If you’re selling a product or service online your conversion rate is your bottom line. With a large volume of traffic, a small improvement can mean thousands of extra dollars in your bank account. Social proof notifications can boost your conversion rate by 15%.
In this guide, we’ll share our shortlist of the best social proof software. Hopefully, one of the options on the list will be a good fit for your site.
What are Social Proof Notifications?
The idea behind social proof is to show that your company or service is legitimate. In the early days of the Internet, social proof would include product reviews, like Amazon use, and testimonials. Over time the way social proof is shown to a user has developed in a variety of ways.
It is common to see notifications pop up on a site that shows how many people have made a purchase, visited the site, or when the last purchase was made, or how much stock is remaining. It’s the same kind of idea as social media plugins that show shares. However, in this case, such notifications can help boost sales.
To help you improve the conversion rate on your website we’ve shortlisted the best social proof notification software. We’ll get started with our favorite social proof notification software. If you can’t be bothered to read the whole article, we’ve summarised the findings in the table below.
| Software | Starting From | Best Thing About It | Biggest Problem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prove Source | $19 a month | Easy to use interface and affordable pricing. | None. |
| Provely | $17 a month | Nice extra features and PLR option for agencies. | No notifications for visitor numbers. |
| Proof | $79 a month | Easy to use interface. | It’s expensive. |
| Use Fomo | $29 a month | You get all the features. | Confusing interface. |
| WP Fomify | $69 a year | It’s cheap and you can purchase a lifetime package. | Just for WordPress. |
| Proven | $39 a year | It’s cheap and you can purchase a lifetime package. | Just for WordPress. |
The table should give you a good overview of the pricing and some of the best features of each platform. Now that’s covered, let’s dive into this review of the best social proof software.
Prove Source
Prove Source is my favorite social proof notification software. It has an easy to use interface and an affordable tiered pricing system. There are four different types of social proof notifications. You can choose between page visits, sales, number of people that took a specific action within a set time period, and Stream (which measures conversions).
It’s easy to create new social proof notifications. The user flow uses a tab system. Each page has a limited number of options making it close to impossible to make a mistake or get confused. The templates are attractive and easy to edit. They’ve also given you the ability to add animated gifs to your social proof notifications, which is a nice touch.
Prove Source is competitively priced. Plans start from $19 for up to 10,000 unique monthly visitors. For $49 you get up to 50,000 monthly visitors. It doesn’t sound a lot, but if you’re only activating the software on specific pages, then 10,000 visitors are enough for most websites.
Provely
Provely is the cheapest social proof notification software as a service on this list. The user interface is very logically laid out and follows the basic system used by Prove Source (create a widget, enter the URL of your site, etc.).
The software has a few extra features that you don’t get with the other software options on this list. This includes small things like the ability to choose animations, add a sound, select different templates, and dummy social proof for when you’re starting a campaign. There are also some major features like reseller rights to the software, which is perfect for agencies.
Provely have a tiered front end pricing system. The starting price is $17 a month or $97 a year for one site with no limitations. There are also packages for 5 websites and unlimited websites. As an upsell you can purchase the right to resell Provely to clients for $17 a month with branding and $27 a month with no branding. You can read more about it in the Provely review.
Proof
Proof is super simple to use. After signing up as a user you select from one of three types of social proof notifications. There’s the notification you get after a person makes a purchase, how many people are active on a page at any point in time, and ‘hot streaks,’ which tracks how many people optin to your email list.
You can make limited edits to the appearance of the notifications. This includes things like editing the proof of purchase text and choosing if the Gravatar or a map appears on the notification. You can also choose when the notifications appear. To install Proof on your website you just add a tracking code to the header on your website.
Proof is aimed at medium to large companies. Pricing starts from $79 a month for up to 10,000 visitors and $129 a month for up to 50,000 visitors. The software is expensive and there are cheaper social proof notification software options available. Still, it’s a good all-round software platform.
Use Fomo
I like Use Fomo. The founders have hijacked a popular abbreviation, Fear Of Missing Out, to rank for a search term that gets close to 100,000 visitors a month. It’s a clever marketing tactic that has undoubtedly helped the company acquire customers. Unfortunately, that’s one of the only things I like about the software.
The user interface feels like it was created by a coder rather than a designer. In the main, it’s functional rather than attractive. There’s also the underlying assumption that the user will be comfortable with coding, which leaves me with the feeling they didn’t budget for a good UI designer (you can read some of my other thoughts in our Fomo review).
Luckily the pricing is simple and competitive. For $29 a month you can use the software for up to 50,000 notifications a month on unlimited sites (this would cost you $129 a month with Proof). There are no extra features with the higher tier plans, just more notifications. Save 50% off your first month by using the link below.
Retainly Notif
Retainly Notif is part of a suite of software solutions for increasing sales through email marketing, drip campaigns, push notifications, and of course the social proof notifications. This is great if you’re looking for social proof notification software that’s part of a suite of tools, but not ideal if you want a standalone software platform.
The pricing for Retainly is more geared towards the email marketing side of the software toolkit. The tiered pricing starts at $9 a month for up to 2,000 contacts and gets progressively more expensive as your business grows.
WordPress Options
There are a few WordPress social proof plugins. The two best options currently on the market are WP Fomify and Proven. Both plugins do what they were designed to do and have nicely designed user interfaces.
Out of the two options, WP Fomify has the most functionality. You can use the plugin to run special offer campaigns with coupon codes for instance, which is a pretty neat feature. Overall though neither plugin offers as many features as you get with the online software options.
The benefit of a WordPress social proof plugin is pricing. WP Fomify costs $69 a year for one site or $299 for a lifetime license to unlimited sites. Proven is slightly cheaper at $39 a year for a license for one site or $99 for a lifetime license for unlimited sites.
Few Final Thoughts
There are some really great social proof notification platforms on the market at the moment. My favorite option is Prove Source, which is easy to use and has a nice range of features designed to increase your sales. If you’re running a site on WordPress and you want a cheaper option I’d probably pick WP Fomify.
For more useful tools for online business owners, check out our guide to the best mockup generators, and heatmap software. You might also want to check out our roundup of the best sales funnel software.
Hope you like our content. If you feel you have a solution that should be on this list, shoot us an email. We want to make our articles as comprehensive as possible.
