The first look at your website is enough to either convert a customer or lose them!
Landing pages are of utmost importance in digital marketing because of this reason. They are vital for lead generation and are the single web page that appears when one clicks an SEO search result.
The standalone page lets one make a trade, give a special offer, and/or deliver an essential piece of information in return for the viewer’s contact information. It is basically the last step in converting a visitor into a customer.
Types of Landing Pages
There are various types of landing pages catering to different aspects that a business typically wants.
Lead generation landing page
A lead capture landing page intends to collect leads by capturing visitor data. Such pages are best used when a customer is on the verge of walking away from your product or buying it.
It gives a reward to the customer by offering them an ongoing coupon in return for their contact information that can be used later.
Click-through landing page
A click-through page acts as an intermediary between your advertisement and the page you ultimately want your customers to visit.
It a link to advertise either a product, the entire website, or an offer.
Squeeze page
Even a squeeze page is used to collect data, just like a lead generation page does. However, its only goal is to gather email addresses to increase the mailing list, having potential leads.
It involves a link, taking the visitor to the next step if they wish to purchase an item, and having an exit option if the visitor desires otherwise.
Sales page
As the name suggests, a sales page’s target is to convince people to buy the product. It is one of the most complex pages to design because of the intricacy.
This page comprises a detailed pitch, which could either sell your product too hard, undersell the item, convert potential visitors into customers or turn them away. So it needs powerful sales techniques, often following traditional rules backed by modern strategies.
Infomercial
Infomercial pages are just like their name, informative. They tell the readers elaborate stories about the product/brand, recalling the agenda behind the brand’s execution and its existence.
It is more like a long story to convert customers by making them feel more involved and connected to the product/brand.
Splash page
The most basic landing page, a splash page, is more like an announcement with a yes/no request. It has a simple copy with a few pictures and brief text.
Such pages are mainly used to verify the viewer’s age, choose the language, and similar preferences.
Viral landing pages
Such landing pages build brand awareness. They make a brand name go ‘viral.’
They usually contain links to the company’s website with informative and fun content on the landing page.
The content is made in such a manner that engages a reader and encourages them to share it with others. It is made either with a written copy or solely focused on graphic-based content.
These were the major types of landing pages one needs for their business’ online presence. However, creating these pages can be a task. But now, no more!
One of the top landing page creators makes your work effortless and less time-consuming by creating high-impact landing pages for better results.
Unbounce vs Leadpages vs Instapage
Leadpages
Founded in 2012 by US entrepreneurs, Leadpages is also among the top landing page builders in the world.
In 2013, it acquired funding of $5 million from the Foundry Group and Arthur Ventures. In 2015, Leadpages brought in their SMS text-enabled opt-in campaigns, called Leaddigits. Leaddigits allow subscribers to join an email list, sign up for webinars, and/or opt-in for a lead magnet easily, from their mobile phones.
It was again funded in 2015, with $27 million from Drive Capital, Foundry Group, and Arthur Ventures.
Leadpages acquired an email marketing startup known as Drip the next year.
To top all of this, in November 2017, Leadpages announced a partnership with Facebook and launched the Facebook Ads Builder. Today, the team continues to build further and supports more than 45,000 users.
Leadpages focuses on professional bloggers and small businesses. It is one of the few tools to offer premium CRO features at affordable prices.
Instapage
Instapage is an American software company producing high-quality landing pages for all types and sizes of businesses.
It was founded in 2012, with a vision to create a landing page platform maximizing returns through advertising personalization.
In 2018, they partnered with Google to be the first landing page platform ever to offer Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) as an option to its users. The same year, they raised $15 million in their Series A funding, led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
Instapage is largely focused on marketing agencies and CPC advertisement professionals. They have an exclusive tech to maximize conversion rate from Advertisement campaigns.
Unbounce
The Canada-based software company, Unbounce is a SaaS for creating landing pages for websites, founded in 2009. they design landing pages for specific advertisements, and generally, ask the web visitors for their contact information as a trade to a piece of content.
The company raised $1 million in 2012 in an initial group investment and has been one of the top software companies producing landing pages. They also produce webinars, podcasts, web series, comparing various landing pages to one another while providing practical conversion optimization tips.
Unbounce is also the host of the annual Call To Action Conference for industry professionals. In 2016, it was ranked as the 14th fastest tech company in Canada and has also extended its offices in Germany and Quebec.
It uses AI and ML to determine which landing pages perform better than others, and build on them for more traffic, productivity and conversion. Its free Landing Page Analyzer uses this process to determine the reason behind landing page performance, and how to better it substantially.
Unbounce has a diverse userbase. From professional bloggers, marketers, small businesses to large corporate enterprises. It has the best client retention and customer on-board team, period.
Now lets’ begin comparing the features of all three landing page builders.
Page Templates
Unbounce
Unbounce gives you 100+ pre-curated templates to start creating your landing page. Their templates are one of the best that any landing page creator provides and outshines that of Instapage’s.
They are more in sync and look more appealing when compared.
They majorly have 10 campaign types for these templates, namely –
- Coming soon templates
- Books templates
- Click-through templates
- E-Course templates
- Sales pages templates
- Lead-gen templates
- Webinar templates
- E-book templates
- Events templates
- Products templates
These different templates, segregated according to the page creator’s specific needs, help minimize thinking and develop a suitable layout.
If you are looking to create a page to generate leads, there is a pre-designed template.
If you want to showcase your products, there is a specific set of templates for that too!
Leadpages
Leadpages provide you with 130+ custom templates not only for landing pages but for the entire website.
These templates look pretty proper and have a unique feature that lets you sort these by conversion rates.
The exact rate, of course, depends on the content you add, but it indeed gives you real-world insights on which template is the best suitable for you.
They divided the templates in Leadpages into many categories, narrowing them down to –
- About and bio section
- Free sources or download section
- Checkout section
- Author section
- Waitlist/coming soon, section
- Webinar/virtual event section
- Sales section
- Event section
- Newsletter/sign up section
- Thank you, section
- Upsell/bonus section
- Contest/giveaway section
- Consultation section
- Offer/coupon/discount section
Instapage
Instapage offers you a set of 90 templates, the lowest among all. However, they claim to have 200+ templates, but not all are rightly available/visible in the interface.
The templates they have look sharp, clean, and pretty modern. However, these templates are best suitable if you have just started out and are trying your hands for the first time on creating a landing page.
They divided the templates on Instapage into the below sections –
- Lead generation templates
- App templates
- E-book templates
- Click through templates
- Two-step templates
- Webinar templates
- Event templates
- Thank you templates
The Drag & Drop Editor
Unbounce
Unbounce’s drag-and-drop editor is just at the right spot among the list of the most efficient drag-and-drop editors!
It gives you the flexibility and easy design to effortlessly edit anything and everything you wish to.
Unbounce does not limit you to a pre-made design/model with a rigid low/column like most page builders. It gives you the freedom to choose your rows, columns, margins, and widths, along with many other editing facilities.
Drag the elements from wherever you want them to wherever you want them!
They also offer widgets for forms, several buttons, and a lot more. What separates it from Instapage or Leadpages is that it makes it highly seamless to add your JavaScript or CSS.
You also get the facility to fully customize your mobile version of the landing page, along with creating dedicated AMP designs. Overall, their drag-and-drop editor is more inclined and targets developers since it has more advanced options.
Leadpages
Unlike Unbounce, Leadpages’ drag-and-drop editor is not as flexible. It only allows you to move elements in a rigid space within the set-up grid.
Hence, it is not a free-form editor.
It gives you a pre-decided suggested section, where you can place your elements–but that is about. If you wish to move your heading just a centimeter towards the right, you might not be able to do that with Leadpages.
They do not have a responsive design compared to Unbounce and Instapage. It makes your designs automatically responsive, but restricts you from customizing the mobile version, also forbidding you the AMP editing mechanism.
However, you get these facilities with Unbounce and Instapage.
Instapage
Just like Unbounce, even Instapage’s editor is super flexible. You can move any element to any spot that you wish with no area restrictions.
It is 100% free form, and like in Unbounce, you also get free widgets for adding buttons, forms, countdown timers, and a lot more.
Instapage also allows you to create a separate design for desktop and mobile devices, again completely customizable. It makes your desktop design automatically responsive and allows you to edit how the mobile version looks and works.
Again, like Unbounce, you can create dedicated AMP designs with Instapage.
Pricing
Unbounce
Unbounce is best suited for the ones who want to have a mediocre plan. Not too costly, not very inexpensive.
Unbounce limits the number of published landing pages according to the plan you choose. However, you can create unlimited of them.
The cheapest tier, called ‘Launch,’ costs $90 a month, billed yearly. This involves publishing 75 landing pages at one time with 8 pop-ups and/or sticky bars.
The Optimise plan costs $135, billed annually. It lets you publish 150 landing pages together and 16 of the pop-ups and sticky bars.
The next plan is the Accelerate plan, costing $225 per month, billed annually.
Their topmost plan is the Enterprise or Scale plan, which is entirely customizable. It starts at $270, billed annually, and goes beyond it according to your requirements. When you opt for an Enterprise plan, let us know via our Contact page. We will get you a deal with free onboarding.
Leadpages
Comparing the 3 together, Leadpages is the most affordable of them all. All the plans that it offers allow you to create unlimited landing pages along with pop-ups and alert bars.
The cheapest plan available in Leadpages is their Standard plan, costing $27, billed annually. It allows you to use the complete builder but does not have the A/B testing.
The next plan, called the Pro plan, costs $59 per month, billed annually, and includes A/B testing.
Finally, their top-tier plan is the Advanced plan, costing $239 per month, billed annually. It has the highest number of integrations, sub-accounts, and a one-on-one quick start call, which is highly personalized.
Leadpages offer a 14-day free trial.
Instapage
Probably the most expensive among the three, Instapage only offers one pre-set tier for all its customers.
It is their Optimising plan. However, they do have an option of a fully customizable plan, known as the Enterprise plan. You will get the Enterprise plan’s pricing by contacting their sales department and conveying your requirements to them.
The Optimising plan is billed monthly at $199 per month. This plan gives you access to the entire builder, A/B testing, analytics and reporting, and all the other features that one needs to create the desired landing page.
For full personalization and AMP support, one needs to get the Enterprise plan.
Instapage vs. Unbounce vs. Leadpages Comparison Table
Features | Unbounce | Leadpages | Instapage |
Ability to customize pages | Excellent | Very Limited | Excellent |
Amount of landing page features | Many features, including new pop-ups and sticky bars. | The highest number of features, including a variety of pop-ups, exit-intent options, and much more. | A good number of features but lacks pop-ups. Includes countdown timers and multi-step forms. |
Hosting tool and integration options | Pages are hosted either on their servers or WordPress. Includes most email marketing tools and Google analytics for integration. | Pages are hosted on most websites, including WordPress and their own servers. Integrations include MailChimp, Salesforce, and more. | Pages are hosted on most websites, including WordPress and their own servers—100+ integrations, including HubSpot, keap, and more. |
A/B testing | Available | Also Available | Available |
Publishing | Publish to WordPress, or choose a custom domain name. | You Publish to WordPress or choose a custom domain name. | Publish to WordPress, Drupal, or choose a custom domain name. |
Analytics & Reporting | Organized reporting of traffic and conversions. Includes traffic and conversion reports sent via e-mail. | Organized reporting and pictorial representation of the analytics via graphs make it easy to understand the traffic and conversions. | Excellent reporting functionality and conversion tracking. Includes heatmaps in premium plans. |
Support options | Phone, email, and live chat support for all plan holders. Enterprise pack also includes coaching. | Differs according to plan. Only email support for the lowest plan. Phone support only for the highest costing plan. | Live chat and email support for all plan holders. |
Ease of use | A little harder to operate than Instapage; it offers a lot of functionalities, though. It is good for marketers building a lot of landing pages but less interesting and tougher for owners who are trying to build through it for the first time. | The accessible editor makes it easy to use for everyone. It puts your content in pre-defined blocks, working in a grid system–so there is less scope of confusion and work becomes simpler. | It is the easiest and most intuitive landing page software to exist. Set up and launch your landing pages within minutes! |
Some unique features of Unbounce that others do not have:
- The Smart Traffic feature on Unbounce matches visitors to the variants that they might convert to.
What is the Smart Traffic tool?
The Smart Traffic tool is backed by machine learning that tests, predict, and optimizes all your campaigns. It helps you see real gains, increases form fills, and gives you more leads going through the sale – in no time!Also, it eliminates the ‘one page fits all’ theory and personalizes the user experience. Each user is given relevant content according to his/her behavior.
It positively boosts your conversion rates through Automatic Intelligence Powered Optimisation. Automatically looking at your user’s attributes and sending them to the area they would most likely desire helps maximum visitors convert into customers.
This Unbounce Smart Traffic feature optimizes is as few as 50 visits itself, and the pages see a 30% conversion lift with this tool.
- Unbounce magically matches the visitor’s search intent. The dynamic text replacement does so by swapping out text for graphics to match the search terms the visitor used et to land on your page. This increases conversion chances.
What is Dynamic Text Replacement?
The Dynamic Text Replacement stops showing the same plain content to all your customers and rather focuses on in-built and comprehensive personalization.
It shows customized content for each ad you put, too, without building multiple landing pages. DTR tailors the text to match keyword parameters, pay-per-clicks, and exactly what the user has been searching for!
It successfully enhances the text for your content marketing and helps convert more visitors into customers by providing them with an enriching and truly personal experience.
- They have a custom Script Manager that applies your custom scripts universally across multiple landing pages.
- Clone and edit an entire landing page, most likely your best-selling landing page for new campaigns.
- Unbounce offers a real-time data dashboard, which can also be linked to your Google Analytics.
- All these tools have specially in-built version control that takes you back to the older version of the edit if you wish to restore it.
Some unique features of Leadpages that others do not have:
- Leadboxes are one of the unique features only Leadpages enjoy. It is a pop-up window that directly converts your user into a customer by offering them your direct product through a link, for example, a free e-book or a webinar sign-up.
How does this feature actually help?
They are highly impactful because they streamline the opt-in process. This means it allows visitors to quickly subscribe in just 2 easy steps.As it is made extremely effortless for them to opt-in/subscribe, the chances of them subscribing increase.
It integrates your e-mail and helps you build your mailing list by sending the subscriber’s information to you. This helps reach out to future potential customers, send them product updates, and a lot more.
- Leadpages is compatible with Google Tag Manager, allowing you to update tags from a desired central location.
- It also allows you to duplicate pages and edit them.
- Leadpages is the only landing page builder out of the three to have an automatic saving. You will never lose your work! It triggers every single time you make a change.
- It gives you more control over your social media handles by adding and customizing your page’s Open Graph Tags.
- Its Lead Magnet Delivery System automatically emails digital files and ‘opt-in bribes’ whenever a new subscriber joins.
What is the Lead Magnet Delivery System, and how it helps?
A Lead Magnet Delivery System is an automated feature helping your subscribers receive different emails that contain the incentive according to the lead magnet they opted for.
A lead magnet is basically a free item or service given away by a brand with a motive to gather contact information. This could involve a free consultation, discount coupon, samples, trial subscriptions, etc.
Such an email comprises a download link for the visitor to get hold of what they were looking for, and you get the contact of a potential future buyer.
This helps in growing your email list.
It also helps in building trust and authority from prospective buyers. Since visitors are not aware of who you are initially, you ought to build trust by offering free trials/samples or something that helps them feel at authority.
The LMD system does exactly that!
- All these tools have specially in-built version control that takes you back to the older version of the edit if you wish to restore it.
Some unique features of Instapage that others do not have:
- Instapage is the only platform with a robust post-click optimization mechanism. It gives marketers the chance to create, optimize, and personalize all post-click landing pages.
What is Post Click Optimisation?
This involves creating landing pages optimized with post-clicks, personalized for each individual in the set of audience.It starts from a greeting message matched post-ad and ends with a customized thank you page and email. It basically involves everything that happens between the ad click and conversion.
This helps in maximizing conversions. Since it focuses majorly on the digital advertising journey, as it begins with an ad click, it helps in ad mapping, scalable creation, optimization, and visitor personalization!
Post-click optimization is so important because, according to statistics, 3.8% of Ad traffic from search ends up in a conversion. This means, if you spend $1,000,000 a year on ads, you generate 38,000 leads. To double the leads, you need to spend $2,000,000 – which is anything but reasonable.
However, by optimizing your post-click landing pages, your customer acquisition efficiency also increases.The average conversion rate for Instapage is about 22% (for 14,000 Instapage customers). This means, if you were to convert at this rate, by spending $1,000,000, you would generate 220,000 leads.
3 times more than what you were generating before with half the money!
- Instapage also offers the service of AdMap. AdMap enables you to sync, visualize, analyze, and evaluate all your advertising campaigns and how they are doing in Instapage. It also clarifies how many post-click conversions you require and update the page experiences accordingly to match the ad.
How is AdMap a useful feature?
AdMaps help you connect ads and make it a truly personalized experience for the users. It automatically imports your ad account structure, helping you visualize campaigns and map ads in a customized manner.
AdMaps also evaluate the post-click stage to maintain the ad-to-page relevancy.
This immensely boosts the digital advertising/marketing ROI by decreasing the cost per acquisition and increasing conversion rates, and improving the 1:1 ad-to-page personalization ratio.
In a nutshell, AdMap helps you manage your campaigns efficiently by visualizing all your ads, matching post-click landing pages, and personalizing each visitor’s experience.
- Instapage also gives a personalized landing page experience by matching visitor’s intent. It does it with data such as keywords, firmographics, demographics.
- It also offers a post-click score, which basically elaborates on how a click/link has performed.
- Instapage has a unique feature of a 1:1 ad-to-page personalization, enabling marketers to create and optimize the target audience’s experience of a post-click landing in minutes and at scale.
- It had a dedicated Compatibility Support Module, including components displaying case information and visualizations. Each information is connected to a data source and provides the customer service agent with an overview of new, assigned, and high-priority cases.
- All these tools have specially in-built version control that takes you back to the older version of the edit if you wish to restore it.
So which is the perfect landing page builder for you?
Summing up all the tools to help you understand better which might be the right fit for you –
- Unbounce: Exceptional editor with flawless templates and design can be used for more than just creating landing pages. It also a little more affordable when compared to Instapage. For best and advanced designs, especially if you are a developer, Unbounce will be the right fit!
- Leadpages: Not a highly flexible editor brings in rigidity when creating a landing page. However, it is the most affordable among all and offers almost the same features as the other two. It allows you to build entire websites! If you are a little tight on budget but still wish to access all the features, Leadpages is your go-to page builder!
- Instapage: It has an exceptional editor like Unbounce, advanced customization tools, and great team collaboration tools/features. But it is the most expensive of them all. If you want an easy-to-use tool, Instapage is your savior!
Well, all the three builders we talked about above are pretty great in their own aspects.
They all offer you beautiful templates, easy drag-and-drop editors, and customizations. There is less scope for a wrong or regretful decision here, and it only depends on your particular needs.
Leave a Reply