Instapage Reviews & Product Details

What is Instapage?

Instapage is the leading landing page-building platform. It helps digital marketers maximize their advertising conversions and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) by delivering hyper-relevant ad-to-page experiences at a scale previously thought impossible. Instapage provides a unified environment for ad mapping, scalable page creation, experimentation, personalization, and analytics to create, optimize, and personalize landing page experiences as quickly as your ads. With over two million landing pages at an average conversion rate of over 16%, Instapage helps leading brands across 100 countries drive more value from their campaigns.

Building a well-optimized landing page is hard, right? You have to go back and forth with a designer and, oh yeah, pay a bunch of money…is that the gist?

Maybe five years ago.

Now, design is mainstream and you have all types of tools that can help you build a feature-rich landing page without needing to know a lick of code.

One of those tools is Instapage. It’s a high-powered landing page builder with tons of helpful integrations and optimization features.

In my Instapage review below, I’ll give you a hands-on look at exactly how Instapage works and delve into the question of whether or not it’s the right tool for you.

What does Instapage do? A general look at the feature list

Don’t worry – I’m going to show you how this all actually works in the next section. But I think it’s helpful to frame the more hands-on part of my Instapage review with a quick look at the feature list so you know what to expect.

You already know that Instapage is a landing page builder. But here’s what that actually means:

• Drag and drop page builder – It’s not grid-based like WordPress page builders. You’re free to drag and drop each element exactly where you want it. This is super cool – keep reading to see it in action.

• Widgets – Widgets let you insert elements like CTA buttons, countdown timers, and more.

• 200+ customizable templates-These help if you don’t want to start from a blank slate.

• Direct access to 33 million Bigstock images – It’s easy to insert professional stock images, though you have to purchase each image separately.

• Detailed form builder and asset delivery – Easily create all types of forms, including multi-step forms. Then, connect to a huge number of integrations. Instapage can even handle automatically delivering assets like lead magnets.

• Helpful analytics – Heatmaps, A/B testing, Google Tag Manager, and more.

• Collaboration tools – Instapage brands itself as a platform for “marketing teams & agencies”, which results in a number of helpful tools for collaboration. For example, you can leave comments on specific parts of a landing page design draft.

• Instablocks – Save specific landing page sections to reuse across designs, or choose from Instapage’s pre-built sections.

• AMP Support – Design Google AMP landing pages using the same drag-and-drop interface.

• Detailed attribution data – Beyond analytics, Instapage can connect to Google AdWords and other services to integrate attribution data like AdWords campaigns or price data.

That’s by no means a full feature list – but it’s a solid look at the highlights.

Why not just use a WordPress page builder?

Ok, as you read the feature list above, you might be wondering this:

Why use Instapage over a conversion-focused WordPress landing page plugin like Thrive Architect?

I hear you – it’s definitely a valid question.

Skipping the obvious answer that some of you might not actually be using the world’s most popular content management system (WordPress!), Instapage still has a few things going for it over a page builder.

First, it’s 100% dedicated to landing pages. Many WordPress page builders include some landing page templates, but it’s not their sole focus. Instapage has over 200 templates, and all of the widgets are geared toward landing pages.

Second, Instapage is much more focused on analytics and optimization. You get A/B testing, heatmaps, analytics, easy Google Tag Manager inclusion, and lots more. Most page builders don’t offer any of those features.

So if you’re analytically focused, you might appreciate those extra options (though you’ll pay more for them).

Third, you can manage landing pages for multiple websites from one Instapage account, which is helpful if you run a number of sites.

Finally, Instapage can handle hosting both your landing pages and any digital assets (like lead magnets) that you want to deliver. While you can do that with WordPress, it’s definitely not as easy.

Six other Instapage features to help you work more effectively

Above, you learned how to use Instapage to create and analyze a landing page at a high level. But what makes Instapage so powerful is that there are also a number of deeper features that you can harness to boost your productivity and the effectiveness of your landing pages.

1. Easy visual collaboration (great for teams)

If you’re part of a team or agency, you’ll love Instapage’s built-in collaboration tools. It’s kind of like InVision but built right into your landing page creation tool.

Using Comment Mode, you, or any member of your team, can click on specific parts of your design to leave a comment right there:

Then, other team members can either:

• Respond with their own comment, including @mentions

• Resolve the issue once it’s completed to help keep track of which changes have been made

2. Instablocks to save you time when working with common elements

You already saw Instapage’s full landing page templates, but Instapage also includes a smaller template option called Instablocks.

Instablocks are essentially templates for a specific section of a landing page. For example, you might have an Instablock for a header section or a CTA section:

They help you speed up your development process without requiring you to use a fully pre-built template.

And beyond the pre-built Instablocks that Instapage includes, you can also save your own sections as Instablocks, which is a big time-saver if you need to reuse similar elements across multiple landing pages.

3. Google AMP support for quick-loading mobile landing pages

AMP helps your landing pages load lightning-fast for mobile visitors. But the problem with most AMP pages is that they’re ugly.

Instapage helps you use AMP without sacrificing design and conversion optimization. You will have some limitations on size and technology that are inherent to the AMP platform (e.g. you lose the timer widget) – but you’re still able to build validated AMP pages using the familiar Instapage builder:

4. Easy AdWords integration to track ROI and effectiveness

If you’re using AdWords to send traffic to your landing page, Instapage helps you connect your landing page to Google AdWords with just a few clicks:

The benefit is that you can view cost and AdWords campaign information inside your Instapage dashboard, which makes it easy to see your ROI.

5. More options for attribution data beyond AdWords

Beyond its dedicated integrations with Google AdWords and Google Analytics, Instapage also lets you pass custom lead metadata (like referral source or IP address) for even more detailed attribution tracking.

6. Built-in heatmaps to find hotspots

Heatmaps help you analyze where users are interacting with your pages the most. Normally, you’d need an external tool like Hotjar to track heatmaps for your landing page. But Instapage can automatically track heatmap analytics and let you view them right from your Instapage dashboard

How much does Instapage cost?

Now it’s time for the moment of truth…how much are all of these cool features going to actually cost you?

Well, more than a WordPress page builder, that’s for sure.

Plans start at $149 when billed annually. Fortunately, this plan includes pretty much everything you might need.

That said, there is an enterprise offering that adds AMP pages, editable blocks, audit logging, and more.

So…is Instapage worth the money?

If you’re a casual blogger who only uses one or two landing pages, probably not.

But if you’re a serious entrepreneur or marketer who’s always running different promotions, or if you’re running a business or marketing team, then I think Instapage is definitely worth a look.

Yes – it’s a hefty cost. But it is legitimately better than many of the cheaper alternatives…if you actually take advantage of the more advanced features.

And with features like heatmaps, you’ll end up saving money on other tools.

Instapage pros and cons

Pro’s

• The true drag-and-drop builder that doesn’t constrain you in any way

• A huge number of templates, most of which look great.

• Easy A/B testing

• Built-in conversion goals and analytics

• Tons of integrations with popular email marketing services

• Hosted asset delivery for easy lead magnets

• Ability to edit the mobile version of your page

Con’s

• Mainly, price. The features are great, but they don’t come cheap. Casual users are priced out by the cost.

• No A/B testing in the cheapest plan. This makes Instapage even more

• The widget list is a little small. E.g. it would be helpful to have a dedicated pricing table widget.

Instapage review: final thoughts

Instapage is a powerful tool. It’s definitely a cut above the WordPress page builders that many bloggers are used to.

While it is powerful, the Builder is still easy to use and accessible to beginners. And I loved how free-form the Builder is. You truly have the power to put things anywhere.

I also liked how things like A/B testing and conversion goals were built right into the Builder. It feels like they’re part of the actual design process, rather than an afterthought that you tack on to a finished page.

Finally, the publishing options make it simple to use the landing pages that you create, no matter what type of website you’re running.

It’s definitely not the cheapest tool. But if you want a high-powered, optimization-oriented landing page builder, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.