Instapage vs Unbounce – Which Is Better?

No matter what type of business you are running, having a strong lead capture page to filter leads into your funnel is the lifeblood of your online marketing.

Today, there are several landing page platforms to choose from. It can be hard to choose which one to use with all of the features and benefits they offer. That’s why today I want to try and help make your decision a little easier.

Therefore, instead of focusing on the entire list of landing page services, I am going to focus on just two – Instapage and Unbounce.

So let’s dive right in!

What Is Instapage?

In simple terms, Instapage is a landing page builder. It’s a platform you can use to create landing pages with conversion focused layouts, and it’s easy to use.

Landing pages you create with Instapage are mobile responsive and you won’t need any developer experience to create them.

Notably, Instapage lets you experiment by testing your landing pages before publishing. This ensures that you use only the best performing landing pages for your projects.

You can test using A/B testing, detailed heat maps, analytics comparison, or multivariate testing.

Going further, Instapage is an ideal landing page builder to go for if you prioritize personalization. You can customize the content on your landing pages for different unique audiences.

Instapage is also ideal if you’re an agency or a team. The landing page builder facilitates collaboration with real-time edits and instant feedback. It’ll help you work faster and better.

Instapage Features Review

I will start off by saying that Instapage has always been my favorite. It is the perfect program to use if you are a beginner and don’t feel comfortable with the in’s and out’s of customizing any coding.

They use “Instablocks” to help you customize the 200+ design templates they have available.

Basic Features

Not only does Instapage allow you to create beautiful, stunning, and high-converting landing pages, they have an incredible amount of features that you can add in addition to helping you with the overall management of your campaigns.

• Pop-ups – allows you to create basic pop-ups although not as robust as Unbounce.
• Templates – over 200 templates available to choose from.
• Built-In Heat Maps
• CRM Integration – allowed through third-party integration.
• Contact Management – allowed through third-party integration.
• SEO Management.
• Real-Time Collaboration – only comes with the Enterprise plan.
• AMP Landing Pages – only comes with the Enterprise plan.
• Dynamic keyword text replacement for SEM campaigns.

Integrations

Instapage comes with over 120 integrations classified under the following 11 different categories:

• Advertising
• Analytics
• Call-Tracking
• CRM
• E-Commerce
• Email Marketing
• Exit Intent & Pop-Ups
• Live Chat
• Marketing Automation
• Other
• Webinar

Analytics

Instapage allows you to analyze your pages and results in several different ways. This is one advantage that I like compared with Unbounce.

You can use their internal analytics on your dashboard, or you can use their analytics integrations.

Here is a list of their major analytics components:

• ROI Analytics
• Conversion Tracking
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• A/B Split Testing
• Engagement Analytics
• Reporting & Statistics
• Real-Time Data and Analytics

There are a lot more tools with Instapage when it comes to analytics overall.

Ease of Use

As mentioned earlier, this is probably an easier program to use when compared to Unbounce. You can see the inside panel of my account and how it looks.

You simply start with picking a template you like, then from there you can go to town editing however you would like.

You can see below the various buttons that you can choose to add different elements to the page. I love this interface and personally feel it’s easier to navigate than Unbounce.

Customer Support

Instapage features a Live Chat on its website for quick support. However, it’s bot-powered, so users may not get the best of help.

The best option to reach the support team is to submit a ticket. You can submit a ticket only on weekdays – Monday to Friday – and you should expect a reply within a few hours.

While submitting a support ticket, you can add attachments and URLs. They’ll help you get a more personalized solution.

You can get self-help with the Instapage help center. It features help articles on nine different topics, which include your dashboard, ad map, landing pages, personalization, experiments, analytics, domains and publishing, integrations, and account administration.

Other customer support resources available on Instapage include a resource library, case studies, and FAQs.

Furthermore, you can connect with Instapage on their LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube profiles.

Instapage Pricing

Instapage is a landing page builder that is geared towards conversions. It has only two pricing plans, which includes:

• Building – $299 per month for monthly subscription, or $199 per month for annual subscription
• Converting – based on customized requirements

Note: You can get a 14-day trial of the Building plan before subscription.

For the Converting plan, you will have to call and request a demo from them.

Instapage Pros

• Easy to use
• Drag and drop builder
• Split testing
• Collaboration
• Cross-domain support
• Responsive landing pages
• Third-party integrations

Instapage Cons

• Only available for premium use
• Not much SEO tools
• High pricing

What Is Unbounce?

Unbounce is a hub of marketing tools that can help you grow any online business. However, the primary tool it features is the landing page builder.

Unbounce is a fantastic platform that has been around since 2009, and allows the more advanced user to get a little more creative with coding if they want. They were one of the first players to enter the market, and they are still going strong today.

The platform is still great for beginners, it simply offers more options for advanced users.

The platform comes with an AI-powered landing page builder. It not only makes building landing pages faster and easier, but it also ensures smarter results.

Many online business users have used Unbounce’s landing pages to convert random visitors into profitable leads.

Aside from landing pages, you can also create sticky bars and popups with Unbounce. These are extra page elements that can come in handy for your marketing campaign. You can create them using the same builder, so it’s easy to do.

Marketing isn’t complete without business writing – more specifically, copywriting. For this reason, Unbounce features AI copywriting tools that you can use to generate, edit, and customize content.

Furthermore, you can count on a platform like Unbounce for traffic optimization. The platform promises up to 30 percent increase in conversion with its landing pages.

Unbounce Features Review

Basic Features

• CRM Integration
• Landing Page Templates – Unbounce has over 100+ templates to choose from.
• Dynamic Keyword Replacement – Fantastic feature if you are doing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns.
• Drag and Drop Builder
• Pop-Ups and Sticky Bars

Integrations

Unbounce has approximately 115 integrations within their platform.

The downside to Unbounce vs Instapage is that Unbounce does not offer a Linkedin, Instagram or Twitter integration, so if you need that, they don’t currently have it as of the date of this post.

Analytics

One of my first initial observations about the analytics compared to Instapage is that there aren’t as many ways to analyze your ROI and vital statistics with Unbounce.

They boast more about conversion tools than analytical tools.

I’m not saying that more advanced metrics can’t be done, but you will need to do most of it through third-party apps like Google Analytics.

In the meantime, you will find these conversion tools on your Unbounce dashboard:

• A/B Split Testing
• Reporting & Statistics
• Conversion Rate Optimization

Ease of Use

I enjoy the user interface as it’s easy, clean, and very fluid. The dashboard has drag-and-drop functionality just like Instapage.

Because of it’s more advanced features, it can get a little confusing for beginners though.

Customer Support

Unbounce offers different support channels for different situations. You can chat with the support team if you want to make sales inquiries, or submit a contact form if you want to do partnership inquiries.

For user customer support, however, you should be logged in to message the support team.

Notably, Unbounce offers extensive support to users in different countries. You can reach the support team on the phone and there are phone numbers for different countries and regions.

North America, Berlin, Vancouver, Australia, Germany, and the UK have dedicated phone numbers. Then, there’s a worldwide number for other countries.

The Unbounce help center is a dependable source of self-help. It is powered by Zendesk and features many articles on different categories on using Unbounce.

Unbounce also maintains a community of users which you can join to get answers and interact with other users. You’ll appreciate the conversion intelligence resources that explain marketing beyond using the Unbounce platform.

Unbounce Pricing

Unbounce has four different subscription levels which includes:

• Launch – $90 per month for monthly subscription, or $81 per month for annual subscription
• Optimize – $135 per month for monthly subscription, or $122 per month for annual subscription
• Accelerate – $225 per month for monthly subscription, or $203 per month for annual subscription
• Concierge – $575 per month for monthly subscription, or $518 per month for annual subscription

Unbounce Pros

• Easy drag and drop builder
• It can build mobile and desktop landing pages
• Integrates with other landing pages
• Supports tracking codes
• Easy to add custom domains
• Affordable pricing plans
• Reliable customer support and resources

Unbounce Cons

• Poor A/B testing
• No free plan

Unbounce vs Instapage: Similarities

The most apparent similarity between Unbounce and Instapage is that both are landing page builders.

Irrespective of which you go for, you can build landing pages for any campaign that’ll display on desktop and mobile devices alike.

Another similarity is that with either Instapage or Unbounce, you can connect with other third-party platforms which helps improve functionality.

Instapage and Unbounce have many similar native features. Some of them are split testing, multivariate testing, API, CRM, automation, and SEO management.

Finally, you cannot use Unbounce or Instapages without paying.

Although they have different pricing models and plans, both platforms are premium. Nevertheless, they both offer free trials, which is another interesting similarity.

Key Differences

Pop-ups and sticky bars

A big difference between Unbounce and Instapage is that Unbounce allows you the ability to create entry and exit pop-ups to help even further with increasing your conversion ratios.

Although you may want to be aware, Jeff Bullas tweeted on October 31st, 2018 on Google’s mobile ranking algorithm regarding “intrusive” pop-ups. Just keep it in mind.

You may want to do some A/B split testing by setting up landing pages that have pop-ups and some that don’t to see if it affects your rankings.

AMP Landing Pages

If you aren’t familiar with Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) Project, you should get to know about it as soon as you can. In a nutshell, it comes down to how fast your website loads on a mobile device.

Instapage offers AMP Landing Pages, but Unbounce is no longer supporting AMP pages.

Real-Time Collaboration

Another big difference I found was that Instapage has a unique collaboration tool. I love this tool because if you are working in a team environment, it allows you to share landing pages, gain instant feedback, and do real-time edits.

It reminds me of Google Docs, but for their landing page software.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both of these programs are fantastic landing page tools to use when generating leads for your business. I believe that it comes down to personal preference and what features you are going to be using most for your online business.

Surely if you are brand new to the business of digital marketing, I would recommend Instapage. The “Instablock” set up makes it so easy to use and you really get the hang of it after a while.

It helps that there are so many analytics available with Instapage as well. If you chose Instapage because you are a novice, then learning from each landing page makes you a better marketer in the long run.

Unbounce is better for the more advanced user and gives you the best flexibility to customize templates.

For me, the first place trophy goes to Instapage. Ultimately, I would encourage you to try the free trials on both of these platforms. Play around inside each and see which one you feel most comfortable with.