What are the Reasons to Consider an Alternative for Hello Bar?
Hello Bar, while a long-standing pop-up plugin, is showing its age. Its dated interface and limited features, including a basic editor and lack of true responsiveness, make it difficult to create modern, engaging pop-ups. Users seeking advanced design capabilities, visual effects, and a more streamlined workflow may find Hello Bar’s restricted element options and high price point less than ideal. This article explores the reasons why users might consider alternatives to Hello Bar, examining its shortcomings in detail.
It Feels Outdated
This plugin has been on the market since 2012 and claims to have over 600,000 active users. Based on this data, it can be said that it is one of the oldest in the market, but perhaps the first thing that comes to mind after working with it is the same oldness. From the very beginning, that is, the installation and setup stage, to the process of creating a popup, working with the user interface it provides, the available options, and the output result, it can be concluded that this plugin has not been updated over time in line with the needs and trends of the market. In the following, we will examine the different parts of this login in more detail.
The Basic Editor
This plugin’s editor has a visual interface, but it’s not a drag-and-drop editor. You can click on any element to activate its formatting and editing tools, but you can’t move or resize it.
With its simple editing options and limited features, you’ll quickly realize that this isn’t an advanced, professional editor.
Limited Choices in Elements
Surprisingly, the number and types of elements you can add to a pop-up are limited. For example, you can only have two subheadings in your design, or just one call-to-action button. The variety of elements is also limited to simple things like images and text.
For instance, imagine you want to design a pop-up with two call-to-action buttons. That’s not possible in Hello Bar. Or, imagine you want to include a shape or icon. Unfortunately, that’s not possible either.
Not Really Responsive
Ok, this plugin does have responsive mode buttons. By clicking on them, you can see how the pop-up will look on mobile or tablet sizes. But the main question is, can you make changes specific to that mobile or tablet size on your design? The answer is no. The pop-up itself automatically resizes so that everything is displayed more compactly in the smaller size.
But there is no option to have a different design or different details, for example, on mobile size.
Lack of Visual Effects
If you’re looking for animations or other special effects, you won’t find them here. There’s only one option: a button to activate a simple animation when the pop-up first appears.
No other animation or display effects exist in Hello Bar. This is pretty disappointing, considering the current design trends and user expectations.
Limited and basic templates
A key part of any professional plugin is having ready-made templates. This makes it much faster and easier to reach your goal. In Hello Bar, you have about 50 ready-made templates with a fairly simple design. Each template is marked with some tags, but there isn’t a specific category for them. It’s also worth noting that by changing the pop-up layout (which is basically the position and how the popup is displayed), new templates with different sizes and positions on the page are available to you. But they are essentially the same templates with the same design.
Pricing
This plugin doesn’t have a free version, so the only way to use or test it is through the 14-day free trial. Hello Bar has three pricing plans, the cheapest of which starts at $29 per month, which is equivalent to $348 annually, and gives you a limited number of popup views. By choosing higher plans, the number of views available to you increases.
The value of purchasing Hello Bar, considering its cost and the features it provides to users, is a matter worth considering.
Depicter, The Best Hello Bar Alternative
The Modern Popup Builder
Depicter is modern in every way, from its dashboard to its UI and the end-to-end process that guides you through creating a popup.
The features and options it offers, the flexibility to customize visual elements, and the creation and output capabilities all work together to provide a remarkably modern and professional experience for users. Below, we’ll explore some of these features in more detail.
The Visual Editor
Simply put, Depicter’s editor is a work of art. To start, everything is completely drag-and-drop. This is a feature not even found in popular, modern WordPress page builders in this way. This means you can resize any element completely freely and place it where you want. Depicter provides tools and features to use various layouts for the elements on the page. From well-known layouts like Grid and Flex to grouping elements together, snapping guides when moving elements, and much more.
You have also the Version History feature. Yes, that’s right. Depicter lets you revert to previously saved versions of your pop-up. So, you don’t need to worry about lost changes or going back to older versions of your pop-up. With just one click, you can restore a previously saved version.
Introducing and reviewing the features of Depicter’s editor requires a completely separate and detailed article.
Variety of Elements to Use
True Responsiveness
When we say Depicter is truly responsive, it means you can freely design completely independent designs in each of the responsive modes. You can even display one or more elements in one size, and specify how responsive behavior, such as resizing or remaining in place, should be for each element.
You can hide an entire slide or even specify a completely different style, such as color effects and more, separately in different responsive sizes. You can change the background image of your pop-up for mobile, or even specify the Background Fill Mode separately for each of the responsive modes. You can also define the size of your responsive mode.
Animations and Transitions
Depicter allows you to add separate entrance, exit, or loop animations to each element, along with the ability to customize all the parameters of an animation. You can also have these animations for the entire pop-up.
Next, we have Transition, which you can use to create attractive effects for moving between different pages of a pop-up.
Professional effects such as Parallax and Ken Burns are also among the features that Depicter provides you. Therefore, creating a super professional pop-up with modern and stylish animations and transitions is easily possible with Depictor.
Templates
Let’s talk about templates. Depicter offers you a collection of 550+ templates with clearly defined categories and diverse applications. Browsing through these templates, you’ll notice that they’ve all been created considering responsive design principles and the needs of websites with various applications. This collection is also updated weekly. Additionally, for each seasonal occasion and holiday, Depicter adds ready-made and up-to-date designs to its collection.
The high variety and professional features among Depicter’s templates make the process of reaching the final result, which is having a professional popup, the shortest path for users.
Assets
Depicter provides a dedicated panel of ready-to-use assets for your designs. These assets include a variety of images and videos in different categories, as well as ready-made text with pre-defined styles. The high variety and clear categorization, along with the ability to search among these assets, is a unique feature that Depictor offers its users.
As a result, the time spent searching for a suitable asset for your design will be saved.
Dynamic Popups
Another important feature of Depicter is the ability to create dynamic pop-ups. This is very important for WordPress users. You can easily create popups that pull content from your blog posts or online store products. It should also be noted that Depictor is fully compatible with any type of custom post and the popular ACF plugin. Therefore, by combining these capabilities, you have endless possibilities for creating and combining different outputs.
Support and Community
Depicter offers 24/7 support. You can reach out through several channels:
- Live chat: For urgent questions, live chat is the fastest way to get help.
- Help Center: The Help Center has articles, tutorials, and a ticketing system. You can find answers there or submit a ticket.
- WordPress forum: The Depicter team is active on the WordPress forum and answers questions.
- YouTube and Facebook: They also participate in YouTube and Facebook communities and respond to user questions.
Tutorials
Video content offered through a plugin or service is really helpful for users. It makes it easier to understand how things work, learn how to use tools effectively and discover new features. Basically, videos make the whole experience better and help people get the most out of what they’re using.
Depicter understands this and maintains an active YouTube channel. Every week, it releases videos covering new and existing features, showcasing templates, and more. This gives users a valuable resource to learn from and stay up-to-date.
Pricing
Price is a big deal. It’s often one of the first things people think about when choosing a service or plugin. Even if something has a free version, the next question is usually, “What does the pro version cost?” And some premium plans make you pay more and more to unlock the good stuff.
Depictor is different. It has a free version that handles the basics. And the pro version? It’s just $39 for a whole year, for one website. No tiered pricing and no gradual unlocks. You get all the premium features for that one website with the $39 Starter plan.
Conclusion
While Hello Bar has been a long-standing player in the pop-up plugin space, its dated interface, limited features, and lack of true responsiveness make it a less-than-ideal choice in today’s market. Its rigid editor, restricted element options, and absence of visual effects fall short of modern design standards. Furthermore, the pricing structure, starting at $29/month, seems too high considering the limited functionality.
Depicter, on the other hand, presents a compelling alternative. Its drag-and-drop editor, extensive library of elements, and genuine responsiveness across devices offer a vastly superior user experience. The inclusion of animations, transitions, and professional effects empowers users to create truly engaging pop-ups. With over 550 templates, a dedicated asset panel, and dynamic pop-up capabilities, Depicter streamlines the design process. Finally, its transparent and affordable pricing, with a full-featured pro version at just $39 annually for a single site, makes it a clear winner.