Most bloggers are building an email list, which is a great thing if you want to make money online with your blog, as email marketing is probably the most efficient way to do so.
Mailchimp and Aweber are the most widely used services to manage email lists and send newsletters. While I’m using Mailchimp myself and definitely recommend the service, if you’re looking for a 100% free solution, you should definitely have a look at Mailpoet Newsletter, a powerful plugin which allows you to manage email lists and send newsletter directly from your WordPress dashboard.
MailPoet Newsletter : Free download
OptinMonster: PopupAlly
OptinMonster has gained a lot of popularity over the past two years for its ability to catch the attention of leaving visitors and show them a special offer of an invitation to subscribe to your mailing list.
But starting at $9 a month, OptinMonster is somewhat of an investment. Good news for those who don’t want to spend such an amount of money, PopupAlly is a 100% free alternative to OptinMonster. The coolest feature is definitely the “Exit Intent†technology which detects when the user is about to leave, just like OptinMonster does.
There’s also a “pro†version of PopupAlly available, which includes a lot of extra features.
PopupAlly : Free download
Visual Composer: MP Stacks
Visual Composer has grown super popular in the last 12 months, allowing bloggers with little to no coding knowledge to build their own layouts via an intuitive drag and drop editor.
Created by Mint Plugins, MP Stacks is a 100% free alternative to Visual Composer. A great option for those with little budget to create an awesome website.
MP Stacks : Free download
BuySellAds: AdRotate
I’ve been using BuySellAds for over 5 years and have always enjoyed the results. They provide all you need to display ads on your blog and get paid for it. It’s great, but indeed not free, as BSA keeps 25% of your earnings for themselves.
So what about managing your ads yourself? AdRotate is, in my opinion, the best plugin to do so.
AdRotate : Free download
Monarch: Floating Social Bar
Monarch is a super fast plugin developed by ElegantThemes, which automatically puts a floating bar with social buttons of your choice for your visitors to share your articles. I really love that plugin and recommend it, but if you’re broke, no problem: The Floating Social Bar plugin gives you similar features for free!
Floating Social Bar : Free download
Gravity Forms: Contact Form 7
When it comes to forms plugins, Gravity Forms has been the reference for many years. While it’s for sure a great plugin, I’ve never been that enthusiastic about paying for such a basic feature. My choice has always been Contact Form 7, a free and super flexible plugin which allows you to create as many forms as you need, with no coding required. Forms can be integrated on pages, widgets, posts, and even on your theme.
Contact Form 7 : Free download
Ninja Affiliate: SEO Smart Links
Ninja Affiliate is a premium plugin that allows you to define a list of keywords, and automatically turn those keywords in your posts into hyperlinks. The benefit of it is that you can define keywords like “hosting†and turn all occurrences of that keyword into a link to a hosting affiliate program you’re a part of.
Nice, isn’t it? But wait, you don’t need to pay for that plugin. SEO Smart Links does absolutely the same thing (besides cloaking links, but you can use something like redirection for it) and doesn’t cost a dollar.
SEO Smart Links : Free download
Article source: https://dzone.com/articles/7-free-alternatives-to-popular-wordpress-premium-p