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:
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.
Both Leadpages and Instapage come packed with features. Here are the main ones they provide:
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.
Both Leadpages and Instapage have fundamentally different drag-and-drop editors. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Leadpages comes with two different editors:
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:
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.
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 are the elements you can utilize to create a landing page. Both Leadpages and Instapage come with a robust suite of different 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
This one is a clear tie - both have great solutions to provide lead magnets to your visitors.
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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Both Leadpages and Instapage offer many integrations with third-party tools, although one inch ahead by a small margin.
With around 90 integrations, it’s safe to say that you’ll be covered.
Instapage offers even more integrations - you can link 120 different services through direct integrations, JavaScript or Zapier.
We see little practical difference here - while Instapage is the industry leader, all the platforms you need will likely be covered by both products.
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.
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:
Pick Instapage if:
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.