Looking for an Elfsight alternative? Choosing the best social media feeds plugin for your website will help you get more followers, engagement, and sales.
Nowadays, adding social media feeds to your WordPress site has become easier than ever. If you want to get started, there are tons of amazing tools to help you out.
Today, we’ll help you find the best option by comparing 2 popular options: Elfsight and Smash Balloon.
Since this is a detailed comparison, we’ve put together a convenient table of contents here. Just click on a section to skip ahead:
- What Is a Social Media Feed Plugin?
- Overview: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
- Features: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
- Ease of Use: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
- Customer Support: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
- Pricing: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
- Is Smash Balloon the Best Elfsight Alternative?
Let’s get started!
What Is a Social Media Feed Plugin?
A social media feed plugin, or social media aggregator, helps you showcase social media feeds from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more on your WordPress site — no coding needed.
By using a social media feed plugin, you can create, customize, and display your social media feeds on your website in just a few clicks.
Elfsight and Smash Balloon are both social feed plugins you can use for your WordPress website. Both let you embed your social feeds on your pages, posts, and even social feed widgets.
Now that you know what a social media feed plugin is, let’s look at the overview of 2 of the most popular social media aggregators in the market.
Overview: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
Before we compare the specific features of each social feed plugin, let’s give you a quick rundown of both of the options here.
1. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon is more than just a single tool. It’s actually a collection of 6 WordPress social media feed plugins that let users create, customize, and show social media feeds on their websites.
With these social feed plugins, you can embed content from the biggest platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube.
Plus, Smash Balloon also lets you display testimonials and user-generated content (UGC) from highly trusted sites such as Yelp, Tripadvisor, Facebook, Google Reviews, and more.
Created in 2013, Smash Balloon has been helping people boost their social media following and gain conversions for 10 years — and counting!
Now, it’s the #1 social media feed plugin and powers 1,750,000+ websites from all over the globe.
With its solid reputation, it’s easy to see why Smash Balloon is a popular alternative to Elfsight.
2. Elfsight
Elfsight is a service that provides different apps to help users connect their websites to other platforms.
With Elfsight, each app allows you to integrate 1 social platform into your site. And since there are 80+ apps, you have a lot of options to pick from.
So, you can just add their app to your site to embed social feeds. And just like Smash Balloon, there’s no need for coding languages like HTML or Javascript.
Similarly, both Smash Balloon and Elfsight work perfectly well with WordPress, so they’re both great choices if your small business is running on the WordPress platform.
Features: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
Now, let’s get started with the comparison! We’ll start by looking at the features you’ll get with Smash Balloon and Elfsight.
1. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon has a lot of great features to offer — and it does all that while keeping things simple.
Let’s go through some of the highlights of Smash Balloon:
Easy Setup With Zero Coding
Setting up Smash Balloon is so easy that you can install the plugin and add beautiful social media feeds to your site in minutes — no coding needed!
All you have to do is follow the 3-step guided flow and the plugin will walk you through the process of creating, customizing, and embedding your social media feeds.
Plus, all the social feeds you create will be responsive and automatically inherit your website’s design.
That way, you can be sure your social media feeds look beautiful right out of the box and work perfectly on all devices.
In just a few clicks, you can embed content from the biggest social media platforms out there and supercharge your engagement.
Eye-Catching Designs for Your Feeds
If you want a social media feed that perfectly fits your brand identity, then Smash Balloon has you covered.
First, you can choose from a collection of professionally designed themes. That way, you can instantly create eye-catching and unique social media feeds.
On top of that, this social media aggregator tool comes with ready-made templates to instantly change the layout of the posts on your feeds.
Want more customization options when embedding social feeds? Smash Balloon has you covered!
With its built-in visual customizer, you’ll have total control over how your feed looks. You can change your layout, size, margins, font, color, and more with just a few clicks!
You can then use the live preview to track all of your changes in real-time.
Since your feeds will automatically copy the design of your website, this Elfsight alternative can give you beautiful social media feeds even without any customization!
As a bonus, you can curate your social media feeds using filters and moderation options. That way, you can focus on showing social proof from high-quality sources.
Smart Caching for Speed and Backup
Another highlight of Smash Balloon is the smart caching feature. Your social feeds don’t have to repeatedly ask the social media platform for data.
This means less time is wasted when loading your page, so both your social feeds and webpage load much faster, which helps improve your site’s SEO.
Plus, it won’t load TikTok or YouTube videos until your visitors click on it to open the lightbox popup, so you can add tons of media to your web page at once.
On top of that, smart caching also backs up your feeds. So, even if the social media platform goes down, your social media feed will still be displayed on your website.
Engage Visitors With Lots of Feed Types
One of the best things about Smash Balloon is the wide variety of social media feed types that you can display on your website.
In fact, here’s a small sample of the social media content you can display:
- Instagram profile feed
- Facebook timeline feed
- Custom Twitter feed
- YouTube video feed
- Shoppable Instagram feed
- Facebook events calendar
- Instagram hashtag feed
- Twitter hashtag feed
- YouTube playlists feed
- TikTok video feed
- And more
The best part? When you grab a copy of Smash Balloon’s All-Access Bundle, you get access to all Smash Balloon plugins, as well as Social Wall Pro.
That way, you can use Social Wall Pro to combine content from all these social platforms into a social wall to engage your site visitors.
Plus, this bundle will unlock unlimited access to ALL of Smash Balloon’s plugins for unlimited websites!
Boost Your SEO and Reach More People
Most of the other social media aggregators use iFrames to display the feeds. Since search engine bots can’t recognize iFrames, that’s not good for SEO.
However, Smash Balloon actually embeds the content on your website with absolutely no iFrames. So, your social media content will be recognized by search engines.
That means you can use social media feeds to regularly add fresh content with relevant keywords on your site.
As a result, you can improve your SEO ranking and reach even more potential customers for your brand.
2. Elfsight
As an all-in-one social feed plugin, Elfsight also comes with a nice collection of features. To give you an idea, here are a few highlights:
Supports Lots of Sites
The biggest selling point for Elfsight is the sheer number of apps that it supports. Of the 80+ Elfsight apps, 16 are social apps.
You can use these apps to show social feeds on your site, from social media giants like Facebook and Instagram to less popular platforms like VK and Pinterest.
Unfortunately, the downside of having more apps is that you might get as many features with each individual app.
Lots of Supported Platforms
While Smash Balloon is specifically for WordPress, Elfsight is different. You can use its functionalities with almost any website builder out there.
If you’re not a WordPress user, then this can be a plus for you.
That means you can use other web platforms like Squarespace and Wix and even e-commerce platforms like Shopify.
Additional Useful Tools
Want to spice up your site with extra items like maps, forms, and media players? With Elfsight, you can also get apps that add all these features to your site.
For better communication with your audience, you can also buy tools that can add chats from WhatsApp and Viber.
Live Customizer
Another great thing about Elfsight is the live customizer. Like with Smash Balloon, you can edit your feeds in real-time, and you can see how your changes will look while you’re customizing your feeds.
Since it’s so easy, you can create social feeds by yourself in a few clicks — no need to hire a web designer.
You’ll get a simple collection of customization options for each app. While you won’t be able to do advanced customization, it’s user-friendly.
If you’ve got a bit of technical know-how, you can also use the customizer to add custom CSS to Elfsight feeds.
You might need to fiddle around with the customization options to create social feeds that match your site.
On the other hand, Smash Balloon plugins will inherit your site’s existing design and match your brand’s identity — automatically.
Ease of Use: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
Another important thing to consider is how user-friendly the tool is. Let’s compare and see which WordPress social feed plugin will be easier for you.
1. Smash Balloon
Smash Balloon keeps things as easy as possible, even though it’s packed with a lot of features. You’ll be able to connect your social media, customize, and then embed your feed — all with zero coding.
In fact, this is all so easy that you can finish everything in a few minutes. You don’t even have to bother with embed codes. You can simply add a block, and you’re good to go.
Customization is also pretty straightforward. There are many options, but it’s laid out in a simple way so that you won’t get lost.
You even get an amazing live customizer to customize your social media feeds with ease.
What’s more, you can even embed your social feeds directly from the live feed customizer in just a few clicks.
If you ever get stuck, there are tons of resources to give you a hand. You can check out the in-depth documentation, YouTube tutorials, or the various blog posts.
Plus, you always have a dedicated support team to help you out in case you want help from WordPress experts.
2. Elfsight
Elfsight also tries to provide a smooth user experience. From sign-up to posting the feed, you can do the whole process in just a few clicks — just like with Smash Balloon.
If you’re getting started with Elfsight, there’ll be one big hurdle to get past: picking the right apps. It sounds simple, but there are a lot of options here, so you might get confused.
Also, you’ll have to pay for each app separately (more on that later). As a result, you’ll have to be careful while picking the app if you want to get your money’s worth.
Aside from that, the rest of the process is pretty smooth. The customizer is simple, so you can have the feed ready to go in no time at all. After that, you just need to copy the embed code to your site, and you’re set.
While Elfsight is mostly user-friendly, having to mess about with the embed code is a downside when compared to Smash Balloon.
Customer Support: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
If you ever run into any issues while using these tools, you’ll have to turn to the support team. When that happens, high-quality support can make your experience so much better.
Let’s see if Smash Balloon holds up as an Elfisight alternative when it comes to customer support.
1. Smash Balloon
The quality of customer support is one of the best things about Smash Balloon. Anytime you need help, the dedicated support team will be there.
You can take a quick look at the user reviews, and you can see how happy people are with the support. It’s no wonder that Smash Balloon has a 4.9/5 star rating.
If you ever need help with Smash Balloon, you can just reach out using the support page here.
You also get lots of other resources that can guide you. Just check out the helpful videos, blog posts, and documentation if you ever need help.
2. Elfsight
With Elfsight, you also get quite a few options for support. There’s a help center where you can easily search for your queries.
You also get tons of articles and tutorials that you can look through here.
There’s also the blog if you want to learn more. For help with specific problems, you can also leave them a message on their support page. They’ll usually get back to you after a few hours.
Pricing: Smash Balloon vs Elfsight
So far, we’ve seen the features, support options, and user-friendliness of the two options. Now, let’s see if their prices are worth it.
1. Smash Balloon
First of all, you can use Smash Balloon without even paying for anything. You can just use the forever free versions of the plugins.
Since they’re free, the features are a bit basic. Still, if you just want to add simple social feeds, then these can be perfect. And if you want more features, you can just upgrade anytime.
For the premium plugins, the pricing is actually pretty simple. For each plugin, you can choose between 3 plans: Basic, Plus, and Elite.
The Basic Plan starts at just $49/year with unlimited use for 1 website.
If you want something more, then there’s the Plus Plan. For $99/year, you can have all the features of the Personal Plan plus support for 5 websites.
The next one is the Elite Plan at $149/year, which supports up to 25 websites! On top of that, you also get priority support.
And finally, there’s the All Access Bundle. You can get ALL the plugins, including Reviews Feed Pro and Social Wall Pro, for just $299/year. And that’s unlimited access for unlimited websites!
The All Access Bundle also gives you the Facebook extensions and all of Smash Balloon’s future plugins too. And remember, you can freely use it for unlimited websites.
The best part? Smash Balloon has a 14-day 100% money-back guarantee! If you’re not happy, then you can just get a full refund. So, trying out Smash Balloon is completely risk-free.
2. Elfsight
Elfsight gets a bit more complex with its pricing options. Like Smash Balloon, the Elfsight plugin has a free plan as well.
However, the free plan is limited to just 200 page views per month. If your feed is loaded more than 200 times, the feed stops working. So, a sudden influx of visitors can cause you to run out of views.
You also have to deal with Elfsight branding on your site if you go with this option.
For the paid plans, you can choose between 3 Elfsight plans: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise for a single app.
You can get the Basic Plan for $5/month, or 60$/year with support for unlimited websites. As a plus, you also get premium support, and the Elfsight logo is removed.
While that is great, it also has a limit of just 5,000 views per month. As said before, that limit can cause you problems in the future.
The second pricing plan for Elfight is the Pro Plan at $10/month or 120$/year. You can now get up to 50,000 views with this plan.
With the Premium Plan, Elfsight costs $20/month or $240/year. With this upgrade, you’ll get a limit of 150,000 views.
However, certain apps like Social Feed can actually cost more than this, so remember to check carefully before buying.
And then, you also have the All Apps Pack, where you can purchase all of their 80+ apps in one go.
Here, the Basic Pack starts at $15/month or $180/year. The bad news is that you’ll still have to deal with that 5,000 view limit per app.
To upgrade to 50,000 views per app, you can get the Pro Pack for $30/month or $360/year.
Finally, you have the Premium Pack that increases the limit to 150,000 views per app. However, it costs $60/month or $720/year!
With Smash Balloon, you will not be limited by views, no matter what plan you get. Similarly, the premium plans for Smash Balloon start at $49/year, while the cheapest Elfsight plan is $60/year.
With that in mind, you can see how Smash Balloon is a cheaper Elfsight alternative.
Is Smash Balloon the Best Elfsight Alternative?
We’ve seen everything these two have to offer. While there are other social aggregators like Powr and Tagembed, Elfsight and Smash Balloon stand out from the rest with all of their features.
Now, it’s time to make the decision and help you decide between Elfsight vs Smash Balloon for your business.
Smash Balloon
- With Smash Balloon, you can integrate your site with a smaller number of social media platforms. However, you also get a lot more options for each of them.
- Plus, these social media platforms are the most popular channels worldwide: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, TikTok, Tripadvisor, Google Reviews, TrustPilot, and more.
- Instead of a simple “link-in-bio,” you can easily create shoppable feeds to give your website visitors an amazing buying experience.
- As you can see from the customer reviews, Smash Balloon maintains a high quality of customer support. Its amazing rating of 4.9/5 stars with 1.75 million users says a lot.
- The plugin will automatically inherit your site’s existing design, plus you get a lot more customization options like themes, templates, feed layouts, color options, and feed moderation options.
- Smash Balloon has absolutely NO limits for page views.
Elfsight
- Elfsight has over 80 apps in total, and you can add them to almost any kind of website out there.
- Customization is simple with Elfsight, but you might need experience with CSS to get the most out of your social media feeds.
- You’ll have to deal with limited page views regardless of the pricing plan.
- You might need multiple apps to match the features of a single Smash Balloon plugin, plus the pricing options aren’t as budget-friendly as Smash Balloon.
While Elfsight has its plus points, it’s clear that Smash Balloon wins by most metrics here.
If you’re not a WordPress user, then Elfsight can be a great option for you. After all, it’s a lot better than manually adding social media feeds
With Smash Balloon, you get better and MORE features. On top of that, you can also enjoy top-notch customer support at a budget-friendly price.
Plus, you won’t have to worry about any limits on your views.
So, it’s easy to see why Smash Balloon is used by 1,750,000+ websites, including some of the biggest brands in the world, like Clorox and Coca-Cola.
And that’s it!
We hope this review of Elfsight and Smash Balloon helps you pick the right option for you. Now that you know about Smash Balloon as well as Elfsight, you can decide for yourself which one’s the best for your business.
Ready to add social media feeds and grow your online presence?
Grab Smash Balloon’s All Access Bundle today and get started!
If you want to boost your social media followers, check out this article on social media marketing tips and tricks.
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You may also want to check out this post on the best WordPress social media feed plugins to grow your business.
