Background

I spent the best part of last year sending out one-off email blasts to promote my e-commerce company. At the time I was using very basic email marketing software to try and move leads further down my funnel. The problem was this basic software did not allow me to ramp up my lead generation. There was no way to effectively nurture leads. And measuring the results of my lead generation and nurturing efforts was difficult.

This inspired me to search for an all in one solution that would maximize my lead generation efforts. After a lot of research, two contenders emerged. Before I reveal my choice, let me highlight the features I found most interesting. I’d also like to address some frequently asked questions about inbound marketing platforms.

What is Wishpond?

Wishpond is an all-in-one marketing platform that focuses on integrating email campaigns with social media lead generation. Wishpond handles:

• Landing pages,
• Email marketing,
• Sign up forms,
• Popups,
• Contests,
• Promotions,
• Marketing Automation

The Wishpond platform allows marketers to understand potential customers better through behavioral analysis. Using this understanding, marketers are better equipped to send targeted messages to people may be unsure about making a purchase.

What is Hubspot?

Hubspot is another all-in-one marketing platform that is designed to help companies plan and execute inbound marketing campaigns. They focus on improving web presence so that website traffic can be converted into reliable leads. These leads can then be tracked within their system so they can be analyzed and nurtured. Linking analytics with nurturing helps keep campaigns on track. Hubspot helps both B2C and B2B businesses with these capabilities:

• Analytics,
• Blogging,
• Content management,
• Email,
• Landing pages,
• Marketing automation,
• SEO,
• Social media management.

Wishpond Pros and Cons

Hubspot Pros and Cons

Key Wishpond Features

Funnel Management

Every marketing campaign experiences waste. The sales funnel can leak at many points and it is very difficult to keep track of losses. Wishpond offers a capability that allows you to plug leaks in your funnel. This is an automated process so you don’t have to waste time figuring it out manually.

There are two areas where I was losing the most money: reader conversions and cart abandonment.

Email Nurturing

Wishpond allows me to trigger a drip campaign as soon as someone subscribes to my blog. This is more effective approach than sending an email announcing a new article. Dripping blog subscribers is better for converting loyal readers into paying customers.

Reader Interest Segmentation

Wishpond’s drip marketing feature allows for easier segmentation. I can see which articles my visitors were reading before deciding to subscribe. I found this very useful as it allowed me to produce more targeted content. It also helps us send email follow-ups related to what subscribers are most interested in reading.

Key Hubspot Features

Calendar Planning

Hubspot is also effective at reader conversion. It’s not as straightforward compared to Wishpond, but the option is there. I was able to create custom emails for subscribers that would notify them about new blog posts. Hubspot’s analytic tools then allowed me to see which blog posts were the most profitable. This helps me do a better job of planning my editorial calendar.

Contextual Drip Customization

I felt Hubspot let me down in relation to creating more personalized drip campaigns. I was hoping to create campaigns related to blog posts viewed before subscribing. I was only given the option of either instant, daily, weekly, or monthly notifications. Each of these notification emails is customizable. Yet, there is no option to trigger a custom drip sequence based on a subscriber’s individual interests. For such an expensive software platform I found this omission disappointing.

Recovering Abandoned Carts

Two things are responsible for most cart abandonment. Excessive extra costs (especially shipping) and requiring the buyer to create an account.

Cart recovery is where Hubspot really shines. I attribute this to the depth of detail Hubspot provides about the abandoned sale. Both my internal team and the prospective customer get all the information necessary to resume the sale.

Most people shop with many tabs open. And so memory aids, like an image of the abandoned product in the follow-up email, are very helpful.

FAQ

1. Why do I need a platform like Wishpond or Hubspot?

Inbound marketing is labor-intensive. This is because you shift focus from financial investment to creative investment. Things become far more complicated because you are attracting leads from many sources. In addition to ads, you can generate leads through SEO, blogging, and social media. Inbound traffic comes from a wide range of sources. That’s why you need an easy to manage, central platform to keep everything straight.

2. What do these platforms include?

For Hubspot and Wishpond what you get depends on the level of service you decide to opt for. Wishpond’s “everything you need” plan provides you with all the basics. This allows you to run effective reader conversion and cart abandonment campaigns. Those benefits alone are worth the monthly fee. Yet, Wishpond has a broad feature set that helps you convert cold traffic to paying customers. Hubspot includes everything that Wishpond offers except built-in contest management.

3. I’m already using WordPress and MailChimp for free, why change?

If you are still meeting your growth goals and you’re not overwhelmed. Which is especially common if you’re working with a Frankenstein system. That is something cobbled together from many services. In that case, there is no need to upgrade yet. This review is for people who are making money but know they should be earning a lot more.

4. Do intelligent drip campaigns have to be expensive?

The idea of expensive versus cheap doesn’t hold in business. The money spent on either Hubspot or Wishpond is an investment. The platform you choose will depend on your ROI calculations.

If you are just starting out, then Wishpond is the better choice for you. If you are more experienced, a powerful platform like Hubspot provides the most leverage. This is true even if the initial investment is greater. For example, the cheapest Hubspot plan that includes A/B testing is $800 per month. By contrast, Wishpond offers a plan that includes A/B testing for $99 per month.

Wishpond vs Hubspot Price Comparison

Conclusion

Using Hubspot was mostly a smooth experience, at least for me. I did not have to make many changes to my workflow to get the benefits from their platform. Yet, I did find that I was having to find workarounds for the limitations of the platform. I liked Hubspot as a contact manager. It helped me to track the activities of thousands of people in one centralized panel. This helped me to manage follow-ups and gave guidance on when to push forward on a deal or drop an opportunity. The only other issue is that I work with a team of people. It doesn’t matter how good a platform is if no one is willing to use it.

This is why Wishpond took over. My marketing team preferred Wishpond over Hubspot. And since they would be the ones using it day to day, it as hard to argue. They convinced me to take another look at Wishpond from the perspective of using it to drive leads all year. From this perspective, Wishpond is the clear winner.

Wishpond offers a range of tools that help to promote creativity within a marketing team. This is especially true for the contests management feature. The toughest challenge in marketing is being remembered by your ideal customer. To be remembered, your company needs to provide memorable experiences. The same holds true online. We need prospective customers to remember our brand when they are in need. They also need to remember us to recommend suitable people that may need what we offer.

Wishpond’s contest feature stands out because it helps to make our brand sticky. It achieves this by getting people to be active in their involvement. Wishpond does this very well. I am impressed with how many positive messages we get about our competitions. Wishpond allows marketing to be fun for customers, this increases sales and referrals. If you need to improve the engagement and conversion rate of your marketing campaigns, then I recommend Wishpond.

What is Infusionsoft?

Infusionsoft is a marketing automation platform with a built-in Customer Relationship Management. It is designed to help SMEs automate their sales and marketing processes. The platform focuses on engagement, customer tracking, and cash flow. You can use it to run a digital business from lead generation to final sale. This is what first attracted me to Infusionsoft. It was a single platform that could replace the three other services I was using to run my online business.

Why I started looking for alternatives

Poor Data Presentation

One of my main problems with Infusionsoft was the poor presentation of metric data. This is a tricky criticism to make because the actual data is excellent. Infusionsoft provides highly actionable information. It just takes a lot of number-crunching to make it useful for marketing decisions.

Ugly Email Templates

The other issue is their ugly email templates. I felt that my email results had reached a plateau. And this was partly because I was forced to send emails that were not visually pleasing. In my experience, well-designed emails increase trust and drive conversions.

Evolving Business Needs

In the end, Infusionsoft went from something I would happily recommend to colleagues to something I would steer people away from. When recommending alternatives to Infusionsoft (depending on the person’s personal circumstances and business needs) I would typically recommend one of three alternatives: Salesforce, Hubspot, or Ontraport.

Salesforce

This is the Infusionsoft alternative I recommend for professional services companies.

What is the main problem Salesforce solves for professional services companies?

For most professional services companies, the biggest challenge is generating and managing incoming call requests. I recommend Salesforce Sales Cloud as an alternative to Infusionsoft in these situations. Recently, I was advising a colleague of mine that was in charge of a midsized accounting firm.

A recent series of positive press articles had led to an increasing number of people using their website’s “call me back” button. The level of call requests began to overwhelm the sales staff. This is a serious issue because 90% of people hang up after spending 10 minutes waiting for a callback to be connected. To make matters worse, they projected that the volume of calls would double over the next four months.

Which Salesforce Sales Cloud features helped manage these inbound leads?

My colleague needed to set up a collaborative system of freelance teams. These teams would need to work with the core sales department to solve the call request overload problem. They did this by using a combination of Salesforce Lightning Dialer, Web-to-Lead Capture and Opportunity Score. These features allowed them to automate the lead follow up the process. This led to the highest value leads having priority for callbacks.

To make this run smoothly, he invested in the Enterprise Lightening Plan. You can see a plan comparison below:

What does Salesforce cost?

On Salesforce, there are 4 plans; Lightning Essentials, Lightning Professional, Lightning Enterprise, and Lightning Unlimited. The Lightning Essentials goes for $25 a month, the Lightning Professional goes for $75 a month, the Lightning Enterprise goes for $150 a month, and the Lightning Unlimited is $300 a month.

What were the results?

The new setup relieved the core team’s workload. This allowed them to focus on the most important leads. Salesforce was able to align the capabilities of the off-site freelance team with the firm’s goals. So then my colleague’s firm could maintain their high standard of client engagement.

Hubspot

This is the Infusionsoft alternative I recommend for e-commerce companies.

What major problems does Hubspot solve for e-commerce companies?

A close friend of mine had been running a successful clothing and accessory store for nearly 11 years. After opening a few locations, he decided that they should also launch an online store. The problem was that the online store quickly started eating the lunch of the physical locations. We call this cannibalization. The CEO wanted to solve this cannibalization problem. He needed an online store that generated independent sales, increased engagement, and expanded brand awareness.

Which Hubspot features were helpful?

The first thing the team did was dig into the Hubspot Academy. This gave them a foundational understanding of inbound marketing principles. This was an important step because they did not have a background in digital marketing. This educational resource maximized their use of Hubspot.

Next, they set up a blog using Hubspot’s blogging application. They used this to share fashion tips and information about new products. This went a long way to attracting relevant visitors to their website.

Finally, they began to use Hubspot‘s workflows application. They could then segment email marketing actions based on the behavior of their customers.

Key features of Hubspot Marketing Hub – from $200/month

• A/B Testing
• Advanced segmentation
• Analytics dashboards
• Blogging
• Calls-to-Action
• Content optimization & creation
• Email marketing
• Landing Pages Builder
• Lead Management
• All-in-one Marketing Automation
• Personalized content and CTAs
• Predictive lead scoring
• Reports
• SEO
• Salesforce Integration
• Social media tools

What does Hubspot cost?

On Hubspot, there are 5 plans; Free, Starter, Basic, Professional, and Enterprise. The Free Plan has no cost at all. The Starter goes for $50 a month, the Basic goes for $200 a month, the Professional plan goes for $800 a month, and the Enterprise is $2,400 a month. Check out which plan works best for you here!

Q&A

Is HubSpot for startups any good?

“HubSpot for Startups is a great program. HubSpot provides fully integrated marketing, CRM, and sales platforms — this is difficult to stitch together on your own (there’s always something that doesn’t quite work when you bring multiple platforms together). Knowing who’s visiting your site, what pages they are viewing, and which gated collateral they are downloading provides visibility that is often missing. I customized our sales funnel in less than 20 minutes, providing clarity and metrics that drive success. And this is all available on day 1.” Matt Benati

What were the results?

These features transform their digital marketing strategy. They could build campaigns and develop workflow funnels based on historical customer behavior. Right now, every email they send makes use of Hubspot‘s Smart Content feature. This is built into the email application. And it allowed them to successfully nurture customers that abandoned shopping carts. They also send transactional emails based on how customers have behaved in the past.

This change produced a 52% increase in sales compared to the previous year. And most impressively, they convert over 45% of inbound leads to paying customers. All this adds up to making the online store a driver of 1/3 of the company’s profits. It is now one of its most important profit drivers. Whereas before it was draining profit from the physical stores.

Ontraport

This is the Infusionsoft alternative that I recommend to information marketers.

What major problem does Ontraport solve?

A classmate of mine had spent the last 15 years working as an environmental engineer. After so many years of doing this work, he wanted to do something fulfilling. He chose to help Americans reduce their carbon footprint as well as their energy bills.

To support this vision, he needed to set up a system to generate leads and manage a membership site. In addition, he needed a platform that would support rapid growth. The challenge was doing this without sacrificing his freedom and flexibility.

Which Ontraport features were most helpful?

Membership Sites

The first step was getting the membership site off the ground. Ontraport integrates smoothly with WordPress to create membership sites within the platform. This allowed for easy management of both membership access and subscription fees. Things were also better for his customers. They had the ability to update profile and payment details in a few clicks. These changes would be instantly reflected in Ontraport.

Marketing Automation

This business sells a digital product. Ontraport supports this by allowing information marketers like him to build intricate marketing funnels through their Sequences and Rules feature. This toolset automates lead generation, payment processing, and content delivery.

[earnist ref=”grow-your-membership-platform-the-easy-way” id=”33600″]

Payment Processing

Ontraport‘s payment automation has been especially useful because it is a massive timesaver. Everything from initial payments to declined charges is automated and dealt with. Payment automation does a lot of the work one might expect from a dedicated customer service rep without the extra cost.

Key Ontraport Features

• 2-way SMS Messaging
• Abandoned Cart Follow-up
• Facebook Integration
• Lead Management and Scoring
• Marketing Automation
• Marketing Tracking
• Membership Sites
• One-click Upsells
• Order Forms
• PURLs
• Partner Programs
• Postcard Marketing
• Split Testing
• Task Management
• Trials, Subscriptions, Coupons, and Payment Plans
• Webforms
• WordPress Integration

What does Ontraport cost?

Ontraport has four pricing plans; Ontraport Basic, Ontraport Plus, Ontraport Pro, and Ontraport Enterprise. The Ontraport Basic plan goes for $79 a month, the Ontraport Plus goes for $147 a month, the Ontraport Pro goes for $297 a month, and the Ontraport Enterprise goes for $497 a month. Check out which plan works best for you here!

What were the results?

The most important result is financial. His business generated over $4 million in sales last year. This success was made possible because Ontraport allowed him to generate over 170,000 qualified leads. This is what provided the foundation for him to sell over 80,000 memberships that year.

Comparison Table

Conclusion

As you can see, if you come to me and ask “what is the best alternative to Infusionsoft?” My response will be that it depends. You should select marketing automation software based on your business model and goals.

If you are an information marketer than your best bet is Ontraport. For running an e-commerce company, I recommend Hubspot. And if you are the head of a professional services firm, then Salesforce is for you.

What is Leadpages?

Leadpages is an online solution allowing you to capture email leads. With their excellent drag and drop builder, you can create effective landing pages. To get you started, Leadpages offers a wide range of templates to create a profitable funnel. I use it daily to keep my pipeline full of high-potential leads.

Leadpages has been a market leader since 2016 when they updated the page builder. Leadpages boasts a large library of landing page templates. Yet, they are not a static company. Leadpages is very responsive to customer requests. This led to some recent innovations and special features, such as:

• Event countdown timers
• Movable calls to action
• Easier video or image insertion
• More flexible page layouts

Although the platform is not perfect, they do listen to customers. This kind of responsiveness is rare, especially in larger companies. But, Leadpages seems committed to evolving with their customers. This allowed them to grow to over 60,000 paying customers and counting. You may be unhappy with the current performance of your landing pages. That may be because you are currently using a DIY solution or another platform. In either case, you may find this review helpful.  Read on to find out whether Leadpages could be a good solution to increase the ROI of your marketing.

This review will explore both the positives and negatives of Leadpages. By the end, you will understand the most important features of Leadpages. You will also understand how it compares to other similar solutions on the market. Armed with this knowledge, you will be able to make an independent buying decision. And answer the question, what is the best tool for improving your marketing?

Pros and Cons of Leadpages

Key Features

• A/B testing
• Change the published URL
• Collaboration Solution
• Drag & drop WYSIWYG editor
• Edit landing pages any time
• Email notifications
• Form builder
• Free subdomains
• Heatmaps
• Instant analytics & data
• Lead-gen dashboard
• Mobile responsive
• Professional templates
• Publish to multiple domains
• SEO plugin
• Social widgets
• Support for video
• Template Importer

Feature Spotlight

1. Customizable Templates

Certain features are crucial in a landing page platform. One of the most important is the ability to produce professional designs at scale. Leadpages allows you and your team to create conversion ready, branded templates. All this without needing to go through an entire wireframe process. These customizable templates reduce the time it takes to develop new landing pages.

2. An Easy-To-Use Builder

Page builders are always a tricky compromise on landing page platforms. On the one hand, we needed to have enough features to be useful. On the other, we don’t want to be so overwhelmed with functions that the builder is counterintuitive. The page builder that comes with Leadpages strikes the right balance. It allows you, and your team, to create high converting landing pages. A key benefit is the ability to add multimedia elements without needing a developer. If you want to create a page from scratch, then the Leadpages builder makes it easy.

3. Easy Publishing

With Leadpages, it is simple to publish a landing page on your website. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a content management system or not. If you are using a content management system then it integrates very well. Especially with the most popular platforms: WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal.

4. Impressive Analytics

Marketing teams don’t like to fly blind. Analytics allows us to understand how each landing page is performing. This data allows you to optimize paid advertising campaigns. This way, they become more profitable over time. Leadpages allows you to track key performance indicators. You can track visitor numbers, cost-per-lead, and conversion rates across your landing pages. This gives you a clear idea of where you can make improvements.

5. Reliable A/B Testing

To get the full benefit of analytics you need to be running A/B tests. Leadpages offers reliable tools for testing different versions of your landing page. This allows you, and your team, to scientifically figure out what is driving conversions.

A/B testing is one of the most effective methods for improving return on investment. This is why expert marketers use them to improve the efficacy of paid advertising. If you have any A/B testing experience, you know it involves statistical calculations. The math for figuring out whether your results are statistically significant is difficult. Yet, you need to ensure you have enough data to determine which version of your page is more successful. With Leadpages, you do not need a deep knowledge of statistics. Their A/B testing platform is easy to use without sacrificing accuracy.

6. Collaboration Tools

It takes a wide range of skills to put together a successful landing page:

1. User experience expertise,
2. search engine optimization,
3. copywriting,
4. and graphic design.

It’s very rare that all the skills reside in a single person. So, it is important for landing page platforms to have built-in collaboration features. This is especially true for creative teams. Leadpages allows you to invite team members to different landing page projects. This feature also allows you to control which accounts individuals have access to. This all makes collaboration easy and efficient. Especially when dealing with many people across multiple time zones.

Feature Summary

Leadpages provides search marketers with a diverse library of easily customizable templates. The page builder is easy to use. You can choose to customize an existing template or create a landing page from scratch. There is also a wide range of publishing options. You can publish through a content management system, Facebook, or CNAME.

The collaboration features make it very easy for teams to get together and setup A/B tests. Having these two features in the same place cuts down on a lot of arguments. This is because any disagreements can be subject to split-test.

This is all backed up by excellent customer support. Representatives are able to guide you through the various features of Leadpages. The support staff is also helpful for figuring out how to get the most out of the Leadpages’ powerful analytics. This insight will help you better understand the behavior of your users.

Leadpages vs. Alternatives

Integrations

• ActiveCampaign
• Acuity
• AWeber
• Calendly
• Constant Contact
• ConvertKit
• Drip
• Emma
• Facebook Ads
• GetResponse
• Google AdWords
• Google Analytics
• GoToWebinar
• HubSpot
• iContact
• Infusionsoft
• Joomla
• LinkedIn
• MailChimp
• Marketo
• Ontraport
• PayPal
• Salesforce
• Shopify
• Squarespace
• Stripe
• Timetrade
• Twitter
• WebinarJam
• Weebly
• Wix
• WordPress

Conclusion: Should You Buy Leadpages?

The success of your ad campaigns depends on your ability to create quality landing pages. Your long-term success depends on your ability to create these pages at scale. Choosing the correct platform allows you to do this with a better return on investment. Before selecting a landing page tool, you need to ensure the chosen tool has all the basic features. The features we have discussed in this review are the things that will contribute most to your ROI.

If you choose Leadpages, you can be confident that you are covering all your bases. Their customizable templates are already optimized for conversions. The excellent support infrastructure reduces the learning curve. This means it is not as steep compared to other platforms. I can say from personal experience that Leadpages has made marketing simpler.

Leadpages provides great variation in communicating with potential customers. It offers a broader set of tools for converting prospects into paying customers. It has done this by providing a centralized communication system. This improves the relationship between your business and individual customers. Allowing you to make quick independent decisions and clearly observe the results. This speed of testing is one of the greatest advantages of Leadpages. If you value speed and accuracy, this is for you.

What is Instapage?

Instapage is an online tool that helps you quickly create and launch landing pages. They focus on what happens after a user clicks one of your paid adverts. It’s also great at helping you track conversion rates on paid advertising campaigns. In the past, building landing pages used to be expensive. Good-looking mobile responsive landing pages were especially difficult.

The page builder that Instapage provides makes it easy to create landing pages. Especially when you have no coding skill. You can choose from 200+ landing pages organized by type. This allows you to easily create and test landing pages for a wide range of marketing campaigns.

 Pros and Cons of Instapage

Key Features

• A/B testing
• Change the published URL
• Collaboration Solution
• Drag & drop WYSIWYG editor
• Edit landing pages any time
• Email notifications
• Form builder
• Free subdomains
• Heatmaps
• Instant analytics & data
• Lead-gen dashboard
• Mobile responsive
• Professional templates
• Publish to multiple domains
• SEO plugin
• Social widgets
• Support for video
• Instapage Template Importer

 Feature Spotlight

1. Massive Template Library

You can choose from over 200 customizable templates. Each of these has been optimized for conversions. I was especially impressed with the range of templates on offer. You may need a page for lead generation, webinars, or an event registration. Regardless, you will find something that looks great and converts reliably. Another excellent benefit is the ability to import your own landing page templates. For instance, I love the selection of themes at ThemeForest. And the import feature allows me to upload premium themes to modify later on.

2. Instablocks

This is the unique way Instapage allows you to build landing pages at scale. This is important if you are advertising on a pay per click basis. PPC platforms offer discounted rates for more relevant ads. This takes into account both the ad wording and the content of the landing page. The higher your ad-keyword-landing page relevancy, the cheaper your cost per click.

Instablocks allows you to create landing page building bricks. These bricks can be used to construct a large number of landing pages in a short time. This allows you to create high-relevance landing pages at the same rate as you are creating ads. This also reduces the time it takes to set up a series of A/B tests.

I tested this feature with a brand-new campaign that required me to test 62 unique adverts. Running a test like this used to take a couple of weeks. Instead, I was able to create landing pages for each ad in a single afternoon. I was able to create custom building blocks for my campaign and save them for later, so I saved a lot of time not having to duplicate my work. This freed me up to create more unique variations. This, in turn, led to counterintuitive but profitable results.

3. Advertising Attribution

This is my favorite Instapage feature. When you spend serious money on AdWords there are lots of clicks flying around. Many campaigns, multiple ads, thousands of keywords. Which are profitable and where is the waste? It used to take a data analyst to figure all this out. I found that as my campaign scaled, this became prohibitively expensive. And it’s not as though the analysts never made mistakes.

So I love the advertising attribution solution. It had an immediate positive effect on the return on investment of the campaign I tested it with. More importantly, the results scale to all my pay per click activity. The Wanamaker conundrum is finally solved. I previously knew I was wasting half of my advertising money. And now I have a clear idea of where the waste was occurring.

Up to this point, the main difficulty has been tracking campaign performance. This has been especially difficult at different stages of the funnel. It has been tough to attribute conversions and revenue to specific keywords. How does one connect revenue to specific campaigns and individual ad costs?

It has been tough to track this automatically, and doing it manually gets expensive at scale. This happens because the middle of the funnel represents something of a black box. So much can happen between an ad being clicked and a completed sale. It is difficult to find a system that will keep track of everything that happens between the click and the sale.

Instapage’s advertising attribution solution offered me a newfound perspective. I now have a better idea of what is happening in the black box that represents the middle of the funnel. This is the only solution that gave me reliable data on both cost per visitor and cost per lead. Not just for paid ads, but for organic traffic as well.

4. Global Blocks

This is the key time-saving feature of Instapage. It is fairly new so I’ve not been using it very long, but it is a game changer. This feature allows you to manage all your landing pages instantly. This will save you a ton of time if you manage hundreds of landing pages across many campaigns. When managing so many pages, you will often need to make updates to specific parts of multiple pages. I can say from personal experience this can be a major pain.

For example, back in January, I faced the dull task of updating the copyright date at the bottom of my landing pages. It is a minor detail but needed to be done. This is both mind-numbing and time-consuming to do manually. Using global blocks allows you to create an editable block to be used across all landing pages. It doesn’t matter if you are working with five or 5,000. Imagine making these updates one by one? Instead, you can make changes in a single block and publish them to all your pages with a click.

The second, more profit-focused, use for global blocks is templating “champion” elements. Let’s say you’ve been testing 63 different calls to action. After extensive testing, you find a call to action block that outperforms all the rest. You can now publish that element to all your landing pages with a single click. This gives all your pages an instant conversion boost.

Take a look at Instapage’s different plans from the core plan to the Enterprise or Premium plan:

Alternatives to Try

Integrations

• Drupal
• Facebook
• Google AdWords
• Google Analytics
• HubSpot
• LinkedIn
• MailChimp
• Marketo
• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• Shopify
• WordPress
• Zapier
• ConvertKit

Conclusion: Is Instapage Worth It?

Instapage is a powerful landing page software. Its power is enhanced by a few key features:

• Advanced A/B testing functionality,
• a diverse integrations ecosystem,
• and seamless collaboration features.

This is a flexible landing page system with layered functionality. Instapage allows both solopreneurs and large marketing teams to execute successful marketing campaigns.

One of the first things you will notice about Instapage is that it is fully customizable. As you continue to use it, you will learn it is also scalable. I can recommend this landing page solution. It’s one of my top sales funnels software programs out there too.

When compared to other solutions, such as Unbounce, it is far more flexible. If you are managing a team of people with differing opinions about how the marketing campaign should be conducted then Instapage can settle a lot of arguments with its testing and collaboration features.

Instapage provides a lot of features that increase the accountability of team members. This is mainly due to its finest feature, the advertising attribution solution. Using attribution, you can tie specific results to the work of specific people or teams of people. This greater accountability produces more effective marketing campaigns. It also improves the productivity of the teams you manage over the long run.

Instapage offers the ability to optimize the comparative advantage of different team members. It also allows you to reward them for their marginal contribution. Combined, these are the two greatest benefits that make Instapage highly recommended. This becomes truer as your team grows.

Are you planning to start using a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system? In the very basic sense, a CRM manages all strategies and activities used to interact with customers. CRM helps in building and maintaining customer relations. This, in turn, creates loyalty and increases retention.

While a CRM can do wonders for your business, it’s not easy to select the right product. Just search online and you’ll find dozens of good CRM solutions. There are hundreds of options and it’s easy to be confused.

Let us make things easier for you. We’ll select the two top two options: ActiveCampaign and Hubspot, and compare them both. This way, you’ll get a better understanding of which option does what. And you’ll be able to make an informed decision.

Let’s begin.

What is Hubspot?

Started in 2006, Hubspot began with the observation that businesses do not quickly adapt to the changing requirements of their clients. To bridge this gap, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah invented Hubspot.

Hubspot is user-friendly, feature-rich, powerful, and helps users get relevant and personalized results. The aim of Hubspot is to transform the businesses and make the industry more inbound.

What is ActiveCampaign?

In the world of CRM, ActiveCampaign is the most user-friendly marketing platform that’s designed with small and mid-level businesses in mind. If you want to create eye-catching campaigns and attractive marketing strategies, this platform can be the best for you.

From alluring email marketing drives to customer retention to many other aspects, ActiveCampaign can do it all. In particular, the visual campaign creator is very useful in making targeted email campaigns. The ads are based on customized user interactions. The software also records all interactions and assists in closing deals.

In addition, the software can also integrate more than 700 services and applications. These range from accountancy to content management system to every other aspect of marketing and business optimization.

How much do they cost?

Hubspot offers a number of pricing schemes depending.

The lowest version of Hubspot is free to use. However, the Hubspot Marketing Suite offers three distinct modes. These are based on different needs such as the scale of operations and other aspects. You can also try it for free in the beginning.

ActiveCampaign has 4 paid modules. Setup is free but it costs money to go above a set number of contacts.

The Best Features of Both

Email Automation

Both platforms offer very similar services in this area which include excellent and customizable email templates. However, ActiveCampaign does offer some better features than Hubspot. For example, you can leave notes under relevant automation series as well as ‘yes or no’ automation considerations.

Blogging Integration

In this area, Hubspot is the clear winner because it facilitates direct blogging from its website. Thus, it enables SEO and marketing to be directly integrated into the blogs.

Campaign Reporting

Once more, Hubspot offers better features here by generating social network source reports within 10 seconds. ActiveCampaign instead offers setting up website analytics and free conversion tracking through Google Analytics which makes the process slower.

Social Media

For 3^rd party app integration, both the platforms offer excellent integration features.

Also, in social media management, Hubspot wins because of its range of 0features like report generation, post scheduling, engagement monitoring etc. You can also create and upload a post spreadsheet which Hubspot will then use to automatically schedule posts. However, you must follow their template for this to happen.

Comparison Table: Hubspot vs Activecampaign

On the whole, both Hubspot and ActiveCampaign are great options for CRM. While Hubspot is certainly more diverse, it is also considerably more expensive. So, the question boils down to how much of an investment you are willing to make in your marketing campaigns.

Conclusion: Which Should You Choose?

Analogically, you could say that the difference between them is the same as that between a digital and atomic clock. While ActiveCampaign, the digital clock, offers relatively accurate reading, it cannot match up to Hubspot, the atomic clock.

Normally, you should consider going for ActiveCampaign when just starting out your business. During this time, it is unlikely that you will have more than the basic threshold for contacts in the app. Also, ActiveCampaign is much easier to use and gets the job done with minimum fuss. So, it is a good place to start. If you have lesser than 3,000 web traffic per month, then ActiveCampaign is great for you.

However, as your business grows, you will come to feel that ActiveCampaign is just not cutting it after a while. In that case, it is probably time to switch over to HubSpot. By now, you must have your revenue streams sorted as well. So, it should not cost you a lot to operate the software effectively.

ActiveCampaign is great for starting. It handles central issues like email marketing and CRM easily. You can just use WordPress to make up for its lack of blogging options. Do the same with Google Analytics and Buffer. Nevertheless, Hubspot’s impressive functionalities will make you want to try it at least once.

So consider all the aspects, choose wisely and get the best out of your CRM.

My final top pick: Hubspot — If you want to grow your company, you need to invest in the right tools. I believe that Hubspot is an excellent CRM that you will love. Why not try a free 30-day trial today to find out for yourself? 

Instapage is an awesome tool that helps in the creation of highly optimized and customizable websites. Useful for businesses and individuals, this is one online resource that many have definitely benefited from.

Instapage is a powerful landing page software that provides post-click optimization for all digital and advertising campaigns. With enterprise capabilities, landing page templates, real-time team collaboration, Instablocks™, integration with your marketing automation app, and an easy-to-use builder, Instapage is a great choice for many but what if you are looking for an alternative (maybe one that you’ll love even more).

While Instapage is an excellent choice for many, there are alternatives to Instapage that you might love even more. Here, we’ve rounded out the best Instapage alternatives to get you started:

Hubspot

Hubspot provides a landing page builder as well as a wide array of other services. Thanks to features such as drag-and-drop and for development, creating a webpage on this platform will be as easy as possible. You get a dashboard that provides features such as personalization token and smart content, all of which make it easy for users to show various types of content based on their specific requirements.

Pricing

Hubspot makes the following plans available to customers:

• The Free Plan, which goes for absolutely no fee
• The Starter Plan, which goes for $50 a month
• The Basic Plan, which goes for $200 a month
• The Professional Plan, which goes for $800 a month
• The Enterprise Plan, which goes for $2,400 a month

Try Hubspot for a free trial for 30 days! Click here to start! 

Wix

Without a doubt, Wix us one of the most popular cloud-based website development platforms. It serves over a million users all over the world and has been receiving a wide array of accolades in the past few years.

With Wix, it is possible for individuals and small businesses to easily build aesthetically appealing and professional websites that will also not in any way impugn their creativity with coding expertise. Wix is essentially a free service, but it is also possible for users to choose to enhance their experience and output by making a subscription to the premium plans offered by Wix, of which one of them is completely devoted to serving online retailers and e-commerce providers.

The rationale behind the creation of Wix is a pretty simple one; they believe that with the right building software, a developer should be able to create just about anything. With their Editor, Code, or Artificial Design Intelligence Model, it is possible (easy, in fact) for you to build a nice hub for your content, and you can also build just about anything; from a simple profile web page to robust and highly multifaceted retail store.

It is important to know that you don’t especially need to have any technical or coding skills to work on this platform. You just need a few simple modifications and edits, and the drag-and-drop functionality will be able to help you design your ideal website.

The feature that makes Wix really distinct from other popular site builders is the fat that is has a very high level of personalization. All its templates are open, and all you need to do is provide simple branding, customization, and modifications. With all that, you will be able to build your app just as you’ve always imagined it to be. These websites are also flexible and scalable, and they can work in situations of heavy traffic and highly complex.

In addition to all that, Wix is also a fully-feared and mobile-optimized builder that provides all its services for free. In order to grasp the basic operations, all you need to do is create an account and if you’re looking to take advantage of its shopping cart and e-commerce functionalities, just switch to any of its premium plans.

Pricing

Wix makes a wide array of plans available to customers, all of which have varying amounts of features

• There is the free plan
• The Connect Domain Plan costs $4.50 a month
• The Combo Plan costs $8.50 a month
• The Unlimited Plan costs $12.50 a month
• The eCommerce Plan costs $16.50 a month
• The VIP Plan costs $24,50 a month

Pagewiz

Pagewiz was ideally designed or professional marketers, affiliates and business owners who will like to launch their websites from scratch. It helps you to build user-friendly webpages in a matter of minutes, and all pages are also accompanied by A//B testing capability in order to make for automation and conversion maximization.

Pricing

The plans for Pagewiz include:

• The Basic Plan, which goes for $29 a month
• The Standard Plan, which goes for $49 a month
• The Plus Plan, which goes for $99 a month
• The Pro Plan, which goes for $199 a month

1&1 MyWebsite

1&1 MyWebsite is a website building platform that was created to help serve the needs of freelancers and business that are looking to establish a presence on the online landscape, regardless of their size offer scale. It is an internet product that was developed by 1&1 Internet Ltd.; a long-time provider of web hosting services.

1&1 MyWebsite is an online solution that makes use of ready-made templates and drag-and-drop functionalities to provide users with the ability to make and design websites of their choices within a few clicks. N provides an intuitive and simple site creation experience that will also enhance creativity and ingenuity. All in all, 1&1 MyWebsite will give you the ability to create and launch a fully functional website in no time, complete with all the information and elements that you will need in order to match the website with your business or brand.

1&1 MyWebsite comes with all the features that you will require in order to build your website easily and quickly. A few of its most prominent features include a website editor, a wide array of ready-made templates, and multi-language support (for those who will like to build websites that will deserve purposes over more than one country).

In addition, it also makes marketing tools available, including but not limited to site analytics tools and SEO functionalities. All of these will help you to come up with unique and targeted content and they’ll help improve the ranking of your website. The online platform also includes Email and domain addresses for you as well as 24/7 support.

A few benefits of 1&1 MyWebsite include:

• Speed and accuracy: Thanks to a wide array of templates, catalogues, and useful tools that have already been loaded on the platform, all you have to do is pick and design your website and in no tie, you’ll be ready to go.
• Photo editor: An online photo editor gives you the ability to change the properties of photos that are on your site.
• Multilingual capabilities: If you’ll like for people in far countries and continents to have access to your website as well, 1&1 MyWebsite provides multilingual support as well.
• Optimized for mobile devices: As opposed to managing a website that can only be accessed with a computer, 1&1 MyWebsite provides websites that are responsive and work on mobile as well.

Pricing

The plans on 1&1 MyWebsite are pretty flexible, and you’ll definitely be able to get one that will work to fit into your business and budget requirements.

• The Basic Plan costs $0.99 for the first month, then $9.99 per month from then on
• The Personal Plan goes for $2.99 for the first 2 months, then $6.99 from then on
• The Plus Plan goes for $9.99 a month for the first 3 months, then $19.99 from then on
• The Bundled Plan offers the features of the Plus Plan as well as a fully functional ranking coach for search engine optimization and advertising. It goes for $19.99 for the first 12 months, then $29.99 from then on.

Unbounce

Unbounce was created with a simple purpose; helping to create landing pages that will enhance users marketing efforts. Page building experiences have been revolutionized lately, and Unbounce has been a major driving force behind that.

A few of Unbounce’s major features include:

• The Unbounce Builder: A drag-and-drop builder that provides text replacement and convertables and is also mobile-accessible.
• Unbounce Convertables: These convertables make it easy for you to target landing page visitors, set custom templates, and integrate with basically anything.
• Templates: There are over 100 custom templates on Unbounce, and you can either chose one or start building one from scratch by yourself.
• Conversion Tools: There are unlimited A/B testing tries, lead generation tools, conversion optimization tools, and many more on Unbounce.
• Unbounce can also be easily integrated with google analytics and Email marketing tools like Hubspot, MailChimp, WordPress, Marketo, and much more.

Pricing

Unbounce provides three packages, and you can make payments on a monthly or annually basis.

• The Essential Package allows you to create 75 landing pages and 8 convertables for $99 a month
• The Premium Package charges $199 a month, and you can build 10 landing pages, 16 convertables, and you also get sub-accounts and better conversion rate tools.
• The Enterprise Package starts at $499 a month and on it, you get all the features of both previous packages as well as a Success Manager and Launch Specialist that will help you to maximize your ROI. This package also provides the opportunity to build over 375 landing pages and at least 40 convertables.

Shopify

Shopify is an award-winning e-commerce retailer. It provides a wide array of features and tools that make it easy for individuals and businesses to build and operate online retail services as well as sell products. Shopify is packed with the right features, it provides tools that are specifically designed for servicing online retail, and its influence is represented by the fact that it is used by well over 120,000 stores all over the world.

The platform has been branded by experts and businesses as one of the best e-commerce solutions available online in this age. The Shopify Advanced version has especially gotten a lot of praise.

Shopify provides a myriad of benefits for people and businesses that will like to set up their online stores. Some of its benefits include:

• A store that is easy to set up and is very beautiful and responsive. The platform has a long list of professional themes, and you can choose from any one of them in order to provide your store with a corporate look.
• Shopify will also boost your store. Essentially, you won’t have to worry about any of the technical aspects of running and operating the store. Your servers are updated and secure with the latest software.
• You also get customer support round the clock
• Abandoned carts are automatically recovered
• Easily and  quickly import catalogs (even the largest ones)
• Shopify Advanced can provide you with been more nifty templates
• You get a wide array of marketing features and reports that are easy to use
• You run your payment gateway and control you’re the money coming in.

Features of Shopify

Shopify has many of the features that you’ll need to set up an online store.

• Fully customizable online store, website — including blog
• Unlimited bandwidth, product inventory, customer data
• Sell on new sales channels like Pinterest and Amazon to increase your market potential
• Accept credit cards instantly with Shopify Payments
• Save time and moeny with discounted shipping rates
• Great customer support — 24/7 access

Pricing

Just as it is with just about any other alternative to Instapage, Shopify has various pricing tiers. These are:

• Shopify Lite, which goes for $9 a month
• The Basic Shopify Plan, which goes for $29 a month
• The Shopify Plan, which goes for $79 a month
• The Advanced Shopify Plan, which goes for $299 a month

Try out Shopify free for 14 days — click here!

As you know 10-minute Funnels vs Clickfunnels are funnel building applications and before we jump into comparison lets quickly go through what Funnel builders are actually for…

What are Funnel Builders anyway?

You need a funnel builder if you are looking at “upping your game” on lead generation/Conversion or sales. Funnel builders help you to quickly devise funnels for varied needs… think of opt-in (build mailing list), webinar, membership site, e-commerce (create upsells/down-sells) or even create sales or membership pages.

Funnels are mostly used with paid traffic to test and optimize conversions quickly. They not just let you create awesome funnels but also let you track stats and do split testing. Funnel builders may well be used along with websites or independently…  Some people find the ease of creating web pages so appealing on these funnel creation applications they prefer to develop their whole website on them.

The option of inclusive web hosting and absolutely no hassles to maintain server is particularly appealing. Add to that powerful option of webpage editing it becomes a no-brainer solution.

If you are someone trying to finalize on funnel building software I am sure you would want to know how 10 Minute Funnels compares with Click funnels.

But before we go there how about taking a flashback?

Flashback: A Time Before Online Funnels?!?

There was a time when the term “Funnel” was not so well understood as it is today. The only landing page builder was Optimisepress or you could do it manually. If you didn’t know Optimisepress is a plugin for WordPress websites and is operated from the website backend(Admin Interface). The issue with this method is that you need a domain and a hosting plan first…Then only you can move to building funnels or landing pages. A lot of people are actually using Optimizepress effectively to this day.

Then Leadpages came to the fore. Unlike Optimise press Leadpages is a hosted solution… Where you wouldn’t need domain or hosting of your own to begin using landing pages. The concept of a website editor outside your own website was largely unknown and a welcome feature. Now you could have your website or landing pages online without worrying much about load speed or management of the hosting server.

When Leadpages came in they provided you with a fantastic interface to build leadpages and its functionality was driven to make this a great user experience. However, we have to note that this is the time when understanding what “converts” and the significance of building funnels was still in infancy.

As the time went by the concept of “Sales funnels” began to show up and people realized that they had to build an awesome customer experience through a series of sales pages/order forms/Upsells/Downsells to take the real advantage of unending internet traffic.

This emerging opportunity was cashed in by applications like Clickfunnels or 10-minute funnels… These applications took the aspect of lead generation, conversion/sales to a whole new level. More and more people started to bank upon the accepted wisdom of “what worked” and were eager to experiment.

Fast Forward Today! The World of Online Funnels Awaits!

Now businesses started focussing on the “Funnels that convert” instead of landing pages as an entity. This helped everyone to have a bigger picture and see the entire process of lead gen and conversion as a flow.

This called in for new challenges and expectations rose on what people need to see in there interface and dashboards…Along with what they would be willing to pay!

And that brings us to the comparison of two major players in the Funnel building space:

Clickfunnels vs 10-Minute Funnels: The Comparison

Let’s look at what comes out when these are pitched against each other as a solution to funnel building.

At a high level, a funnel builder like Clickfunnels and 10-minute funnels let you accomplish the same task of building great opt-ins/sales funnels. The difference mainly lies in the interface and what you get with the package.

Both applications essentially provide you the functions of Funnel building with easy options to create and modify funnels and pages, funnel templates, integrate applications like autoresponders and payment systems at the click of a button. You don’t have to touch any codes to accomplish a advanced customization. This helps you to engineer the customer experience at the most granular level.

Pricing — How Do These Compare?

Clickfunnels and 10-minute funnels are competing at the same price point for their primary offer.

You get started at $97: Both are priced at $97 for their basic offer but the packages are different…

Clickfunnels and 10-minute funnels both give you a package that put limits… 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors.

These limits can be removed if you upgrade your plans which is $297 for Clickfunnels and $197 for 10-minute funnels. However, the upgrade with Clickfunnels gets you the added benefit of using an inbuilt affiliate program or interface through which you may add and track your own affiliates. And also an Autoresponder solution with advanced functionality.

Thus Clickfunnels is a solution to go for if you want to ramp up quickly to a well-rounded business that also utilizes the aspect of affiliate marketing and an inbuilt autoresponder solution.

You also have different trial offers. While you can try a free trial with Clickfunnels for the first 14 days you got to pay $1 to try 10-minute funnels for the same period.

Look and Feel: The Interface Comparison

Clickfunnels has a feel of layered functionality where you can click and learn more about something… While 10-minute funnel provides you with “drag and drop” functionality and almost mimics a process builder. This brings in intuitive process flow orientation and lets you see all your funnel steps as a self-explanatory map. This is a great way to convert your ideas into quick workable funnels.

Clickfunnels does have full funnel visibility but not in process map mode.

Ease of Use

10-minute Funnels was built further on the functionalities Clickfunnels provided. It has redefined the way funnels are created and modified. Imagine just connecting the lines to make or modify a funnel flow. The best part is you can just pick up one of the pre-built marketing funnel campaigns and just modify any of the pages instantly… This is very helpful to creatively formulate the experience you want to provide your audience. It is quick and extremely effective. 

The editor windows of both the applications are significantly different too. While Clickfunnels opens new side windows to edit a page.(Click to go deeper) The 10-minute funnels very interactively highlight all the items that you may edit on a left panel. We can say without any hesitation that 10-minute Funnels provides a much more intuitive way to create and edit funnels.

10 Minute Funnels vs Clickfunnels: Which is Best?

Using a funnel builder software like Clickfunnels or 10-minute funnels you create funnels like a pro. Both are great applications and will significantly reduce the guesswork. Now you can create funnels that really convert… The effort is to make sure you succeed and both the applications.

In the end, what to use… Clickfunnels or 10 minutes funnel is your personal call and you should choose what suits you best… However, there are a couple of aspects that are needed to be highlighted.

• Clickfunnels is much widely accepted funnel builder and largely dominates the funnel building market. It is seen not just as funnel builder but also a Business Suite that takes care of online business aspects of affiliates and autoresponder (upgrade priced at $297).
• Clickfunnels is a bit older in the market than 10-minute funnels and has a lot of people who will actually swear by it. While there is no dearth of success stories with either application.
• Clickfunnels has much longer standing and a much wider customer base. If you are looking at an accepted industry norm Clickfunnels wins the race by a mile.

• 10 minutes funnel is relatively new and incorporates “intuitive process flow” styled graphical interface that lets drag and drop functionalities. This is a modern approach to building funnels and is much appreciated by progressive businesses who want to use the latest… 10-minute funnels definitely scores on the usability angel and lets you embrace the best practices of funnel building in a very subtle manner.
• 10 minutes funnel may safely be your best bet if you are trying to focus on “sales funnel space” and clear that you don’t really need a native affiliate or autoresponder solution. (You always have the option to go with third-party options anyways…)
• You can use the 10 minutes funnel solution without any restrictions for $197 monthly. This means you can build as many funnels or web pages you want. (Without the need of web hosting or maintenance of servers at your end)

Businesses need to promote themselves, be in front of their eyes (target market) at the right place and right time. Being online for acquiring customers today is nobodies guess. If you have been in this for some time, you must have asked yourself this obvious question. Clickfunnels vs website: do I need both?

Which is better, a Website or Clickfunnels? Do I even need a website anymore?

Websites are seen by many as a natural choice when getting online. Websites help businesses have a dedicated address to be found online and interact with the customers. Just like a physical address… the website is your online address (www.yourbusiness.com).

You dress up your website with pleasant “get up” in terms of look and feel, introduce your business, its products, and services and even give pointers for people to buy and try out your offerings.

Websites by definition are generally 6-10 related pages, contain clear navigation links and the intent is to tell you as much as possible about the business including products and services. Websites may be designed on coding elements on HTML/Java/JavaScript/PHP etc. or by using a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress.

So how does this differ from pages created with Clickfunnels?

Clickfunnels at the core does contain a “web editor” with which you can create or edit pages within Clickfunnels on the fly. This makes creating web pages so simple that many people actually go and develop a complete website on Clickfunnels. But then that’s not what Clickfunnels is actually intended for…

Clickfunnels is a funnel creation application. Funnels are generally characterized as a lead generation and conversion tool. Helping you create landing pages (also called squeeze page) which capture leads and sell your products or services online.

As you might have figured Websites and Clickfunnels do have a range of similarities and dissimilarities. In this article, we will attempt an in-depth comparison so as to fully understand how these compare as a utility for customer acquisition.

Now even before we do this comparison lets understand something that shall put our entire discussion into a perspective. Check out the free 14-day trial offered by Clickfunnels too!

Let’s talk about Traffic… We can categorize traffic into two main types:

Inbound and Outbound Traffic

Inbound traffic is generated when people visit your website while actively searching for pertinent information mostly on a search engine like Google. They search a term on Search Engine and land on your website by clicking a result that appeared mostly in the first 10 pages. This happens as your webpage was optimized /relevant to that keyword in the eyes of Search Engine.

This is the organic mode of traffic generation and involves SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Websites are ideal for ranking on search engines as they support many of the requirements that enable search engines to understand relevance, quality, and usefulness of the content created.

Outbound traffic, on the other hand, is traffic that is generated mostly through paid advertising and may involve PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising on advertising networks like Google Adwords, Facebook ads, Twitter or Linkedin.

Paid traffic is greatly different from organic traffic as the visitors are directed to your website from an ad that is put in front of a prospect via targeting methods available on Advertising networks. In this scenario, the focus is on acquiring leads or possible sales that over a period help you recoup the advertising cost.

Simply put you will use a Website or Clickfunnels based on the traffic you want to leverage…

A website, in the long run, should allow you to create content that helps you rank on the search engines and generate organic traffic. Clickfunnels on the other side is a tool that will help you convert paid traffic and focus on ROI.

That being said you may use one in the place of other if you want to… But then you should ideally use an application for the purpose it is designed for. Let’s look at specific characteristics of these two options compare and how best you can use them.

Clickfunnels vs website: The comparison

1. Domain

Your website would essentially have a unique domain that you booked for your website example www.yourbusiness.com.

This will not be that case with Cickfunnels…here you will share the same domain and your landing pages will resolve on a subdomain like www.yourbusiness.clickfunnels.com.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can make the Clickfunnel pages appear in your website domain like www.yourbusiness.com/myclickfunnelpage but then you will have limited options to optimize that page for SEO.

The advantage of having unique domain name is that you can brand your domain. Develop focused content aligned with your SEO strategy. This shall help you engage with your website visitors, generate inquiries and even sell your products or services online.

Now if you are looking at capitalizing paid traffic and getting too aggressive with your online promotions. (It also depends on what type of products or services you are promoting) being on Clickfunnels subdomain is a real advantage as your actual domain is protected. This makes Clickfunnels a great choice for testing new landing page design concepts, products or services.

2. Landing Pages

While you can always get conversions from a website. It’s been proven landing pages help you convert better.

Clickfunnels gives you a design option that is focussed to convert visitors. Doing the same thing on the website shall take a lot of time and may even have big technical constraints.

Websites are not effective at getting conversions as they are generally designed to keep the visitor glued (allow them to move from one webpage to another find more and more interesting stuff to lower bounce rates)

Clickfunnel Landing pages, on the other hand, are CTA (Call to action) oriented and have one single focus on capturing leads or converting them.

A landing page or any funnel pages unlike website page carry minimal distractions and are designed to “squeeze” the visitor into sharing more information or completing the sales process.

3. Online Marketing Funnels

While it may be difficult to design funnels on a website… Clickfunnels is created for the very purpose. You can create advanced sales funnels literally on a click of a button.

The biggest advantage is with Clickfunnels you don’t have tie every end of your conversion funnel… it’s done automatically.

Talk of Autoresponders, Payment Systems, Upsells or Down sells all is inbuilt within Clickfunnels and all you got to do is configure them once.

Clickfunnels gives you multiple templates and funnels that you can utilize at the click of a button. Not just that it packs almost all the features you might need to setup, test and optimize sales funnels. You can also try Clickfunnels free for 14 days!

4. A/B Split Testing and Full Funnel Conversion View

AB split testing involves creating two versions of the same page and running traffic to see which converts better.

Clickfunnels makes this extremely easy along with providing analytics to decide the winner. Doing split testing on websites is possible but extremely cumbersome.

Clickfunnels also lets you have full funnel conversion view at one place. This allows a lot of clarity on sequence and ability to select/edit and develop a consistent experience for the visitor all through the funnel.

5. Change of Funnel Order on the Fly

Clickfunnels lets you change the funnel order on the fly. This is almost magical as you can change different funnel steps with a few clicks. Add or remove types of pages within the funnel sequence. This is a very advanced feature. Imagine a graphical user interface to do all the work for you at the code level!

Changing funnel order on a website is extremely cumbersome (even if you created a funnel) as it would involve code changes on every page and would be a nightmare for troubleshooting.

6. Easy Page or Funnel Replication/Sharing of Funnels

Again on Clickfunnels, you can replicate a funnel or page with a click of a button…and not just that you can share the whole funnel with another user.

This is unimaginable on a website.

One thing to appreciate is both the options (Website and Clickfunnels) ultimately help you to build “webpages”. CMS Application like WordPress greatly reduces the code level intervention needed to build websites. You may use plugins that greatly enhance website features. But an application like Clickfunnels takes this to entirely new level.

Now that you know how the Website and Clickfunnels compare…The other question that a lot of people ask is…

Do I need both?

And the short answer is Yes!

A website, when used with Clickfunnels, can get you best of both the worlds. It can help you leverage testing done on paid traffic and get the same benefits from organic traffic. A lot of successful businesses do that…

But at the end, you need to make the call based on your current needs. Ask yourself what type of traffic you are looking at generating.

You can start with Website first if you want to drive organic traffic and capitalize on free traffic from search engines.

Start with Clickfunnels if you want to test product/services in your target market and start earning revenue right away. Drive paid traffic and then expand based on what you find viable in your testing.

Goodluck! Now go ahead and make the right choice.

Do you need a dedicated WordPress website or could you use Clickfunnels as the lead generation tool for your business? That is the question I ask in this comparison review. Clickfunnels vs. WordPress, which one works best for you?

Introduction: Clickfunnels vs WordPress

Not long ago I made the decision to move from regular work to freelancing. I knew from experience that success depends on my ability to generate a consistent flow of leads. But, I cannot afford to waste a lot of money in the process. I have no problem investing but getting a return on that investment is critical. When money is tight we have to spend time. This means making trade-offs between spending time and spending money.

The lead generation part of the business is no different.

I’m not a trained coder, so building lead generation pages from scratch was never an option. In the end, I found myself choosing between ClickFunnels and WordPress. Yet, building a WordPress site was daunting to me.

The $1000+ price tag of ClickFunnels was also worrying. Since ClickFunnels offered a 14-day trial, I decided to try it out and see what I could achieve. Afterward, I tested WordPress to see whether the time savings were worth the extra costs.

I learned a lot during this simple experiment. We will look at both sides of each solution and you can decide the best fit for your needs.

Costs

My first concern is usually: how much is all this going to cost me? I take a longer-term view of my business so I measure costs over a year, rather than month-to-month.

ClickFunnels

As mentioned it offers a 14-day Clickfunnels free trial and then has two paid options depending on your needs. Here are the two main types of accounts:

Basic Account (Starter Account) – The ClickFunnels pricing for this program is $97 per month. You will have the ability to create twenty funnels, over one hundred pages (whoa!) and up to 20,000 visitors per month.

Etison Suite (Enterprise Account) – The ClickFunnels pricing for this program is $297 per month.  You will receive Actionetics and Backpack affiliate system.   If you think you might want to use ClickFunnels as your “all in one” tool including List Building, this may be for you. In addition, you can utilize ClickFunnels pricing as an affiliate.

WordPress

WordPress is a little more variable.

To calculate the cost I have to consider hosting, theme, and plug-ins. Hosting would cost about $71.40 for the year, depending on the hosting service you use and the necessary themes and plug-ins would cost $89 for the year.

So the WordPress option would cost hundred and $160.40 for the year (of course, this is just for the basic setup, not including any specialty themes, e-commerce add-ons, or design spend). Another question in my head is: what am I getting for that extra $1003.60?

It’s not a really fair comparison because, as Clickfunnels claims, you can replace your entire website and save thousands, but nevertheless, if you just want to get online and start building those leads, WordPress may be the less expensive option to start.

Ease-of-use

Clickfunnels

When you decide to create a new funnel in ClickFunnels, there are a lot of options. At first, I found this overwhelming. What the heck is a hero funnel? When should I use a bridge funnel? But, when you click on a funnel type there is a little explainer video that helps.

I am not current with the latest Internet Marketing lingo. So these short videos helped point me to the funnel I needed for my design company. (A sales funnel, as it turns out).

Once I was able to select a suitable funnel, I found an advantage with ClickFunnels. I could create a visitor journey to increase the chances of a lead to converting into a customer. But, two weeks was too short to know if I was trading efficacy for ease-of-use.

WordPress

Anyone can learn how to make a basic WordPress site without coding but if you need anything more elaborate or extensive for your business, it can get quite tricky. WordPress offers thousands of plugins for a reason, with thousands of themes to choose from before that. If you are a new business owner, never had an online presence, you should probably consult with a design team first (which could cost you).

Of course, there are quite a few easy-to-use WordPress themes that are free. If you just want to get online and start building leads, many of these will work.

Is WordPress easy to use?

That really depends on what you want to accomplish. If you want a basic site, you could upload a theme, or use your hosting company’s theme builder and get online but that doesn’t mean you’ll get what you want necessarily. WordPress itself is a basic, open-sourced software tool that really does nothing. It will take a bit of know-how and expertise to learn how to use, but if you are above-average tech savvy (or learn things quickly), you can figure out how to get online.

Of course, with anything technical like a website, that is typically not always the case.

Here is what the backend of a basic WordPress site looks like:

You can take online courses and seminars to learn how to use WordPress, and of course, your hosting service or theme that you build should have plenty of materials, videos, resources for you to learn how to create a site.

Be ready to invest some serious time if you want to go online. WordPress is one of the better, and certainly most used tools for websites out there for a reason, but there is a lot of technical know-how that has to go into it.

Is Clickfunnels easy to use?

Well, that is the claim that Clickfunnels makes, isn’t it — that you can be up and running and have your first funnel built in under 10 minutes. I’m not sure if that is entirely accurate, especially if you are new to Clickfunnels or just getting started.

Just like anything else in business, Clickfunnels takes some time to learn, and a lot more time to master. Of course, there are numerous online resources, many from Clickfunnels themselves that can help you along the way.

If you really want to learn more about Clickfunnels and the magic sauce behind how online funnels work, I strongly recommend reading Russel Brunson’s work — even if you don’t end up getting Clickfunnels for your business, this book is a must-read. It is jam-packed full of best practices, insider tips and more on how Brunson (the Founder of Clickfunnels) built his multi-million dollar funnel empire. I strongly recommend it.

ROI

The price difference between ClickFunnels and WordPress is too large for a fair ROI comparison. Instead, I judge them on both ROI and return on effort. WordPress has the advantage in the former and ClickFunnels in the latter.

ClickFunnels takes a lot less effort upfront. There is a certain amount of comfort in having the pages already predesigned for sales. I was able to sign-in, pick a funnel, and then I had the choice of a few different designs. There wasn’t a lot of variation in the free designs but I found the paid options to be expensive.

Once I had a funnel template, the next step was the modification. This part took the longest but I still had a page I was happy with in under an hour.

Support

With WordPress, my site would become a total mess from time to time. I spent many hours trying to figure out exactly which change is causing the mess. Not exactly a good look for a designer.

Of course, I shouldn’t be editing the live version of the site. But, editing an off-line version and making the switchover is something I find tricky. My strategy when something like this happened was twofold. First, I would post on WordPress forums asking for help. And while I awaited an answer from the community, I would begin a painful trial and error process.

With ClickFunnels support, there is an instant messaging feature. This makes it very easy to ask for help and follow along with instructions. It’s not exactly instant but for me, it has always been under an hour and sometimes less than 10 minutes.

Search Engine Optimization

ClickFunnels has more SEO options than one might expect from a landing page builder. Since I am using this for paid advertising campaigns, I did not expect much in the way of SEO features. I was surprised to find that I could at least edit SEO metadata. But, it is still limiting compared to what I could achieve on WordPress. The Yoast SEO plug-in provides a more comprehensive toolset, and with some SEO know-how, you can achieve a lot of best practices using Yoast.

There are also many SEO-focused WordPress plugin if you are ready to do that, and of course, you’ll have the flexibility to add your own meta tags, meta descriptions, titles, and more.

Time

The time factor was not trivial to me. I do not want to spend a lot of my day dealing with technical issues when I could be working on projects. Then again, if I don’t get the tech right then I won’t have any clients to work in the first place.

The time it takes to create and edit landing pages is important to me. I expect to test different page variations for optimal results with AdWords traffic.

Flexibility: My Real World Testing

I was confident in producing funnels using ClickFunnels. Yet, I did find it a little restrictive. My test with ClickFunnels went quicker than I planned. So I began testing with WordPress before my trial period was over.

My research into funnels and recent experience with ClickFunnels gave me some clues. I needed five pages for my WordPress funnel. Opt-in, confirmation, thank you, quote request, and download. The first issue I ran into was that WordPress pages contain a sidebar on the right by default. If I put links there it takes this squeeze out of the squeeze page, and if I leave it blank it looks weird.

The theme I selected had a template for full width. The problem was that this ended up being a little too wide for my taste. I had to do a bit of tinkering to get a basic layout I could live with. By this time I had already spent a couple of hours configuring WordPress.

So after about a day of work, I had my five basic pages set up and ready to go. Or so I thought. When you’re doing everything yourself, it is easy to miss the little details. One of the positive points of WordPress is that it’s SEO friendly. Your pages get indexed in Google very easily. The problem is that there are some pages you do not want to be indexed, especially download and thank you pages. I caught the mistake before doing too much damage. After a little more research I was able to remove the pages from my site index. It took a few days before they stopped appearing in Google searches.

After linking the pages together, my funnel was ready to go. It took about two days to complete this funnel compared to a couple of hours on ClickFunnels. I am also worried about the security of my pages. I’m protecting these pages from search engine spiders. But, could someone with technical skill still uncover them? With ClickFunnels, I am more confident in the security of these pages.

A learning experience

I am not sure how to consider the extra time I spent on my WordPress funnel. It was my first time building such a funnel but future funnels should be easier and take less time as I gain skills. In fact, the skill development aspect is what I am enjoying most about WordPress. I liken it to automatic versus manual cars. If I can build a funnel on WordPress, that skill would make me more proficient using other software.

I started this experiment looking for a way to attract new clients. As an unintended side effect, I find myself learning new skills. Although these skills are not related to my core business they seem handy to me.

My Final Thoughts: Who wins this battle?

The choice you make between ClickFunnels and WordPress will depend on your budget, time, and desire to tinker. You may prefer to pay for a more consistent and less stressful experience through ClickFunnels. Others will prefer more flexibility and enjoy the learning process of building funnels in WordPress.

On functionality, it was a dead heat. I sent an equal amount of paid traffic to each funnel and they both produced many leads. Not an equal amount of leads. But, there are so many variables at play that I cannot say the software was the deciding factor. In the end, this was a fun experiment that fixed my funnel problem and I learned a lot in the process.

Of course, you can watch this video and see for yourself if Clickfunnels could possibly replace your website:

Clickfunnels vs. WordPress: Features at a Glance