Leadpages vs. Instapage: Which Landing Page Builder Should You Pick in 2021?

Are you looking to build high-converting landing pages without the need to learn any code? If so, you’ve likely heard of these two landing page builders:

• Leadpages
• Instapage

Both tools offer a variety of features that make landing page creation and testing much more effortless. What isn’t that easy, however, is making the right choice between them.

Both Leadpages and Instapage have received excellent reviews and have satisfied thousands of customers. So, understandably, you might hesitate before purchasing.

Fortunately, we’ve got your back.

Here is a thorough comparison of Leadpages vs. Instapage across several different categories. We’ll also provide you with different situations in which one outperforms the other - helping you choose the tool that’s perfect for your business.

Let’s dive in.

Main Features

Both Leadpages and Instapage come packed with features. Here are the main ones they provide:

Leadpages Features

• Web Hosting: No need to bother yourself with an e-real estate. Leadpages hosts all your pages.
• Drag-and-Drop Editing: Quick and easy to use, the editor makes building your landing pages a cinch.
• Over 130 Free Templates: If you’re worried about where to start, Leadpages provides you with more templates than you could ask for - themed over 13 different industry sectors.
• Integrations: Leadpages seamlessly integrates with major payment gateways, CRMs, email marketing tools, and analytics tools.
• Split Testing: Leadpages allows you to set up A/B tests for your landing pages quickly.
• Analytics Platform: The software comes with an in-house analytics feature, but you can also integrate a third-party tool.
• Website Integrations: Capable of using WordPress and HTML plugins, publishing a landing page is quick and painless.
• Entire Website Building: Want more than just a landing page? You can build a full website without the need for a separate tool.
• Alert Bars: Quickly design notifications and alerts to push discounts, special offers, and more to your audience.
• Bonus Features: Use Leadlinks to manage and draw a subscriber base, Leadboxes to boost conversion, and several more proprietary tools.

Instapage Features

• Freeform Editing: Unconstrained by grids, Instapage allows you to build a landing page exactly how you want it.
• Templates: Instapage offers more than 500 templates.
• Plenty of Integrations: Like Leadpages, Instapage also offers integrations for dozens and dozens of third-party tools.
• Landing Page Hosting: Instapage comes with in-house hosting for your landing pages.
• Split Testing: A/B testing tools to optimize your landing pages.
• Great Analytics: You can use both in-house analytics tools and third-party services. Instapage even offers advanced functions such as heatmaps to understand your audience better.
• Collaboration Tools: Instapage comes with an inbuilt communication platform, allowing multiple users to collaborate.

That’s a lot of features for both landing page builders. Now that we have our hands on the basics, let's dive into the comparison between Leadpages and Instapage.

Leadpages vs. Instapage: In-Depth Comparison

Landing Page Builder

Both Leadpages and Instapage have fundamentally different drag-and-drop editors. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

Leadpages Editor

Leadpages comes with two different editors:

• A standard, relatively outdated legacy editor.
• A modern drag-and-drop editor, released in 2016.

While you can use both, Leadpages themselves advocate against using the legacy editor - so let’s take their advice.

Leadpages’ interface will feel familiar to many of you who’ve tried out WordPress landing page builders in the past. It works with a no-nonsense drag-and-drop interface that divides your website into grids - you can set up a layout of rows and columns and then drag and drop elements into it.

Adjusting your elements’ width and height is also pretty straightforward and can be done by simply dragging the borders of your text boxes, images, and other elements. Take a look at the builder in action:

Instapage Editor

If you’ve found the grid system to be a bit restrictive and constantly getting in the way of your inner creative, you’re not alone. It seems that Instapages’ developers felt that a more free-form tool is the way to go - and the result is quite stunning.

Instapage does not constrain you within the limits of a grid-based layout - it allows you to directly drag any element exactly where you want it on the landing page, enabling a fully-customizable landing page.

Verdict

Is the free-form approach of Instapage better than Leadpages’ more conventional editor?

Both editors have a considerably different core approach. Picking a winner is highly subjective and depends on your needs and preferences more than anything else.

Widgets

Widgets are the elements you can utilize to create a landing page. Both Leadpages and Instapage come with a robust suite of different widgets.

Leadpages Widgets

The Leadpages developers went all out - the platform offers 18 different widgets. You can easily customize any widget to your needs. For example, with the form widget, you can add specific fields. What’s excellent about Leadpages is that you can utilize a checkout widget to sell digital products and receive Stripe payments. Also, I found the progress bar and the comment widget especially useful.

Instapage Widgets

In comparison, Instapage only offers 11 widgets - although they are a bit more multifunctional than Leadpages’. Instapage puts the design foot forward with Shapes and Instablocks. Shapes allow you to create boxes, circles, and lines, while Instablocks enable you to save specific landing page sections and reuse them on other pages.

Verdict

Leadpages provides more widgets than Instapage. With Instapage, you’re missing out on checkout widgets, comments, progress bars, and icons. However, keep in mind that Instapage provides Instablocks, which are super helpful.

Templates

With custom-developed websites costing thousands of dollars, it’s clear that templates are a big reason why landing page builders have become so successful in recent years.

But does Leadpages or Instapage offer better templates?

Leadpages Templates

Leadpages offers over 130 templates, built for its drag-and-drop editor. Templates include themes as newsletters, product launches, eBooks, post-purchase thank-yous, and many more.

A massive benefit of Leadpages’ template selection is that they come pre-classified. First of all, you can select from a range of 13 different industries. Second, you can sort all templates by ‘highest converting’.

This is an absolute godsend if you’re looking to quickly build a reliable, tried-and-tested landing page - with Leadpages’ analytics team doing the heavy lifting for you.

The templates themselves are generally simple, clean, and very polished.

Note: Beyond the 130+ templates mentioned above, Leadpages also maintains hundreds of free and premium templates compatible with the older legacy editor. However, we would recommend sticking to the new editor.

Instapage Templates

Thought Leadpages' 130+ templates were impressive? Instapage offers 500+ free templates with varying levels of detail and complexity. Some provide a blueprint-style layout to get you started, while others come fully-designed.

Verdict

While both Leadpages and Instapage have well-realized and elegant designs, Instapage wins us over with sheer quantity - taking the lead with over 500 templates.

Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are an easy-to-implement strategy to get your visitors’ email addresses. With both Leadpages and Instapage, you can offer lead magnets to your visitors to capture their email addresses.

Leadpages Lead Magnet Tools

We earlier came across the form widget - this is what you can use with Leadpages to incorporate lead magnets.

The functionality is simple and hassle-free. After setting up integrations and fields, you can email files to visitors who complete the form and manage these lead magnets from a separate ‘Lead Magnet Delivery’ tool.

Instapage Lead Magnet Tools

Instapage does pretty much the same thing. You can use a similar ‘form’ widget and send specific lead magnet files to anyone who completes the form.

Verdict

This one is a clear tie - both have great solutions to provide lead magnets to your visitors.

A/B Testing

A/B testing allows you to test different versions of your landing pages. Both Leadpages and Instapage provide a simple A/B testing feature.

Leadpages A/B Testing

Leadpages allows you to start an A/B test directly from the account dashboard. All you need to do is choose a specific page for testing, create a new variation, choose your traffic distribution - and you’re good to go.

Instapage A/B Testing

Instapage offers pretty much the same A/B testing feature. Unlike Leadpages, though, you will have to start your A/B tests from within the editor rather than the dashboard.

Verdict

Again, with little difference between both tools, it comes out to a flattie. The only difference is that Leadpages requires fewer clicks to get to the A/B testing tool.

Analytics

Most marketers use different analytics tools depending on the website and its purpose. There are hundreds on the market, and several of them have third-party compatibility with both Leadpages and Instapage.

But what about in-house analytics?

Leadpages Analytics

Leadpages offers a quick-and-easy dashboard view of your earnings, conversions, and more - that’s about it. It covers your basics and leaves the heavy-lifting for compatible third-party tools.

Instapage Analytics

Leadpages offers a more robust set of in-house analytics. Along with the basics mentioned above, you have the option to link up to Google AdWords to display ‘cost per visitor’, and generate website heatmaps to give you a solid idea of how visitors interact with your landing page.

The catch? You can only use these features with the Enterprise Plan.

Verdict

While it’s best to use third-party tools like Google Analytics, Instapage’s in-house analytics beat out Leadpages if you’re willing to pay the price.

Integrations

Both Leadpages and Instapage offer many integrations with third-party tools, although one inch ahead by a small margin.

Leadpages Integrations

With around 90 integrations, it’s safe to say that you’ll be covered.

Instapage Integration

Instapage offers even more integrations - you can link 120 different services through direct integrations, JavaScript or Zapier.

Verdict

We see little practical difference here - while Instapage is the industry leader, all the platforms you need will likely be covered by both products.

Bonus Features

Leadpages Extra Features

• Leadboxes: This lets you design popups - complete with contextual triggers such as clicking on a specific button or time spent on site. You can also use Leadboxes on your website - not just with Leadpages’ pages.
• Integrated Facebook Ads: Instead of spending time and effort on graphic design tools, Leadpages allows you to create Facebook ads, auto-matching your website designs easily.
• Leadlinks: Autosigns subscribers to sublists or webinars with a single click.
• Leaddigits: Lets subscribers opt-in via their mobile devices.
• Website Building: Leadpages allows you to build entire websites with the editor - not just landing pages.
• Alert Bars: Set up alert bars to promote offers on any page.

Instapage Unique Features

• Easy collaboration: Real-time visual collaboration tool.
• Audit-log: Keeps track of changes and edits over time.
• Dynamic Text Replacement: Text updates in real-time to match a user’s specific search keywords.
• Instablocks: This feature lets you save entire ‘blocks’ or segments to reuse on other pages.

Pricing

Leadpages cheapest plan starts at $25 per month, billed annually. Instapage costs $149 per month. Both tools also offer monthly plans.

Leadpages does not include A/B testing with the Standard Plan. If you’re looking for this feature, you’ll need to go for the Pro Plan for 44 per month.

Final Verdict

If there’s anything to take away from this detailed analysis, it’s that picking a winner is not easy. While we’re tempted to recommend Leadpages simply because of its excellent competitive pricing, we’re going to summarize the pros and cons below:

Pick Leadpages if:

• ...you like a grid-based editor.
• ...you’re on a budget.
• ...you want to create pop-ups.
• ...you work solo and don’t need team functionality.
• ...would like to build entire websites, not just landing pages.

Pick Instapage if:

• ...budget isn’t a concern, and the extra functionality fits with your needs.
• ...like working with the free-form editor.
• ...want extra control over the mobile versions of your landing pages.
• ...you're part of a team and need collaboration tools.

With both software offering 14-day trials, give the editors a spin - there’s no risk involved with trying out both and coming to an informed decision.