Are you looking for a landing page builder to rely upon it with all your actual and future campaigns and other promo projects? Today’s market has many decent options for you. How to choose the only one?
There are no bad solutions here. Since the landing page niche is relatively narrow, all the competitors are of high quality and do their best to fit their customers. However, there are site builders that can offer you a bit more.
Let’s take two well-known and all-equipped landing page builders, Instapage and Unbounce. Both can offer you a top-notch creative experience. Both offer similar options when compared on a broad scale. Yet, they are different when you go into details.
In this review, I’m going to compare these details, which are essential for your choice, and you’ll know for sure if Instapage or Unbounce is better for your project at the end of this reading.
Instapage vs. Unbounce: General Overview
What are Instapage and Unbounce? Instapage has been present in the market since 2012. This is a landing page builder with a massive set of instruments designed for creating professional landing pages. The platform is focused on personalized ads and fast-loading pages. It shows excellent integration possibilities.
At present, Instapage powers up landing page campaigns of 15,000+ brands. It boasts 3M+ landing pages created with its help. Each page can serve as a model of a full-power marketing strategy ready to bring conversions.
Instapage does not require coding knowledge, although it offers a long list of quite complex instruments. Even its cheapest plan may supply you with every tool and app you need and even more. However, the landing page builder requires a solid budget right from the start.
Unbounce came to the arena earlier, in 2009, and it may surprise you when observing Unbounce’s modern AI-powered options. This landing page builder is praised for its consistent system of instruments. Unbounce offers a well-thought-out process for creating effective landing pages tailored for successful conversions.
The platform was created by a group of well-known personalities like Oli Gardner and Rick Perreault. The idea was to find a fast and workable solution with the help of which any non-coder can easily create a professional landing page ready to engage customers. And they did succeed in it!
Unbounce is now one of the best landing page builders in the industry. It has everything necessary for building landing pages, popup windows, and sticky bars. Unbounce offers a number of unique options based on artificial intelligence techs. Its pricing model is more flexible when compared with other competitors and Instapage in particular.
Instapage vs. Unbounce: Which One Is Easier to Use?
The main similarities between Instapage and Unbounce include their drag & drop editors involved in all building processes and the ability to access code if necessary. Both platforms will be equally easy to use when you have a basic experience in web design.
The main difficulty of both Instapage and Unbounce is the abundance of instruments. It’ll take a while to cope with all the options for everyone dealing with such software for the first time.
Still, If I were a total beginner, Unbounce would be a more intelligible choice for me. It’s all about the interfaces. The one from Instapage looks more formal. Yes, it is well-sectioned, but these sections (like AdMap or Experimentation) may seem unclear to a starter.
Like many other site builders, Instapage offers an all-in-one Dashboard through which you can create and manage your landing pages. You can click on this or that and understand how it all works. There are even general suggestions like “explain why your brand is the best”, but Unbounce has moved a step forward.
The Unbounce interface is absolutely beginner-friendly. If you have no idea what to start with, you’ll see clear how-to suggestions right in the working field. These will be messages like “How about editing the headline first?” or “Add more descriptive content here”, and so on. This interface is designed to communicate with the user and make their work with the software as simple as possible.
Moreover, Unbounce’s interface has a clearer menu than the one from Instapage. You can quickly access such Editor’s sections as Text, Images, Buttons, Custom HTML, etc. By the way, Unbounce offers two editors, Classic Builder and Smart Builder (AI-based). The latter will let you build your pages and customize them, hands down.
For justice’s sake, both Instapage and Unbounce are simple to use as soon as you get into their features. Both have Help Centers with all options explained in detail. Both Instapage and Unbounce will let you observe the results of every action done. The Preview option is supported on the two platforms.
Instapage vs. Unbounce: Design and Flexibility
Is Instapage or Unbounce better for designing your landing pages? Do not doubt that both platforms are equally good in terms of design tools and flexibility. Here, you should rather opt for the site builder that offers more interesting specials for your project than try to define which is better or worse.
Landing Page Features
Over 500 landing page templates are at the core of Instapage design capacities. These are page layouts for various purposes grouped into sections. You can choose a suitable one, for example, a template for a signup, a special event, a thank-you form, and so on.
The main features include the following:
- Instablocks;
- the Global Blocks option available from the Convert plan;
- Hiding Mobile Blocks;
- built-in AMP to ensure mobile responsiveness of your pages;
- the built-in Thor Render Engine option to make your pages load fast.
With Instablocks, you can supply your landing page with any element for inserting content. These can be footers/headers, various widgets, multimedia insertions, etc. You can also create your own blocks, as well as save your personalized Instablocks as JS, HTML, or CSS scripts. On the Convert plan or higher, you can save them as Global Blocks.
Unbounce offers a smaller number of templates. At your disposal will be 100+ landing page themes and 50+ popup/sticky bar layouts. However, these are responsive and fast-loading templates organized into convenient groups. The site builder enables a high level of design customization thanks to the following features:
- two editors (Classic and Smart);
- Popup & Sticky Bars;
- Optimization Block Sections to extend your freedom of using landing page elements;
- Design Assistant;
- Builder Grid;
- built-in Google PageSpeed Insights.
A big plus of Unbounce is that it offers such extras as popups and sticky bars. For many marketers, this 3-in-1 solution will be complete. Moreover, the site builder offers the so-called Optimization Block Sections. It means blocks and elements from all the templates can be mixed in your chosen template.
Such tools as Design Assistant and Builder Grid will be especially useful for beginners. With their help, a user can choose a more fitting template and customize its elements in a more effective way from a marketing perspective.
eCommerce
Instapage and Unbounce are excellent site builders in terms of eCommerce possibilities. They both will let you connect loads of apps for selling goods and services to your landing pages. Expect equal integration freedom from Instapage and Unbounce because they both support Zapier and HubSpot. Pages built on both platforms are easily published on WordPress, Drupal, and so on.
As to specialties, Instapage offers such unique options as AdMap, Ad-to-Page Personalization, etc. The platform also has a set of tools for advanced analytics (Drop-In Pixel Tracking, Heatmaps, etc.). The site builder supports A/B testing tools. Finally, you can find a lot of useful extras like Invisible ReCAPTCHA, Tag Manager, the Dynamic Text Replacement option, and more.
Unbounce has also worked out unique options for increasing conversions. One of the useful instruments is Conversion Mapping to analyze and tune up your campaigns. The platform boasts its Smart series – a set of AI-powered tools.
Thus, Smart Copy will let you generate proper text content for your campaigns within minutes! Copy Assistant will suggest improvements for your existing headings, subheadings, and other textual elements. Smart Traffic tools will provide profound reports on your pages’ conversion rates, visitors’ activities, and so on.
Unbounce also offers such tools as Dynamic Text Replacements, A/B testing, Visitor Attributes, automated scheduling tools, and many more.
Website Editing
Editing a landing page is simple on both Instapage and Unbounce. If you know how to code, OK, use the custom code section available on both platforms. If coding is not your cup of coffee, Instapage and Unbounce will also let you implement your landing page projects into reality.
On Instapage, you can move all the blocks thanks to drag & drop and place them anywhere you wish. How will they look on your ready landing page? You can observe it immediately in the working area. The platform supports the Preview option.
The Unbounce editor is also based on the WYSIWYG tech. That is, all your changes are shown immediately in the working area, and you can check how your landing page will look in the end.
Once again, you can opt for a traditional drag & drop builder or choose a faster way with Smart Builder, an AI editor, which can build the needed pages and blocks almost automatically. The Preview option will also be at your disposal.
To sum up this chapter, Instapage and Unbounce are equally powerful instruments for building landing pages. However, if I need to choose one, I’d prefer Unbounce due to the popup and sticky bar options and AI-based instruments.
Instapage vs. Unbounce: General Pricing Comparison
As to prices, Instapage offers three options, only one of which, the Build plan, goes with a fixed price. It will cost you $299 per month if paid by a month-to-month billing system. This package contains loads of features and represents a worthy solution for businesses with high-conversion priority.
The Build plan covers 30K visitors and allows 30 landing pages per month. There are no limits for conversions and domains within this plan. You can avail yourself of a 14-day free trial, but there’s no free plan on the platform.
The other two plans are Convert and Ignite. Both require customized pricing and include a broader set of features. You can order a demo for each of the packages.
Unbounce offers a more affordable and transparent pricing model. It has four plans:
- Launch ($99/mo.);
- Optimize ($145/mo.);
- Accelerate ($240/mo.);
- Concierge ($625/mo.)
No matter which plan you choose, you get access to unlimited landing pages, popups, and sticky bars. Even the cheapest plan goes with 20K visitors per month and includes enough features. However, Unbounce sets limits on conversions and domains. In the Launch plan, you’ll access up to 500 conversions and one domain for your pages.
Within the Accelerate plan – the closest solution to the Instapage Build package – you’ll get up to 2,500 conversions, 50K visitors per month, and 10 domains. All plans go with a 14-day free trial.
Thus, you should decide what is more precious for you – unlimited conversions and domains or unlimited landing pages – before subscribing to Instapage or Unbounce. In any case, Unbounce is a more flexible platform in this respect.
Instapage vs. Unbounce: Which One Is the Best for SEO?
Both competitors offer SEO-friendly (by default) templates for creating high-rated landing pages. Both Instapage and Unbounce allow manual improvements to your SEO settings. On both platforms, you’ll be able to edit the following components:
- page titles;
- meta descriptions;
- canonical URLs;
- keywords;
- favicons.
Still, Unbounce has more SEO options to offer. For instance, it will let you add image container descriptions and edit alt text.
The platform’s strongest point is its AI-based tools, including Smart Copy. You can expect automatic SEO-oriented suggestions for everything you write in your landing pages, popups, and sticky bars. The platform also offers an integrated IP Filter to block undesired traffic to your pages and other optimization instruments.
Comparison Conclusion: Which One Is Better?
Instapage and Unbounce are two high-class platforms for building landing pages. However, for the best part of individual users and businesses, Unbounce represents a better alternative in many respects.
Although Instapage offers a huge set of unique instruments for sophisticated landing page campaigns, this solution remains too pricy and narrow-purpose. Yet, it will be a great site builder for strong-budget companies with a big need for conversions.
Unbounce offers consistent solutions for creating not only landing pages but also popups and sticky bars. The platform grants more customization freedom, offers unique tools for tuning up your campaigns, has better SEO options, and many more for a lower price. Unbounce will be an optimal landing page builder for a much broader range of businesses and individual entrepreneurs.
