Most business websites have at least one landing page for generating leads. But in today’s digital marketing landscape, it takes more than an effective landing page software to improve your conversions.
You need a host of other tools to implement marketing strategies and monitor results. And you or your team must be able to do this easily and quickly, even without a developer.
These are some of the problems that ClickFunnels and Instapage try to solve. Below we’re going to take a closer look at their common features and unique tools to help you choose the right platform for your business.
Let’s begin this Clickfunnels vs Instapage battle!
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Clickfunnels vs. Instapage
Instapage began as a landing page software that made it easy for brands to create beautiful pages. Today, Instapage has added more powerful conversion-boosting tools to its landing page software, besides the basic A/B testing features.
These include features that increase landing page loading speeds, so their customers don’t lose leads due to pages that take a while to load. They have also incorporated Post-Click Automation™ (PCA) in their higher-tier Enterprise plan so businesses can show a unique landing page to different audiences. It’s a handy tool for businesses that are heavily investing in Google and Facebook ads and retargeting campaigns.
Instapage Pros:
- With PCA, web users who click on an ad are led to landing pages that appeal more to them. For example, users in the U.S. and Europe are shown landing pages featuring landmarks in their region.
- Businesses or their marketing teams can quickly roll out landing pages and PCAs even without a developer.
- Instapage has tools that can help teams coordinate landing page reviews and approval in real-time.
- With Instablocks™, teams can save and reuse the same section of a landing page, such as the testimonials, saving them time and effort.
- Instapage has multiple tools–conversion analytics, heatmaps, A/B testing, multivariate tests, ad spend conversion attribution–to help users better track their performance and make informed decisions about what’s working and what’s not.
Instapage Cons:
- PCA features are only available to Enterprise plan users. This may be a challenge for new entrepreneurs who are working on a tight budget.
- Businesses running an affiliate or membership program will have to use another platform.
Meanwhile, ClickFunnels stands by its promise of helping entrepreneurs–even those with limited online marketing background–quickly create beautiful sales funnels. It’s not just a landing page software: It’s an all-in-one tool you can use to sell physical and digital products, courses, events, and memberships. On top of this, ClickFunnels helps its clients grow their traffic and sales through affiliate marketing.
ClickFunnels Pros:
- It’s an all-in-one tool that guides users throughout the sales funnel building process. You can market your products, promote related offers through upsell and downsell pages, and integrate with other platforms to process payments and ship physical goods.
- If you’re launching a membership site, you can build your sales funnels and house your materials and courses within ClickFunnels.
- It enables Platinum users to grow their business through an easy-to-use and customizable affiliate management tool.
- Platinum subscribers can also create automated follow-up funnels within ClickFunnels to increase your conversions.
ClickFunnels Cons:
- ClickFunnels does not give users the capability to customize landing pages per audience.
- Unlike Instapage, it lacks collaboration tools that can help marketing teams exchange comments on landing page revisions.
| Features | Instapage | ClickFunnels |
| Cost | Business plan: Annual: $149 Monthly: $199 Enterprise plan: Customized | ClickFunnels plan: $97 per month Platinum plan (formerly Etison Suite): $297 per month |
| Landing page/funnel builder | Business Plan: 30 published landing pages | ClickFunnels: 20 funnels, 100 sub-pagesPlatinum: unlimited funnels and sub-pages |
| Visits | Business: 30,000 unique visitors/month | ClickFunnels: 20,000/month Platinum: Unlimited |
| Editing tools | Instablocks™Editable global blocks* | Clone sales funnel set-up |
| Two-step & multi-step forms | Available | Available |
| Experimentation | A/B testing Multivariate and split testing | A/B testing and sales funnel split testing |
| Speed Boost | Thor Render Engine™ AMP pages & experiences* | |
| Other unique features | Dynamic textHeatmapsAdMap™Post-click automation* | Web hosting Membership funnels Upsell pages Downsell pages Follow-up funnels (Email Marketing with Actionetics) **Affiliate management** |
| Collaboration | Business: 5 team members, 5 workspaces Real-time collaboration* A/B testing | ClickFunnels: 1 userPlatinum: 3 users Share funnels Split Testing and A/B testing |
| Integrations | E-commerce integrations Email marketing integrations Marketing automation integrations CRM integrations Zapier integration Payment gateway integrations Advertising integrations Analytics integrations Full list of integration can be accessed here | E-commerce integrations Email marketing integrations Marketing automation integrations CRM integrations Zapier integration Payment gateway integrations Webinar integrations Shipping software integration Other integrations can be found here |
*Available to Instapage Enterprise users only
**Available to ClickFunnels Platinum subscribers only
Common Features: Clickfunnels vs Instapage
- Easy-to-customize landing pages
You don’t have to be a developer to design engaging and high-converting landing pages. Both platforms are loaded with several templates and have drag and drop tools to help you create landing pages and multi-step forms or funnels in minutes.
| Features | Instapage | ClickFunnels |
| Landing page templates/sales funnel templates | Special promotionTrial signupDemo requestAsset downloadWebinar registrationEvent registrationEcourse registrationEnrollment application Business service inquirySchedule appointmentTravel bookingApp downloadWaitlist signup | Squeeze Page Funnels Daily Deal Funnel Reverse Squeeze Page Funnel Invisible Sales Funnel Lead Magnet Sales Funnels Webinar Sales Funnel Bridge Sales Funnel Auto Webinar Sales Funnel Survey Funnel Product Launch Funnel Application Sales Funnel Hero Funnel Ask Campaign Funnel Homepage Funnel 2-Step Tripwire Funnel Cancellation Funnel Video Sales Letter Funnel Storefront Funnel Sale Letter Funnel Summit Funnel Membership Funnel Live Demo Funnel |
| Editing Tools | Business: Instablocks™ Enterprise: Global blocks | Clone funnel option |
Aside from the landing page templates, Instapage has Instablocks™ to help you easily reuse blocks or sections of your landing pages. Meanwhile, ClickFunnels has a clone funnel option, so users can quickly duplicate entire funnels.
If you upgrade to Instapage’s Enterprise plan, you can access editable global blocks, which comes in handy when you need to edit information on all your landing pages, such as your business address.
Source: Instapage
If your priority is to create beautiful pages at scale and ensure that these are loading at lightning speeds, then Instapage is a better candidate for you. But if you prefer a platform that will guide you in making an effective sales funnel from start to finish, choose ClickFunnels.
- Using two-step and multi-step forms
Two-step and multi-step forms can also be made through ClickFunnels and Instapage. While two-step forms appear on the same page, multi-step forms are independent pages that only appear once your visitor has filled out the previous form.
These functions come in handy when you need to collect more information about your leads, but you don’t want to scare them away with a long-form. Also, if your visitor enters their email information on your first form but does not finish the next steps, you already have their contact details. You can use this to send them a follow-up email and remind them to finish the registration or purchase.
In the case of ClickFunnels, their multi-step form can include an upsell page, where you try to sell a higher-priced product on top of your main offer. If they don’t buy this upsell product, you can show them a down sell page, where you try to sell a cheaper offer.
These multi-step strategies help you increase your sales from a single visitor. Meanwhile, your visitors can conveniently discover and buy your products without having to enter their payment details again.
If you’re selling multiple products in an eCommerce store, ClickFunnels’ multi-step forms, paired with the upsell and downsell pages, can dramatically improve your sales.
- Payment gateway integrations
Both ClickFunnels and Instapage allow users to accept online payments from their buyers via payment gateway integrations.
ClickFunnels gives users access to more payment integration options than Instapage, but with certain restrictions. Basic plan subscribers are allowed only three payment integration, while Platinum Plan users can have up to nine payment integrations.
The more suitable platform for your business will depend on whether you’ll be offering products from third parties (in which case ClickFunnels is a better option) and your target market’s preferred payment methods. For instance, credit cards, debit cards, and eWallets (ex., PayPal) top the list in North America.
So check out your ideal clients’ preferred payment methods and make sure the platform you choose integrates with these.
| Instapage Integrations | ClickFunnels Payment Gateway Integrations |
| Shopify Stripe PayPal Venmo | Supported API gateways:Apple/Android Pay Authorize.net EasyPayDirect KeapNMI (Gateway Funnel Pros) PayPal API Recurly Stripe Third party product access: ClickBank JV Zoo PayPal Warrior Plus |
- Running A/B tests or split testing
Both Instapage and ClickFunnels allow you to run A/B tests (or split tests) and serve upconversion analytics to help you determine which landing page version is bringing in more leads or sales.
Instapage goes further by allowing clients to run multivariate tests. After running an A/B test between two drastically different landing pages and determining a winner, you can run multivariate tests. For example, you can experiment with three or more CTA colors or graphics to find the highest-performing version before you invest more money into your paid campaigns.
Plus, you can use Instapage’s heatmap feature to understand how users interact with your page and decide which elements to include in the split testing. So if you want a software with powerful testing capabilities, Instapage is your better bet.
- Facilitating collaboration
Another time-saving feature in Instapage’s Enterprise plan is its real-time collaboration tools. Team members can now leave comments and approve landing page edits in real-time. Agencies can also give their clients access to the landing page revisions and leave comments.
All these allow teams to, quite literally, be on the same page when it comes to revisions, and finalize and publish landing pages faster.
Meanwhile, ClickFunnels has a Share Funnel tool, which allows users to duplicate a sales funnel from one account and use it in another person’s account. This is essential for consultants who are developing funnels for their clients, or team leaders who want to help their members get better results by sharing their best funnels. This feature is available in all ClickFunnels plans.
If you want a platform that allows your team and clients to easily exchange inputs and follow landing page edits, the collaboration tools in Instapage’s Enterprise plan can help you do that.
Stand-Out Features
Instapage and ClickFunnels have their own ways of helping businesses boost their conversions. Below is a summary of their unique features.
| Instapage | ClickFunnels |
| Heatmaps Instablocks™Dynamic text replacement Thor Render Engine™ (Speed Boost) AdMap™ Global blocks AMP Pages & Experiences Post-click automation (PCA) | Web hosting Upsell pages Downsell pages Shipping software integration Membership funnels Affiliate management Follow-up funnels |
Instapage
Instapage’s heatmap lets you track your landing page visitors’ mouse movement, clicks, and scroll depth. Once you have sufficient data per device, turn these insights into action, by refining your landing page.
For example, move sign-up buttons near sections that receive more attention. Then use Instapage’s A/B testing and multivariate testing functions to see which landing page version generates the highest conversions.
When you’re personalizing your landing pages, chances are you’re reusing the same sections or blocks, such as:
- Headers
- Pricing information
- Product features
- Calls-to-action
- Testimonials
- Footers
With Instablocks™, your team can save these landing page sections or blocks and insert them in your new landing pages. It works like a copy-and-paste option that frees up your marketing team to do more important tasks than revising the same section over and over.
It’s also easier than simply duplicating existing landing page templates, where you may still need to do a lot of revisions. With Instapage’s modular approach, you can simply pull sections from different landing pages so you can reuse only the parts that you need. Then you can put these sections together to create landing pages.
You can either create your own block (and even include a parallax scrolling or video background), save, and insert it in your new landing page. Or you can choose from Instapage’s block templates, then save and insert it in subsequent landing pages.
With dynamic text replacement, you can customize your ad’s landing page copy, images, and other elements to match the terms a visitor used in the search engine. This small shift can enhance PPC conversions, by showing visitors a landing page that closely matches what they’ve been looking up online.
In Instapage’s example below, a visitor searching for luxury waterfront apartments is shown a landing page with the word “Luxury.” It took the place of the word in the bracket [Brand], so the page can better resonate with the web visitor’s search intent.
- Thor Render Engine™ to boost the loading speed of your ad’s landing pages
Slow loading speeds can hurt your company’s conversion rate and earnings. The longer it takes for a page to load, the higher the chances that a visitor will leave your site, as shown in Google’s illustration, below.
Instapage makes page loading speeds less of a problem through the Thor Render Engine™. To ensure customers don’t lose their leads due to slow-loading landing pages, Instapage ensures that above-fold images load fast, while below-fold images and videos load lazily.
- AdMap™ to easily track, match, and update your growing list of campaigns and search ads with the right post-click landing page
When visitors click on ads, they are often led to a generic landing page or to a homepage. This lowers the relevance of the landing page to your visitors and, since this site doesn’t directly relate with their search intent, they may opt not to convert. Or once they get to your homepage, they look around your site for a while then close the tab.
To minimize lost conversions, marketers are personalizing their landing pages, going beyond dynamic text placements. For each ad or campaign, they create a corresponding landing page.
While this helps maximize conversions, it also makes marketing teams’ work more tedious. Teams often depend on spreadsheets to track the URLs where each ad leads. This is not a problem if you’re only tracking several ads, but it can get overwhelming as you launch more campaigns and landing pages.
Instapage’s AdMap™ makes it easy–even for non-technical team members–to match an ad with the right post-click landing page. They can also see which ads still need a custom post-click landing page.
Once the new landing page is ready, AdMap automatically updates the ad network to direct visitors to the newly created landing pages.
You can start using this function with Google Ads. Eventually, Instapage will be including other ad platforms as well.
If you want to check your team’s performance in creating a personalized landing page for each ad, check out the Postclick dashboard. Here you will find your Postclick Score™ or the percentage of ads with personalized landing pages and other essential marketing information like your number of visitors and conversions.
Aside from the features above, Instapage tops up their Enterprise Plan with the following impressive features:
If you’ve changed addresses or phone numbers, you don’t have to edit each published landing page. With Global blocks, your marketing team can edit one global block, then opt to apply these changes in all related blocks.
Aside from your address and phone number, you can use the global block tool to update your:
- Copyright year
- Product screenshots
- Branding
- Pop-ups
- Service areas
- Legal information, including terms of services and privacy policy
- Testimonials
- CTAs
- Thank-you pages
- AMP landing pages for faster mobile loading to support higher conversions
Today’s Internet users–who are increasingly on mobile–are only willing to wait a few seconds for a page to load. If you can’t show them what they want in that short time period, they’re going to close your page.
Fast-loading mobile pages contribute to positive user experiences and better conversions. According to Google, brands whose mobile sites load in 5 seconds are generating twice as much mobile ad revenue than those whose mobile sites take 19 seconds to appear.
With Instapage’s AMP landing pages, Enterprise plan users can:
- Make sure that post-click landing pages are mobile-optimized
- Improve mobile users’ experience on their site
- Enhance their Quality Score (which reflects the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages). You can use your Quality Score as a guide in generating high-quality ads, so you can get better ad positions and lower CPCs, among other benefits.
- Improve your ad ROI, especially if you have high mobile ad clicks but poor conversion rates
Instapage makes it easy to build AMP pages. Even if it has limited features, there’s still a lot of options you can use to build mobile-optimized pages.
For instance, you can’t use Instapage’s heat maps and global blocks with AMP pages, but you can still take advantage of collaboration and Instablocks functions and run A/B tests.
AMP also supports dynamic content, personalization, shopping carts, checkout, and payment processing–features essential for eCommerce sites.
Image source: Instapage
- Leverage 1:1 ad-to-page personalization to serve more relevant landing pages and increase conversions (even for retargeting ads)
Many marketers have been using their data to personalize their ads. But not many have done the same for their landing pages where they are directing ad traffic.
Post-click optimization has the potential to increase conversions by serving up landing pages tailored to a specific audience or demographic. This is critical since, as Instapage points out, conversions happen during the post-click phase.
But post-click optimization has lagged behind for many reasons. Among them is that it’s too complicated and required multiple platforms, and this complexity made them hard to scale.
These are the problems Instapage’s 1:1 ad-to-page personalization is solving for Enterprise plan users.
When these businesses’ visitors click on their ads, they are not led to a generic landing page. Instead, they bring visitors to optimized landing pages depending on the ad they clicked or their audience segment. This helps focus the visitors’ attention to the offer or CTA, minimizing the chances that they will click on other pages and leave without converting.
Post-click optimization is also made scalable through Instablocks™ and global blocks. Plus, you can keep improving your conversion rates using insights from your heatmaps and A/B tests
All these benefits are available in one platform and can be done even by non-technical team members.
These functions become even more important if you’re also sinking in money for retargeting ads. Here’s how.
According to Marketo, 96% of your visitors may not be willing to buy just yet. But don’t be quick to dismiss these as lost opportunities. They may actually lead you to higher sales when you run retargeting campaigns.
In a comScore study, retargeting increased branded search by 1,046% after just a four-week ad exposure.
Instapage helps marketing teams improve their retargeting results by equipping them with tools to personalize the landing pages and make sure that these load fast.
Running a successful retargeting campaign goes beyond getting former visitors to click on your ads again. You need to make sure they see a landing page that can convince them to convert–sign up, download, or buy–this time around. It’s your second chance to grab their attention, so you want to make sure you get a better ROI this time around.
ClickFunnels
If you’re building your online business from the ground up and you have no marketing background, ClickFunnels can be your all-in-one platform.
- All-in-one tool not just for creating a landing page, but a full sales funnel
ClickFunnels doesn’t just help you design a landing page. It helps you create a series of pages aimed to help increase your conversions.
Whatever you’re marketing online–whether it’s physical products, ebooks, courses, webinars, a membership site, or a combination of these–ClickFunnels can guide you through the multiple steps you need to promote or sell a product.
If you’re selling books, for instance, you can:
- Host your website on ClickFunnels
- Create landing pages for your book
- Add one-click upsells and downsells
- Send follow-up emails
- Process payments and ship your product (via integration with other platforms)
- Create Membership Funnels
If you want to run a membership site, you can do so even with the basic ClickFunnels plan. You can:
- Customize a Membership Area template like the one below
- Store content for your subscribers/members
- Have the option to make your lessons available to members all at once or unlock one training at a time
- Have unlimited members
- Do away with running a separate membership software
- Boost your sales through one-click upsells & downsells
ClickFunnels enables users to generate more sales per customer by adding upsell and downsell steps . Upsells are usually more expensive offers you can show to customers while they are purchasing your main product. If they don’t add the upsell to your cart, you can then show them a downsell page that offers a cheaper product.
On top of these features, ClickFunnels Platinum clients can also do the following:
- Run affiliate marketing programs to boost product promotions
Running an affiliate marketing program allows you to spread the word about your product’s benefits. Unlike paid ads where you spend even with minimal guarantees of conversions, with affiliate marketing, you pay out commissions only when visitors convert or make a purchase.
Add to that, it gives your product users or fans a way to earn when they share their experiences or insights about your products. As more people share content on your business, you are also able to increase your brand visibility, credibility, and site traffic.
ClickFunnels makes it easy for you to run your affiliate program through Backpack. For instance, you can:
- Include an affiliate program to any of your sales funnels
- Place your banners and other marketing materials in the affiliate center
- Track and pay commissions
- Enable your affiliates to earn commissions not only when customers buy after clicking their link, but also from every purchase that the client makes in the future.
- Implement a two-tier affiliate plan, allowing first-tier affiliates to earn from the sales of second-tier affiliates.
- Use follow-up funnels to automate message sequences to nurture your customers or leads
In email marketing, you need to segment your subscribers and send message sequences that are relevant to that group.
With follow-up funnels, you can:
- use ClickFunnels as an autoresponder, sending follow-up emails as well as text messages. Alternatively, you can integrate your current autoresponder via API or use an HTML email form integration.
- design follow-up emails in ClickFunnels or use one of their templates
- create customized message sequences based on your email lists (ex., abandoned carts, failed purchases) which can help increase your sales by reminding your visitors to come back to their carts or update their payment details.
- Use Smart Lists or dynamic lists to segment your email list based on different characteristics (called rules) such as social and contact profiles, products purchased, number of Instagram followers, or those who reached a specific sales funnel step. People who satisfy these criteria or rules are automatically added to this email list and receive your custom emails for their group.
ClickFunnels vs. Instapage: Which Should You Choose?
Ultimately, the winning platform for you depends on what you need for your business. While they share some features, these two amazing platforms clearly serve different client needs.
If you need an all-in-one platform to sell your products, ClickFunnels is a better choice. But if you’re investing heavily in numerous paid ads and retargeting campaigns, and you need tools to optimize your conversions and help your marketing team collaborate, Instapage can meet your expectations.
If you want to test-drive each platform, you can sign up for a free trial. You can try out ClickFunnels’s basic plan and their platinum plan for 14 days, free of charge.
With Instapage’s free Business plan trial, you can use the platform for 14 days or up to 2,500 unique landing page visits (whichever comes first). For the Enterprise plan, contact Instapage’s team to request a demo here!
