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Instapage Review: Pros and Cons (with Video)

Instapage is one of many landing page builders on the market today. There are many alternatives to consider: Instapage vs. Leadpages (our Leadpages review), Instapage vs. Unbounce, etc. So how do you know if Instapage is the best landing page tool for YOU? That’s what our in-depth Instapage review (and video) is for. MarTech Wiz will help you decide if Instapage is the right landing page builder for your organization.

What is Instapage?

Instapage helps you quickly create professional, powerful landing pages. No design or coding skills are needed to create pages. Instapage has all the main features expected in a landing page builder including templates, drag and drop editor, conversion rate analytics, and mobile-responsive design. Pro and Premium subscribers have the added feature of A/B testing functionality.

Instapage gets an excellent rating of 8.5/10 from MarTech Wiz ranking them the #4 landing page builder. Continue on to find out the highlights as well as downsides of Instapage.

Instapage Logo
Instapage Review - Overall Rank and Score
Instapage Review - Overall Rank and Score
Instapage ReviewInfo Table
Overall Rating8.5/10
Price range $29-$149/ mo
Core FeatureLanding Pages
Free TrialYes, 30-day free trial
Free PlanNo
Year Founded2012
Founder(s)Tyson Quick
LocationSan Francisco, CA USA
Twitter@instapage
Websitewww.instapage.com

Instapage Features: What does Instapage do?

Instapage doesn’t have a huge features list with tons of bells and whistles. Instapage focuses solely on their core offering of landing pages. Their 9.0 rating indicates they do it well. It’s not meant to be a website builder like Wix or Squarespace. Instapage’s feature list includes:

  • Landing page builder: drag and drop editor to build and edit pages
  • Pre-built customizable templates: templates for lead generation, event registration, thank you pages and more
  • Optimization & analytics: analytics dashboard to show conversion analytics of all of your pages
  • A/B Testing (Pro/Premium version): split testing to compare different versions of a page in order to identify the best performer

Instapage Benefits: Why use Instapage?

Quick Landing Pages

Instapage helps organizations that need to create new marketing pages fast. And nowadays, who doesn’t? Pages are typically created to generate leads, sales, webinar registrants and thank you pages. Instapage pages do not require the time, money and effort of hiring a developer, designer or building in-house.

Lead Generation

The standard lead generation tools like boxes and forms can easily be added to your pages. Form submissions integrate smoothly with most major email marketing solutions. This allows you to build your email list in a professional and effective manner. Instapage also has templates for two-step or multi-step opt-in forms.

Conversion Rate Analysis

Instapage provides an easy way to analyze the performance of your landing pages. The analytics dashboard shows the conversion statistics for each Instapage landing page. This allows you to compare one landing page versus others as well as industry benchmarks.

A/B Testing

Not sure if your page design or copy is your best work? Use A/B Testing to split test the page with two or more variations (pro/premium plans only). A/B Testing with Instapage is easy. Duplicate your main version (A) to make a second variation (B) with copy or design changes you want to test. When people visit the url, some will see version A and some version B. Over time, you will have the data on which page is converting better.

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Example of Template - Instapage Review

YouTube Video

To see Instapage in action, check out this Instapage demo and review video by MarTech Wiz.

How does Instapage work?

Getting started is extremely easy. Instapage is an online SAAS tool.  Simply create an account (sign up for a free trial) to gain access to Instapage. No credit card is required.

1. Choose your starting point

Once logged in, you have several options for the starting point of your landing page.

Pick a template on Instapage

This is the most popular starting point. Templates provide a professionally-designed page to work from. Our Instapage review recommends started here.

You can browse over 100 Instapage templates to find a template that best fits your purpose.

Templates are categorized into lead generation, click-through, webinar, mobile app and thank you pages. Instapage templates are flexible and fully customizable. You can completely alter the layout, images and copy in the drag and drop builder.

Templates - Instapage Review
Templates - Instapage Review

Purchase a template on ThemeForest

What if you cannot find the perfect template on Instapage? There are about 100 templates for sale on at the external marketplace ThemeForest. The prices of these templates range from $9 to $23 with most at $18 or $19.

Themeforest Templates - Instapage Review
Themeforest Templates - Instapage Review

Start with a blank page

You can always choose to simply start from a blank page. This is the most flexible option as you create your page from scratch.

Landing pages aren’t very complicated.  You can build a simple landing page fairly quickly with an idea of the images and copy. The question is whether it will look as professional and polished as the templates.

Also this option requires the most amount of work and design skill. For these reasons, we don’t recommend the blank page option for beginners in this Instapage review.

Note: Instapage has several free and paid images to pick from right in the page builder.

Instapage’s Template Importer is an interesting advanced premium feature. You give Instapage a web address of a landing page. Instapage then scans the style of that page and returns it as a template. Instapage will pull in its style and layout in the Instapage editor. From there you will be able to change any text, videos, or buttons you want.

2. Customize in the drag and drop editor

Next use the drag and drop editor to fully customize the page to your liking. People rave about the power and ease of use of the Instapage editor. The editor is central to the Instapage platform. Instapage has managed to achieve a balance of simplicity and power. You can achieve most editing options with an intuitive interface and no clutter. The editor has a mobile view to check if your page is mobile-responsive.
For example, say you want to add a new section with a title, video and CTA button.

  • First add a blank section in Instapage and place it where you want on the page.
  • Next choose a background image or color if desired. The tool to nudge the background image is helpful as that can be tricky sometimes. There is a nice feature to add a color overlay to your image.
  • To add video, simply paste a Vimeo or YouTube url into the edit box. To adjust the size of the video box, simply drag the corners to your desired size.
  • Adding and styling a button is easy. Choose Add New then Button. All the key editing options are there (minus font which is in settings). Just drag the corner handle to size the button.

It is not a problem if you need elements to overlap. Drag and drop wherever you like and then arrange which element goes on top.

Psst! We ranked all top landing page builders from #16 to #1!

SEE WHERE INSTAPAGE RANKED

Our complete Landing Page Builder Rankings provides in-depth analysis of all the best tools. We wrote up in-depth reviews of the best landing page builders to show you which is tops in terms of features, usability and price. Compare tools against each other so you pick the right tool for you and don’t overpay!

Landing pages often use sense of urgency to convert. One of the biggest conversion tools is a countdown timer. Instapage has a countdown timer which is lacking in some other builders.

One thing we didn’t like was the parallax background effect. Instapage simply fixes the background image in the background while the page scrolls. In a true parallax effect, the background image should scroll at a slightly different speed than the rest of the page. This creates a 3D-like effect.

The full list of elements include headline, paragraph, image, video, button, form, shapes, map, social, timer, and HTML.

The HTML container allows you to embed any forms or other html items (like an iframe) that you couldn’t add otherwise. Map provides a live Google Map for any address given.

While we can’t cover all aspects of Instapage here, our Instapage review video provides an inside look into Instapage in action.

instapage-review-drag-drop-editor
Drag and Drop Editor - Instapage Review

3. Publish

Once you are satisfied with your landing page, you can publish it online.  You have several publishing options:

  • Publishing on Instapage is easiest. However you may have to use a url with an Instapage subdomain.
  • Use the WordPress plugin to publish it to your WordPress site. Drupal is also fully integrated.
  • Publish directly to your website servers which requires more technical know-how
  • Or even publish it on Facebook as a page
Publishing Options - Instapage Review
Publishing Options - Instapage Review

Getting started is simple. Sign up for a 30-day free trial with only your email address, no credit card required. Then test out this powerful and polished tool. You might get offered an Instapage discount after you sign up via email.

2017 Update: SSL certificates are now available (Premium plan only) for a more secure pages.

What do users typically say about Instapage?

Positives

Customer service has amazed me with their quick, helpful personalized responses

The drag and drop page editor is extremely intuitive to use

The tools are simple to use yet still very powerful

Instapage has over 100+ attractive templates to choose from so I can always find the right look

Pages are responsive so they look great on mobile too

Quickly building pages with Instapage saves me lots of time

I can usually find a way to integrate Instapage with my most important marketing applications.

Negatives

I encounter some errors when switching to mobile view in the editor

I occasionally come across irritating bugs or glitches

It has a lot but not all the integrations I need

The price is on the high side.

Instapage Pricing and Plans: How much does Instapage Cost?

Instapage pricing for the basic plan is $39/month paid monthly or $29/month if you choose the annual plan.

The Professional plan is $69/month (monthly) or the equivalent to $55/month (annually). It provides access to team access and A/B testing.

The Premium plan is $149/month (annual option only). The premium plan includes personalized support options and expanded team access options.

All plans include unlimited pages, visitors and domains.

All plans provide at least email support and access to the knowledge base.

Instapage Pricing Monthly

After signing up for the free trial, we received a 30% discount to the annual plan and 10% discount to the monthly plan.

Instapage Pricing Annually

You may not find the monthly payment option on the website until you sign up for an account or free trial


Related Landing Page Builder reviews by MarTech Wiz

Clickfunnels Review: for a vast feature set and sales funnels

Leadpages Review: for a broad feature set and some innovative features

Landing Page Builder Rankings: We reviewed and ranked the top 16 Builders


Does Instapage have a free trial and/or totally free plan?

  • Free trial: 30-day (link)
  • Free plan: No
  • CC required for free trial: No

Instapage Integrations

  • MailChimp
  • ActiveCampaign
  • AWeber
  • Campaign Monitor
  • Constant Contact
  • E-goi
  • GetResponse
  • GoToWebinar
  • Mad Mimi
  • Zoho
  • Autopilot (Pro+)
  • Infusionsoft (Pro+)
  • Salesforce (Pro+)
  • Zapier (Pro+)
  • WebHooks (Premium)

Several integrations are only available in the Professional and Premium version

Instapage Review - Breakdown of score

Market share

6%

Estimated %

Drop Off Rate

24%

Estimated percentage of people who stopped using the product

Market share and drop off data from Datanyze

We care deeply about providing accurate and up-to-date information. Please contact us if you think there is an error.

We are grateful to bring you this content free of charge. If you find the right tool and go on to buy it through our link, we may receive a referral commission at no additional cost to you. This support enables us to keep the site up. Thank you!

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