Unbounce and Instapage are two big names in landing page builders. Both of them have feature-rich and cutting-edge software to build landing, sales, checkout, or any webpages.
However, there’s a lot of difference between Unbounce and Instapage. You may get pretty confused about which one is better for you.
In this post, I will share everything you need to know before you settle for any of these two powerful and competent landing page builders.
Both Instapage and Unbounce come with a bunch of unique features that can be a USP for you. It entirely depends on what exactly you’re looking for in a landing page builder.
This whole comparison will help you understand which one of these two tools is the best fit for you.
This is a comparison to choose the best landing page builder and not a complete sales funnel.
Unlike competitors such as ClickFunnels, you can not build a sales funnel solely using any of these two tools. If that’s your aim, check out AutoFunnel Conversion Funnel by GetResponse.
Let me give an in-depth overview of both Instapage and Unbounce. And then you can decide which one is perfect for you.
Unbounce vs. Instapage
Let’s begin with Instapage.
Instapage is one of the most popular landing page builders, especially for people working on PPC campaigns.
It’s a feature-rich page builder tool for people heavily invested in social media advertising.
Instapage comes with tons of powerful features and a few completely unique to it, like the Post-Click Automation (PCA).
PCA allows you to turn your landing pages according to the visitor’s interest. We’ll talk about it later, but this is such a unique feature you won’t find anything like it in any other tool. That’s how cool it is.
Here are the most important features of Instapage:
- Drag and Drop page builder
- A vast collection of Landing page templates (conversion-optimized)
- Multiple levels of personalization
- Tons of integration options
- Advanced features like AMP, Real-Time Collaboration AdMap and Post-Click Automation really make it stand out from the crowd.
- Extensive reporting
The Drag and Drop page builder allows you to build landing pages with real-time editing.
Instapage is fast. Its page builder experience is faster, and your landing pages load faster than any other platform.
Instapage also comes with dynamic features like AMP and their Thor Render Engine. These two backend features are basically used to make your Post-Click landing pages load quicker.
Both of them help in serving personalized pages to the visitor, so they don’t bounce. This ensures you don’t lose customers and lead because of slow pages, which turn out to be frustrating for most people.
AMP pages are beneficial for targeting people on smartphones. These AMP pages load super fast and are minimal to reduce bandwidth. Instapage offers AMP for both desktop & Smartphones.
AdMap is another interesting feature by Instapage.
You can visualize your entire Ad-to-conversion workflow inside Instapage by integrating your Ad Network with the help of AdMap. After that, you can create the perfect post-click experience for visitors by understanding their behavior throughout the workflow.
Instapage comes with over 500 different page templates. You can choose between multiple designs and layouts to create a webpage you need. They create each template with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) elements that help you convert visitors into leads and customers.
Just like page templates, there are multiple form templates to choose from. You can create two-step optin forms to collect emails or get people to click on a call to action.
There are global boxes that allow you to save the edits you do on a custom element. This makes it easier to reuse and update the element from one place easier. Once you save a regular block into a global block, it will become available to use as it is. It’s a huge timesaver for developers.
Experimentation is the key advantage of using Instapage. They have three highly effective features:
- Post-click automation
- A/B + Multivariate test
- Heatmaps + Real-time analytics
Post-Click automation is a multi-step conversion optimization feature built for maximizing the ROI from Ad traffic. It works on the visitor level to target and re-target visitors and displays highly personalized landing pages.
There is an integrated heatmap feature, so you won’t need to pay extra for other heatmap tools like CrazyEgg.
Instapage allows you to run conversion tests between multiple landing pages, not just two like most others.
Integration options are key factors for many marketers. They look to overlook many options because the page builder doesn’t integrate with their choice of CRM, email marketing software, or payment processor.
That isn’t an issue with Instapage. It integrates with many popular Advertising networks, CRM, Email Marketing Softwares, Webinar platforms, Analytics Software, Support, Tracking, and E-commerce platforms.
And if Instapage has no native support for your footwear or cloud-based app, it offers native Zapier integration.
For security nerds – Every landing page is being hosted over an HTTPS connection with an auto-renewing SSL certificate.
You don’t have to worry about GDPR compliance as well. They handle it all for you. You can read about their multiple security measures on this page.
Instapage offers thorough documentation that helps you resolve the most common problems quickly.
If you’re stuck on something and need detailed help, you can reach the Instapage support team through email tickets. On the enterprise plan, you have a dedicated Customer Success Manager and Custom Feature Implementation.
Now let’s talk about Unbounce.
Unbounce is all about improving conversion. Unbounce is toe-to-toe with popularity among marketers.
It is a powerful landing page builder that allows you to build web pages of any kind. Similar to Instapage, it is also a complete Drag and Drop page editor.
Unbounce is much more loved by a variety of marketers. Its primary users are agencies, online course sellers, professional bloggers, and small business owners.
It’s easy to use. There isn’t much of a learning curve you need to go through.
One of the unique features of Unbounce is Smart Traffic. Smart Traffic is an A/B testing tool that works with the power of Artificial Intelligence.
What’s the big deal?
It works on A.I. – which is technically smarter than humans at making choices of which landing page should be shown to each individual. That means it serves each visitor a variation of landing page they are more likely to convert on.
The A.I. keeps learning. With more visits you generate, Smart Traffic will keep getting better at predicting the most relevant landing pages for each visitor.
Some of Unbounce’s best features are:
- Drag and Drop page builder that allows you to shift element without limiting the framework.
- Conversion intelligence – mixes A.I. and human learnings to get better CRO.
- Smart Traffic automated A/B testing.
- on-click PopUp optin forms and sticky notification bars.
- Dynamic text replacement for personalization.
- In-depth reports and analytics.
The editing experience is much smoother on Unbounce compared to its competitor. There isn’t much of a learning curve to pass.
Unbounce offers you a Drag and Drop page builder. Again, it’s not limiting you to move frames in fixed rows and columns, which means it’s a true drag-and-drop experience.
It also comes with a PopUp builder and a Sticky Bar add-on. The custom Pop-Up and Sticky Bar builder support everything the page builder does.
So you can build amazing Call To Action and Optin forms using the Pop-Up and Sticky Bar builder. Use it for collecting links or driving attention.
You get access to over 100 conversion-optimized landing page templates. The same goes for Pop-Up and Sticky Bar. There are multiple ready-to-use templates you can edit and publish.
Copy/Paste feature between pages – Unbounce offers this unique feature to copy a customized design of a form or text element and save it on another page element.
All pages support AMP. You can enable and disable the AMP feature on individual pages. By default, every Unbounce landing page is responsive. Even if you don’t enable the AMP, your pages are accessible and optimized from any screen size.
Script Manager – it allows you to add custom Javascript or other codes inside the Head, Footer, and Body Area of your landing pages.
You also get access to unlimited free stock images from Unsplash. Auto Image optimizer from Unbounce helps you compress and optimize every image you upload. Which makes your pages faster.
It comes with a Two-Step optin form, Gated-Content, along with a drag-and-drop lead optin form builder.
The Dynamic Text Replacement by Unbounce is one of the best features for anyone with a PPC campaign, especially with Google Ads. Dynamic Text Replacement boosts conversion by increasing the relevancy of the landing pages.
Right from the Unbounce dashboard, you have access to detailed real-time analytics and data reporting. You can connect KissMetrics, Google Analytics, Fathom, or any analytics software you want.
Integration options are limited in Unbounce. It has native support for top-rated tools like Aweber, Salesforce, InfusionSoft, FOMO, GoToWebinar, and GetResponse. You can check the complete list over here.
All landing pages, optin forms, and lead fields are GDPR compliant, and you get a free SSL certificate on hosted pages by Unbounce.
Both of them charge a monthly or an annual fee. You have an option to try both of them for 14-days completely free. I suggest using the free trial to determine if the tool is exactly what you’re looking for in terms of usability, features and if it integrates with other tools in your pipeline.
Once the trial ends, subscribe to an annual plan. Instapage offers a discount of 25% on the annual plan. That’s $50 of savings per month.
Unbounce offers a 10% discount on its annual plans. That’s equal to saving a minimum of $8 every month.
Insatpage is expensive. Unbounce is affordable, especially after its recent price reduction and changes in plans.
Unbounce has four plans:
- Launch – $80
- Optimize – $108
- Accelerate – $180
- Scale – $270
Instapage has two plans:
- Business – $149
- Enterprise – Curated & quoted specifically depending on your needs.
Instapage offers limited features on the Business plan. Only the Enterprise plan users get access to 1:1 Ad-to-Page Personalization, Real-Time visual collaboration, page migration service, and dedicated success manager.
Unbounce offers every feature it has on all plans. You can create unlimited landing pages, Pop-Ups, and Sticky Bars.
But, Unbounce has a limit on how many conversions your page is generating.
If you’re getting up to 3,000 conversions in a month, then the plan starts from $72/month and goes up to $270/month.
If you’re generating more than 3,000 conversions and 50,000 visitors in a month, Unbounce offers a Concierge plan.
The Concierge plan will give you access to dedicated on-going support from a team of conversion specialists, page-migration service, and personal onboarding.
The Business plan of Instapage gives you access to all the necessary features for $149/month. The advanced features such as AMP, Guaranteed Uptime are only available in the Enterprise plan.
Considering the price, Instapage isn’t built for beginners. Choose it only if you’re looking forward to scaling your business or if you’re professional.
Instapage doesn’t put a restriction on how many conversions you’re generating. The conversion count is unlimited on every plan of Instapage. But, you’re only allowed 30,000 visits per month on the Business plan.
Unbounce is built for both beginners and advanced marketers.
I was able to get a 20% discount on Unbounce for you on all plans for the next 3 months applicable on all plans.
But, Instapage isn’t offering any discount, as of now. When asked, their answer was weird.
One of the Instapage team members told me a discount would devalue the company.
They don’t run discount sales and offers because, according to Instapage, marketers who endorse a coupon have already lost.
Which I totally get. Instapage is a B2B and not a B2C focused company, unlike Unbounce.
However, by no means a discount lowers the product/brand value. Or that the marketers using them have no winning. It is about helping small businesses test their fate with the tool at a lower cost before settling for a premium plan.
Unbounce offers a short-term discount, which works perfectly for beginners and marketers with doubt in mind.
Instapage is ideal for serious business owners. Especially Advertisement-Focused Marketers & Customer Experience Professionals.
Both Unbounce and Instapage are true Drag and Drop editor. It means they allow you to move elements on your page without frame limits. You can actually move elements all over the page in any way you want.
It doesn’t force you to put it in a pre-defined row/column or other elements on the page. If you’ve used WordPress page builders like Beaver Builder, you’ll know how limiting it can be.
Instapage is faster on the front-end. The landing pages hosted on Instapage load quicker and are much lightweight when you use the default templates and the editor’s blocks. If you’re adding custom codes such as CSS and cloud-app Javascript, it can affect the loading time.
Unbounce has a richer user experience. Your editing experience is smoother, and it’s far easier to use compared to Instapage.
The pages load a little slower than Instapage. When using Dynamic Text Replacement, especially.
The A/B testing works better on Unbounce. Mostly because of Smart Traffic A.I.
It takes only one click to use Smart Traffic. All you have to do is to create multiple versions of a landing page. The rest is managed by Unbounce and its algorithm.
Smart Traffic filters the traffic and shows the most relevant landing page. It experiments with visitor targeting and personalization to gather data. This is then used to serve highly personalized and relevant landing pages to each visitor.
Instapage has an edge for professionals involved heavily in PPC Ad campaigns.
Instapage Post-Click personalization is its main USP. It is a highly effective feature for generating more sales & leads using the power of ad-to-page personalized landing pages.
The Post-Click Automation allows you to automatically change the page’s dynamic elements based on the data passed by the UTM parameters.
The text on the page changes automatically if the parameters match the set input. If you’re targeting multiple states for a certain business, each visitor will be served a landing page unique to their state of residence. It happens automatically, and the results are highly personalized landing pages that generate higher conversions.
Sounds sales, but it is precisely what Instapage does.
Watch this video to understand how it works.
https://instapage-app.wistia.com/medias/nv7200198y
Instapage has Post-Click as its most decorated feature, which genuinely makes it a solid competitor to Unbounce.
If your sole aim is to generate paid traffic for businesses and profit with Ad campaigns, Instapage is the BEST option. It is fast, feature-rich, and its focus is your point of business.
Having a like-minded team with software build exactly for your purposes is exactly what you need to get better ROI & ROAS. Instapage, specifically their enterprise plan, is worth it.
Unbounce has become more focused on small businesses in the past 2 years.
It is a versatile tool that anyone can use to its full potential. It is easier to learn than Instapage and has a more beginner-friendly approach to the back-end.
Unbounce has a more advanced form builder and comes with a sticky bar. Using the sticky bar, you can display ultimatum for scarcity marketing or use it as an Opt-in form to collect email addresses. You don’t get this feature with Instapage.
The core development of Unbounce is highly focused on creating technology to boost conversions with minimum effort. Look at their Conversion Intelligence marketing approach here:
I’ve been told Unbounce will release multiple new tools using the power of Conversion Intelligence. Where human intelligence is mixed with Artificial Intelligence.
At advancing with innovative technology, Unbounce is ahead in the game.
There’s also a WordPress plugin for both Unbounce and Instapage.
Using the plugin, you can host the landing page on your WordPress website’s domain name.
Instapage supports more apps via native integration than Unbounce. But both support Zapier so, integrating both of them with any platform or software you’re using won’t be an issue.
If you’re looking for a powerful landing page builder for your business that is affordable and equally effective in improving conversions, Unbounce is the best tool out there.
Unbounce has an amazing team behind the product, and I know a couple of team members personally. If you’re a growing business, they’ll help you scale it in every way possible.
Before you move on to the final verdict, you ought to know the pricing of both Unbounce and Instapage. In fact, the plans Instapage & Unbounce offer are a big factor in deciding the best.
It all comes down to your professional need and your current business requirements.
Unbounce and Instapage remain the only two landing page builders that are doing something futuristic for marketers.
When you compare them with LeadPages, WishPond, and ClickFunnels, Unbounce and Instapage are far ahead in the game.
ClickFunnles shouldn’t be considered a competitor because it is a sales funnel system, not a stand-alone page builder. Consider it if you’re looking forward to building a sales funnel and HubSpot for marketing pipelines.
Instapage is a premium tool for high-level marketers with roots deep into generating revenue from ads. It is not a tool for everyone but professionals.
Unbounce is a tool anyone can use effectively to get more conversions and increase the ROI. It’s surprising how simple its workflow is and yet how advanced you can get with it.
Instapage has no pre-sales support, and they only have a ticket support system for the Business plan users.
Unbounce has a quick chat and worldwide Phone support on weekdays, which even includes pre-sales support.
The winner is Unbounce. It is affordable, comes with futuristic CRO options, offers way more features even on smaller plans, and has better support to rely on.
Since both provide free trials without credit cards – try them both and then decide.
My recommendation?
I hope this article helped you decide and choose the right landing page builder.
Did you choose Instapage, or did you choose Unbounce? Comment your pick below.
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