In the interest of full disclosure, This Is Trouble earns a referral bonus for anyone that purchases through some of the below links inside this Leadpages review. These are the best publicly available offers that we have found for these programs. Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone. You can read the full disclaimer here.
In this Leadpages review, I’ll cover everything there is to know. I use this tool myself, have gotten tons of value out of it, and here is all that a new user should know. Pricing, features, popularity, downsides – it’s all inside this Leadpages review.
Buckle up…
Why I Use Leadpages
I would never recommend something that did not work for me. Here are my personal reasons to choose Leadpages over other opt-in page creators. There are ten of them, varying degrees of importance:
- Easy to use
- Integration is simple
- Responsive customer support (but it would be better if the same customer support options were available to everyone)
- Plenty of templates to choose from
- You can sort templates by conversion rate
- A/B testing (even if it’s just for Pro and above users)
- Free weekly coaching sessions (that you can participate in or watch after the fact)
- Mobile-friendly
- The WordPress plugin is easy to install and use
- Custom HTML and CSS available (so customization can actually work out)
Now let’s look at some of the main features of Leadpages and make this the only Leadpages review you ever need to read.
Leadpages Review: Some Background
Whether you’ve built a website before, or you’re a complete newbie, you’ve seen Leadpages before. Even if you didn’t know it, you have come across a Leadpages pop-up or landing page.
By the number of users, Leadpages is the top landing page and pop-up provider on the internet. They have a great, easy-to-use product and it shows. Aside from their main focus, Leadpages also provides other lead-generating tools – for instance, the SMS-based opt-in.
They are the number one in size because, arguably, Leadpages is the easiest-to-use landing page builder on the market. Thus, it works for newbies just as much as it does for experienced users. The beauty of this is you’ll get all the professional customer support (plus a great community of users with tips and tricks already figured out).
However, size and quality are two very different things. I myself love Leadpages and this is what I use. Still, I have to admit they’re not the best fit for everyone. And this, kids, is what this Leadpages review aspires to do for you:
Help you decide if Leadpages is right for you and, if so, which plan is the best.
NOTE: I am a bit biased since I use Leadpages all the time. Accept that and, in exchange, I will try to be as impartial as possible.
What Does It Do?
The main feature of Leadpages is creating landing pages.
What is a landing page? It’s a single page that pops up and asks visitors to interact with it.
You could collect emails, invite people to like your social media posts, or gain new followers through landing pages. Since they are used for generating leads, landing pages are also called “Lead Pages”.
Leadpages is optimized for getting conversions. The Leadpages drag-and-drop editor is optimized for designing the most enticing landing page. They even let you sort templates by conversions…
Although:
Don’t Trust Leadpages Too Much
Leadpages have over 100 different landing page templates available. The thing is, you can’t trust their “sort by conversion rate” feature too much.
In theory, it sounds like a brilliant idea. You get to pick and choose the most efficient template for your lead page. This is based on real-life data from other Leadpages users.
The thing is, conversions depend on much more than just the template. Other things that come into play are incentives, the timing of the pop-up, and the kind of people you’re trying to attract. For instance, you would find it easier to get conversions if you offer a freebie but the template conversion stats don’t reflect that.
Leadpages templates can also be customized. Even design-wise, the information on conversions that you’re getting is not 100% relevant to your particular site, offer, and audience.
Takeaway Lesson:
Yes, it’s smart to pick the template that is best for conversions. Don’t rely on that info too much, though. You still need to work on making your landing page efficient if you want to get a maximum amount of contacts for your email list, purchase conversions, or whatever else you’re using it for.
How To Use Leadpages
Obviously, you need to sign up first. It’s as simple and straightforward as it gets. You’re automatically directed to the page creator and you are ready to create your first campaign.
Start by clicking the Let’s Do It button.
Leadpages has a built-in landing page creation wizard. They will teach you all the basics as you go. The site walks you through every step of the way – asking questions about what your landing page would be like, offering templates, and giving you directions on how to customize them.
You can skip all that and access the templates from the navigation bar. As boring as these walkthroughs can be, though, I suggest you go with it. It’s the easiest way to familiarize yourself with how Leadpages works.
Leadpages Templates: Choosing The Best One For You
There are two main types of templates on Leadpages.
Standard templates are simple but relatively rigid. You can edit the text and place your own images in them. You do not, however, get to move any of the elements around. The most you can do is hide some of the template elements.
For most standard templates, it’s best to use them as-is. They are pretty enough and easy enough to use. Hiding parts of the template will only make it seem empty and poorly designed.
This is where the conversion rate sorting works best, too. Since you can’t change up the standard templates all that much, the conversion rate stat is an accurate reflection of how well the template performs IRL too.
Drag-and-drop templates offer a lot more options. You can insert new elements and edit the ones already on the template. This means adding and editing headlines, buttons, new text boxes, videos and much more.
It sounds great in theory but, in practice, the drag-and-drop functionality is far from perfect. You can only put elements on the grid that the template has set up for you.
This effectively means that some areas are completely off-limits for placing widgets.
That problem aside, it’s a pain to get the destination right. Time after time users have complained that the results are completely unexpected. The widgets would appear, it seems, anywhere they please.
As with the standards, editing text and swapping out images on the drag-and-drop templates is a breeze. You simply click and change the text/photo.
How To Really Customize Templates?
The drag-and-drop functionality leaves much to be desired. So how do you you make customization work? By going in deep.
Don’t be scared, CSS and HTML have an easy learning curve and Leadpages makes it even simpler for you.
On Page Layout, you can change up the sections, while Page Style lets you play around with fonts and add custom CSS.
Click on the Page Layout icons to look at the different sections, the rows and columns in each one. You can change the design of each section separately – just select Section Style.
If you’d like to change fonts, Page Style swaps out the font styles for the entire landing page. You can also enable custom CSS and then write your own code. This is the only effective way to redesign the pop-up. Obviously, that would only work for more advanced users. If you’re just a beginner, stick with the template as-is, there is plenty of choices.
In time, try to learn a bit of CSS. There are some great Leadpages tutorials available online. Since they are the most popular pop-up tool on the Internet, there is a huge community around them. Look up video tutorials on YouTube – they are the easiest to follow and you will find hundreds of them.
Leadpages Review: Pricing
It wouldn’t be a Leadpages review without discussing the pricing. Subscriptions include a lot of functionality and they are very cost-effective.
There are three plans available and you can subscribe for different periods of time – pay per month, per year, or every two years. Obviously, subscribing for two years is the cheapest way to go. I currently pay the monthly plan, simply to keep my accounting easy.
Is it a great choice if you’re just starting out? Nope.
Yes, it will save you some money. It’s a big commitment, though. Try out the site for a month or two if this is your first time using it. They have a free trial and you can move on to one paid month from there. After that, if you like it, I say go directly for the two-year billing. It saves so much money!
The Standard Plan
This is Leadpages’ most basic and cheapest plan. It includes everything you need. The perks of other subscription plans are cool and all but the Standard does the job just fine.
The price is $37 if you’re billed monthly, $25 per month if you pay for an entire year, or $17 per month for two-year plans. That means the two-year plan is 45% cheaper…but, once again, only sign up for that if you know and love the product.
Now let’s look at what the Leadpages Standard plan includes!
Most importantly, you get unlimited pages, traffic, & leads and no limits on pop-ups and alert bars either. All of the templates and standard integrations are available to you. There are no “special” or “premium” templates made by Leadpages. They provide all of their stuff to all users (which, to me, is a huge perk). Some third-party templates might cost you more but they are priced the same, regardless of your plan.
The Standard users still get free hosting on their lead page but they can only connect one domain. You can choose to host a page on its’ own or to link it up with your own domain. Publishing on a subdomain can turn some users off, though. This is why you want to connect your own domain as much as you can.
What does that mean for aspiring niche site owners? Well, you have two options:
- Accept that you’d publish your pages elsewhere (not on your own domain) and that might affect conversions.
- Opt for a more expensive plan – for instance, the Advanced plan lets you connect 50 different domains.
Which one to choose?
I’d say go for the cheaper Standard plan at first. As your business grows, you can think about upgrading.
The Leadpages Coaching Sessions
Leadpages is targeted towards beginners, as much as it is suitable for bigger businesses and even marketing agencies. They try to make the process accessible and effective for everyone. Their biggest step in this direction is, arguably, the weekly group coaching option.
It is included in all plans and I highly recommend that you take advantage.
Here is how they describe it:
Join live Q&A coaching sessions to clear your marketing roadblocks and improve your results.
What does that look like in practice?
The Leadpages’ Marketing Mastery live coaching sessions are lead by company employees and expert marketers. They go on call every week to give tips and tricks, as well as real-time feedback on your popups. During the live-sessions, people usually talk about the different aspects of list building and how that fits into the creating of entire marketing funnels.
This includes information on Facebook and Google ads, automation, copywriting (much needed!) and more!
The sessions are different every time and, while some questions tend to repeat, I do think it’s a good time investment to try them out. If you can’t tune in that particular week, you can access replays (but, obviously, you miss out on the whole live coaching perk).
The Pro Plan
If you want to step up your game, the Pro plan will provide some handy options for you.
Here are the additional perks you get:
- Connecting three domains (not just one)
- Online sales and payments through the pop-up – works wonders for e-commerce or if you are trying to market your e-book
- Unlimited A/B split testing which lets you use two different designs of the same pop-up and gives you info on which one is the more effective. That’s arguably better than just the conversion rate stats. On the downside, it’s only really effective for larger sites. If you don’t have many visitors, you would not get very statistically significant results.
- Email trigger links, a.k.a. Leadlinks are links that you insert into your subscriber emails. They are great for instant registration. Once the subscriber clicks it, they are registered (without any additional questions). Use it if you’re trying to get people to register for an event or a webinar.
- 10 opt-in text campaigns which invite people to subscribe by SMS. Sure, 10 campaigns are not a lot but use them wisely and you’ll get a lot of new email subscribers.
- Special discounts with partner companies, which I am yet to use. Still, it’s a feature that you only get with the Pro and Advanced plans so I thought I would mention it. And no, I can’t find the list of partner companies anywhere either.
The Leadpages Customer Service
As with any online service, sooner or later you will have to deal with the Leadpages team directly. Problems come up, pages crash, things don’t work out the way you expect them to.
The good news is, Leadpages has pretty decent customer support available 24/7. They are responsive and qualified, at least for the most part.
The customer service could be better, though, for instance by providing support by phone and chat for everyone.
Standard users only get email technical support.
They do get a response within 24 hours and the problems get solved one way or another. If you’re running a larger site, though, the email delay can be more than a bit frustrating. Pro users get additional chat support (which works instantaneously). With Advanced you also receive priority phone support. I mean, for the money you pay to subscribe to Advanced you better…
No, but really, the customer support works fine either way. It’s nice that they have a phone and chat option. It would be even nicer to provide that to all users, not just the ones that pay more. Just saying.
Other Leadpages Reviews
Even though Leadpages is the Internet’s most popular page creator, they are far from universally loved.
Blogging Wizard gave them a 4.5 out of 5. Their conclusion was:
If you want a super easy way to create gorgeous landing pages across multiple sites, as well as advanced features like Leadboxes, tons of integrations, and A/B testing, Leadpages won’t let you down.
Niche Pursuits also gave them a glowing review:
Leadpages is the perfect choice for people with the money to spend on a tool that will let them create beautiful and high-converting landing pages and opt-in boxes.
On the other hand, some reviewers were far from impressed with the drag-and-drop functionality. With a 3/5 review Mar Tech Wiz said:
Both of Leadpages’ landing page editors disappointed us. And since those are the heart and soul of the software, we can’t recommend Leadpages in this review.
Uh-oh!
And as for the thousands of users that don’t run a blog? The service has a 29% drop out rate and a 21% market share. This makes them one of the biggest providers…but it also means that not everybody ends up loving it.
Why People Hate Leadpages?
Well, hate is a strong word but you get the point. Basically, Leadpages may be huge but they’re apparently not perfect for everyone. Huge surprise, I know, who would think that one-size-fits-all solutions don’t work…
Anyway, personally, I think Leadpages gets a higher dropout rate because they cater to beginners. Not all Leadpages users are complete newbies. The ones that are, however, are far more likely to drop out.
The other reason is pricing. There are several WordPress page builder that is far cheaper. Sure, that’s not completely comparable to Leadpages (that’s why I am only mentioning it now) but it does the job. For startups that are conscious about every cost, WordPress is simply a more cost-effective option…and that’s why they often switch to that.
Basically, when you’re providing a service with an easy learning curve and in a large niche, you will have more dropouts.
Is There A Free Trial?
Yes, Leadpages now has a free trial. They give you 14 days to try it out for free AND they have a money-back guarantee. Both of those are key. When you first start using Leadpages, it’s best to go for the shortest term contract. No use paying for two years if you’re not sure you’re going to use it.
So, yes, there is a free trial and yes, you should use it.
That’s the one thing you should take from this Leadpages review. Use the trial.
Leadpages Review: The Verdict
The mailing list is where the money is at. That’s why building a large subscriber list should be the #1 priority for an online business, whether you are a startup or a larger company.
Out of all ways of building a list, opt-in forms and landing pages are arguably the most popular. They are not, unfortunately, that easy to make. Constructing them from scratch requires coding and design skills that us, mere mortals, don’t have.
Leadpages has a free trial and they will give you back your money if you don’t love them. The entry point is reasonable, too. At $25 per month (if you pay yearly), the price is reasonable for the service they provide. The landing pages are sleek and responsive + it doesn’t take long to make one. The tool delivers on its promises – efficient and pretty landing pages, even if the drag-and-drop functionality leaves a lot to be desired.
Bottom line:
Leadpages does what it says it will do. It sets you up with great landing pages without any coding or complicated designs.
Is it the cheapest? Probably not.
But considering the huge community behind it, and all the functionality they provide, it’s safe to say that you do get what you pay for.
So, time to find out for yourself – is Leadpages right for me?
Try it out and let me know what you thought in the comments below…