSpot, Infusionsoft, and Zoho CRM.
However, if you opt for a lower service tier or are testing out the free trial version of SimpleTexting, you still have several options to populate your contact list. You can import a limited number of CSV, XLS, or XLSX records, connect to a MailChimp list, create Zapier automated workflows that require coding, or manually enter data.
To keep things simple here, I’ll walk you through the process of manually creating records in your list.
In the Contacts screen, click on your customer list to open it in a new screen. Select Add contact to create your first record in the empty list.
You will then see a pop-up screen, like the one below. Fill in the desired information, then select Add contact to save the record. Note that only a phone number and list name are required, but that you can personalize the contact more than that. I’d suggest making sure to include the contact’s first and last name at least, and their email address would likely be helpful as well.
To add additional contacts in the list window, click the Add Contacts drop-down arrow, then select Manually add contact.
This will bring up another pop-up box for the new contact. Repeat these steps to add all your contacts.
And that’s it. You’ve created your first list of future text recipients.
Once you have your contact list populated, you are just a few steps away from sending out a group text. Here’s how to start the process.
From the SimpleTexting home screen, select Campaigns from the menu on the left, then choose New.
You will see the following Compose campaign screen. Enter your Campaign name and choose whether your message will be formatted as SMS (text only) or MMS (media plus text).
Next, create your message. You can include emojis, custom URLs, media, and even custom fields to personalize your message. As you create your message, you can see how your message will look in the Message preview screen on the right.
In the Send to field, use the drop-down arrow to display all the lists you’ve created. Select the list you wish to use. Here we’ve chosen the Customer List we created in Steps 2-3.
You’re now almost ready to send your message to the recipients on your chosen list. Don’t close this screen, though. You’ll need to complete a few more steps to finish the process.
It’s almost go time. Your contact list is built and your campaign is designed and approved. All that’s left is to decide when to send it. SimpleTexting offers several options.
Scroll down the Compose campaign screen to the Send on section. Here you can choose when to send your text message. Your options are:
Whichever delivery option you choose, when you select Next you’ll be prompted with a final confirmation screen. This is where you can double-check and edit details of your campaign before you finalize it for delivery.
Once you are sure your campaign is as you want it, click Send now (for immediate delivery) or Schedule (for scheduled or recurring delivery). In this example, we chose immediate delivery. If you choose a future date or recurring delivery, you would see a Schedule button instead.
Congratulations, you’ve just created your first campaign and sent or scheduled your first group text using a business text messaging service.
With a business text messaging service, your laptop becomes a powerful tool to reach new and existing customers in an efficient and highly effective way. With it, you can send a single text to a VIP client or a group text to a targeted list–without having to squint at a mobile screen or set up everything using only your thumbs.
Text messaging boasts a nearly 100% read rate, so in just a few clicks you can get your important information in front of the eyes that really matter–all from your keyboard. It’s easy with a business text messaging service.
SMS is a powerful way to connect with your users. Businesses all over the world use SMS texts to send appointment reminders, shipping notifications, customer satisfaction surveys, and more. For countries or customers with slower internet speeds, SMS can even function as a viable alternative to something like an in-app chat feature.
In this article, we’ll demonstrate the power of SMS and showcase just how easy it is to get started. Together we’ll build a “Fun Fact of the Day” web app that allows users to enter their phone number to receive an SMS text with a fun fact. We’ll provide this functionality using the SMS API from Infobip, a cloud communications platform.
If you’re ready to invest and start your own landscaping business, you’re in luck.
The landscaping industry is a lucrative venture for those with an entrepreneurial spirit and a green thumb. Plus, there will always be thousands of lawns in your city waiting to be cared for, regardless of where you live, so you’re assured of abundant work opportunities.
Moreover, entering the industry isn’t very difficult—even if you have no experience.
In this guide, I’ll give you a step-by-step outline to eliminate any hurdles in your path to landscaping success.
Starting a landscaping business allows you to be your own boss. You have complete control over which jobs and clients you take on, set your own hours, choose what services to offer, and set your prices.
No one gives you any commands to follow. No one forces you to work against your wishes.
You also don’t have to spend a single penny on getting formally trained or educated. While a degree or certification could help attract more customers, not having academic credentials isn’t a deal-breaker.
Limitless potential is another benefit. Most landscapers set their schedules in a way that allows them to take on as many clients as they can, which ends in them making more money. That said, you should only accept work to the point you can handle it. If you allow yourself to get overworked or double-booked, you may end up with disappointed clients and negative reviews.
You’re also assured of repeat business. Managing to impress clients with your services nearly always leads to them hiring you again for future work. So, in addition to more clients, you’re also creating a loyal customer base—provided you deliver quality work every time.
To ensure you are staying on schedule and streamlining your process, we recommend using scheduling software to coordinate appointments and bookings. Booking Koala is our top pick for any service-based business, such as landscaping.
The online booking forms are mobile-responsive and contain an intelligent schedule to only show available appointment times in real-time. Booking Koala also has payment processing built in, so you can take care of invoicing and payments through the same system.
In addition, Booking Koala has in-app live chat and SMS and email notifications to respond to customer queries quickly. For additional fees, you can also access marketing tools, track field employees, and access a referral system you can use to encourage clients to recommend your services.
Booking Koala starts at $27 per month. Try it for free with a 14-day free trial now.
The manual labor involved in running a landscaping business can get incredibly challenging.
It’s no secret landscaping requires hard work and physical labor. This means a tiring day for you every day you work, especially if you plan on running a business as a one-person operation.
What’s more, finding reliable and professional people who understand the work and do it correctly can get time-consuming and difficult when you hire a team. Many landscaping workers are beginners, so you may not always find experienced individuals.
Seasonal changes and inclement weather pose other challenges—ones you have no control over.
Landscaping is an umbrella term. There’s a wide variety of services that come under it.
While you can start as a full-service landscaping company, it’s best to focus on just one service when you’re starting out. Plus, choosing a landscaping niche will also help you save money in your initial budget, giving you more wiggle room to buy equipment, hire people, and advertise your business.
The very first step of building a successful landscaping business is knowing your local market. This is called market research and validates that your business idea is a good fit for your area.
You should know who your competitors are, if the market is oversaturated, your customers’ pain points, and the average prices for the services. Use this knowledge to determine the services you want to offer.
Question local landscapers for feedback. Here’s a list of questions to ask:
The above questions will give you a fair idea of what to expect once starting your landscaping business.
You can also question potential clients and ask them things such as:
As mentioned, you won’t find yourself getting short of options when choosing landscaping niches. Here’s a list of some of the most common ones:
As you narrow down your offerings, keep an eye out for your competition and the overall scope in your niche. This will help you identify potential customers.
Another aspect here is deciding whether you want to cater to commercial clients or residential clients. Each has its advantages, so it really boils down to your personal preference.
The rule here is simple: Don’t start your landscaping business without doing your homework.
You need a good understanding of your competition to create a solid marketing plan and ensure better outcomes. Besides, you should be paying attention to any business that’s doing a good job so you can improve your strategies.
Once you identify the top performers in your chosen niche, take a long, hard look at their:
You should not copy your competitors. But you can use them as inspiration to set up your landscaping business and make good business and marketing decisions.
Now that you know the kind of services you’re going to offer, it’s time to shift your focus to the logistical part of establishing a company. This involves registering your business, creating a business plan, and getting the necessary licenses.
Choosing the name of your company is serious business. You want something that accurately conveys the services you offer, especially since your business name is the first impression you’ll make on a customer.
And changing a name after registering a company can be very tedious. So if you want to save yourself from extra paperwork, make sure you focus and brainstorm a great name.
The best business name is simple, short, and relevant. It should be easy to remember but unique enough to stand out from your rivals.
Sounds confusing, right? Trust me, it won’t be once you get down to brainstorming.
You can always use a business name generator for ideas if you have trouble coming up with a business name or want additional inspiration.
A business plan is a living document that outlines your company’s future. It includes several crucial details about your business, including your goals, financials, strategies, and management.
Your business plan helps improve your chances of being a successful landscaping business. Plus, it outlines your company‘s mission statement and long-term goals and details your expenses, both of which facilitate better decision-making.
A business plan also makes it easier to secure business loans or other financing options from bankers and investors.
Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be intimidating. You’ll find tons of sample business plans available on the internet. To give you a brief idea, here’s what a business plan generally covers:
It isn’t necessary to prepare an overly detailed business plan. However, the more detail you include, the better the document will serve as a roadmap for your company.
Before registering your business, you have to choose your business structure. Most landscaping businesses opt for one of the following three options:
As you can see, each business structure has its benefits and drawbacks. Consider consulting with an attorney to help you make the right choice.
Starting a landscaping company doesn’t involve procuring special industrial licenses, but you need a state business license. Contact your county clerk’s office to find out the licenses required, business licensing fee, and if there are any potential restrictions.
Although getting a landscaping business license is a simple process, you can be turned down if you have a criminal record, violate zoning laws, file the wrong paperwork, or fail to pay taxes.
Obtaining an Employer Identification Number (EIN) is also important.
For those of you who aren’t aware, an EIN is your business’s federal tax ID that makes you eligible to open a business bank account, hire employees, and apply for local permits. You can apply for it for free through the IRS website.
When you know how much it costs to start a landscaping business, you’ll automatically be more vigilant with your money, which, in turn, will help you sustain the business.
Maintaining a positive cash flow is key to ensuring you can buy the necessary tools and pay your team members without running into debt. It’s why you should budget your money and make well-informed decisions when renting or purchasing equipment and tools.
You have to figure out how much money you need ASAP.
Finding the answer isn’t exactly easy since landscape startup cost depends on various factors. You have to consider your location, vehicle requirements, how much equipment you already have, the kind of marketing you want to do, business fees, and so on.
Confused? Let me explain in more detail.
If you already have a truck, leaf blower, hedge trimmer, and a mower, you’ll probably only need about $2,000-$4,000 worth of additional landscape equipment. But if you start from scratch, you’ll need way more money to have everything checked off your list.
Getting your landscaping business insured is also critical to protect yourself against expensive liability lawsuits.
To simplify it further, you need the information for the following two questions:
Figure out how to fill the gap between the questions above. For instance, you can apply for a personal loan or a business loan.
Once you know the landscape services you want to provide, you can create a list of all the tools you need.
I found this excellent list prepared by Spyker that covers all the standard equipment used in the landscaping business, along with their average cost:
If you have the startup budget to cover everything on your list, you’re golden. But if you don’t, you can rent the more expensive tools initially and then buy them once you have enough money.
A good rule of thumb is to buy fewer pieces of high-quality equipment rather than purchasing a full range of landscaping tools of lesser quality right off the bat. Remember, tools wear out over time, so the more high-quality your tools, the longer they’ll serve you.
The average hourly pay of a landscaper is about $14.25 per hour, according to Payscale. However, you can set your rate based on your experience, location, and the services you offer.
I highly recommend looking at what your competitors are charging. The idea is to price your services closer to theirs to stay competitive—you don’t want to be too high or too low.
You can also test out what hourly rate gets you the most landscaping projects. Once you gain more experience, you can raise your rates accordingly.
Also, you already know the kind of money you need to maintain a positive cash flow and buy equipment/tools. So don’t forget to plan for those expenses and taxes when setting your rates.
While some landscaping projects are one-person jobs, you’ll need a team of reliable people when handling larger jobs.
Finding good workers is one of the most challenging parts of running a landscaping business. You want experienced and friendly individuals you can trust—without going over your budget.
Job marketplaces like Linkedin and Monster.com are excellent places to find quality employees. Alternatively, you can also reach out to trade schools and colleges to find candidates looking for work.
The other option is to work your contacts. Contact your current vendors, clients, and other peers in your community, and inform them you’re hiring. Ask them to pass along contacts of reliable and professional people they think would be a good fit for the job.
Passing out flyers can also work.
As a business owner, you want to create a strong brand identity that sets your brand new landscaping business apart from your rivals. You also need effective marketing strategies to attract a steady stream of clients for your business.
I cannot emphasize the power of great branding enough. It really can make all the difference when it comes to outshining your local competitors.
Your brand is how your clients perceive you, so you have to strategize in a way that best reflects who you are and the services you offer. Since we already have a business name and a mission statement, you can work on understanding your unique selling point (USP).
Your USP is the defining characteristic that distinguishes you from other landscapers. Think about what makes your company unique. Do you have a diverse team of designers? Do you offer 24/7 customer service? Are you only focused on luxury landscapes?
Next, you have to refine your brand messaging to best highlight your USP. Consider what you want your business to say and how to communicate it to your target audience effectively.
Lastly, you’ll need a unique logo for your business and build a professional website to put your business on the online map.
You need a solid web presence to land more clients and, of course, start earning money.
The good news is there are both online and offline marketing strategies to implement. For instance, you can create profiles on leading social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram and regularly post content relevant to your target audience.
Posting high-quality, SEO-optimized content on your website is another effective way to drive organic traffic through search engines. As for offline tactics, you can focus on building strong relationships in your local community to land new job opportunities.
Another excellent way of boosting your clientele is by delivering the best possible service. Satisfied customers are more than happy to refer your services to their acquaintances, friends, and family.
You can also use Booking Koala’s marketing tools and automated referral program to further market your business.
Once you have put everything together and have a team ready to go, you are ready to start booking clients and working on jobs!
Use Booking Koala to help you manage all your bookings in real-time and make sure to give excellent customer service.
You’ll do great!
The success of your new landscaping business depends on your work quality and your relationships with clients. And while you should give your best at the job, don’t forget your budget and always stay on top of emerging marketing trends to ensure your landscaping success.
Do you want to get more online reviews for your product or services? Podium has got you covered. By helping businesses send automated invites to customers at every critical touchpoint, Podium can give you a competitive advantage. It harnesses the power of online reviews for companies built on word of mouth. And with its powerful interface, you can also request feedback, convert web chat to text messages, and manage customer messages across different platforms all from the same place.
From starting as a simple tool to procure quality reviews, Podium has grown into an all-in-one app that consolidates all customer interactions. With the help of Podium’s support team, you can cherry-pick only the features your business needs, at a price that is well within your budget.
The most disgruntled customers are often the most driven to post their negative experiences. So even if you hold your business to a high standard, the negative reviews of a select few can warp people’s perception of your business. To stop these bad reviews from outnumbering the good, you need a reputation management tool like Podium’s.
Podium is integrated with over 20 online review sites like Facebook, Google My Business, TripAdvisor, and a host of other industry-specific platforms. With Podium Reviews, you can view and manage all customer reviews from these platforms under one roof. No more jumping back and forth between these review sites as you can keep track of all new customer reviews straight from an easy-to-use interface.
Are you ready to beef up your online reviews? It all starts with a request, and you can convince your customers to provide their reviews using your own message or one of Podium’s preset templates.
Sending these review invites is a whole new ball game, but this where Podium outshines its competitors. Through its platform, you can set up automations so your customers can receive review invites soon after completing a purchase. With its switchboard feature, you can also determine how many customers will be sent to which review sites, ensuring no platform is overlooked.
From the same dashboard, you can also set up alerts so you get notified each time a customer leaves a review. By doing so, you can promptly respond to each review and address customer complaints within the Podium app.
Podium Reviews comes with in-depth reporting to help you gauge how well your business performs based on the reviews. By looking at star rating, recency, and review count, you can determine how well you stack up against competitors and whether your strategies need fine-tuning.
Podium Campaigns is a potent alternative to old-fashioned email campaigns. Instead of sending emails that are often relegated to either the SPAM or a separate “Promotions” folder, you send marketing promotions to where customers can see them right away: SMS inbox.
We’re not talking about sending out spam texts en masse. Customers won’t receive marketing campaigns via SMS unless they opt in to your list. And with opt-in opportunities available in every customer touchpoint, you can passively grow the list of people who are more likely to respond to your promos.
With a targeted list at your disposal, it’s easier to craft personalized campaigns that resonate well with your customers. You can send these campaigns to your entire list or to specific segments of your list.
By using a conversational tone in your messages, you can take the first step towards building a long-term relationship with your audience. The text thread is also two-way so your customers can reply to your messages, giving you more opportunities to earn their trust.
Whether you’re sending out coupon codes or announcing a special sale, Podium Campaigns allow you to take advantage of the 98% open rate of a text message. Moreover, it comes with built-in analytics so you can measure your total revenue, unsubscribe rate, click-through rate, and response rate straight from your dashboard. Using these valuable data, you can fine-tune your campaigns and get better results in the long run.
By integrating Podium with Facebook, Google, Instagram, Zendesk, and other platforms, all customer conversations can be funneled into one location. This enables you to quickly reply to messages without having to juggle multiple platforms at the same time.
Podium’s inbox also streamlines how you deal with all these messages. Using artificial intelligence, it can automatically group incoming messages so you know which one should be prioritized. Each customer profile also has an interaction history which includes all payments and transactions completed. At one glance, you can get insights about the customer you’re dealing with, allowing you to personalize your messages accordingly.
For the busy marketers who don’t have time to respond to all messages, Podium’s inbox also provides smart solutions.
You can assign the messages to other employees or another business location. Access restrictions are also available to ensure only the authorized people can answer specific messages.
Meanwhile, you can set up autoresponders so you won’t lose potential leads even outside business hours or whenever you can’t reply in person. By also automating feedback requests, review invites, and reminders, Podium ensures you won’t waste your precious time on cumbersome tasks.
Getting feedback from your customers doesn’t have to involve long, boring surveys that barely get attention. Podium’s feedback feature turns the traditional survey on its head by sending two automated text messages proven to elicit quicker responses.
Humans are notorious for having short attention spans. By sending short and simplified questions via SMS, you don’t have to wait for weeks or months for answers. Your customers can send their honest feedback almost instantly, which means you can also address customer complaints at lightning speed.
With regular use of Podium’s feedback feature, you’ll be able to understand your market, explore opportunities to improve your service, and gain more loyal customers. The best part is you can also automate it so you can gather insights about your customers at any touchpoint, not just after they make a purchase.
You can schedule when your customers will receive the feedback request and also set up automated responses based on the customers’ answers. By doing so, Podium can gather a wealth of valuable information even while you’re not around.
Podium’s feedback feature also comes with analytics so you can dissect the impact that customer feedback has on your business. Through this tool, you can track your Net Promoter Score which gives you an idea of how satisfied your customers are with your products or services. It also enables you to measure how many customers who received feedback invites actually responded. By understanding how effective your campaign is, you can revise your questions accordingly to elicit more responses.
Through Podium’s webchat widget, you can turn random website visitors into customers.
Unlike live chat where transactions begin and end in the same chatbox, the webchat follows your visitors even after leaving your website. All the visitor has to do is enter his name, mobile number, and message to the webchat and the conversation will be transferred to his phone. By giving you access to the SMS inbox where people are the most engaged, you can answer queries and nurture leads without being glued to your computer screen.
The only downside is not everyone will agree to volunteer their contact details, especially those who are only making casual inquiries. But for those who agree to invite you to their personal inbox, the possibility is endless.
To ensure the webchat can capture leads every single time, you can also set up autoresponders. This guarantees your visitors can get an automated reply even when no one from your team is available, usually during holidays or after business hours.
Through Google Analytics integration, Podium webchat can give you insights on how your visitors interact with your website, and which web pages perform the best. There’s also an option to receive daily digest emails so you can keep track of every inbound lead.
Finally, a leaderboard allows you to compare each employee’s response times and other metrics. It ensures nobody in your team is slacking off when it comes to capturing valuable leads.
Every business is unique so Podium offers custom pricing tailored to your needs. To get a personalized quote, go to Podium’s pricing page, fill out the form with your contact information, and submit it. A Podium representative will then contact you to get a better picture of your business, its industry, and its locations.
A customized plan that includes only the features that will best optimize your business will be recommended. Price varies depending on how many features you need and the number of your business locations. A single-location business, for instance, can cost anywhere between $350 and $450. It may be too expensive for businesses that only need Podium’s review feature but remember that Podium is much more than a simple text messaging solution.
What most users may find off-putting is the 12-month contract that they have to commit to initially. Payments can be made upfront (annually) or in monthly installments.
For those who can’t afford to get into a 12-month contract yet, Podium also has the free Starter plan. Users from the US and Canada can sign up to take advantage of a free textable number and up to 30 communications per month.
The free starter plan also includes a webchat widget, a centralized inbox where you can manage all customer communications, and the ability to send a limited number of automated review invites via SMS.
Podium has been known as a reputation management tool so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most users rave about its review feature. In fact, it’s the leading reason why most users gravitate toward Podium. By letting them send review invites via text not only after purchase but at every possible customer touchpoint, Podium can help businesses triple the number of online reviews they get.
The clean user interface makes it easier to navigate the dashboard and find what they’re looking for at a glance. Podium’s capability to consolidate all messaging apps in one place is also worth highlighting. By eliminating the need to move from one platform to another, Podium effectively streamlines how businesses communicate with their customers.
On the flipside, Podium may turn off businesses that value transparency. Pricing plans are not available publicly so any business interested to get a personalized quote must contact Podium directly. According to those who have already used Podium’s service, the steep cost of the customized plan may pose a problem to businesses that only need basic features.
The platform has also grown cumbersome for small businesses that only signed up to beef up the number of their customer reviews. The problem is you can’t purchase a plan with only one feature. So even if your team only needs the review feature, they still have to contend with other moving parts they rarely use but make navigating the user interface a tad complicated.
Podium stands head and shoulders above the competition for helping businesses use every possible customer touchpoint as an opportunity to get reviews. And because online reviews are now the word of mouth of the digital world, multiplying the reviews you get tenfold can drive great returns for your business in the long run.
However, Podium comes at a steep price, not to mention you have to commit to a 12-month contract before you can get your team on board. If your company has multiple locations and deals with a steady stream of inbound leads, it most likely has the revenue to justify the cost of using Podium’s services.
On the other hand, small businesses that don’t have the means to enter into a long-term commitment with Podium can use its free starter plan instead. Alternatively, you can use Textedly and other similar services that let you message your customers via text but come with a more flexible monthly payment schedule.
CloudTalk’s remote cloud-based phone solution is built for call centers, sales, and support centers that need a streamlined call processing system that saves them time and keeps them productive.
CloudTalk offers a slew of call-center-friendly features that make it a must-have call center solution.
However, it’s worth diving deeper into CloudTalk’s offerings to see if it really is the best cloud-based phone solution for your business.
Below we talk about CloudTalk’s pros and cons, the specifics of its best features, and what you can expect to pay for access to its calling tools.
Here’s a deeper dive into some of CloudTalk’s most standout features.
Though CloudTalk offers your standard voicemail tools, call queuing, and call recording abilities, it also throws in a few more advanced features that are nice to have. For instance, you’re able to send your customers automated text and SMS message reminders so that your call workflow goes smoother. This can be a huge long-term time saver.
CloudTalk doesn’t only provide you with customer-facing voice features. Your team is also able to easily engage in conference calls with its conference call scheduler. Do you have people calling your business after hours? CloudTalk lets you create personalized greetings and even music if you need to put customers on hold.
All of CloudTalk’s advanced voice features are great, though if you’re a smaller business you might not have the need for them. In that case, you’d be able to get away with going with a starter plan with more limited access to features.
In the end, the more you pay, the more robust features you have access to. Whether you need specific features or not is definitely something to keep in mind as you consider each of CloudTalk’s calling plans.
If you work at a call center, you know that one of the best ways to save time and send calls where they need to go is through intelligent call routing. With it, you can make sure each of your calls is routed to the right person once it meets a list of pre-set criteria you get to choose. Once you log onto your CloudTalk dashboard, you can easily do this with its Call Flow Designer tool.
To complement its intelligent call routing features, CloudTalk also equips you with an Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, menu. It helps guide each caller through different call routes according to what they need.
Not only that, but you can also program your call flow to choose the best agents for calls depending on their set of skills. It’s easy to see how this would come in handy if you’re working with a varied team with all kinds of strengths and weaknesses.
Sometimes, when you’re making outbound calls, local clients might not be so keen to answer international numbers. CloudTalk allows you to set your call’s ID to a local number. Along with this, CloudTalk lets you set a preferred agent for specific calls from specific customers, and if they aren’t in the office, CloudTalk’s call forwarding feature can send that call to a different mobile or landline number.
Keep in mind that some of the more advanced features can only be accessed through CloudTalk’s higher-tiered plans. If you’re going with its basic plan, for instance, you won’t be able to do things like creating personalized greetings, caller-based routing, or automated call redirection.
Call centers and businesses deal with both inbound and outbound calls. As far as outbound calls go, CloudTalk has made sure to integrate outbound features that make calling easier. These include things like call tagging, automated callbacks, and call notes.
With call notes, your team can jot down notes about each customer they talk to. They’re then saved in the system for future reference. Need to know what type of calls you’re dealing with? Call tagging helps your team clearly categorize each call as they receive them.
As your team makes and ends calls, they can take advantage of CloudTalk’s predictive dialer. It automatically dials the next call in line once a team member is ready to take the next call. Tools like these are ultimately designed to help your team stay productive, whether you’re managing a call center or work in sales.
One of CloudTalk’s most powerful time-saving features, especially for call centers and sales teams, is its power dialer tool. Your call agents might have lots of numbers to get through for the day. Whether it’s because of fatigue, attempting to multitask, or because of pure distractions, they might not always make outbound calls at a sustainable rate.
This is where the power dialer can come in handy. It helps you increase your caller efficiency by automatically dialing the next number on the list without the lag that inevitably comes if you try to do it all manually.
Within the power dialer, once you have a handful of contacts to work through, you can easily create caller campaigns.
These campaigns allow you to set the list of numbers you want the power dialer to auto-dial once you hang up. You can also assign a calling script to each campaign so that your call agents know exactly what to say for each number they call.
Not only that, but you can also create customized surveys within CloudTalk’s dashboard and assign them to specific campaigns. As your call agents work through the power dialer, their dashboard shows them the number of calls made, The number of sales closed (if any), their conversion rate, and the number of contacts left to call.
Once done, your team members can easily export any information they’ve stored as well as call recordings and questionnaire responses. As far as staying organized and efficient goes for call centers, these tools are total must-haves to ensure productivity, keep customers happy, and keep operations flowing smoothly.
One of the best ways to keep track of how your team is performing and handling calls is through statistics and call monitoring. Thankfully, CloudTalk doesn’t fall short in this area.
With CouldTalk, you get access to call stats and also stored stats on individual team members. Agent reporting helps you rank team members in terms of performance to see how well each team member is performing.
However, the information you can gather on both team members and incoming calls isn’t something you have to wait for. With CloudTalk’s real-time dashboard, you can be up to speed on the state of your operations at every step.
A newer perk CloudTalk has managed to include in their set of tools is the Emotion Analytics feature. With it, your call agents can gauge how callers felt after finalizing their phone call. Were they very satisfied? Satisfied? Neutral? Or even very unsatisfied?
These are all one-click determinations your team members can make after each call. Though each agent’s determination of how the call went can be pretty subjective, the tool can still be useful in giving you insight on how best to conduct calls, what scripts to use, or which team members to assign to which tasks.
As an active business, chances are you’re dealing with a few pieces of software. If you’re integrating a calling solution into your workflow, you definitely want to make sure it integrates seamlessly.
CloudTalk readily integrates with big names like Hubspot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Zendesk that you might already be using. CloudTalk also integrates easily with any of your ecommerce, help desk, or CRM systems so that you’re able to see and manage data in a centralized manner.
Being able to integrate CloudTalk with the rest of your tech stack also means you won’t have to deal with scattered contacts or scattered pieces of customer information. Your customer contact history along with any notes, chats, or orders are kept in one place.
CloudTalk lets you try out any plan for free for 14 days without having to commit to anything. I highly recommend, especially if you’re seriously considering using CloudTalk, to take advantage of its trial first.
It’s one of the best ways to tell if CloudTalk really meets your expectations and fits into your workflow. Here’s a quick look at its mix of call plans:
CloudTalk’s most basic plan, at $20 per user per month, gives you access to the bare essentials. For $20 per user, you’ll only be able to store call recordings for one month, you won’t be able to set personalized greetings for after-hours calls, and you won’t have access to automated customer text messaging. Your intelligent call routing and productivity features are also pretty limited.
It isn’t until you get to the Essential $25 per user per month tool where you start to get access to more advanced features for intelligent call routing, productivity, and greater integration capabilities.
While CloudTalk isn’t as established as some of its competitors, users are still saying solid things about its product offerings. They love how easy the onboarding process is and how user-friendly the phone system becomes once it’s set up and ready to go.
However, users can sometimes have trouble using its most basic plan, as it comes with limited support features, and sometimes the self-setup process can leave you with some troubleshooting issues. Plus, as many useful features as CloudTalk comes with, in the customer support area it doesn’t quite shine as bright.
Keep this in mind when you’re making your final decision on what cloud-based phone solution to rely on. If you feel like CloudTalk isn’t quite up your alley or doesn’t have the specific calling features you’re after, I’ve listed a few alternatives that might be worth considering at the end of this guide.
Overall CloudTalk is definitely a cloud-based phone system worth considering if you want a solution that won’t cost you too much. Though it does come with its own pros and cons, there are plenty of useful business calling features it offers users once they’re onboarded on an appropriate plan that works for them.
However, if you’re still on the fence about which provider to go with or you want to consider other options, here are a few additional suggestions worth considering:
You could say RingCentral is a leader in the phone solution industry, though Nextiva doesn’t fall far behind. Whether you’re looking for message, video, phone, or contact center systems RingCentral has the tools to set it up. It works great for service providers and small businesses. And even goes as far as providing the tools to allow developers to create their own integrations. Prices can start as low as $19.99 per user per month.
Grasshopper is great for smaller businesses that want straightforward cloud calling solutions like call forwarding, VoIP and WiFi calling, custom greetings, call transfers, and simultaneous call handling. Prices start at $26 a month billed annually.
Nextiva offers a slew of cloud-based phone calling solutions at pretty decent price points. It brings together your phone systems, AI, and automation to help you run your business operations smoothly without dropped calls or troublesome customer support. It was voted the best business phone system by U.S. News two years in a row. Plans start as low as $18.95 per user per month.
As you probably guessed from the title above, sending an SMS is the main topic of today's article. I started the articles with a few words about SMS service providers, then I explained what you may take into consideration while choosing the one for you, why I choose the Vonage, and added some more details about this platform. I also provided a simple step-by-step implementation of SMS sender service in Scala.
Before we start — a quick disclaimer
Here you can find only the most interesting code samples. The full source code is available in my GitHub repository. The link is provided in the end of the article.
QR codes have been around a while now, and they don’t seem to be going away any time soon. That’s a good thing because they can benefit your WordPress site for sales, awareness, engagement, and more.
Though they look complicated, adding a WordPress QR code is simple to do — and free!
Are they that great? Well, considering mobile QR code coupon redemptions are expected to surge and surpass 5.3 billion by 2022 — it’s a better time than ever to use QR codes to your advantage.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at:
There are a lot of ways to implement them with plugins and other resources, such as QR Code Google Chrome Extension (which we’ll be going over).
After reading, you’ll understand how QR codes can add additional value to your WordPress site and your users.
You’re more than likely familiar with them. They’re the funny-looking square objects you see on items, videos, ads — just about anything.
QR, or Quick Response codes, are similar to the barcodes you see on many products’ packaging. The main difference between the two is that QR codes can hold a lot more data than traditional barcodes.
QR codes can store up to 7089 digits or 4296 characters. That includes punctuation marks and special characters.
It can equally encode words and phrases (e.g. URLs). The more data added to a QR code, the more the size increases, and its structure becomes more complex.
When scanned by a compatible device, including a camera-equipped smartphone, that data is extracted.
What’s nice is that even if it’s damaged, a QR code’s structure data keys include duplications, so it allows up to 30% of the code structure to be damaged without affecting its ability to be scanned. (e.g. coupons, interactive links, etc.)
QR codes use is relatively straightforward. They can be used on your website for numerous purposes; everything from coupons to contact information.
There are two types of QR codes: Static and Dynamic.
A Static QR code is fixed, and you’re not able to edit once the code has been generated. It’s the best code to use for personal use (e.g. access to home WiFi by scanning the QR code).
Dynamic QR code can be edited, updated, and changed however times you need. It’s ideal for ad campaigns, sales, coupons, and more (e.g. share your social media platform on a print ad).
QR codes are essentially a shortcut to information in this mobile world. Some of the most common uses for QR codes include:
For a good example of how they’re used on a bigger scale and how relevant they are, a recent CNN article mentions that QR codes are potentially going to be used with COVID-19 passports as a means of knowing who is vaccinated.
With all of that being said, let’s take a look at…
As you’ll see, there are many ways you can use QR codes on WordPress.
In print media, they are often used to make it easier to visit a website by encoding a URL in the code. When scanned, the code will open the website on a phone’s browser, saving the user the trouble of typing in the address. However, if your visitors are already viewing your website, this isn’t a helpful way to use them!
While it might be tempting to start using QR codes all over your website due to their novelty factor, less is more. It’s best to use them wisely to ensure they benefit your visitors rather than become a distraction.
So let’s take a look at some example uses for QR codes.
As well as the standard email contact form, you can provide an easy way for your visitors to get in touch with you to add a QR code to your contact page.
Depending on how you create a QR code, your users can either send you an email on their phone or send you an SMS message once scanned.
Suppose you prefer not to receive inquiries about your services via email. In that case, this can be a great way to encourage your potential clients and customers to contact you via SMS while also saving them the effort of manually entering your contact details.
Another way to use a QR code on your site is to link it to a file that your users can download. This could be an audio file for a podcast, a PDF containing an eBook, or any other content that is well-suited to be consumed on the move on a mobile device.
Want customers to stop by? Adding a QR code to your contact page, which links to an online map that is locked into your location, is a great way to simplify visitors’ process of looking up your location on their phone. This can then be used for navigational purposes when they are making their way to your premises.
Another widespread use for QR cards that translates well to online publishing is sharing contact details using the vCard format.
This gives your visitors an easy way to store your details in their phone as one of their contacts, rather than entering them manually.
Suppose you are offering your visitors a mobile app or linking out to apps created by others. In that case, you can create a QR code that links to the app and automatically redirects visitors to the correct store based on the device they are using.
If your visitors are printing pages from your website, you can make it easier for them to find their way back to your online content later on by inserting a QR code into the footer of printed copies of your pages.
Last but not least is perhaps the most practical use for QR codes on a WordPress site: adding two-step verification to the login process.
Our own security plugin, Defender, has a 2FA feature that uses a QR code in collaboration with Google Authenticator.
To take things to the next level, you can set your website to require that a trusted device scans the QR code on the login page.
This helps ensure that even if your passwords get compromised, unless a hacker also has access to your mobile device, they won’t be able to log into your site.
If this sounds like an appealing way of increasing your WordPress website’s security, Rublon is a free plugin that adds QR code-based two-factor authentication to a WordPress site.
For an alternative, you can explore these six security authentication plugins for WordPress.
Along with Rubion, there are some other great QR code plugins to consider for your WordPress. They all function differently and offer specific features.
We’ll take a look at several free QR plugins to check out. The market on WP.org of QR plugins is relatively small; however, there are some decent choices. All of these are free and up-to-date.
The Kaya QR Code Generator makes it quick and easy to add a QR code to your WordPress site. It’s all done via a widget or shortcode.
What’s nice about it is you can customize the settings to send any user to a link, text, and even currency pages. Plus, you can change the color, size, alignment, and more.
The QR codes can be static or dynamic. It’s suitable for WooCommerce products and also multisite.
QR Redirector makes it a snap to use a QR code repeatedly and redirect users to any link. You can update the QR code at any time, so you won’t have to repost a new one continuously.
It’s all done with a shortcode that you can copy and paste on any acceptable widget, posts, and pages.
There’s not much to this plugin when it comes to visual editing. There are numbered sizes you can choose from, and that’s it.
However, it has an Error Correctional Level that can be adjusted. It will automatically update all of the shortcodes on your WordPress site when adjusting the size or Error Correctional Level.
The QR Code MeCard/vCard Generator was made for sharing contact information with a QR code embedded on your WordPress site.
Like previously mentioned plugins, it uses shortcodes that can be copied and pasted in an acceptable widget, pages, and posts.
It has options to choose between a vCard or MeCard. Plus, you can select your margins, correction level, and label.
The card fields area allows you to input all of your information (name, email, etc.). It can be customized and adjusted at any time.
Qyrr lets you get a bit more unique with your QR codes, considering its customizable options.
You can design your QR codes with custom colors, configurable corner radius, custom labels, and more.
If you have a logo, you can easily upload it with the QR code. Also, you can customize the font to match your brand or website.
Additionally, this plugin creates QR codes that can be easily printable as a PNG when exported from your WordPress site.
It’s worth noting in this article about the QR Code Generator for Google Chrome. It’s another platform for creating (for free, of course) QR codes and applying them to your WordPress site, printouts, coupons — anything.
Once installed, any URL you want a QR code for can be generated with a click of a button.
For example, if I’m on our website (wpmudev.com), clicking on the QR Code Generator will instantly create a QR code for our site.
From here, I can Edit or Scan the QR Code.
If you edit, you have a ton of options on deciding what information to provide the user. And if you want to go beyond just the URL (which it provides by default), you can provide them with:
Here’s a look at the Contact information fields you can edit and add:
To add the QR code to your WordPress site, you have the option of saving it as a PNG, SVG, or EPS file.
Once saved, upload your file to any page or posts — and you’re all set!
The QR Code Generator for Google Chrome is a simple, accessible, and convenient way to add a QR code to any WordPress site in just a few clicks. You can get more information in this short video:
It’s worth checking out the QR Code Chrome Extension for yourself. You might find you’ll prefer this over a plugin.
As you can see, WordPress QR codes can be a real benefit to your site, and there are several ways of adding one, whether that be with the help of a plugin or a tool, like the QR Code Generator.
One of the best parts about them is, along with being effective — they’re free to create and start using today! There’s nothing complicated about putting one on your WordPress site and offering your users a quick mobile option for the information you want to provide.
So, with that, any QR-uestions?
This article was written in collaboration with:
James Leesley: Leesley Films. Jamison is a published author, writer, and director. When he’s not writing or directing, he can be found playing live music, fishing, tubing, or anything outdoors.
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Note: We do not accept articles from external sources. WPMU DEV members, however, may contribute ideas and suggestions for tutorials and articles on our blog via the Blog XChange.
With over 135,000 users, Grasshopper is one of the most trusted phone service providers for small businesses on the market. Grasshopper stacks up well against the other products on our list of best phone services, as it offers more customer support and no restrictions—making it an excellent choice for small businesses.
Priding itself on separating personal work from business work at a low cost, Grasshopper is the best phone service provider for small business owners and solo entrepreneurs.
With multiple product offerings that help users improve their phone service, the system can transform your business and increase clientele by providing a more professional phone service with custom greetings and extensions.
Compared to the top five other best cloud-based phone systems, Grasshopper comes in at number three, because it offers unique features for small teams at an affordable price.
Grasshopper takes this position in our top list because most of the other phone systems offer better packages for office settings and are a tad cheaper. However, this doesn’t mean that your business won’t benefit from Grasshopper. With a focus on small businesses or solo side businesses, Grasshopper is the easiest way to find a unique variation of phone numbers and make unlimited calls, unlike our top picks for phone service providers.
In terms of our top picks, we think Nextiva and RingCentral are excellent alternate options. Nextiva is the best enterprise-level phone system that offers supportive features and hardware for your business space, whereas RingCentral is the most popular with more than 350,000 users with specifically designed plans for small businesses.
In the past year, working remotely has seen a shift and increase due to the pandemic. Now, it’s crucial for all business models to include remote tools that are reliable for teams to work from home, in a more virtual space. Fortunately, if you’re looking for a phone service provider that offers extensive remote access, Grasshopper is an excellent option.
Grasshopper offers comprehensive mobile and desktop apps that seamlessly sync up to your phone service system. The mobile app is easy to use and displays all your business calls and text messages in one place. The great thing about this mobile app is that your personal calls and texts stay completely separate from your business ones, while still being on one phone. It’s a lot more convenient for small business owners or solo entrepreneurs to operate with the least amount of tools and equipment to avoid overworking and stress.
The desktop app is just as helpful, with an intuitive interface—so even the least experienced user can find their way around. The app lets you use your internet connection to make and receive VoIP calls and text messages. So, you really can do business anywhere under any internet connection, whether that be at a library or local cafe.
What makes this app even more efficient is that you can also view your voicemails and call history, so you can continue to respond to clients and follow-up on missed calls efficiently and professionally.
With such supportive remote access for small teams, you can experience the freedom and flexibility of working anywhere without the stress of being unorganized. Compared to other phone service providers, we think Grasshopper has the most simple remote tools that will suit most business owners.
There are no additional costs to download both apps, but to install the desktop app, you will need:
Having high-quality audio and video connection is certainly one of the most significant roles of a phone service provider. Luckily, Grasshopper’s audio connection quality is impressive, and they offer a few alternative options for users having trouble with poor connection or weak signal. In terms of video connection, Grasshopper currently does not offer video conferencing–one of its few major weaknesses compared with other cloud-based phone service providers.
As stated above, Grasshopper lets you make business calls using VoIP and WiFi. Straight away, it’s quite substantial that Grasshopper offers two ways to make calls, where users can utilize either option if one of them happens to drop out. The difference between these options is that VoIP is commonly used to make calls through an internet connection, whereas users will use WiFi calls through any WiFi network.
But what happens if your internet or WiFi connection is weak? Well, Grasshopper has a solution for that. While using the mobile app, if Grasshopper identifies any weak signals, it will automatically transfer your inbound or outbound call to its normal calling network. There’s no notification or interruption when this happens so call quality will remain at its highest. Subsequent calls will revert to an available WiFi network once your signal strengthens.
However, if you do experience poor phone quality, the Grasshopper team over on the support forum has an in-depth guide on how to troubleshoot both the mobile and desktop applications with ease. This just goes to show how much Grasshopper cares about the user’s experience.
As for video connection, since Grasshopper is yet to offer this service, we think RingCentral or Vonage are great alternative options for anyone looking for video conferencing. RingCentral offers a service called Glip, which uses carrier-grade infrastructure to operate high-quality video calls for up to 100 people. On the other hand, Vonage offers a video call feature that’s similar to Zoom, with a highly intuitive interface.
Being able to connect with and keep in touch with your clients is paramount for success. And most business owners don’t want to rely on just phone communication. So, many phone service providers will offer either SMS text messaging and MMS texting, or a mix of both or none—however, Grasshopper offers both that are easy-to-use channels, which will make communication better.
Unlike other phone service providers we reviewed, Grasshopper offers unlimited texts for no additional cost, which is an enormous benefit for small businesses on a budget. To make it even better, business texting is free for all virtual phone numbers when you sign up for a seven-day free trial—which is an excellent option for beginners who are looking for a phone service provider as a starter.
The most beneficial feature of Grasshopper’s SMS texting tool is called the instant response. If you miss a call, the instant response feature will automatically send an SMS message to your new client, letting them know you’re unavailable. The caller can even write back with their details and let you know why they’re calling.
This feature can potentially eliminate the risk of losing future clients by responding promptly and professionally and will save you time while you’re busy. You can also use this feature to your full advantage and create a text that provides new callers with information about your business.
Grasshopper also offers MMS for picture and video messaging, however, it is currently not possible from toll-free numbers and is only available for local numbers. Group texts are also possible from local numbers. International SMS and MMS are only available between the United States and Canada, so Grasshopper may not be ideal for remote teams working internationally.
Prioritized support is so important for phone service providers because no calls mean no profits or new clients. If your phone lines go down because of technical issues, it’s crucial for a support team to immediately jump in and help. This is where Grasshopper shines because it happens to have the best responsive customer support of all the service providers on our top list.
Grasshopper offers 24/7 US-based live customer support in every plan, which is a great option for a distributed company, working remotely all over the United States. What’s so great about Grasshopper’s support is that it’s also responsive and active on its social media accounts like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This means you can contact the support team on these platforms for a quicker response, rather than through an email query.
Not only does it offer 24/7 live chat and telephone support, but Grasshopper also has an updated and relevant support forum that has frequently asked questions, knowledge-based topics, case studies, and a ‘how-to’ section. This support forum is a great way for users to save time instead of waiting on a phone call or waiting a couple of business days for an email about an issue you can solve by reading through its helpful forum.
Grasshopper offers a few products that relate to phone services, which give a variety of options for different user needs. Here is an in-depth look at the different products Grasshopper offers for phone services:
If you want to make your business number more memorable, Grasshopper offers local and toll-free vanity numbers at no additional cost. You have the freedom to choose up to seven letters or numbers that relate to your specific business niche with the number lookup tool. It’s important to note that some numbers may already be taken, and according to Grasshopper, it suggests opting for a shorter term to return a match.
Creating a custom phone number is a great way for people to easily remember your number in advertising, which might generate more leads and increase your clientele. Apart from seeming more identifiable, using a vanity number will make your small business look larger and more established. It’s also a great option to address what your company offers while aiming for consistency across your business cards and website.
Grasshopper lets you make business calls and texts with your US-based toll-free vanity number. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support text messaging for toll-free or local vanity numbers in Canada or internationally—so you may be better off choosing a provider like Phone.com in that regard.
The good news is that Grasshopper allows you to port your existing vanity phone number for free, so you don’t have to lose the number you love. The transfer process is straightforward because Grasshopper does all the nitty-gritty behind the scenes once you sign up, and it will confirm with you once the transfer has gone through.
If vanity numbers aren’t for you, you can still maintain your professional appearance by choosing a toll-free number instead. Grasshopper lets you specify digits or select a number at random using its lookup tool. All the toll-free prefixes are assigned by an entity known as ‘Responsible Organization’ and include the numbers 800, 888, 877, 866, 855, 844, and 833.
The major benefit of a toll-free number is the fact that it is free for the caller, even if you happen to call from a long distance in the same country. Grasshopper makes sure that you aren’t charged for these calls, however, charges will apply if you call an international toll-free number, even when it costs nothing to receive an international call.
Just like Grasshopper’s vanity numbers, you can send unlimited texts and calls with your toll-free number. Some other benefits of using a toll-free number include:
Again, there are no additional charges to add a toll-free number to your plan with unlimited calls and texts—and porting your number is also available.
As a unique function, Grasshopper introduces the new Ruby virtual receptionists add-on that can help improve your business while you’re busy. Ruby will help small business owners look more professional, as a US-based receptionist or an auto-attendant system answer all your calls by greeting new callers with a personalized message based on your instructions and needs.
With Ruby, you can boost business by operating during extended business hours. You can also save a lot of time and money by trying to find and pay for a full-time hire that suits your every need. Speaking of saving time, Ruby is a great opportunity to take up more work and focus less on daily administrative tasks.
Another significant thing about the Ruby service is that the receptionist can transfer calls to your mobile or home phone—under any number you wish. Additional fees may apply for phone lines outside of North America, however, Grasshopper recommends to provide multiple phone numbers, so there are a variety of ways to reach you.
There are three Ruby pricing plans that are 35% off under Grasshopper, these include:
These prices may seem a little expensive, but if you are a solo entrepreneur or small business owner, sometimes a little help is all you need—and we think it is worth the price to boost your business and save you time.
Overall, Grasshopper is an excellent phone service provider for small business owners. It’s affordable starting at $28 per month, and it offers reasonable products at no additional cost like vanity and toll-free numbers. It also offers a great mobile and desktop app for remote teams and high-quality VoIP and WiFi calls. With unlimited texts, calls, and 24/7 live support, anyone using Grasshopper is sure to improve and transform their business and call system.
2020 is about to come to an end, and it has been an unprecedented year.
Despite the COVID lockdowns and challenges, a record number of people started new businesses and took advantage of WPBeginner’s free resources and community support.
We want to thank all of you for your continued support that keeps us motivated and energized.
To keep up with our tradition, in this article we will share our staff-pick of the best of best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner. We’ll also share an overview of 2020 from our CEO to gain some perspective and reflect upon the progress.
2020 was a challenging year, and it taught me many lessons, but above all it reminded me to truly appreciate and be grateful for all that I’m blessed with: an amazing family, great friends, supportive team members, financial stability, and good health.
This year felt like the longest year of my life.
I turned 30 years old, bought multiple companies, hit a mental burnout, nearly lost $1.4 million dollars in a fraud case, but despite all that, I’m closing the year stronger than ever.
None of it would be possible without the support of my beautiful wife, Amanda, and my family.
If you want to see more of my personal journey, then please check out my 2020 Year in Review blog post on my personal blog. It has everything that happened to me in 2020 both personally & professionally along with lessons that I learned, my favorite books, and my goals for 2021.
Let’s take a look at some of the business highlights of WPBeginner and our family of products.
WPBeginner
WPBeginner turned 11 years old this year.
Our YouTube channel passed 220,000 subscribers, and our WPBeginner Engage Facebook group grew to over 66,000 members.
We added two new free tools on the WPBeginner website: WordPress theme detector and a free business name generator. We also added a free business tools page that has a list of all our free tools.
I switched the WPBeginner website hosting to SiteGround Enterprise platform. This was the first time in 10 years that I made the change on WPBeginner hosting. I wrote about 6 reasons why we switched to SiteGround.
We hired 2 new full-time and 2 part-time support team members to dedicate 100% of their time giving back to the WordPress community through free support on channels like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
What many don’t realize is how much free WordPress support we offer through WPBeginner. If you need help, just send us a message through our contact form, facebook messenger, or in our Facebook group.
This year, we also created a new full-time WordPress Core contributor role and welcomed Peter Wilson to our team. Peter is a well-known WordPress developer and a prolific WordPress core committer. He is now spending 100% of his time working on improving WordPress core and our free open source plugins.
WordPress has had a huge impact on my life, and I’m really honored to be in a position where we’re able to increase our contributions to the community. We’ll be doing a lot more of that in 2021.
Want to join our team? We’re hiring!
I’m also working on a WPBeginner site design refresh which will be coming out in 2021, hopefully before our 12th birthday.
One of the questions I often get from new readers is how does WPBeginner make money? Well, it’s through our suite of premium plugins and SaaS application. I did a brief overview of WPBeginner income, but here’s a quick recap of our various products.
WPForms
WPForms passed over 4 million active installs, and it’s now one of the top 10 most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Considering that we only launched it in 2016, it’s amazing to see how far we have come.
This year we expanded our integration ecosystem by making it easy for our users to connect WPForms with Salesforce, ActiveCampaign, Sendinblue, Authorize.net (payments), Webhooks API (external platforms), WP Activity Log (security), WPML (multilingual sites), and page builders like Divi and Elementor.
We introduced a brand new User Journeys feature which lets you see all the pages a user visits before they submit your contact or lead form. Combine this with our conversational forms, form landing pages, and form abandonment addon, and you have one of the most powerful form toolkits to grow your business!
WPForms team did a very slick year in review post which is more like an interactive infographic that you can check out.
Not using WPForms yet? You can try the free version and then upgrade to Pro when you’re ready.
SeedProd
SeedProd is now a fully revamped drag & drop landing page builder for WordPress (that’s both easy to use & FAST).
I built this product because I wanted to have the ability to build landing pages that are completely independent of my WordPress theme, without writing any code.
With SeedProd, you can have custom headers, footers, content layouts, etc. Unlike other page builders, this won’t slow down your site. It’s basically like building a fast static website similar to Webflow, except in WordPress.
Want to try SeedProd? You can start with the free version and then upgrade to Pro when you’re ready.
OptinMonster
OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization toolkit to help you get more subscribers & sales.
This is the plugin I use to get more email subscribers. It’s one of our flagship brands that’s trusted across industries.
Each month, we help optimize billions of sessions for our customers, so they can turn their website traffic into subscribers, leads, and sales.
Since many of our readers asked me for a free version, I had our team create a secret free plan that I shared with our newsletter subscribers earlier.
All you have to do is install the OptinMonster WordPress plugin, and then create an account from there. This will let you create a free account which is otherwise not available from our site.
This year, we revamped our plugin to offer a more native user experience for WordPress users, and we also added tons of powerful features like TruLead verification to help you get more subscribers and sales.
Other Plugins
MonsterInsights added a really powerful popular posts feature that I’m super excited about. It will help you get more pageviews. It’s the #1 analytics plugin, and I highly recommend it for all sites.
WP Mail SMTP passed 2 million active installs and is now in the top 20 most popular plugins of all time. This helps you fix WordPress not sending email issue, and we added several more powerful features there.
RafflePress team added LinkedIn share actions and many other powerful features to help you grow your social following through giveaways.
TrustPulse introduced Click AutoMatic detection which automatically detects user clicks and show it as live activity. It’s the best social proof notification plugin to increase your sales conversion.
Acquisitions and Investments
This year, we acquired three companies.
AIOSEO which is a leading WordPress SEO plugin used by over 2 million websites. We’re working hard to add new features and I’m super excited for the new upcoming items in 2021 (see the full story).
Smash Balloon is the #1 social feeds plugin used by over 1.4 million websites. We introduced a new social wall feature that lets you combine all your social media content on one page (see the full story).
PushEngage is a leading push notification software with over 10,000+ customers in 150+ countries who use the platform to reliably send over 9 billion notifications each month. Push notifications are a top 5 traffic source on WPBeginner (see the full story).
We also took an investment stake in UncannyOwl, the parent company of Uncanny Automator Plugin and the popular Uncanny Toolkit, eLearning extensions (see the full story).
In 2018, I created the WPBeginner Growth fund to invest and advise other WordPress focused companies.
All of our portfolio companies did really well this year.
MemberPress team launched a brand new course feature to help you create online courses with an immersive learning experience.
Formidable Forms team launched a powerful calculator feature, so you can easily build lead calculators.
Rymera team improved their Advanced Coupons plugin to add powerful features like free shipping, buy one get one, and many more for WooCommerce store owners.
Other products crushed it this year as well. The list includes: Pretty Links, Thirsty Affiliates, WooCommerce Wholesale Suite, Business Directory Plugin (new), AWP classified plugin (new), and Affiliate Royale (revamp coming in 2021).
If you run a WordPress company and would like me to invest in your company, then you can learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund here.
With that said, let’s take a look at 2020’s best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner.
How to fix your connection is not private error – A lot of website owners come across this error on websites using the SSL / HTTPs protocol when your browser is unable to validate the SSL certificate issued by the website. In this guide, we showed how to easily troubleshoot and fix this error.
How to set up WooCommerce conversion tracking – Many WooCommerce beginners struggle with converting website visitors into paying customers. In this step by step guide, we showed how to easily set up conversion tracking on a WooCommerce store. We also talked about using the conversion tracking data to grow a business and get more sales.
11 Things you should do when inheriting a WordPress site – whether you’re a business owner who recently acquired a new website, or an office assistant who’s inheriting your company’s existing website from another team member, here are the most important next steps.
How to send a custom welcome email to new WordPress users – Want to welcome your new users with an email? Here are two ways to send a custom welcome email. Method 2 allows you to schedule automated emails for the entire onboarding period.
How to uninstall and delete a WordPress theme – We have been asked by users about the proper way to uninstall a WordPress theme and delete it from their websites. In this guide, we showed how to easily uninstall a WordPress theme and safely delete all its files and data.
Best blogging niche – 7 that will make money (easily) – Blogging is still going strong and many users ask us which blogging niche or topics would be the easiest to generate a regular passive income. In this article, we shared the best blogging niches that are very successful and easy to monetize.
How to clear your cache in WordPress – Installing a caching plugin to your WordPress website is the best way to optimize speed and performance. However, it can become annoying if caching is making you unable to see the changes you have made to your website. In this article, we showed how to easily clear your WordPress cache and fix many common issues which may be caused due to caching issues.
How to add Google Optimize in WordPress – Google Optimize is a free tool that lets you split test your pages and personalize them for your customers. In this tutorial, we showed two methods to easily add Google Optimize in WordPress. We also talked about how to use it to run split tests on your site.
How to create a contract agreement form with digital signatures in WordPress – A user asked us how they can create a contract agreement form and allow users to digitally sign them directly on their website. In this tutorial, we showed how to create a contract agreement form with an option to digitally sign and submit them.
How to use cookie retargeting in WordPress to show custom on-site messages – Retargeting helps you personalize user experience across the internet but what about doing the same on your own website? In this tutorial, we showed you how to use cookie retargeting in WordPress to show personalized user experience, targetted messages, and custom offers.
How to code a website (complete beginner’s guide) – This is a common question that we get asked by our users. In this beginner’s guide, we talked about how to code a website when you don’t have hours and months to spend learning different coding languages.
How to make a logo for your website – Your business logo plays a crucial role in building a brand identity for your business. However, as a startup you may not have the budget to hire an agency for that. In this article, we showed users how to make a logo for their website using free tools and come up with something very professional looking.
How to create an online order form in WordPress – Some business owners just need a simple order form that users can fill in to place an order. In this tutorial, we shared how to easily create an online order form in WordPress without installing a shopping cart or eCommerce plugin.
How to run a virtual classroom online with WordPress – Due to challenging times a lot of users turned to offer online learning using virtual classrooms. In this article, we taught how to easily run a virtual classroom online using WordPress and other tools.
How to perform a WordPress security audit – Often users asked us how they can perform a complete WordPress security audit by themselves? In this tutorial, we shared our checklist for performing a WordPress security audit without hiring a security expert.
How to create a buy one get one free offer in WordPress – Running a buy one get one free (BOGO) offer helps you bring more customers to your online store and make more sales. In this tutorial, we showed how to easily create a buy one get one free offer in WooCommerce with step by step instructions.
How to set up email newsletter tracking in Google Analytics – Running an email newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with customers and bring them back to your site. However, how do you track users coming to your website from your email campaigns? In this guide, we explained how to easily set up email newsletter tracking in Google Analytics.
How to easily add an affiliate program in WooCommerce – Adding an affiliate program to your business allows you to build partnerships with other marketers and customers. In this tutorial, we showed users how to easily add an affiliate program in WooCommerce to grow your business with affiliate partnerships.
Best WordPress newsletter plugins – Sending an email newsletter is the most effective way to stay in touch customers and bring them back to your website. In this guide, we shared our top pick of the best WordPress newsletter plugins that are beginner-friendly and powerful.
How to open a WordPress popup form on click of link or image – Popups are an excellent marketing tool when used creatively. One such creative method is to show a popup when user clicks on a link or image, Since the user started the action, they are more likely to complete it. See our step by step instructions on how to add click to open popups in WordPress (no coding required).
How to add image choices in WordPress forms – Forms can get quite boring with text fields and buttons. What if you wanted to add images as multiple choice fields in your forms? In this article, we showed how to easily add image choices in WordPress forms to boost user engagement.
WordPress conversion tracking made simple – Once you start getting visitors to your website or online store, you want to track your conversions to make important business decisions. However, most beginners struggle to figure out how to do that properly. In this beginner’s guide, we made WordPress conversion tracking simple with a step by step instructions.
How to send SMS messages to your WordPress users – SMS marketing is proving to be another effective way to communicate with customers. In this tutorial, we showed how to easily send SMS messages to your WordPress users or WooCommerce customers.
How to create smart coupons in WooCommerce – Coupons help you run effective marketing campaigns throughout the year. In this tutorial, we showed users how to easily create smart coupons in WooCommerce including BOGO offers, scheduled coupons, auto-apply coupons, and free gift coupons.
How to put images side by side in WordPress – Many beginners find it a bit confusing to place images side by side in their WordPress posts and pages. In this beginner’s guide, we showed you different ways to place images side by side in WordPress.
How to easily edit a WordPress homepage – Many users struggle with creating a perfect layout for the homepage of their WordPress website. In this tutorial, we showed how to set up a homepage for your website step by step and how to easily edit it to create very professional looking homepage layouts.
How to create a custom Instagram photo feed in WordPress – An easy way to grow your Instagram following is by sending traffic from your WordPress website. In this article, we shared how to easily display your Instagram feed in WordPress using different styles and views.
How to create a secure contact form in WordPress – Many users ask us how they can make their WordPress contact forms more secure. In this detailed guide, we showed how to easily create secure contact forms in WordPress without compromising functionality.
Best Instagram WordPress plugins (Compared) – Instagram is a massive social platform so naturally our users want to build Instagram following while also getting traffic from Instagram to their website. In this showcase, we hand-picked the best Instagram WordPress plugins that help you achieve both goals.
How to create a paywall in WordPress (with preview options) – Adding a paywall for premium content on your WordPress website is a sustainable way to monetize and grow your business. In this tutorial, we shared how to easily create a paywall in WordPress while giving users option to preview before they pay.
How to sell group memberships in WordPress for corporate teams – We were asked by a user how they can sell bundled memberships for corporate teams on their membership website. In this tutorial, we showed how to easily create and sell group membership plans to corporate clients on your WordPress membership site.
How to run a social media contest to grow your site – Social media contests are an easy way to quickly get lots of traffic to your website. In this guide, we shared how to run a social media contest with some practical tips and examples.
How to add automatically drip content in WordPress – Running a WordPress membership community or an online course, you can give away all the content to the users at once after payment. However, it is not sustainable in the long run as users may not return to your site to renew a subscription or simply ask for a refund. In this tutorial, we shared how to automatically drip content in WordPress at a fixed schedule.
How to create a WooCommerce popup to increase sales – Popups have a very high conversion rate on eCommerce sites. In this guide, we shared how to create a WooCommerce popup with 6 different methods to boost sales.
How to write math equations in WordPress – Sharing math equations on the web can be a bit difficult and challenging for new users. In this tutorial, we showed different ways to easily write math equations in WordPress.
How to embed Facebook group feed in WordPress – If you want to quickly get new members for your Facebook group or boost activity, then you need to promote it on your website. In this tutorial, we showed how to easily embed your Facebook group’s feed anywhere on your WordPress website.
How to password protect your WordPress forms – A user asked us how they can add password protection to your WordPress forms so that only authorized users can fill those forms. In this article, we shared how to easily password protect your WordPress forms.
Best lead generation WordPress plugins – Collecting leads allows businesses to grow and make more sales and there are a ton of tools to help you do that. In this article, we shared the best lead generation WordPress plugins that are incredibly powerful and easy to use.
How to make a print on demand shop in WordPress – A popular online business idea is to sell print on demand products online. In this guide, we shared how to easily start a print on demand shop in WordPress with step by step instructions.
How to prevent newsletter signup spam in WordPress – Spambots may target your newsletter signup form by adding spam email addresses to your list. This costs you money and your email service may mark your emails as spam. In this tutorial, we shared several methods to block newsletter signup spam on your WordPress site.
How to show personalized content to different users in WordPress – Personalization helps you improve user experience and boost engagement on your site. Both of them ultimately lead to more sales and conversions. In this guide, we shared how to show personalized content to users based on user activity, location, behavioral data, cookies, and more.
Best social proof plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce – Adding social proof to your website helps build customer trust and triggers FOMO effect. In this showcase, we picked up the best social proof plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce that you can use.
How to find out who is hosting a certain website – We have been often asked by users how to find out who is hosting a specific website. In this guide, we shared how to find out who is hosting a certain website using two methods.
How to get SMS text messages from your WordPress forms – A user asked us how to to get an SMS alert when someone submits a form on their website. In this tutorial, we showed how to easily get SMS text messages from your WordPress forms.
How to fix the Facebook and Instagram oEmbed issue in WordPress – Due to Facebook and Instagram API changes, all embeds on WordPress websites were broke. In this article, we shared how to fix the Facebook and Instagram oEmbed issue in WordPress.
How to add web push notification to your WordPress site – Push notifications allow you to send notifications to users regardless of their device or browser. This makes them an incredibly powerful marketing tool. In this article, we shared how to easily add web push notifications to your WordPress site.
How to translate your WooCommerce store – Users prefer to shop from stores that offer information in their own language and currency. If you ship internationally, then translating your WooCommerce store into other languages can improve user experience significantly. In this article, we shared 2 easiest ways to translate your WooCommerce store.
How to accept recurring payments in WordPress – Recurring payments allow you to automatically charge users on a regular basis for the services, products, or digital subscriptions. In this tutorial, we shared four easier ways to accept recurring payments in WordPress.
Best push notification software (Compared) – Push notifications is a popular marketing tool that allows you to send messages to your users regardless of device or browser. However, there are so many of them with different features and pricing. In this showcase, we compared the top push notification software with pros and cons to help you pick the best tool for your business.
How to create mobile popups that convert (Without hurting SEO) – Mobile popups are a bit tricky because you have smaller screen and popups can hurt user experience and SEO. In this tutorial, we showed how to create mobile popups that only convert well but also don’t ruin customer satisfaction or SEO.
What is VoIP and How Does it Work? – VoIP provides a cheaper way to manage your business calls. In this article, we explained how does VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) work in plain English for small business owners. We also talked about how it can help you grow your business.
How to change domain nameservers and point to a new host – We have been often asked by users about changing domain nameservers when moving to a new host. In this guide, we showed how to easily change domain nameservers on all the popular hosting platforms.
How to create automated workflows in WordPress – Do you want to create automated workflows on your website to offer a better user experience and avoid repetitive tasks? In this tutorial, we shared how to easily create automated workflows in WordPress with Uncanny Automator.
How to save a blog post to your computer (5 methods) – Learn how to easily save a copy of your blog content that you can read, share, or even convert to an eBook or physical book.
How to export a WordPress site – beginner’s guide on how to export WordPress site to move hosts or make a local copy.
These were some of the best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner in 2020. We hope that you found them helpful.
We want to thank all WPBeginner users, who visited our website, offered feedback, left comments, and shared it with others. We truly appreciate you.
We look forward to adding even more useful WordPress tutorials in 2021. Have a Happy New Year.
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