In today’s cut-throat competitive world people want to see even imperfections, perfectly. So the question here arises that why do we need an animated event countdown timer? The reasoning to this is fairly simple. To keep your audience engaged and in anticipation, we provide them a visual aid as to when their wait shall come to an end. This could be used for many reasons viz. an event occurrence, product launch, off-season sale, product expiry date or even for launching a website till the time it’s under construction. With reasons galore, this makes the wait worthwhile.

WordPress has many such plugins and here at Templatetoaster WordPress website builder, i am going to compare 5 such great ones because their features make them stand out from the crowd.

Maintenance Mode

Maintenance mode WordPress plugin

 

Your website is currently undergoing changes, but you want to keep your visitors in anticipation of something really happening coming up. Then, this is just the plugin that can do the job for you. This plugin comes with six different responsive themes to choose from. The pro version of this supports the countdown timer, custom HTML, and progress bar.

There is also an option to add your own custom content with the help of visual editor on maintenance mode page with WordPress shortcodes support. Social icons and subscribe forms are also supported on maintenance mode page.

WP Maintenance Mode

wp-maintenance-mode-wordpress-plugin

This plugin can be activated whenever you want your website visitors to know that your blog is down for maintenance or if you want to put up a coming soon page for a new website.

However, only the users who have admin rights get complete access to the blog that includes the front end as well.

The date can be set with a countdown timer for visitor information or a value and unit can be set for information purpose.

This works with WordPress Multisite installs which imply that every blog from the network shall be having its own maintenance settings.

Its other features include:

  • Responsive
  • Newsletter subscriptions
  • contact form
  • Countdown
  • Social media icons

Minimal Coming soon and Maintenance mode

minimal-coming-soon-and-maintenance-mode-wordpress-plugin

To create a Coming soon page without adequate coding knowledge is simply outstanding. This is where WordPress has helped so many non-developers create wonderful websites, using their awesome plugins. Coming soon and maintenance mode plugin allows you to do just that, and that too, very quickly and easily. It’s one of the best ways that your website page will be back shortly.

The salient features of the plugin include:

  • Compatible with any WordPress theme
  • Completely customizable
  • Can be integrated with MailChimp to collect emails
  • Powerful options panel

T(-) Countdown

t-countdown-wordpress-plugin

T(-) Countdown is another WordPress plugin that displays a highly customizable, flash-free countdown timer using with HTML5, using either a sidebar widget or shortcode.

This plugin is the perfect choice to inform your website’s visitors about an upcoming event. Viewing pleasure is great in this plugin, thanks mainly to CSS for that.

Uji Countdown

Similar to T(-) Countdown, Uji Countdown also allows you to display a fully customizable HTML5 Countdown Timer countdown on your post or page without any difficulty. This plugin comes with a recurring timer.

Its other features include:

  • Email subscription
  • Customizable
  • Server time or user time option
  • Unlimited styles

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Features Comparison of WordPress Countdown Timer Plugins

In the WordPress plugin repository, the above mentioned five plugins are heavily capable and popular for website maintenance modes. Here is the feature comparison chart of these plugins.

Features

Maintenance Mode

WP Maintenance Mode

Coming soon and Maintenance mode

T(-) Countdown

Uji Countdown

Simple & easy to use interface

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

HTML5 Support

Yes 

 

Yes 

Yes 

Yes

Fully customizable (change colors, texts, and backgrounds)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Subscription form (export emails to .csv file)

 

Yes

Yes

 

Yes

Countdown timer (remaining time)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Contact form (receive emails from visitors)

 

Yes

 

 

 

Enable Animation

 

 

Yes

 

Yes

Uses CSS3

 

 

Yes

  
Coming soon page

 

Yes

 

 

 

Landing page templates

 

Yes

 

 

 

WordPress multisite

 

Yes

 

 

 

Responsive design

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes (Pro / Premium Version)

Social media icons

Yes

Yes

Yes

 

 

Works with any WordPress theme 

Yes

 

 

 

SEO options

Yes (Pro version)

Yes

 

 

 

Exclude URLs from maintenance

 

 

 

 

 

Server Time or User Time option

 

 

 

 

Yes

Simple using shortcode

 

 

 

Yes

Yes

Multi-Language Option    

Yes

 

Conclusion

The above chart precisely compares every feature of each plugin. To choose the best among these depends on your requirements. If you want a responsive design with landing page templates then go for WP Maintenance mode, if you are happy just with countdown timer then Maintenance mode should be your choice. Most of these plugins support all standard themes, but if your theme is not supported your can design a new standard compliant WP theme using TemplateToaster website builder software. This WordPress theme builder design the WP themes according to guidelines set by WP Developer group.