Welcome to my UPDATED Leadpages review for 2020. The majority of reviews around the web are outdated (2016 or earlier), sugar-coated, or misleading.
This is not one of them….
I’m going to be brutally honest, analytical, and, I hope, helpful to you in making this decision. By the end, you’ll know everything necessary to make an informed decision. Personally, I think you’ll understand why Leadpages is the best landing page editor for business, even if it’s a bit pricey.
Let’s get started…
What I Cover in My 2020 Leadpages Review
I’ve built my fair share of landing pages, and in my Leadpages review, I’ll cover all the important details:
What is Leadpages?
Features – Templates, SMS, links, pop-ups, landing pages, and more
How to use Leadpages – A quick, very basic tutorial so you get a feel for the UX
Usability – My overall thoughts on usability and UX
Pricing – Leadpages’ somewhat “controversial” pricing
Customer support – A major bonus in my opinion
Important Note: No other landing page builder comes close to rivaling Leadpages usability, templates, and advanced features. You can design awesome landing pages with literally 0 experience. But it’s not for everyone, and there are some very important things you should know before starting your free trial.
Ⅰ: What is Leadpages?
Leadpages is a suite of tools that facilitates business growth by helping your company capture more leads and convert those leads into paying customers. They’re mostly known for their landing page builder and highly effective (yet slightly annoying) pop-ups.
Since you’ve probably heard of how the internet works, I won’t waste time explaining why you need landing pages.
You should just know that Leadpages’ Leadpage Editor is a simple, drag-and-drop tool that lets you create effective landing pages that convert with no design or development experience.
I discovered Leadpages when I was still a digital marketing newbie. All I had to do was choose a template and edit a few details—that was it. They did the rest.
Wow, that sounds great! Leadpages must be the best landing page tool out there, right?
Well, yes. Kind of. In my opinion, it is, but it might not be for everyone. There are a lot of landing page builders out there, and some are less than Leadpages.
You should know what the tool is capable of first.
Ⅱ: Features
Leadpages claims to be the #1 landing page tool out there, and honestly, they’re probably right. It’s hard not to be impressed with the features.
They’ve somehow managed to make this one of the most powerful business growth tools on the market and still not overcomplicate to the point where you need a Ph.D. just to get the thing live. If you’re looking to make high-converting landing pages with email-capture pop-ups, opt-in forms, and other cool features, you’ll have a lot of fun with Leadpages.
Here are a few of my favorite features:
2.1: Leadpages Templates
Leadpages templates are hands-down the best in the industry. They have 150+ templates broken down by purpose and industry.
And, as far as I’ve seen, nearly all of them are mobile responsive so they’ll render well on any device.
Need a lead capture template or a landing page for a special giveaway? You got it.
Are you a startup or tech firm that needs a landing page for a free guide or product pricing page?
The work has already been done for you. Just click, edit your details, and you’re pretty much set.
Maybe I’m just nostalgic about how helpful Leadpages’ templates were to me, but I love how easy it is to create a professional landing page in basically every industry for any purpose in minutes.
WARNING: Leadpages’ templates ARE NOT PERFECT
Leadpages’ templates come in two forms: Standard and Drag-n-Drop. The standard templates have very few customization options (if any).
I’ll get into more detail further down in the pros and cons section, but there are a few things you have to know. The templates are a great feature for businesses, but there are some flaws that you need to know about.
2.2: Pop-Ups (Leadboxes) – Grab a visitor’s attention at just the right time
You’ve most likely encountered a Leadpages pop-up (Leadbox). They’re ubiquitous.
Leadboxes are crisp, professional-looking pop-ups that help you capture more leads at just the right time.
Leadpages lets you create a high-converting Leadbox in a matter of minutes and comes with automatic settings to pop up at the height of your visitor’s interest.
That’s right, as soon as the visitor is engaged in your landing page, you can forcibly invade their eyesight with an offer they can’t refuse.
You can set your pop-up to appear:
When a user clicks a button or link
On a timer
As they’re about to exit in a last-ditch effort to keep their attention
Leadpages lets you design your Leadboxes in a few minutes with a simple drag-n-drop editor.
You can even connect your email service provider so new subscribers automatically go to your preferred email list.
Pro Tip: Enable Leadbox Tracking
Leadbox is a highly effective feature that lets you track every visitor’s interaction with your pop-up. You can track how long visitors keep the pop-up open and whether or not it accomplishes its goal of getting a sign-up or click.
You can evaluate the performance of a Leadbox by tracking it with Google Analytics. That way, you can see what’s performing up to speed and what’s not working and reevaluate accordingly.
2.3: Alert Bars – Increase conversions by making the most of screen real estate
You know those little bars at the top of your screen that offer a free product or alert you to a sale/giveaway?
Those annoying little things are alert bars, and Leadpages scores a 9 out of 10 in that department. I actually had no idea these were even a thing when I first discovered Leadpages, but they helped big time.
Hey, screen real estate is more valuable than a Manhattan penthouse, so any time you can make extra use out of what you’ve got, it’s a win. Leadpages lets you create non-intrusive (kind of) alert bars that scream for attention until your audience is forced to notice.
Like this:
And designing them doesn’t get much easier. Even if you’re a complete rookie, Leadpages walks you through the process step-by-step, including colors, text, and theme. You’ll have a custom alert bar in 2 minutes.
Pat yourself on the back, big boy.
2.3: Leadlinks – Sign up in 1 click (no extra info)
Leadlinks (email trigger links) is a cool feature that lets your prospects sign up for promotions (for example, a webinar) in 1 easy click.
Say you’re running a webinar called “how to make the perfect caviar taco.”
Normally, you’d send a broadcast email to your entire email list with a signup button that transports the reader to a landing page for that webinar (probably made with Leadpages, too).
If they wanted to learn more, they’d have to click that link and enter more personal information to sign up for your webinar.
Not anymore…
With Leadlinks, you—or an affiliate working with you—insert the link into the email, and when the prospect clicks it, they’re instantly signed up. No extra info needed.
All they do is click the link and they are auto-registered.
2.4: LeadDigits – Grow your email list via text
Leadpages’ “LeadDigits” feature is another useful tool that helps you reach out to prospects where they spend the vast majority of their time…
…their mobile phones.
Check this stat out from Mobilexco:
Text messages have a 209% higher response rate than phone, email, or Facebook. [1]
It makes sense though, right? We spend our entire lives glued to our phones, and it’s way easier to reply to a number with a short text rather than an email. LeadDigits lets you collect phone numbers (far more effective than email, but harder to get) and get email signups, send coupons, or promote your business via text.
2.5: A/B Testing: Make calculated changes based on data
Neo was the first visitor to ever take an A/B test
Theory gets you nowhere in this business.
It’s not enough to just slap a landing page up and hope for the best. The only way to know what truly works is to test, test, test.
Leadpages make it easy to A/B test right from your dashboard.
From there, you set the control page, make a copy, and implement your tweaks (for example, changing the CTA). If you’re feeling extra frisky, you can direct traffic. No, seriously, Leadpages lets you control how much traffic goes to each variation, but this is a bit advanced.
Still, it’s a neat feature to have.
2.6: Integrations
I just want to mention quickly how good Leadpages’ integrations are.
Not many landing page editors integrate with this many social media, payment, video, and CRM programs.
You can connect it with basically any email, webinar tool, payment processor, analytics program, social media platform, or scheduling program you want. That’s a huge plus.
2.7: Customer Service – Real people answering real questions… or so they say
Unlike most companies, Leadpages has real human beings behind those avatars and not some chatbot that’s only programmed to answer the top 10 FAQs.
That, and they’ve got a huge library of resources or “knowledge base” as they call it to help solve your problems.
I’ve had nothing but good experiences with customer service. That might not be a big deal to most people, and it shouldn’t make or break your decision here. But trust me, when you just want to run an A/B test and can’t figure out how to change the font color, you want a fast response.
Next up, a quick “how-to” section…
I could go on all day about features, but it’s best to leave SOMETHING to the imagination.
Let me give you a quick step-by-step “how-to” just to show you how easy the basics are.
Ⅲ: How to Use Leadpages
OK, I want to show you how to use Leadpages quickly so you get a feel for it.
That way, you’ll know if you can pull it off or not.
Step 1) Fire up Leadpages and click “Create New Leadpage”
This is REALLY EASY.
From your account dashboard, you can navigate to the Landing Pages tab within templates:
Notice you can choose Drag & Drop or Standard.
Step 2) Choose a template and edit
Alright, Picasso. Now’s your time to shine. Let’s make a landing page!
Each template contains pre-built sections. This makes it insanely easy to rearrange, modify, add, or delete to your liking.
NOTE: There is a big negative to the simplicity of Leadpages’ pre-built sections that I’ll cover at the end. It’s not the end of the world, but you should know about it.
All of the content on your new landing page is held in “widgets.” Each section of content has its own widget. Basically, that means your:
Title
Subtitle
Call to action
Images
All are held in predetermined areas. To edit, you just click on that widget.
Editing Widgets
If you’re using a Drag & Drop template, you can click the widgets tab on the left, then drag and drop elements onto your page for editing. Including:
Images
Videos
Text
Countdown
Progress bar
But that’s not all! Leadpages gives you full control over the look and feel of your page.
Aside from adding widgets, you can edit the actual dimensions and structure of your page too.
Editing page layout
You can edit your page’s layout using the section titled—you guessed it—Page Layout.
You can add or remove sections, rename sections, or do anything else you want with them. It’s your landing page, after all.
From there, you can get into even further detail and customize everything from colors to font sizes using the Page Styles tab.
Customizing page style
The paintbrush below Page Layout is Page Styles. This is where you can edit:
Font
Background
Width
Custom CSS
Favicon
That’s pretty easy considering you just made a totally functional landing page from scratch just by clicking a few buttons.
Now, it’s time to publish your page.
Step 3) Publish your page
I recommend previewing your page before publishing. You don’t want any screw-ups going live (TRUST ME).
Just click the Preview button like so:
From there, click Publish and you’re all set.
TIP: Always publish on your own domain
Leadpages allows you to publish to your own website or theirs (but they require you to use a subdomain, e.g. Store.Yourdomain.com). That will put people off big time. Don’t do it.
Ⅳ: Leadpages Pricing
Now for the million-dollar question.
Or, in this case, the $25 – $199/month question.
How much does Leadpages cost?
In my opinion, Leadpages is worth the price. But I won’t sugarcoat: it’s not cheap.
Leadapages’ pricing is one of the most common gripes with the tool, especially since most of the high-value features aren’t available with the Standard plan.
The price starts at $25/month (billed annually).
$300 a year doesn’t sound too bad for a tool that basically makes landing page creation a matter of a few clicks and a bit of dragging here and there.
But, once you see the details, you realize the bad news. The Standard plan doesn’t include:
Unlimited A/B testing
Leadlinks
LeadDigits
Sub accounts
Online sales and payments
If you want that, you have to upgrade to either:
Pro – $48/mo
Advanced – $199/mo
But wait!
All is not lost. I want to make this really clear:
THE STANDARD PLAN HAS EVERYTHING A BUSINESS NEEDS TO MAKE AWESOME, HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGES!
If you need a suped-up suite of marketing tools to scale your agency to space, then yeah Leadpages gets really expensive.
But the Standard plan includes:
Unlimited landing pages
Unlimited pop-ups
Unlimited alert bars
200+ templates
Facebook and IG ads builder
Group coaching
What else do you really need?
If you’re a small business with the Standard plan, you can make a landing page, add a pop-up, add an alert banner, and create social media ads.
That’s plenty if you ask me. Sure, you won’t get the most advanced features, but to be brutally honest, if you can’t afford $2,400 a year, then you probably aren’t at the level where any of that is important.
Pricing Verdict: Yes, Leadpages is pricey if you want all of the juiciest features, but the Standard plan has more than enough to build high-converting landing pages, and it’s not that expensive.
Ⅴ: Pros and Cons of Leadpages
I know this was a lot to take in, so let me summarize the pros and cons of Leadpages here:
Pros
Usability: It doesn’t get any easier than Leadpages’ drag-n-drop editor and intuitive widget system. I created some killer landing pages back when I had 0 clue what I was doing. No experience. No nothing. In a few clicks, you can have a professional level lander.
Feature Rich Without Complexity: Leadpages has awesome features like SMS marketing, Leadlinks, pop-ups, alert banners, in-depth analytics, and social ads, but it’s still super easy to use.
Templates: Leadpages has a template for nearly every function and most business niches. Just find a template to match your goals or search through options custom made for your industry. Leadpages has done all of the hard work for you.
Integration: Leadpages is the UN of landing page tools. It comes with 40+ standard integrations like Google Analytics, Facebook ads, and live chat software.
Cons
Pricing: It’s not cheap, but it shouldn’t be. It’ll cost you $300/year minimum, and that’s without the advanced features.
The drag & drop editor is wonky: This is the flaw that I mentioned before and you should be prepared for it. The editor is great, but it is flawed. A lot of the widget boundaries are a bit off, and often an element snaps into the wrong place or doesn’t end up exactly where you want it. Also, you can delete elements if you’d like, but then you just have awkward spaces that are impossible to fill in. I ran into some issues with it, but nothing that ruined campaigns for me. Just be prepared to fight a bit with the editor from time to time.
You can’t customize standard templates: The standard templates really can’t be edited at all even though they claim they can. You’re better off using a drag-n-drop one.
Ⅶ: Verdict – Is Leadpages worth it?
In my opinion, Leadpages is 100% worth the price. It’s the best landing page builder available in 2019.
If you’re a business that needs to create landing pages for lead magnets, special giveaways, regular promotions, or basically any other purpose, Leadpages is the best choice.
You can create specialized landing pages complete with banners and pop-ups in minutes and then publish them live with no coding or design knowledge. That will drastically increase your conversion rates. From there, no other landing page creator rivals its extended features and analytics integrations.
Yes, the editor has some quirks, and yes, the tool is pricey for the advanced features. But what do you expect for an entire suite of marketing tools? If it were cheap, it wouldn’t be good.
My advice: If you need great landing pages and have the funds, sign up for Leadpages’ free trial and you’ll have landing pages that are conversion machines in no time.
