Monarch Social Share Plugin Review – Pros & Cons

The role of social media platforms on the success of an online business is undeniable. Just by hitting a single click on the share button can instantly draw hundreds of visitors to your website and make it viral. And, it’s not just about the traffic. Apart from reaching out to people far and wide, it also helps you convert your leads into customers.

The Monarch Social Plugin from ElegantThemes has been doing a great job in empowering online businesses with the easiest options to share their content on social platforms. All you need to do is install the plugin, activate it and start sharing your work. The best thing is that there is absolutely no coding required.

In this post covering monarch plugin review, we will have a better look at this plugin, its features, installation, and settings. We will further go into the pros and cons of the plugin so you know exactly what you need to know before opting for it. So let’s begin by understanding a bit more about the plugin.

Monarch-Social-Share-Plugin-Review

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Monarch Plugin Review


What is Monarch Social Sharing Plugin?

Monarch is one of the most popular Social Share plugins in the WordPress market. When you install this plugin, you will have several beautiful social shares and follow icons that can be placed in different locations on your website.

This can be above or below the content, on a floating bar, on an image or video,  automatic popups, or automatic fly-ins.

And guess what! Even these automatic fly-ins and pop-ups also have different style options that you can choose from.

The plugin offers you more than 35 different social platform options for your website. Each of these icons can be customized with appealing color, size, etc. You might as well choose to stick to the default settings. But you have the flexibility to change it too.

You can also choose to display your social share counts if you want. Overall this plugin is a complete package if you are looking for a social share plugin for your website.

Monarch Plugin Features

Being an advanced and modern WordPress plugin, Monarch has been loaded with an amazing list of features. Check out the list it comes with –

  • More than 20 social networking options to choose from
  • Different Locations to Display the buttons
  • Different Styles For Popus and pop-ins
  • Display social share counts
  • Customize button with color, size, and effects
  • Choose your icon orientation
  • Choose your own native network color
  • Check statistics
  • Great Customize Options
  • Import/Export option
  • Support
  • Documentation

Installing Monarch Plugin

Installing Monarch is no big deal. If you have installed a plugin or a theme on your WordPress website before, then installing Monarch won’t be that difficult.

Just like any other premium plugin, you need to download the plugin first and then go to your WordPress dashboard -> Plugins -> Add New. Now upload the zipped folder that you have previously downloaded from the Monarch official website and click on the Activate button.

And that’s it, your plugin is now ready to be explored. Let’s configure it now.

Monarch Plugin Settings

To configure the plugin you will have to go to the Monarch dashboard. You can locate it under the Tools tab in your WordPress dashboard. Your Monarch dashboard will look something like this.

Selecting the Icon Location

The first option is the Locations option. Just as the name says, this option lets you place your icons in different locations. It can be one single location, a combination of two or multiple, the choice is yours.

Under this, you have five locations to choose from.

  • Sidebar
  • Popup
  • Inline
  • Flyin
  • Media

You can select the one you think will be best for your website.

#1. Sidebar

If you select the sidebar option, your icons will be displayed on your floating sidebars. Here you also have the option to select your icon color, shape and style. If you scroll down the window, you will have more options under the Display Setting tab.

Here you set up the sidebar orientations, add in animation effects, display social shares and counts, add space between the icons and much more.

#2. Popup and Flyin

The next is the pop-up option. If you use this one, your icons will show up in the form of pop-ups. Similarly, you can select the fly-in option. This will make the icons fly-in from the right bottom side of your side after your reader has spent a specific amount of time on your website.

For both these options, you can add a title and a message for your visitors. You can also add various triggers to make sure when it appears on the screen. There are several triggers that you can choose from.

  • Timed Delay Triggers – With this, you delay the time for fly-ins and pop-ups to appear until a reader has been to the page for a specific time.
  • Page Leave Triggers – This one makes the share icons pop-up or fly-in just when a reader is about to exit your page.
  • After Commenting Trigger – Just like the name says it triggers the icon display after the reader leaves a comment on your post. This increases the possibility of your content getting shared because the reader has already engaged with your content and knows what it contains.
  • Bottom Post Triggers – With this option, you can trigger the icons when your reader reaches the end of your post or page.
  • X Sec Delay Triggers – Here, the share buttons appear when the opened page has been inactive for a certain duration. By doing this you can bring back the readers attention.
  • After-Purchase Triggers – This is more for an e-commerce platform. You can trigger the popups and fly-ins after the customer has made a purchase.

#3. Inline Location

The inline option lets you add an icon within your texts. With this option, you can encourage your readers to share a specific quote or sentence or phrase from within your article.

Selecting Social Networks

The last option is the network options. By selecting this option, you can let your visitors share your media content which can be in the form of images, videos, infographics, etc. The social icons will appear on the media every time your visitor hovers over them.

Choosing the Networks

This is the most important option. In fact, you should first choose the network that you want to use on the website.

Monarch offers you more than 20 social site options to choose from. You definitely won’t be using all of them, but it makes sure that all the options are available to you.

You can select whichever network you want by clicking on the icon of your preference. But if you have just installed Monarch, your network option will be empty like this.

So you need to add your networks which can be done by clicking on the Add Network button. You will have the following window on your screen.

You can select the network by clicking on the icons here. You can scroll down the window to check out all the options available. After selecting the icons, click on the Apply button. You can arrange the order of your icons by simply dragging them and dropping them wherever you want.

Click on the Save option in order not to lose your settings.

If you have selected the Twitter option, you will notice that it has a unique field next to the icon. This won’t appear against any other icon. It’s called the username.

In this section, you can add the username of your Twitter handle. By doing this you ensure that whenever someone shares your post on Twitter, it will be followed by your business name. This helps you promote your page and reach out to more people.

Selecting Widget Style

The next option is to configure your social icon widgets.  You have several options here. From selecting the style and shape, icon position alignment, displaying follower counts and more, you can do a lot of experiment with your widget.

General Settings

This option comes with two parts. In the first part, you can command the plugin when to update your social counts. This has the option to display your counts as soon as someone follows or shares your post. For that, you need to set your frequency at 0.

By default, the frequency to update the count is 3 hours. But you can choose a time of your own as well.

Checking your Site Social Stats

The next option is to check how your website is doing on social platforms. The plugin has a section to let you know every detail about your social media performance. You can check it out by clicking on the bar icon on the top of your screen. BY doing that you can check out your details for the past 7 days. However, it also has options to display the data for the last 30 days and even a year.

By checking the stats you have an idea how people are reacting to your posts and pages across different platforms. It also gives you an idea about which platform needs more attention from you to boost the shares.

Import/Export

This option becomes handy when you have multiple websites to handle. You can customize all your buttons on one website and then import it to another. This also helps you keep a uniformed look on all your sites. Just make sure that you file is downloaded in the .json format before your start importing or exporting your files.

Monarch Social Plugin Pros and Cons

Although Monarch is a great plugin with fantastic features, the confusion whether the plugin is truly a good choice continues to lurk among users. To make it easier for you to make a choice, we are highlighting the pros and cons of the plugin in this section.

# Pros:-

Here are a few points marking the positive side of the plugin –

  • User-friendly interface
  • Easy setup and configuration
  • Attractive social buttons
  • More than 20 social sharing options
  • More than 40 social follow options
  • Quick assessment of social performance with stats
  • Hide low social share and follow
# Cons:-

Monarch also comes with its own set of flaws. Here are some of them –

  • Occasional inaccurate share counts
  • Button style may vary with themes
  • May slightly impact load time
  • Floating sidebar location is restricted to the left only

Monarch Support & Documentation

Like all modern plugins, Monarch has been very well documented both through written content and videos. It covers everything you need to know about the plugin and the instructions can be easily followed.

That makes it absolutely easy for anyone to use it without having to get stuck in the middle. You can check out the video here. It shows you exactly how to configure your plugin for the best results.

Monarch Social Sharing plugin also comes with a brilliant team to support you solve your queries. You can reach out to them any time you have a problem. They are available to chat with you at all times.

License & Pricing

The plugin is available under two different pricing plans starting from $89 for club membership.

For any packages purchased, you also get to access to other Elegant Themes products like Divi Theme, Extra theme, Bloom plugin and other products.

You also get automatic updates and 24×7 free support.

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Over to You

Monarch is a wonderful plugin that can make a huge impact on getting your posts and pages shared across various social platforms.  Even a novice with Zero professional knowledge of codes can use it easily for their websites.

The best thing is that it shows brilliant compatibility with other modern plugins too. So you can use it in combination with any other advanced plugins and that too, without compromising any of its features.

Although the icons may look slightly different on different themes, it will not hamper the overall appeal of your website. Overall the plugin is great. Whatever little negativity it has does not effect your business as all of them a negligible.

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If you want your pages to be popular across social platforms, then Monarch should definitely be your go-to plugin.

5/5 - (9 votes)