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Whether you want to create a landing page for your project or a mini website that takes your visitors through a sales journey, Leadpages, OptimizePress, and ClickFunnels are three of the best tools on the market.
Regardless of whether you already have a website or not, by using one of these tools, you could have a highly-effective landing page (or sales funnel) up and running in just hours. But when it comes to these three page builders, which is best? Which one should you choose?
These are the question we’ll be helping you answer in this article. If you’re looking to create that all-important high-converting landing page for your site, read on.
Let’s dive in…
What Can These Tools Do?
The main goal of Leadpages, OptimizePress, and ClickFunnels is to allow you to create high converting sales or landing pages to promote offers to your audience. Physical and digital products, services, events such as webinars, invitations to join your email list, or any offer you can think of can be promoted with the right type of landing page.
The official Leadpages homepage
To help you create the perfect landing page for your project, Leadpages, OptimizePress, and ClickFunnels include fully customizable templates. You can also split test your landing pages to find the design that works best with your audience and the offer you’re promoting.
OptimizePress, Leadpages, and ClickFunnels all integrate with payment processors and auto-responders, helping you create a seamless user experience, from a prospect’s initial visit to your page through to completion of a payment or subscription goal.
So if you’re looking for a powerful tool to improve your conversion rates, whether you’re promoting your own products, acting as an affiliate, or offering some other opportunity to your audience, Leadpages, OptimizePress, and ClickFunnels have been built specifically for this purpose.
But which one’s best? Let’s find out by exploring their best features and different approaches in our guide to helping you decide whether Leadpages, OptimizePress, or ClickFunnels is the right option for you.
Leadpages Overview
Leadpages is a popular landing page and lead generation tool that provides you with everything needed to create custom sales pages.
This 404 error page is just one of the many Leadpages templates that can help turn visitors into leads.
As the landing pages are hosted on the Leadpages servers, you don’t need your own website to start generating leads or sales for your project. However, you can publish the pages on your own website, either by uploading them to your web space or by using the WordPress integration plugin.
Leadpages Templates
An example of one of the editable Leadpages landing pages.
To help you get started, you have the option of taking a quick questionnaire covering your reasons for using Leadpages. Templates matching your goals are then displayed, ensuring you can quickly find the right design for your landing page or mini site.
Leadpages tries to help you quickly find the templates that are closely related to your goals.
You can also easily browse all 160+ Leadpages templates with the option of filtering them by category.
Leadpages tries to help you quickly find the templates that are closely related to your goals.
Unlike ClickFunnels, where you can only view templates related to the type of funnel you’re creating, Leadpages makes it easy to see everything that’s available.
Another of the sales page templates in the Leadpages library.
Considering the high quality of the designs, it’s not hard to see why Leadpages is eager to show off their templates. As well as being able to search the template library, another nice feature of Leadpages is the ability to sort templates by highest converting or newest addition.
Leadboxes Optin Forms
As well as creating landing pages, Leadpages can also produce Leadboxes. These are optin forms that can be added to your Leadpages landing pages or inserted into your regular website content.
Leadboxes can be used to grow your email list or encourage visitors to opt into some other offer.
Leadboxes can be activated by the exit intent triggers and timers, as well as the plain text, button, and image links.
Leadboxes offers many of the features of the best lead generation plugins and services.
Like the Leadpages landing pages, the Leadboxes are fully customizable through the drag-and-drop editor. Leadboxes helps make Leadpages a good alternative to email optin plugins like OptinMonster, Bloom, or ThriveLeads.
Create custom optin form popups with the Leadboxes feature of Leadpages.
Then there’s the Leaddigits tool that lets visitors optin via mobile phone text messaging. The Leadlinks feature can also be used to sign up visitors in one click rather than through a form.
The Leadlinks can be used on your website or in emails to enable someone to subscribe by clicking.
Like ClickFunnels and OptimizePress, additional templates can be purchased. However, with Leadpages, the selection of ‘free’ options are more than enough to get started with. The Leadpages designs are also organized according to whether they’re drag-and-drop compatible or standard templates.
Leadpages Template Editor
Whether you choose a drag-and-drop landing page template or a standard design, you get access to a useful set of customization options with Leadpages. This might’ve not been the case in the past, but the latest version of Leadpages comes equipped with a modern point-and-click page builder.
The drag-and-drop landing page templates can be fully customized through the Leadpages editor.
The Leadpages drag-and-drop editor makes it possible to click on any text in the template to start editing it. The context-sensitive controls make it easy to find the settings for the item you’re working on.
Leadpages templates are constructed from multiple sections that are populated with widgets.
Whether you start with a blank canvas or load an existing template, you can easily add new sections to your page and then customize their appearance. Widgets can be inserted into the sections to build your custom landing page.
Once you’ve added a widget to your page, you can then customize it through the WYSIWYG interface.
If you choose one of the standard templates, then the customization work takes place through a different editor. Although the standard template editor isn’t as user-friendly as the drag-and-drop version, you still get a lot of control over the design of your landing page.
Some of the Leadpages templates are classified as standard templates and are customized through a different editor.
When your page is ready, it can be published as a standalone page hosted by Leadpages with its own URL, added to your Facebook page on its own tab, or downloaded so that you can host it on your own web space. WordPress users can also use the Leadpages plugin to display the landing pages on their website.
The Leadpages plugin makes it easy to use the landing pages on your WordPress website.
The Leadpages drag-and-drop editor isn’t quite as intuitive as the ClickFunnels editor, especially with two different versions to master, although it doesn’t appear to be any less powerful. It is more impressive than the OptimizePress editor.
Leadpages Reporting and Optimization Tools
With Leadpages, your landing page views and conversion rates are automatically tracked. Leadpages also integrates with third-party tools like Google Analytics. That could be useful if you need more data or you’re planning to add the landing pages to your existing website, and you’re already using this tool to track your visitor activity.
Leadpages provides basic performance reporting, but you can integrate your pages with Google Analytics for more detailed data.
Running split tests to optimize your landing pages is very easy with Leadpages, provided you’re on the Pro plan or higher. You can create multiple variations of a page and then choose how traffic is distributed among the variations until you’re ready to declare a winner.
If you want to test your alternate design with a small percentage of your traffic, Leadpages makes it easy to do so.
Leadpages Integration Options
Like ClickFunnels and OptimizePress, Leadpages integrates with all the most popular relevant services, including email marketing tools, webinar services, payment gateways, and WordPress. Integrations with services like Hubspot and Salesforce are reserved for those on the Advanced plan.
Just some of the Leadpages third-party integrations available.
By connecting your Stripe account to your Leadpages account, you can add checkouts to your pages and collect payments on your site, with payments processed by Stripe.
Leadpages Pricing
Leadpages is available on three tiers with different features available at each level:
- Standard: $37 per month ($25 per month if paid annually).
- Pro: $79 per month ($48 per month if paid annually).
- Advanced: $199 per month (only available with annual payments).
As this is a hosted service, you need to maintain your subscription to keep your pages online (unless you download a design and upload to your own web host). Therefore, you might want to take advantage of the reduced prices available to those paying for two years upfront.
Although there are some differences between the three Leadpages plans, all users get access to all 160+ templates and the ability to create as many pages as they want for an unlimited number of visitors. Unlike ClickFunnels, there’s no cap on leads and visitor numbers.
Upgrading to the Pro plan unlocks features like the split testing tool, text message opt-ins, and one-click sign-ups.
Can You Try Before You Buy?
There is a 14-day Leadpages free trial available. It does require a credit card, but you should have enough time to explore Leadpages before your card is charged.
Leadpages Summary
Leadpages has high-quality landing page templates and a very usable drag-and-drop content editor. So whether you’re looking for ready-made landing page designs or you have your own vision for your sales pages, this tool is a solid option.
The Leadboxes optin form feature and the ability to publish Leadpages landing pages on a WordPress website are another reason to recommend this tool. The reporting features are a bit basic, but the Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel integration, along with the split testing tool, should provide you with all the data you need to optimize your landing pages.
All this makes Leadpages a powerful tool. However, as we’ll soon see in this Leadpages, OptimizePress, and ClickFunnels comparison, the inability to create multi-step funnels might make another tool in this article a better option for you.
OptimizePress Overview
OptimizePress is a landing page and lead generation tool for WordPress websites. Previously delivered in both WordPress theme and plugin formats, after a recent update, only the latter version is available now. However, there is an optional OptimizePress SmartTheme that you can add to your site for extra functionality. While OptimizePress should work with most WordPress themes and plugins, there are some compatibility issues to be aware of.
One of the customizable OptimizePress landing page designs.
So if you’re already using WordPress or you’re prepared to start a new WordPress site, OptimizePress could be the tool to help you create sales and landing pages as well as pages for your membership site, webinars, and product launches.
OptimizePress Landing Page Templates
Unlike the ClickFunnels and Leadpages hosted services, with OptimizePress, all the action takes place in the dashboard of your WordPress website.
The OptimizePress control panel within the WordPress dashboard.
Once the plugin is active, you can watch the introduction video to get started or begin work on a new page. The fully customizable OptimizePress pages are divided into six main categories, including optin and landing pages, sales pages, thank you pages, and pages for webinars and delivering membership site content.
Some of the OptimizePress landing page templates.
The OptimizePress templates look good, but they’re not quite as impressive as the designs from Leadpages or ClickFunnels.
The OptimizePress landing pages are designed to generate subscribers for your email list.
While the OptimizePress landing pages are focused on helping you grow your email list or collect the contact details from your visitors, the sales page templates have been designed to elicit a purchase from your audience.
The OptimizePress sales page templates feature more content than the landing page designs.
The OptimizePress templates are usually focused towards a specific goal, but they are fully customizable so they can be adjusted for a range of purposes and outcomes.
One of the OptimizePress sales page designs.
Unlike Leadpages, there’s no conversion rate information about the OptimizePress templates so you can’t sort them to find the most effective designs. But like the other two products in this comparison, you can purchase additional templates for OptimizePress from their marketplace.
Additional templates can be purchased at the OptimizePress marketplace.
OptimizePress Template Editor
Once you’ve chosen a template, it opens in the OptimizePress LiveEditor for customization.
The OptimizePress landing page editor.
The OptimizePress LiveEditor definitely isn’t as slick as the ClickFunnels and Leadpages editors, or even those of some of the best WordPress page builder plugins. But it is functional enough.
No inline editing and not being able to instantly see the effects of your changes does slow things down.
Altering an element involves clicking on the edit icon, then making changes through a popup panel rather than being able to work through a sidebar panel or type directly into the page as you can with Leadpages and ClickFunnels.
OptimizePress makes it easy to enhance your pages with its library of elements.
You can add a good selection of elements to your pages with OptimizePress, including audio and video players, buttons, countdown timers, optin boxes, pricing tables, testimonials, and much more.
Publisher and Pro license holders (but not the entry level Core license) can access the PlusPack elements, making it possible to add product showcases and sliders to your pages.
OptimizePress Reporting and Optimization Tools
Google Analytics and other tracking code can be added to your OptimizePress pages via the plugin dashboard. Pro and Advanced license holders can access the OptimizePress Experiments features via the PlusPack module which includes the split testing tool.
You can run split tests on your pages to find the highest converting designs with the OptimizePress Experiments feature.
With the OptimizePress Experiments module, you can compare two or more designs with an optin or page visit goal. The process isn’t as user-friendly as ClickFunnels and Leadpages. Instead of everything taking place in one location, you must switch screens to make changes to the pages you’re comparing. You also can’t define how traffic is distributed among your pages as you can with Leadpages.
The feature is functional though, so you will be able to effectively test and compare your designs with OptimizePress.
OptimizePress Integration Options
Payments for your OptimizePress membership content can be collected through a number of gateways.
OptimizePress integrates with all the main email marketing services to help you grow your subscriber list. You can also use the Stripe and Gumroad integration to take credit card payments via order forms on your OptimizePress pages.
The OptimizeMember module gives you the ability add free and paid membership plans to your site.
The OptimizeMember module is designed to protect content on your site and sell access via the payment gateway integration.
OptimizePress Pricing
The OptimizePress WordPress plugin is available on three pricing plans:
- Core: $97 for use on up to 3 websites.
- Publisher: $197 for extra features and use on up to 10 websites.
- Pro: $297 for all Core and Publisher features and use on up to 30 websites.
Unlike Leadpages and ClickFunnels, the price of OptimizePress is a one-time fee, although you will need to pay $39 each year to retain access to support and updates.
Also, there’s an additional membership package which is presented as an upsell after purchasing OptimizePress. Paying this monthly fee gives you access to more landing page templates and the OptimizeLeads lead generation and list building software.
Can You Try Before You Buy?
Although there’s no free trial, there is a 30-day money back guarantee.
OptimizePress Summary
OptimizePress isn’t as slick or feature rich as Leadpages and ClickFunnels. However, it is a lot more affordable, and the lack of subscription pricing might make it a good option for those on a budget, although you will need to pay for web hosting and manage your own WordPress website.
With OptimizePress you do get access to a good selection of page templates, and the LiveEditor does give you the ability to customize the pre-built designs or create your own. It’s just that ClickFunnels and Leadpages have a lot more to offer.
Also, as OptimizePress is a WordPress plugin rather than a hosted service, it’s up against some pretty strong competition in the WordPress page builder space, including Visual Composer, Beaver Builder, and Thrive Content Builder to name just a few.
ClickFunnels Overview
ClickFunnels offers much more than professional looking landing page creation. Instead, this service is focused on helping you create funnels that take your prospects through a multi-step, predefined journey from initial interest through to your final goal, such as a product purchase.
One of the pre-defined sales funnels available to users of ClickFunnels.
Compared to Leadpages and OptimizePress, ClickFunnels is more of an all-in-one solution. Unlike Leadpages, you don’t need a website as the landing pages are hosted on the ClickFunnels servers.
ClickFunnels also has the ability to process payments and manage communication with your email list (although you will need to integrate with an SMTP service to send emails).
ClickFunnels includes pre-built customizable landing page templates for a range of promotions.
ClickFunnels is the most feature-rich option in this landing page service comparison, but it’s also the most expensive. Let’s explore the best features of ClickFunnels to help you decide if it’s a worthwhile investment for your project.
ClickFunnels Landing Page Templates
Before you get to the library of landing page templates, ClickFunnels gives you the opportunity to choose from a selection of pre-defined sales funnels. Each funnel has been designed for a specific purpose and will help you promote products, events, your email list, an online form, and webinars, to name just a few.
ClickFunnels includes a good selection of pre-defined sales funnels for a range of promotions.
Each funnel is accompanied by an instructional video to help you get the most from it. You’re also free to create your own funnels or purchase third-party funnels from the marketplace.
As well as choosing from the pre-defined funnels, you can also create your own sales journey with ClickFunnels.
Once you’ve chosen a pre-defined sales funnel or created your own, you can then move on to choosing a template for the landing page and other stages in your funnel. The selection is relatively small, compared to Leadpages. However, as well as the free templates, you can also choose from a selection of premium designs.
ClickFunnels offers free and premium purpose-built landing page templates.
It’s good to have more choice, but considering the relatively high price of ClickFunnels, it was a bit of a surprise to see $247 templates being offered in the marketplace.
ClickFunnels Template Editor
Despite giving you the ability to create complex sales funnels, ClickFunnels makes it easy to manage them.
Once you’ve chosen a funnel and template, you can start customizing. As well as editing the steps in the funnel, you can also launch the editor to work on the landing page templates.
The ClickFunnels landing page editor is very intuitive and well designed.
The ClickFunnels landing page editor is very impressive. Simply click on a page element to start editing. Thanks to the WYSIWYG interface, you can edit the content directly on the page with a live preview of your design as your work.
The design process is very streamlined and intuitive with ClickFunnels, thanks to the WYSIWYG editor.
To help you create a custom landing page, template elements can be dragged and dropped into new positions. Clicking the settings icon for a page element opens up a side panel containing the appearance-related controls.
Almost every aspect of your landing page can be customized through the user-friendly ClickFunnels interface.
As the templates are fully customizable, you can easily add new rows and sections to your pages and then populate them with elements from ClickFunnels library.
ClickFunnels includes useful elements to help you create feature-packed landing pages, whatever your goals.
Whether you simply want to replace the template placeholder text and images with your own content or get more creative and redesign the whole page, ClickFunnels makes it easy.
Once you’ve finished customizing a template, you can return to the funnel page to work on the rest of the user journey.
ClickFunnels Reporting and Optimization Tools
ClickFunnels gives you easy access to the stats for your funnels. Through the funnel dashboard, you can view the success rate of each step in the user journey.
Being able to see how well each stage in your funnel is performing gives you the ability to try and improve poor converting pages and learn from any that are doing well.
ClickFunnels provides the data and tools to help you evaluate and optimize your funnels and their pages.
Setting up split testing in ClickFunnels is easy, too. At any point in the funnel, you can create a variation of a page and then either edit a clone of the original or create a new design based on another template. All this takes place on one screen so you have easy access to everything you need.
ClickFunnels Integration Options
Although ClickFunnels provides lots of the features you would need for a sales journey, such as web hosting, email list management, and membership site functionality, it also integrates with an impressive number of third-party services. Like Leadpages, you can also display the pages from ClickFunnels in your WordPress website.
ClickFunnels makes it easy to display its pages on your WordPress website.
All the major payment gateways and processors, as well as many lesser-known options, can be connected to your ClickFunnels pages. You can also integrate your sales funnels with many email marketing and communication services as well.
ClickFunnels Pricing
This is the most expensive option in our Leadpages, OptimizePress, or ClickFunnels comparison. However, unlike Leadpages and OptimizePress, even on the lower priced plan you get access to nearly all the features of ClickFunnels, rather than a limited version of the service:
- ClickFunnels: $97 per month (supports 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20k visitors/month).
- Full ClickFunnels Suite: $297 per month (supports unlimited funnels, pages, and traffic).
As well as letting you create more content and handle more visitors, the Full ClickFunnels Suite also includes the Actionetics autoresponder tool and the Backpack affiliate marketing system. Discounts are available for paying annually.
As with Leadpages, this is a hosted service, so your landing pages and sales funnels are only accessible while your subscription is active.
Can You Try Before You Buy?
Like Leadpages, there is a free trial available, although you must enter your credit card details to sign up. However, the 14-day trial period does give you enough time to evaluate ClickFunnels before your card is charged.
ClickFunnels Summary
With a good selection of customizable landing pages and pre-defined sales funnels for promoting a wide range of offers, ClickFunnels is the all-in-one hosted landing pages solution with the most to offer.
The ClickFunnels template editor has the best user interface of these three tools.
The recurring pricing options are more expensive than Leadpages and OptimizePress. But if it’s within your budget, you’re serious about growing your business, and you don’t want to miss out on any features, ClickFunnels is probably the best landing page builder solution.
Final Thoughts: Which One Should You Choose?
So now you know what Leadpages, OptimizePress, and ClickFunnels can do, which one should you choose?
ClickFunnels is the most powerful tool here, and if you can afford the fees and will use the main features, it’s probably going to have the biggest impact on your business. However, the funnels functionality might take you a while to master.
On the other hand, if you’d prefer a tool that’s very easy to pick up and still has a useful set of lead generation features, then Leadpages might be the best option for you.
OptimizePress is the most affordable option – although you will need your own WordPress website – and while on paper it has a good feature list, in reality, it’s not up there with ClickFunnels and Leadpages in terms of template design, usability, and capabilities. It’s still a powerful tool for those on a budget, though.
If you’re concerned that you might not be able to get the most out of these tools, don’t worry. They’re all well supported with lots of online training materials, including written guides, videos, webinars, and responsive support staff.
OptimizePress, Leadpages, and ClickFunnels are all powerful tools for generating leads and increasing conversion rates, so whichever one you choose, you’ll be taking a step in the right direction when it comes to growing your business.
Using or used Leadpages, OptimizePress or ClickFunnels? Thoughts?
