Hey everyone.
Jason here, digital marketing consultant and this landing page software review comparison
for 2020.
We're going to answer the question.
What is the best landing page software for fill in the blank for whatever your situation
is?
So timestamp table of contents in the description, along with some deeper dive reviews, looking
at the pros and cons of each one of these individually, as well as comparing them side
by side.
So here we're going to go through all the solutions you have and then I'll link up in
the description to several playlists and videos that take a deeper dive on these individually.
So before we dive into our three sections here, we're going to look at landing page
builders.
Then we're going to look at landing page builders for WordPress.
We're going to look at landing page builders that are also just full blown marketing suites
and funnel builders.
And then finally, we will wrap up with my personal recommendations for each one.
So I've heard you loud and clear.
I'll actually give my personal recommendations at what we use at the end of the video.
So as we dive in here, there are two very important things.
Number one, whatever software you choose, it needs to have split testing, for some reason,
not all landing page softwares have split testing, as you're about to see you need AB
split testing saying to use Google optimize or Google analytics experiments, it doesn't
count, because you can do that with a non-landing page builder too, and those solutions are
free.
And if you don't know what those are, that's okay, because you don't want to have to mess
with those.
And then number two, you want to make sure that if you already have an email autoresponder,
the landing page software that you're looking at actually integrates.
And what I mean by this is you need to go to the landing page software site that you're
looking at.
You're going to scroll all the way down and you're going to look for support links or
their knowledge base, and then search your email software provider or email autoresponder
provider, and actually look at their support to see how it actually integrates.
It's so ridiculous.
How many of these landing page software say, Hey, we integrate with this one and then you
go and look and it has to be done through Zapier or automatic.io or something dumb.
So make sure that it does actually have a native integration.
And I'm just including this here at the beginning, since I don't know what your email autoresponder
is.
So you're definitely going to need to make sure that it works with whatever solution
you wind up choosing.
So we'll kick things off with just the straight landing page builders.
That's all they do, standalone software as a service, they build landing pages and that's
what they do.
We're going to be looking at lead pages, Instapage and Unbounce.
Now the first two I've actually used, and I just have some secondhand experience with
Unbounce.
So first we're going to go through arguably the best one on this list.
So go and hit that like button, if you like that, you got to your answer within the first
three minutes of the video, and that is going to be lead pages, hands down of all of the
page builders, when it comes to just landing pages, lead pages’ wins and wins for two
main reasons.
Number one is the price that you're not going to be paying hundreds of dollars a month for
the software.
And number two, it has the largest template selection out of all of these solutions.
Now their lowest priced package actually does not include AB testing, which just makes it
absolutely useless.
So you need to go with their middle tier package or higher.
And so that's what we're going to compare here.
You're going to have an incredibly large template library.
They also have two different types of templates.
So if you're one of those people who just wants to dive in, choose a template, change
out the copy and then get going, and then lead pages has you covered, because they do
have some templates where all you have to do is change out the text and it's actually
designed to just be ready to go.
That's something I actually really liked about lead pages, landing pages with Lead pages.
There we go.
But if you are one of those people who wants to customize everything, then lead pages also
has that ability.
They also do integrate with almost every other software or marketing software suite or auto
responder that you could think of.
So they do have a pretty robust integrations set as well.
They also allow you to do checkout.
So you're not going to be doing anything fancy with sales funnels or upsells or down sells
or cross sells or little order bumps.
But if you need to collect credit card information to sell your service or product, then lead
pages also has you covered there.
Now, the next on our list is Instapage and Instapage is complete overkill for 90% of
business owners and entrepreneurs.
Instapage is something that I actually used to use when I worked at a marketing agency
and I really liked the page building experience.
I found it just as fluid and easy as lead pages.
Although my business partner in contrast does not like Instapage at all.
The page building experience.
So it definitely seems to be either you really like the page building experience or, oh,
my gosh, this is not intuitive.
And it's just knowing how many times you have to click.
So what is great about instapage is the ability to create dynamic tests.
So if you're spending 10 to $20,000 a month in Google ads for search, then you're actually
going to be able to change your landing page headlines and certain copy elements based
upon the exact ad that was clicked.
That's really cool.
That's really awesome.
They have some really sweet analytics around that.
They also have heat maps.
I mean, if you're a data and analytics nerd, this is for you, but of course the only problem
is, if you're not spending 10 or 20 grand a month on advertising, then you probably
don't need all that stuff and paying $150 a month just doesn't make a whole, a lot of
sense for most people compared to all that extra stuff that you get, that you're not
actually going to use compared to lead pages.
And finally, we have Unbounce, which starts at $160 a month and then goes up from there.
And that I really only recommend if you are looking to start your own marketing agency,
you're definitely going to need at least three clients paying you anywhere from 150 to $200
a month in management fees, in order for the math to work out for you to actually buy their
enterprise plan or their mid-tier plan.
And that does it for the landing page builder.
So this might list probably seems a little short and anticlimactic, but lead pages is
just continuing, even in 2019, it was the top and in 2020, it's still the top.
Now, when it comes to doing more than just collecting that name and email, and then shipping
that information off to your autoresponder, there are some full blown marketing solutions
like Click Funnels, Kartra, Kajabi get response and con Verde.
So we're going to talk about all, but the last one simply because I haven't had personal
experience with it and we haven't had any clients that have used it.
And so go ahead and take a look at this chart.
This is all of the math that we could talk about.
So let's just get the pricing out of the way before we even start talking about features.
The cost column shows the actual monthly cost of the software, not with getting locked into
an annual subscription.
So year one is assuming that you pay month to month, year two is assuming that you actually
like the software.
So you go ahead and prepay a full year.
I definitely don't recommend paying a full year for a software that you haven't figured
out, whether or not you like it, because the software has changed and you might halfway
through the year realize, oh, actually my business grew a lot, so maybe I need to move,
or it's not as great as you thought.
So it's very important that you don't just dive in and try and save that 20 or 30%, and
get locked into a particular service when you're not quite sure if you love it yet.
So then the total column shows your total costs over that two-year period.
And the limits are actually, what's very important.
So you can look at the abilities.
They pretty much all do the same thing, but something that's very important to note, is
the limits on Kartra and Kajabi.
You'll notice that with Kartra their starter package, you can only have 2,500 people on
your list.
Now, I don't know about you, but if you go two years and you're paying for the software
and you only have 2,500 people, you probably have a software that's way overkill.
So you're most likely going to be stuck with the silver package.
And that gives you up to 1,250 leads.
And so this is pretty much just your list size.
It's the same way get response is measuring how many people are on your email list.
Although you can tell the get response has a much more reasonable pricing structure.
So I'll allow you to pause the screen.
If you want to look deeper on all of these, I'm just going to point out the two that make
the most sense economically.
Number one is click funnels and number two is get response.
Now, the only reason Click Funnels wins in this category is because Get Response does
not have a very good shopping cart sequence or it doesn't have a shopping cart sequence.
There you go.
So what's nice with get response and Click Funnels is you can have landing pages, you
can send emails, you can kind of do webinars with click funnels.
It's more just a video on a page.
It's not really a webinar.
And then you can have your sales pages and you can also have a checkout.
Now, then click funnels goes a step further and allows you to do upsells.
And we'll integrate with your membership software or allow you to create membership sites with
their basic software.
Although I don't really recommend doing that, because it's not very robust.
Although get response can be integrated with membership sites softwares, using Zapier,
but again, you're adding another extra layer, so it's not really integration.
So if you're looking for something that's one and literally one and done, then Click
Funnels does win in this category, if you're willing to add a shopping cart software, or
you are looking for something that's going to work on top of the membership sites that
you already have, or you just don't care about membership sites, then get response is going
to be the best value here.
So it just depends on what you're looking for.
The main drawback of Click Funnels is just, it's not very fast, when it comes to building
your pages, it can feel clunky at times.
And then when it comes to your actual page speed, which is why we actually don't recommend
it to any of our clients, because when you're driving paid traffic, landing page speed is
so important.
Some crazy statistic, like every second that it takes you landing page load, you lose 10%
of your conversion rate or something crazy like that.
I don't know the exact statistic, but it is a huge difference.
And so for that simple reason, we almost never recommend using Click Funnels.
Although if you really want something that's one and done, it's hard to beat everything
that you get.
So you kind of get the quantity instead of the quality with Click Funnels.
So before we move on to our final winners across everything here, let's go ahead and
talk about WordPress.
There are two main options when it comes to plugins that are specifically designed for
making landing page.
Yes, there are a ton of page builder plugins, like Beaver builder, and Elementor, although
when it comes to actual landing pages, I think thrive themes and optimized press still offer
the best value and easiest setup.
So thrive architect is going to cost you $97 a year.
You can do up to five sites and optimize press is going to charge $99 a year and you can
do one site.
Now the main difference between these two actually comes down to the first thing I talked
about at the very beginning of this software review and comparison for 2020.
And that is AB split testing.
It's crazy.
We are an optimized press 3.0, and there's still no native the testing inside of optimized
press.
And so for that simple reason also thrive themes has a lot more templates, but for that
simple reason, if you're looking for a landing page builder specifically for WordPress, you
don't want to pay a software as a service, then thrive architect is going to be the winner
here.
Now it's important to note that thrive also has a bunch of other products and optimized
press has a bunch of other pricing with a bunch of other products.
I don't recommend those anymore.
So if you're looking to just build landing pages, then definitely go ahead, check out,
thrive architect for WordPress.
But if you're looking to try and build an entire funnel, I actually don't recommend
doing that on WordPress.
Then you might want to consider one of the software as a service solution like lead pages
or get response, because it's definitely going to reduce your headache and just setting up
membership sites on WordPress is an absolute nightmare at times.
And so neither one of these solutions offers a very robust membership solution, even though
they both have those in their feature sets.
So that does it for all of the different types.
We went through just landing page builders, going through those sales funnel builders.
And of course some WordPress solutions.
So now it's time to crown all of the winners or review all the winners and then reveal
what we actually use right now.
So if you just want to build landing pages, that's all you need.
You're just, I need a page builder.
I want to optimize conversions.
I want people on my list.
If that's all you need.
Lead pages offers the best value of everything that we've talked about so far, even though
their price point is close to what you would see with Get Response and Click Funnels.
At the end of the day, Lee pages, when it comes down to just the landing pages, they
win, that's all they do.
And it really does show in their software, their template library, their page building
experience.
And of course, their page speed.
Now, if you're looking for a solution, that's going to allow you to get everything done.
You don't just want to collect emails.
You want to collect emails.
You want to send emails.
You want to have sales pages, maybe a webinar, and he wants to collect payments and you want
a membership site.
Then we're actually going to cheat a little bit here and I would recommend going with
get response and then teachable.
And so that would actually cover you with both everything that you'd need to do online.
And you'd only have to use two pieces of software.
You definitely need to add Zapier in there to connect the two automatically, but it is
a relatively easy integration.
And I think it's well worth it, when you compare what you can get with teachable, especially
you can start with a free plan.
So technically they are still ahead then compared to Click Funnels, where yes, you do get everything,
but it's not worth it.
You're sacrificing way too much in quality and tech headaches.
So I definitely recommend that, that would be my recommendation for a full-fledged funnel,
if you're looking for on a budget.
Now, of course, if you're trying to do a WordPress based, landing page or funnel, then thrive
themes is definitely going to be your best friend there.
And you're going to have to check out other solutions, if you want to host your membership
site on WordPress.
Although I don't recommend it.
Wishlist member or member mouse is probably going to be the place you want to go.
Now, what do we personally use?
Well, we use a small combination of what I recommended with Get Response and teachable.
Although instead of get response, we actually use a software solution called mailer Lite.
And the reason it didn't make it onto this list, is mailer Lite pales in comparison to
the landing page capabilities and functions compared to all these other solutions.
So if these solutions were actual landing page builders, well, Mailer Lite could do
is more like a really watered down version of a landing page builder.
So maybe by 2021, they'll make this list.
But in terms of their basic functionalities, it just doesn't cut it as being called an
actual landing page builder yet, but it works for us.
It keeps things simple.
So we use Mailer Lite for our landing pages.
We also use it for sending our emails and then we use something called Thrive cart,
which I haven't talked about, but a link up in the description.
It is a shopping cart software that allows you to do upsells and down sells.
And it's a onetime fee of 500 bucks.
So it's pretty reasonably priced and you don't have to pay month to month.
And then we do use teachable for our courses.
And so that's what we personally use.
And those are all of my recommendations based upon just landing page, doing a complete sales
funnel and then trying to do something on WordPress.
So if you have any questions about any one of these solutions or you have your own opinion
or experience with one of them, please drop it in the comment section below, because your
questions and experience is going to help other entrepreneurs, creators and freelancers
figure out which solution is for them, because there's so many variables to consider.
And I sincerely hope this rapid fire review and comparison has been helpful in figuring
out which direction to go with.
So go and hit that light button, subscribe from our deep dive software reviews, just
like this one, along with tutorials on how to actually put all of this together.
So until the next, keep building the business you love.