LeadPages Alternative – InstaPage Review – Best Landing Page for Lead Generation Pages
LeadPages does a lot of things great and I have been using them for over a year now with a lot of success on several different websites.
But, as I discovered last week there is one major downfall that the eventual alternative (InstaPage) had covered…
One of my websites is generating 3 insurance leads per day but the affiliate I was using at the time was paying out very low. So on my to-do list for that site was to personally reach out to larger insurance brokerage firms and inquire about selling them the insurance leads directly.
Within 12hrs of sending 5 emails one Sunday I was on the phone with one owner of a company who was willing to pay substantially more than I was currently receiving from my existing set up.
So after working out the details in our first conversation I wanted to get moving quickly to show what I could create and start delivering leads for his business. Something along the lines of the page below to start with…
Source – http://www.semanticlp.com/category/medical-and-insurance/
What he wanted was the lead details delivered directly to his inbox, getting the leads email only would not be good enough.
First Stop – LeadPages
I have been using LeadPages for a long time as a very effective list building tool and thought that taking it to the next step with more forms would be easy.
So after talking to the business owner on Sunday night I wanted to get something set up right away. I headed over to LeadPages, rewatched the video tutorial on how to build a multi-form landing page
Problems Encountered
I created the complex form (all pertinent information required – age, sex, smoker, coverage etc) in AWeber then tested it. So I thought I was good to go but whenever I went to LeadPages it would simply hang.
LeadPages Support – Incredibly Cheerful – But no Timely Solution
After an hr and the time going bye I was getting frustrated I was not delivering what I said I was going to be able to do (have a landing page up for Monday/Tuesday).
I submitted the ticket not expecting a response but within hrs of submitting the ticket I got a very cheerful but unfortunately not helpful response.
Ultimately after a couple emails back and forth she confirmed AWeber multi-form loading times were having problems.
Solution – Search for Alternatives
I simply needed to get a basic lead generation page created that looked professional quickly and couldn’t wait!
So my next stop was Google where I found and reviewed a few other options
- Premise (have used and didn’t like for creating landing pages)
- HubSpot (far larger scope than the problem I was looking to solve)
- KickOffLabs – Seemed to do the samething LeadPages was doing
- LivePages (didn’t look super easy and the pricing didn’t offer a free trial)
- Optimizely (didn’t see many examples of templates so couldn’t get a feel for if it was as easy a page-builder)
Other Suggested by Readers in the Comments…
The LeadPages alternative came down to 2…
Based on what I was seeing the 2 alternatives to LeadPages that I thought could handle lead generation better were UnBounce and InstaPage.
The 2 deciding factors between InstaPage and Unbounce were…
- Ease of Use – It looked like I could get something built with InstaPages faster than UnBounce
- Price – Unbounces service is fairly limited until you get up to $99/month while I could get something up for instapage on a month to month basis for free to start and I was hoping the $29/month plan would work for me (I have since had to upgrade to the $79 to get the email delivery piece).
InstaPage.com Review
So far after using InstaPage for a little over a 2 weeks I have been happy with how easy it has been to create lead generation pages.
Overall I am very happy, the speed at which I could get my lead page created, the leads sent directly from the form to the broker and my ability to improve by split testing has me thinking it is now worth me paying for my 2 landing page services (LeadPages and InstaPage)
Here is how it works…
Step 1 – Create an Account
Step 2 – Pick a Template
Step 3 – Drag and Drop Editor
Step 4 – Publish
First install the Instapage Plugin, then send the page to WordPress and finally publish the page at a unique URL.
End Result
Once I signed up I had a good looking lead generation page published in 1hr with leads going directly to the broker.
Within 24hrs of starting the process of looking at more direct monetization strategies I had a working lead page up and in the last week made more from the site than I had in the previous 3 months!
So maybe LeadPages will improve their multi-forms functionality or maybe InstaPage will improve in some of the areas LeadPages is strong like their additional features (video, lead box, lead link etc)but for now it looks like I have 2 landing page services I will be footing the bill for.
Hopefully if you run into the same problem with LeadPages or vice versa with InstaPage this post will help show you what worked for me.
Very nice! I’ve been looking into selling leads with programs like LeadPoint. Meanwhile, you’ve been going straight to the source and negotiating deals directly. Good call.
I dig the InstaPage templates. Is this for your Canadian insurance site?
Hi Jason
Going direct is more cumbersome but definitely has some advantages like higher margin etc.
Thanks Jon, very useful. Maybe not quite what you’re after, but Gravity Forms works well if you get the developer licence.
Thanks for the suggestion, I will check it out if I am in the market again.
I absolutely love working with InstaPage so much easier, LeadPages is great so people says but I’ve never used it before
Hi, this is Clay, co-founder at LeadPages. I’d encourage you to try both LeadPages.net and InstaPage. We’re both great solutions.
Warm regards,
Clay
Clay, thanks for stopping in and leaving some helpful comments!
Hi Constance, Instapage is easier to move things around while leadpages makes it very easy to use as well and also makes it hard to mess things up.
Jon, would love to pick your brain about selling leads and a lead generating website. I started messing around with a local thing this summer, but never really developed it. Did you set it up with a PBN of expired domains? Any other promotion?
Hi Brad, yes the site mentioned is powered by a PBN silo of 6 relevant sites. I did some guest posting and a very small amount of link outreach.
We personally use unbounce and have loved it. It looks pretty similar to instabuilder. Spit testing is the best part about unbounce, incredibly easy. What’s it like on instabuilder?
We’ve also looked extensively at leadpages for their facebook features. Aside from the FB side I haven’t really come across any problems that unbounce has that leadpages could fix.
Hi Dan, in hindsight since I am now at the higher price point anyway UnBounce looks like it may have been a better option. UnBounce looks like it would take longer to set up a page while instapage is very very fast.
What about pagewiz.com I’ve been using them for years. Work great and allow you to do just about anything, white label, email, autoresponder, etc.
NOT an affiliate just happy user.
Hi Roger, never used PageWiz.com thanks for mentioning it.
Hey Jon – Thanks for this post, I was looking at a few options just to see what else is out there (though LeadPages looks to be the best in an overall sense). Appreciate the good content.
Hi Curt! Thanks for the kind words about LeadPages. I left a response here that addresses the issues that Jon raised.
Hi Jon! Thanks for this article. Sorry that the page was hanging. I’m guessing that this happened last Friday? The AWeber API has been spotty recently. We’ve since fixed this issue… but it can still take up to 40 seconds for the form fields to load from AWeber (contrast this to MailChimp with a super fast API that loads the fields immeidately). The issue has been fixed, but waiting 30 to 40 seconds on the progress bar is still too long so we’re working in some caching solutions on our end. Once again, my apologies.
Warm regards,
Clay
Co-Founder At LeadPages
Hi Clay, the Aweber problem is what had me move but I probably would have anyway since I needed the ability to send the leads via email and didn’t want to wait for them to confirm via AWeber to send the AWeber notification.
I am a fan of LeadPages for email list building but right now it seems to fall short of others on the lead generation form/page creation.
Your customer support was supper cheerful and quick but her hands were tied as you mentioned as far as solving the problem.
Thanks for stopping bye and thanks for making a great product!
We’ve been attempting to successfully use InstaPage for several weeks now. Suffice it to say, we’re not happy and have been unable to get timely support from them. I’ll agree that the page development process is very good and easy. What happens out of the blue is the page we select gets replaced with an early variant. This is a huge problem when you publish, see what you think is good and later the page is showing an old variant. So far, no resolution has been presented. I would proceed cautiously with Instapage until this situation is clarified.
Hi Jon,
quick question about sending the nifo by email to the merchant.
Is it possible to send the mail to more than one address (for tracking purposes – or is there a tracking tool installed as well?)
What is the sending address that shows up at the receiving end? The one from the lead or one you set up?
Thanks for your feedback and the great article.
Tom
Hi Jon,
I tried and have bought Instapage on your recommendation. I have to say this is exactly what I have been looking for. It has everything and more.
Thanks for a great review.
Sincerely,
Mark Molina
Thanks. I like Leadpages beacause it is simple and you have statistics. Optimizepress is an alternative too.
Hi,
Nice. I’ve been fiddling with WP LeadPages Pro plugin for sometime. It is a bit buggy and I’m looking for an alternative. I will give InstaPage a try.
Thanks for the lead.
Cheers, Boon
I really like or should say “liked” Leadpages until recently. The product works great and I use it all the time. However, I’m putting together an Ebook, that includes a step by step blueprint for internet marketing and I was going to recommend Leadpages because I use them and can vouch for them. When trying to sign up for their affiliate program, I found out that in order for you to become an affiliate they require you to sign up for their Pro program at $67/month. I’m currently a standard member at $37/month. Let me get this straight – you want me to pay you more money just so I can promote your product? Get outta here! They should be begging us to promote them, not having us pay to promote their product. I emailed their customer service about it and all they could say was “Sorry sir, that’s our policy”. From a business standpoint, this is not smart at all. They are clearly missing out on sales because of this. It’s just downright greedy. I have no problem with a healthy profit, but I hate when companies try to screw people and that’s what they’re doing here. Anyway, because of this, I’m going to cancel my account with them all together. So instead of making more money from me promoting their product, they are now going to lose my $37/month and not get ANY affiliate sales from me. How does that make business sense for them? I’m going to check out Instapage – sounds like what I am looking for.
Sounds like you have a lot of plans and your looking well into the future.
It’s great to have goals like that. I hope everything works out for you.
Hey Jon,
Have you heard of landingi.com? I just thought I recommend it for you to take a look at!
Dan
Il take a look at it.
Thanks
Hey Jon!
Instapage has released a MASSIVE amount of features since this review, can I hook you up with an account and help update this? Thanks so much!! Great site man.
Great post! I have been using instapage and found them to work very well for me!
Hey Jon – this was really interesting to read. I had a very similar experience: I was looking for a landing page generator that was more customizable than Lead Pages, but less cumbersome than OptimizePress. So I did the Instapages trial and used it to create a nice landing page for k-lytics.com ebook market intelligence service. I put the instapges link into posts to social forums and – guess what – within 3 days I had more sign-ups to the mail list than in 3 months combined. Given the design flexibility I feel it beats Lead Pages by a long shot. Let’s hope the also develop some nice add ons, too.
Greetings,
Alex
I noticed when testing InstaPage today, that my WordPress Landing Page was blank. So they are either using some kind of php script or java or something to track the “hit”. It’s sort of the like my Calendar, I don’t actually see the content in edit mode on that page, only a blank page.
Also, in “TEST” mode with InstaPage, I do not get the Auto Response! LoL So it’s basically useless as a Test, it may be fun to play around with, and get a feel, but not getting the eMail, what the heck?
I haven’t found InstaPage because you recommended it, so I don’t blame you. But is it true what you said in your article, that the lead couldn’t actually be seen by you till you paid 79/month??
That’s wild. I like the look and feel of them, but am quite skittish thinking I will only be able to get 100,000 uniques a month! I get that many from just one or two sites and have no idea what will happen when I go over that.
Hey Lon, CEO of Instapage here. I’d like to address a few of your concerns. Setting up email notifications for new leads is actually free and can be setup by following these steps http://feedback.instapage.com/knowledgebase/articles/217312-how-do-i-get-email-notifications-for-new-leads
You can also set up an integration with a one of our many email / CRM partners for free; unless it is Salesforce or Infusionsoft.
If you are concerned about the traffic limitations then please email our support and we can help offer you a custom plan.
Last of all, I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to in regards to the WordPress publishing. If you published a landing page to the WordPress plugin, than make sure you don’t have one variation that is a blank page (this might be what happened).
You can learn more about publishing with WordPress here http://feedback.instapage.com/knowledgebase/articles/229642-how-do-i-publish-my-pages-using-the-wordpress-plug
Thanks so much for using Instapage 😉
Interesting post. I haven’t really looked at Instapages before. Have you tested how your conversion rates perform on there compared to Leadpages? That’s the one thing that keeps me sticking with Leadpages despite the downsides. I’m curious to know how Instapages does in that respect.
Hi Jon,
I just stumbled upon a great tool for building WordPress Landing Pages – Thrive Content Builder. I actually got it when I got Thrive Leads (which is also excellent), but didn’t realise what it did, and never used it. Actually, it’s fantastic. And much better than LeadPages for WordPress users. I just wrote about it here: http://timfelmingham.com/leadpages-alternative-thrive-content-builder-wordpress-landing-page-plugin/
Thanks for these amazing alternatives for Leadpages. I am going to now try the Instapage.
Thanks Jon Gillham this is really very useful info.
Hi, we’re a large brand looking to try out instapages but I’m already very frustrated by the fact there seems to be no phone number, no email address, no easy to contact them at all.
There’;s also literally no information on the functionality it provides on their website compared to competing products.
We use Constant Contact for email so their native integration is appealing but as large company, having to struggle to find a way to get some pre-sales support, it’s not looking good.
Hi Jon, just sent you a quick question via email regarding the article. Would really appreciate a response 🙂