Needs some work

I like the idea of the plugin, and I like most of the execution taking place with the company behind Icegram. it’s a simple enough idea, that however simple it may seem, is still a service desperately needed by many WP developers. We need to monetize our sites. That means getting more subscribers, selling services, signing people up for downloads, taking payments, promoting content and events, and so on. Some of the templates look great and promising potential.

However, I’ve tested out Icegram, Rainmaker, and the subscribe plugins on several different client sites as well as some of my own and had a few issues that could use attention:

There does not seem to be much, if any, support documentation. Now, granted, many WP users are not developers, don’t want to be, or don’t care. But for those of us wondering why a download popup does not have any way to actually offer the promised download or why selecting the option to use your website’s pre-existing color scheme doesn’t seem to work (that option seems to basically remove everything rather than replace the current layout colors) some kind of clearly-written support documentation would help.

Support is an issue. I contacted the guys a few times asking for “how to” support. They seem like a nice-enough bunch of guys and like I said, I love the concept and most of the execution, but it’s incomplete, and it’s incomplete where it really needs to be completed: support. When going to the plugin main site, I submitted a request for help. In both instances, the support team didn’t seem to understand what I was asking for help with or how to provide the assistance. Download plugins had no way to download or reveal anything, the popup subscribe form didn’t take email addresses, the “use your site color palette” option essentially makes it bare bones basic, that sort of thing.

So (to me) Icegram is a great plugin for very simple popups to bring attention to a link or something like that. Now, maybe you have to pay their subscription service in order for the download popups or subscribe popups to work – but if that is the case (probably), it is not clear. So, while it could potentially compete with similar popup services and subscribe services, it kind of just stops half-way without informing you what your options are and support doesn’t seem to know. The Rainmaker plugin subscribe form is extremely basic and doesn’t offer any way to add it as a popup (which given that Icegram also makes a popup plugin, seems like a no-brainer).

It’ll be interesting to see how Icegram changes or adapts to Gutenberg, but for now, I would use it as a popup generator for very simple alerts, promotions, or basic ad-type functions where you show an image, some text, and maybe a link. You can’t really control where popups appear on a page, but the ones they have look good and those work.