Elfsight alternatives, widget by widget.

Why do people look for an Elfsight alternative?

Usually because of views. Elfsight counts a view every time a page carrying the widget loads, pools every widget of one app into one monthly allowance, and hides the widget from visitors when it runs out. The free plan allows 200 views a month, and each kind of widget is priced as its own app.

Elfsight is a library of website widgets: 96 apps on its pricing page, from social feeds and Google reviews to forms, chat, pop-ups, cookie banners and event calendars, each built in one editor and added to a site with a short piece of code. Every app is sold on its own plan, or all of them together in a bundle. Most people who search for an alternative use one or two of the feed or review widgets, and arrive with one of these four experiences.

• The widget vanished. The app’s views for the month ran out, so Elfsight hid it from visitors until the allowance reset. Nothing was broken; that is the documented rule.
• The free plan ran out in days. 200 views a month is about seven page loads a day, and your own page loads can count too.
• Two widgets, two plans. An Instagram feed and a Google reviews widget are two apps, each with its own allowance and its own subscription, unless you buy the bundle.
• The feed looks old. The FAQ on Elfsight’s Social Feed page gives refresh intervals of about 48 hours for Instagram and X, 24 hours for YouTube and 6 hours for Facebook.

How does Elfsight’s view limit work?

A view is one load of a page that carries the widget, whoever loads it and whether or not they scroll down to it. The limit is per app and per month, shared by every widget of that app on every website. Past it, the widget disappears until the allowance resets or you upgrade.

Elfsight’s help center sets the rules out plainly, in its articles on the view limit and on deactivated widgets. In short:

• A view is counted each time a page with the widget loads. It is not a unique visitor, not a click, and not proof that anyone saw the widget.
• Two widgets of the same app on one page count as two views. The same widget on several pages counts once per page load.
• The limit belongs to the app, not to a widget or a website: every Google Reviews widget you have shares one monthly allowance.
• Your own visits count unless you stay logged in to Elfsight in the same browser you use to work on your site.
• When the allowance runs out, visitors see nothing, as if the widget were never installed, and you see a notice in its place. Elfsight sends several warning emails first. The widget returns on the next reset date, or at once if you upgrade.

The bundle of all 96 apps gives each app the same views and widgets as the table, per app, from $15 a month billed yearly ($18 monthly) at Basic to $60 ($72) at Premium. Every plan, the free one included, allows unlimited websites.

How many views will your website use?

On Elfsight, multiply the visits to pages carrying the widget by the pages each visitor opens, then by the widgets of that app on each page. A feed in a site-wide footer is the costly case: a visitor who opens five pages uses five views. A tool that counts visitors instead of page loads counts that visitor once.

The same traffic produces very different numbers depending on what counts as a view. Here is one small site, 1,000 visitors a month, counted both ways. Elfsight counts page loads, as its help center describes. Vitraz counts each visitor once per feed per day.

The second and third rows are the common case, and they are why a footer feed outgrows Elfsight’s Basic plan (5,000 views) on a site this small: the second sits exactly at the limit, and the third is four times over it. To estimate your own number, look at your analytics: the page views of the pages carrying the widget are close to Elfsight’s count, and the visitors to those pages, counted per day, are close to ours.

How Vitraz counts, precisely: a visitor is a one-way hash of their IP address and browser, never stored as it came in, and each visitor counts once per feed per day, however many pages they open. Search engines rendering your page do not count at all. The allowance is 1,000 on Free, 10,000 on Spark and 30,000 on Studio, and Growth and Scale have no view limit.

What replaces each Elfsight widget?

Match the alternative to the widget. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and Bluesky each give you a free official embed for your own posts, and WordPress has a free RSS block. Google reviews and feeds that mix networks have no free official version, so those are the widgets worth paying a tool for.

Instagram and Facebook feeds

Instagram’s own profile embed is free and needs no app: copy it from your profile in a web browser and you get your header and a grid of your latest posts, though you cannot pick posts or restyle the grid. Our guide to how to embed an Instagram feed walks through it. For a Facebook Page, Meta’s Page Plugin shows the latest posts and keeps them current; see how to embed a Facebook feed. We will be plain about our side: Vitraz cannot connect Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn yet. The integrations are built and waiting on each platform’s review. If you need one of those feeds in your own layout today, Elfsight or another tool with that approval is the practical choice.

YouTube, X, Bluesky and RSS

Each has a free official route. Every YouTube channel has a playlist of all its uploads, and one line of HTML shows the whole channel: see how to embed a YouTube channel. X’s publish tool makes timeline code, but in our logged-out test the timeline showed only its fallback link while single posts rendered; our guide to how to embed a Twitter feed has the details. Bluesky gives every public post free embed code (our Bluesky embed guide), and WordPress’s RSS block shows any feed’s titles and excerpts, though never its pictures (how to display an RSS feed). These are the networks Vitraz reads today, and YouTube, RSS, Bluesky and Mastodon connect on the free plan.

Google reviews

Google has no copy-and-paste reviews widget. Its free Maps embed shows your star rating and review count, and review text comes only through Google’s APIs, which our guide to how to add Google reviews to your website explains. A tool is worth paying for here. A Google reviews widget from Vitraz reads a business’s public reviews through the Places API, so it shows the five reviews Google returns, refreshed daily, from the Studio plan.

Feeds that mix several networks

Elfsight’s Social Feed widget mixes networks in one feed, with manual approval and allow and block lists for authors. Nothing free does this, because each network’s embed shows only its own posts. The tools that do are social media aggregators: Vitraz, and Juicer, Curator.io, Taggbox, Walls.io, EmbedSocial, Flockler and Tagembed among others. They differ in how they count views, how fast they refresh and how much moderation they give you, which our page on choosing a social media aggregator compares without naming winners. A Vitraz social media aggregator feed mixes Google reviews, YouTube, X, RSS, Bluesky and Mastodon today. Elfsight’s Social Feed page listed neither Bluesky nor Mastodon when we checked.

Forms, chat, pop-ups and the rest

This is where Elfsight is broadest, and where Vitraz has nothing to offer: we make social feeds and review walls only. Most site builders have their own forms and pop-ups, and other widget libraries, such as Common Ninja and POWr, cover similar ground. If most of your Elfsight widgets are of this kind, keeping Elfsight and moving only the feed may be the sensible split.

How does Vitraz compare with Elfsight?

Vitraz is narrower: social feeds and Google reviews, not 96 apps. It counts a visitor once per feed per day rather than every page load, refreshes YouTube and X far more often on paid plans, and reads Bluesky and Mastodon. Elfsight allows unlimited websites on every plan and connects Instagram, Facebook and TikTok today.

For one feed on one small site the two cost about the same, and the difference is in what a view is. For a single Google reviews widget, Elfsight is cheaper: its Basic plan is $5 a month billed yearly, while Google reviews start on our Studio plan at $12 a month billed yearly ($15 monthly), because every read of Google’s Places API is billed. The full list of what each plan includes is on our pricing page.

When is Elfsight still the better choice?

When you use several kinds of widget and want one account and one bill, when one widget runs on many websites, when you need Instagram, Facebook or TikTok feeds today, or when one Google reviews widget on a small site is all you need. In each of those cases Elfsight does more or costs less.

• Many kinds of widget. Forms, chat, pop-ups, event calendars and feeds in one editor and one bundle is something a feed tool does not replace.
• Many websites. Every Elfsight plan allows unlimited websites. Ours allow 1 on Free and Spark, 3 on Studio, 10 on Growth, 25 on Scale.
• Instagram, Facebook or TikTok today. Elfsight connects them now. Ours wait on each platform’s review, and we will not pretend otherwise.
• One reviews widget on a quiet site. At 5,000 views a month, Elfsight’s Basic plan covers a site with modest traffic for less than our Studio plan.

The case for moving is equally specific: a feed in a footer or a sidebar across many pages, a free plan that runs out mid-month, a feed that needs to be fresher than every day or two, or a wall that mixes in Bluesky, Mastodon or RSS. If none of those describes your site, keep what works.

How do you switch without a gap on your site?

Build the replacement before you remove anything. Connect the same accounts, match the layout, and check the new feed on a test page and on a phone. Then swap the code page by page, remove the old code everywhere, and cancel the old plan once the new feed has run for a day without problems.

1. 1List every page with the old widget. Search your site builder for “elfsight” in code blocks, and check the site-wide header and footer, where scripts are easy to forget.
2. 2Build the new feed. Connect the same accounts, choose a layout and colours that match the old one, and decide whether new posts appear on their own or wait for your approval.
3. 3Test it before visitors do. Embed it on a hidden or draft page, then open that page on a phone and in a private window, where you are logged in to nothing.
4. 4Swap the code page by page. Paste the new embed code where the old one was. On WordPress, our WordPress social feed plugin places the feed with a block or a shortcode instead.
5. 5Remove the old code everywhere, including any script left in the header or footer, then reload each page to confirm only the new feed loads.
6. 6Cancel the old plan. Elfsight lets you cancel from your account at any time, and its pricing page promises a full refund, for any reason, within 14 days.