Clickfunnels vs Leadpages vs Instapage vs Unbounce Vs Hubspot 2020 | Which Is The Best Marketing Software?
5/2/2020 UPDATE: Although we love both Clickfunnels and Leadpages, we’ve found a far superior solution that replaces all the major funnel building tools and several others, all in one umbrella, for the same price. We STRONGLY suggest taking the 14 Day Free Trial for GoHighlevel instead of Clickfunnels or Leadpages, while you still can.
Find The Right solution For You in 30 seconds or less
clickfunnels vs leadpages
what does clickfunnels offer?
Clickfunnels offers proven templates not just for landing pages, but entire sales funnels. It takes every service you need and bundles it into 1 easy to use software. Additionally, you’ll get to meet and network with highly successful marketers and learn from them just from being a part of the community.
- Risk free 14 day trial
- Drag and Drop Funnel Building Software
- Proven Template library
- Split Testing
- Auto-Responder integration
- WordPress integration
- Audience Segmenting
- 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
- Used by businesses of all sizes and niches
what does lead pages offer?
- Risk free 14 day trial
- Split Testing
- Landing Page Building Software
- Social Media Ad Builder
- Alert Bars
- More Customization
- No Refunds
The only scenario where we recommend Leadpages is if you need a simple landing page with no integration or you’re helping a client who prefers pretty looks over functionality and CRO.
Clickfunnels and lead pages table summary above
Clickfunnels vs Leadpages? There’s other options like Unbounce and Instapage, but while both have similarities, they differentiate from each other in a few different areas: Clickfunnels is a comprehensive funnel building and sales platform while Leadpages specializes only in creating landing pages. With Clickfunnels, you can do more by creating sequences, email campaigns, forms, upsells, downsells, while Leadpages only lets you create landing pages.
After having used both for a variety of different projects in scope, the answer is clear. Picking between Clickfunnels and Leadpages comes down to what you want to do with each marketing software. The short answer is that Leadpages is for novice marketers who only need a landing page where as Clickfunnels is for marketers looking to increase CTR, and their sphere of influence. To help you decide on Clickfunnels vs Leadpages, we’ve included a few things in this article for you:
- A table summarizing what each do and who they are for.
- A feature by feature comparison of Clickfunnels vs Leadpages.
- Our personal take on Clickfunnels vs Leadpages.
- The short answer on which software you should use.
Lead pages: How Are They Good For Your Business?
Leadpages is essentially a simple drag and drop landing page tool, which has its priorities properly set.
A landing page is any page on your website that a new visitor or customer lands on first.
This can be a variety of things such as a sales page, a blog post page, a home page, or an “about us” page.
Leadpages integrate with email service providers to get leads for further lead support.
It is very simple, with no coding knowledge needed and takes a lot less time to load.
You may be asking why should even consider using Leadpages in the first place?
Leadpages has a lot of template that increases the conversion rate and helps you grow you email lists efficiently.
You can use Leadpages for hosting a webinar, page opt-in form creation, sending content upgrades automatically, opt-in boxes in your blog posts, and sales templates to build landing pages.
Click funnels: How are they good for your business?
A funnel is a series of pages that lead the visitor or customer towards your main goal.
Whether your goal may be subscribing to your email list or selling a product click funnels can help make it possible and help your business grow.
ClickFunnels are an equally great landing page building tool when compared to Leadpages, but they of course work differently. Click funnels homepage is known to be a content-rich platform that isn’t just all about landing pages.
There are a lot of funnel templates that they provide that will let you create your sales funnel the way you want, which is different from Leadpages just being a stand alone thing.
You can create various funnels for multiple different pages across your website to create a funnel which will make sales seamless while using this tool.
Our Verdict on Clickfunnels vs Leadpages
Clickfunnels vs Leadpages?
To answer Clickfunnels vs Leadpages, we tried both services out and we noticed one huge difference when comparing Clickfunnels vs Leadpages that made our decision a no-brainer.
But, before sharing that 1 key factor, it needs to be said that objectively speaking, Clickfunnels is the better option as it comes with all the tools you need to run a successful marketing campaign.
And although it seems to be more expensive than Leadpages, it saves you money by wrapping several other services you would need into 1 software.
Despite Clickfunnels being the better tool, there’s a different reason we picked it and here’s why:
Your success isn’t based off of the tools that you use, it’s based off the knowledge you have, the skills you develop, and your ability to use a tool.
For example, if I gave you the world’s fastest car, it wouldn’t be much better than an average car unless you knew how to steer a high-powered vehicle.
On the other hand, if you know how to drive an ultra-fast car, you can probably make the most out of an average car. Having skill is more important than having a tool.
With that in mind, Clickfunnels comes with a lot that Leadpages doesn’t, but the most important benefit of having Clickfunnels is the community and training that’s included with it.
The Clickfunnels groups are filled with 6, 7, 8 figure entrepreneurs that built their entire business with Clickfunnels – and it’s an active community with people posting on a daily basis.
The entire group is a massive gold mine for knowledge, networking, and ideas. For you to network with the people in the group or learn what they’re sharing on your own, you’d easily have to spend 6 figures on conferences and training courses.
On top of that, Russel Brunson, who’s one of the best marketers of our time (with him bringing Clickfunnels to the #1 privately held company according to INC magazine) offers an abundance of training with the purpose of transforming a beginner into a marketing legend. And it’s not hype or fluff either, every year, they host their 3 comma club summit where you meet the new series of entrepreneurs who built million dollar businesses in less than a year.
Leadpages doesn’t have the community or training that Clickfunnels does.
Our verdict is that Clickfunnels is the overall better software unless you literally just need a single landing page and nothing else. Now we will cover the technical aspects of Clickfunnels vs. Leadpages.
Clickfunnels vs Lead pages: landing page designs
How do you measure if a landing page is better than another?
Is it based off which one is prettier or which converts more? For us, the only thing we care about is conversions. We would rather have the ugliest page on Earth if it converts better than one with a great design.
And Clickfunnels shines light on a harsh truth: simplicity wins.
As web designers here at Black Swan Media, we take pride in creating beautiful websites but when it comes to landing pages, simple wins most of the time.
We die a little inside every time we have to publish an ugly looking page, but we do so because we know it will bring more revenue to our clients than if our designers went all out.
And that’s just it, Leadpages lets you build prettier looking landing pages whereas Clickfunnels lets you build ones that work. In fact, they also give you the templates of the ones that work.
When I first saw one of these templates, I thought to myself, “there’s no way this thing works”. Below, I have attached one of Alex Becker’s landing pages which converts cold traffic into 6 figures on a monthly basis.
**Yes, you can do pretty designs with Clickfunnels, but once you see “what works”, you’ll quickly learn not to.
When to use leadpages and when to use clickfunnels for landing page design
If we were creating a landing page for a “tough” client who would prioritize design over effectiveness, then we would use Leadpages (we typically avoid these clients anyways).
If we were creating something for ourselves, we would use Clickfunnels because our priority is conversions.
If we were creating a landing page for a client who trusts us to do our job, we’d use Clickfunnels.
And lastly, if we were building a sales funnel, we’d use Clickfunnels.
Overall, when it comes to Clickfunnel vs Leadpages for landing page design, Leadpages will let you make more artistic and better looking landing pages, however, Clickfunnels will show you how to build ones that can actually convert traffic.
when does leadpages make sense over clickfunnels?
Permanent Time Constraints
As we were writing this, we realized that it was coming off more as a 1 way argument for Clickfunnels vs Leadpages.
So, we’re including this section here outlining what we consider the advantages that Leadpages has over Clickfunnels.
Starting off, Clickfunnels is massive. It comes with a huge library of training, a huge library of templates, and huge library of options (upsells, down sells, segmenting, yes/no, split tests, conditional e-mail marketing sequences).
And yes, all of this is an advantage, but the first time we used the software it did feel a bit overwhelming because we had a tight deadline.
That specific day, we got Clickfunnels to quickly build a single landing page for a client. And then we learned that we could increase conversions by 40% by adding up sell sequences or down sell sequences.
Then we learned that we could further increase conversions by adding e-mail triggers throughout the funnel. And so down the rabbit hole we went.
Yes, it improved our marketing skills dramatically and taught us strategies that we use to this day. And thankfully, we had a team of hustlers to learn and execute everything.
However, we’ve noticed that some people when faced with overwhelming knowledge get stuck in “paralysis by analysis”.
If you’re one of those people, stay from Clickfunnels unless you have time to go through everything.
If you have a deadline, and can’t bother to try maximizing conversions or results, then just get Leadpages so you can set something up quickly.
Although we don’t like how their websites are just simple reskins of each other, we respect that they are effective.
true simplicity
When it comes to Clickfunnels vs Leadpages, if you’re looking for simplicity just go with Leadpages.
And by simplicity, we mean you need just 1 landing page and nothing else.
The reason that we recommend Leadpages over Clickfunnels for simplicity is because if you start with Clickfunnels you’re going to fall in love with it and go down the rabbit hole.
Clickfunnels offers hundreds of hours of training for free (from beginner to expert) and lets you build out multi-step funnels with audience segmenting, email triggers, up sells, down sells, etc… Point being is that if you need 1 landing page and you get Clickfunnels, you’re inevitably going to end up building out an entire sales funnel.
Clickfunnels vs Lead pages: Converting traffic into sales
Converting traffic into sales is an art form and when comparing Clickfunnels vs. Leadpages, you have to ask yourself a few questions:
- What am I going to do with that converted traffic?
- Am I going to want to up sell?
- Do I want to email market?
- Do I want other people to send me affiliate traffic?
- Or, do I just want a page to convert sales?
But, what you want to do with that initial conversion is far more important because Leadpages is extremely limited compared to .
Clickfunnels gives you the chance to increase your revenue by offering down sells, upsells, segmented e-mail marketing, and so much more all in a few clicks using only the Clickfunnels software.
So if you’re going to build out a multi-step sales funnel then Clickfunnels is the better choice.
While on the other hand, Leadpages is a less expensive solution for people looking for a simple solution.
It’s only fair to note that Leadpages integrates with almost any other marketing tool out there, however, if you’re going to build a complex sales funnel using Leadpages, then expect to rack up quite the budget with all the required tools.
Leadpages vs clickfunnels: template building
When you look at the Leadpages management software templates, you might think you’re looking at several different templates.
But the truth is that you have 1 template that’s a little bit modified from landing page “template” to “template”.
Kind of disappointing for a landing page software and our 1 serious criticism of Leadpages.
Clickfunnels on the other hand has hundreds of templates all custom made depending on what your objectives are.
Additionally, the Clickfunnels software marketing team also opened the door so that users with successful templates could sell what they built, thus forming a community market place.
There’s no shortage of landing page and funnel templates.
The difference between the two management software is that when you pay for the Leadpages landing pages, you get 1 template that’s slightly modified.
When you pay for Clickfunnels, you get an entire library of not only landing pages, but entire funnels.
And the moment you've been waiting for, pricing.
So to start off the “pricing” section, please understand that both Clickfunnels and Leadpages offer a 14 free trial where you can take them both for a spin. We highly recommend you do this to start “test driving” both management software and see which is the best landing page or funnel builder for you.
Before talking about pricing, I want to point out that it’s relative. Meaning, if I sold you a $5,000/mo software that was going to make you $500,000/mo, you would be more than happy to pay that $5,000. So when considering pricing for both Clickfunnels and Leadpages, start by considering what you need each management software for, what the end result for each of them are, and what the potential is. If you make a decision on Clickfunnels or Leadpages without understand your end goal, then it would be like randomly picking one anyways.
leadpages pricing
Leadpages start their pricing off at $25/mo, but in all sincerity, with their $25/mo plan you can’t do jack. To get anything from their landing page builder that’s worth money, you have to shell out at least $48/mo which limits you to 3 sites and doesn’t even give you access all integrations. Their $48/mo plan is ideal for people who are looking to keep things simple by building one landing page. Their “real” price point, with all the bells and whistles starts at $199/mo and enabled all your integrations. However, keep in mind that if you’re using their advanced plan or any integrations then you also have to pay for those integrations. If you’re going to pay for the advanced Leadpages management software landing page builder, then just get Clickfunnels – it’s more bang for your buck.
Clickfunnels pricing
One thing we dislike about Clickfunnels is that they refuse to put up a pricing page. But we get it. Like us, they believe that pricing is relative to value and so they want people to try out their software, claim the 14 day free trial and give it out a go before even looking at the price.
However, as an insider who actually uses Clickfunnels, I can give you this information. Their basic plan which includes all the training and the funnel building starts at $97/mo which is a bargain. The $97/mo is worth the training you’ll be receiving alone.
Their full plan, with all the bells and whistles, comes out to $297/mo. This includes pretty much every integration you would need anyways and thus it saves you a ton of money.
Our suggestion is that you start at the $97/mo, go through all the training, join the community and learn from them. And then, when you’re ready to build out more complicated funnels and have seen a profit from the Clickfunnels marketing dollars, that’s when you should upgrade to their advanced plan.
who is each software for?
Both Clickfunnels and Leadpages have their advantages and disadvantages. But it’s not hard to pick out who each management platform is for. To put it simply, if you’re looking to keep things simple and low budget – go with Leadpages. If you’re looking to take your marketing to the next level with something a little more elaborate, go with Clickfunnels.
Who is clickfunnels Marketing for?
Clickfunnels gives you the tools that you need to build a multi-step sales funnel that can include up sells, down sells, e-mail triggers, membership areas, audience segmenting, and landing pages. Clickfunnels does this all within its own software and doesn’t require that much more in terms of integrations. Because of this, it saves you time and money on complex projects while also giving you expert level tools that are used by thousands of highly successful entrepreneurs. If you’re looking to build a multi-step funnel or looking to learn more about marketing then Clickfunnels is the solution for you.
leadpages marketing compared: who is it for?
Leadpages gives you a simple solution for creating beautiful landing pages and has the potential of being upgraded into a sales funnel building tool such as Clickfunnels. Where the two software differ is that Leadpages lacks the amazing community, training and knowledge that Clickfunnels does and requires integrations with several other software. If you’re looking to build simple, one step landing pages for your marketing campaigns then Leadpages is the right solution for you because it will save you money.
What I Wish i could tell you about clickfunnels that you don't care about (yet)
This section is my attempt at saving you thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time. It’s not an unbiased section – quite the opposite, it’s written with my personal experiences in mind when it comes to both management software: Leadpages and Clickfunnels.
The truth is that novices focus on tools when what they really need is knowledge. If your marketing skills aren’t sharp – neither the Leadpages management platform or Clickfunnels software can help you. And this is where the game changing gold nugget of knowledge comes in…
Clickfunnels isn’t just the software. It includes the Clickfunnels community of over 100,000 entrepreneurs. That, by itself, isn’t impressive. What is impressive is that when you scroll through the messages and chats is that you’ll find valuable lessons, tips, testimonials, and guides from all the members.
Even for expert level marketers, their community is a gold mine of ideas and knowledge.
On top of the amazing community, Russell Brunson, the founder of Clickfunnels blatantly admits to wanting to keep people hooked to Clickfunnels. And he keeps you hooked by doing everything in his power to make sure that you succeed with Clickfunnels. This includes training that ranges from beginner level to expert secrets level training and It includes giving you entire pre-built funnels that have succeeded.
In short, not only does Russell give you the world’s most powerful marketing software, he also teaches you how to drive it.
Clickfunnels compared: training and knowledge
Leadpages vs Clickfunnels: Nobody can compete with the Clickfunnels community when it comes to training and knowledge. To start with, they offer a more complex product than Leadpages, and because of this, the people who are successful tend to be way more successful. The Clickfunnels community members aren’t just building 1 page landing page, they’re building out entire sales funnels. They know how to squeeze the most of their marketing dollars, and many of them are millionaires because of it. The point that we’re making is that when comparing these management software, the Clickfunnels community has true experts.
This is a gigantic advantage for Clickfunnels because their inner groups are filled with testimonials, guides, “how to’s”, tips, tricks, hacks, and lessons learned from their members. The training doesn’t get any better than from real people seeing real results.
On top of the amazing community training, Russell Brunson himself offers Clickfunnels training through free podcasts, webinars, and training courses. The difference between the Leadpages and Clickfunnels training is that Russell teaches things from beginner levels to expert.
Clickfunnels basics: what is a landing page?
A landing page is any page that you drive traffic to (this traffic can be both organic or paid traffic) with the intent of converting that traffic. Landing pages tend to be different from regular website pages because their only purpose is to guide users to take specific actions such as entering their information into an e-mail opt-in, calling a phone number, or buying a product. These actions are known as conversions.
What makes landing pages special is how specialized they are and just how much their design can be unilateral. For example, when Clickfunnels founder Russell Brunson solidified and further developed marketers’ understanding of landing page, he began encouraging designs where landing pages would have no navigation. Thus the Clickfunnels landing page model was born where designs focused on unilaterally promoting 1 action for consumers.
These days, other internet marketers argue that every page that gets traffic is a landing page – which is a valid perspective. Does this mean you should delete your navigation menus? Absolutely not off your website – just if you’re running ads, then maybe.
For most people this was, this was unheard of. But the reason the Clickfunnels founder re-defined landing pages this way is because he’s stacking multiple landing pages on top of one another in what’s called a funnel.
What is a funneL?
The answer to “What is a funnel?”, you have to say “clickfunnels clickfunnels clickfunnels” 3 times in a mirror. Kidding. To answer that question, it is that it’s a series of landing pages stacked onto one another.
There are different types of funnels – SMS funnels, e-mail funnels, messenger funnels, but these ones are commonly referred to as sales funnels. Remember, a landing page’s goal is to unilaterally promote 1 action. So for example, a funnel could look something like this:
- Landing Page 1: entices customer to enter their contact information. Commonly known as an opt-in form, this landing page what’s to gather their data to plug them into an e-mail marketing/SMS marketing funnel (but we’ll talk about those later).
- Landing Page 2: Once they’ve entered their information – normally in exchange for valuable content, they’re taken to landing page 2 which normally has a video. The purpose of this video is to deliver the content they were promised and sell them on a product, which they can check out by clicking the button at the bottom.
- Landing Page 3: This is now a product page that sells them on a product.
- Landing Page 4/5: These would be “bumps” – meaning once the customer enters his or her credit card information, they now have the option of buying more by just clicking a checkbox. Because customers are in buying mode, these landing pages convert extremely well. If the customer rejects the offer, they can be taken to do a down-sell landing page which offers them a discount.
- Landing Page 5: Thank you page – this normally thanks them for the product and gives the visitor instructions on what to do next.
Stacking landing pages to create funnels is so important because it allows businesses to acquire new customers at a profit. While normally, a single landing page can’t convert well enough to pay for the adspend upfront, by stacking them, you’re able to extract more value from the same amount of adspend.
These days, building funnels is what most marketers do. To the experts, a single landing page is primitive.
what are the other types of funnels?
The other types of funnels are:
- SMS Funnels – SMS funnels are a series of SMS text messages that encourage the prospect to take 1 specific action – normally this action is to revisit the sales funnels or buy the product promoted.
- E-mail Funnels – Email funnels are very similar to text funnels but the medium is e-mail. Every time you give your e-mail to an opt-in funnel, you’ll likely start receiving e-mails from an e-mail funnel.
How does clickfunnels come into play?
ClickFunnels are an easy to use online platform for building sales pages and it runs pretty similarly to LeadPages. However, it has certain features that make it perfect for making sales, and generating leads. ClickFunnels build a series of pages depending on what you are trying to reach, and these collection of pages are called funnels. Now, there are three types of funnels when it comes to ClickFunnels: Sales, Leads, and Events. Each one of these types of funnels have sub-funnels that let you lead your sales pages to your personal goal. Once you have signed up for the service you’ll land on the dashboard where you can access your many different options.
What are the best features of Clickfunnels?
- Click Funnels Builder. The ClickFunnels Buidler is a simple and easy to use since all you have to do is hover over an element and click if you want to edit. You are able to bold, underline, italicize just like you would be able to when you’re using Microsoft Word. There is no coding needed when using the click funnels builder, its just a drop and drop feature which is comparable to LeadPages.
- Payment Gateways. When using ClickFunnels there are several different types of payment gateways you can set up to make your transactions smoother such as Stripe, Infusionsoft, JCZoo, etc. You will just need to set up your payment gateway before you launch you sales page if it used for transactions.
- Split Testing. With split testing you are about to create an identical funnel with a few changes and test which pages users would respond to the best. Having this kind of data and knowledge helps business and website owners understand your users behavior better and you’re able to create a more appealing funnel in the future with the information gathered.
- Easy Use and Accessibility. Selecting a funnel using ClickFunnels is as easy as pie and does a great job in laying out all the options you have to choose from and filtering them. New users will find themselves having very little trouble setting up their accounts for the first time saving your time and effort.
- ClickPop. By activating ClickPop you can enable pop up messages to your sales pages for whatever you may want to get across to your users. You can use it to say a quick thanks or encourage future customers with great offers or subscriptions.
- Excellent Customer Support. ClickFunnels offers videos and other training videos you may need to get your website up and running smoothly. The tutorials are packed with valuable information and tells you everything you need to know. There is also an online chat feature for those who needs urgent assistance in real time.
What I Wish I could tell you about Leadpages that you don't care about (yet)
While Leadpages doesn’t have the type training and knowledge data bases that ClickFunnels offers to their customers, the have their special pros as well. Leadpages may not have exact expansive video training necessarily but they still have a wide variety network of resources for members and non-member such as:
- Vast collections of informative ebooks
- An active & helpful blog
- Some webinars and online training programs
- Free marketing training university
- A weekly updated podcast
However, a lot of this content is focused on increasing audience marketing and how lapdogs can supplement towards your growth and goals. If you are looking for more Leadpages-focused information then you can go to their help-center. Here they will give you step by step guides on how to use Leadpages correctly and get the most out the program.
Leadpages Basics: What Can You Use It For?
What Leadpages Is Not...
Leadpages is not the same things as a regular email marketing software scubas ConvertKit or Infusionsoft. Leadpages instead can be used to to help grow your email list and you can use a different service to communicate with that list, since it does not allow for you to send regular emails to your list.
So why would someone ever want to use Leadpages over another program such as ClickFunnels?
Well, they offer a ton of templates that help you make high converting landing pages and be able to effortlessly send content upgrades.
The difference between Leadpages and ClickFunnels is that ClickFunnels are all-in-one sales funnel software that lets you run everything in your own way and Leadpages is a professional landing page application. However, ClickFunnels and Leadpages are both very powerful and beneficial applications that help generate more leads to your website and in turn make more money from your traffic.
Click funnels homepage is known to be a content-rich platform that isn’t just all about landing pages. There are a lot of funnel templates that they provide that will let you create your sales funnel the way you want, which is different from Leadpages just being a stand alone thing. You can create various funnels for multiple different pages across your website to create a funnel which will make sales seamless while using this tool.
Their basic plan which includes all the training and the funnel building starts at $97/mo which is a bargain. The $97/mo is worth the training you’ll be receiving alone.
Their full plan, with all the bells and whistles, comes out to $297/mo. This includes pretty much every integration you would need anyways and thus it saves you a ton of money.
So a quick overview:
- Basic Plan: $97/mo
- Full Plan: $297/mo
ClickFunnels goes above and beyond from just being a landing page, its the whole package. The landing page is only just a part of the whole “funnel” that is in ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels would be considered a more advanced version of Leadpages because of it being a complete package.
A landing page can serve two purposes:
- Capture valuable information that you can use to promote to people in the time to come.
- Motivate potential customers to make a purchase
There is definitely a better time to use ClickFunnels over landing pages and vice versa, however if you have multiple products and/or services, ClickFunnels is your best bet. They are not the same as each other however they are both very useful and efficient depending on what you use them for and what your end goal is.
