Get started with the #1 Privy alternative

Privy's popup-only plan starts at $24/month for 10,000 monthly pageviews. Their email plan starts at $30/month for 1,500 mailable contacts and scales as your list grows, so the cost to plan for depends on both your traffic and your subscriber count.

OptiMonk's pricing is pageview-based, starting with a permanent free plan covering 10,000 pageviews per month with no contact limits and no time limit. For smaller stores or anyone who wants to test before committing, this is a meaningful advantage, there's no clock running.

Privy offers only a 15-day trial, after which a paid plan is required. The first OptiMonk paid tier starts at $29/month.

If you've ever wanted a popup that actually looks like your brand rather than a generic opt-in form, the template gap matters. Privy describes their options as 'dozens' — no specific count published. OptiMonk gives you 300+, organized by use case so you can find the right starting point in seconds.

Beyond the volume, OptiMonk uses a theme system. Choose a visual style once and it applies consistently across all your campaigns. The AI Wizard generates a fully branded campaign from your store URL in seconds, and the AI Editor lets you describe changes in plain language rather than editing manually.

Privy positions itself around simplicity and human coaching rather than AI-driven automation. Their AI Marketing Assistant is a content writing tool that's useful for drafting emails, but it doesn't touch your popups or adapt to visitor behavior.

Here's what OptiMonk's AI actually does day-to-day. The AI Wizard scans your store URL, reads your brand colors, fonts, and products, and builds a set of ready-to-launch popup campaigns — no brief, no back-and-forth. The AI Editor means you never have to dig into the builder to make a change: just type what you want and it updates the campaign. Smart Popups show each visitor a message based on what they're browsing, so a visitor looking at running shoes sees something different from someone checking out your sale section.

Privy's AI is a copywriting assistant. Useful for drafting emails, but it doesn't touch your popups or adapt to visitor behavior in any way.

Both tools offer A/B testing, but the accessibility and scope differ meaningfully.

Privy's A/B testing is available on paid plans and covers campaign-level variations. OptiMonk includes basic A/B testing on every plan. Beyond that, OptiMonk extends testing to landing page headlines, product page copy, and different campaign offers, with revenue attribution showing which variant actually drove sales rather than just clicks. On higher tiers, Smart A/B Testing automatically identifies the winning variant and shifts traffic to it in real time, with no manual check-in required.

Both tools are built with Shopify in mind and install from the Shopify App Store. OptiMonk holds a 4.6/5 rating with installs growing 11.3% year-over-year. Privy sits at 4.5/5 with a much larger review base built over a longer history — they launched on Shopify in 2015.

Where OptiMonk goes further for Shopify stores is in ecommerce-specific depth: cart value triggers, product-level targeting, product recommendations in popups, auto-applied discount codes, and revenue attribution tied directly to Shopify orders. Privy's popup features are solid but more focused on email and SMS capture and cart abandonment flows.

Yes, and it's worth being upfront about this before you decide.

• Built-in email marketing: Privy includes a full email suite: drag-and-drop builder, campaign scheduling, and automated flows (welcome, abandoned cart, win-back). OptiMonk relies on third-party integrations for all of this.
• Built-in SMS marketing: SMS campaigns, cart saver texts, and automated flows are built directly into Privy's paid plans. OptiMonk integrates with SMS tools but does not send SMS natively.
• Landing page builder: Privy includes a standalone landing page builder. OptiMonk does not have a direct equivalent.
• All-in-one simplicity: for a store that wants one tool handling email, SMS, and popups without connecting multiple platforms, Privy's bundled approach has genuine appeal.

For stores that already use Klaviyo, Omnisend, or another email platform (as 70.9% of top Shopify stores do), Privy's all-in-one pitch is less compelling. OptiMonk pairs with your existing stack and handles the popup and CRO layer far more powerfully. But if you're starting from scratch and want everything in one place, Privy is worth considering.