I am trying to set up a form to collect email addresses for my mailing list after having been on a haitus from WordPress design for a few years, and holy cow this is AWFUL.
I was able to make the form without a problem. The trouble is, it doesn’t seem to be notifying me at all when people sign up for my mailing list, nor is it sending \*them\* the confirmation it is supposed to be sending. I tried looking up instructions for “how to view your subscribers,” but the link contained in this instructional article just takes me to an utterly useless “updates” panel that does not show when people sign up and is instead clogged with spam.
So I decided to try MailerLite as they are supposed to have WordPress integration. I make a form there. Fine. It’s not as visually appealing, but it should actually work. Except no. I go to integrate it into my WordPress page and am told that I cannot do that for less than the price of $40 a month on a WordPress business plan. Really? Really? $40 a month for a form integration?
I then search for SOME way to actually get a working sign-up form for my mailing list for less than $20 a month as a base price and am told that MailerLite forms should be able to integrate with WordPress for free, as long as they are popup forms. Not really what I wanted as I’d planned for the entire landing page of this website to be the email collection form, but whatever. If it’s the only way to do it that actually works and doesn’t cost $40 a month.
Except now I’m in MailerLite and I can’t figure out how to make these popups not look awful. There are almost no options to visually edit the popup and I can’t even get my in-house image editor to overlay a simple effect I’ve used dozens of times in years past. It’s happy to offer a special AI integration, but not, like, basic functions like the ability to adjust the transparency of layers.
How does anyone even do web design anymore in this environment? I don’t mind paying a fair price for an integration, but I’m not \*starting\* at $40 a month for something that should be one of the most basic capabilities of any website, and it’s infuriating to keep finding that basic functions have been removed or are not working even as the number of useless fancy AI tools increases.
Has anyone found a way to have a mailing list sign-up form with any automation at all (my signees are supposed to automatically receive a free ebook after signing up) through WordPress for less than $40 a month?
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