If you’re in the business of selling products online, you’ve probably heard of Leadpages and ConvertKit.
Both are popular digital marketing tools but, until recently, they weren’t really direct competitors. Leadpages was a dedicated landing page builder, whereas Converkit was primarily an email marketing automation solution.
That all changed when ConvertKit expanded its service offering a few years back and introduced its landing pages feature. Now that both platforms can be used to create high-converting landing pages, many marketers and entrepreneurs are wondering which solution they should use.
In this comparison of Leadpages vs ConvertKit, we’ll shed some light on that question. We’ll take a closer look at the main features of each platform and compare their similarities and differences. Then, we’ll reveal which one we think is best for your business.
Table of Contents
Leadpages vs ConvertKit Overview
Let’s start with an overview of both companies. Here’s what you need to know about each platform.
Leadpages
Leadpages is marketed as a cloud-based ‘conversion marketing platform,’ but it’s a landing page builder at its core.
You can use it to create, test, and optimize high-converting landing pages, as well as other lead capture and conversion elements like pop-ups, checkout forms, and alert bars. It’s a popular choice amongst small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Unlike ConvertKit, Leadpages isn’t meant to be an all-in-one platform, and it can’t help with things like email marketing. Rather, it’s built to be used alongside all the other third-party tools in your marketing stack.
It was founded back in 2012 and has continually upgraded and improved its service offering by introducing new features.
Some of the most important features you should know about include its drag-and-drop landing page builder, conversion-focused template library, alert-bar and pop-up builder, website builder, split testing tool, and in-dashboard analytics.
Check out our review of LeadPages for more details!
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is advertised as ‘the creator marketing platform.’ It’s best known as a powerful marketing automation solution, but since introducing its landing page feature, it’s now closer to an all-in-one platform and funnel builder.
ConvertKit has a much broader feature set than Leadpages and can replace most of the tools you need to run your online business, so you don’t have to rely as heavily on third-party integrations.
You can use it to create landing pages and email sign-up forms, launch email campaigns, build automated sales funnels, sell digital products, and more.
It’s also purpose-built for creatives, with an easy-to-use interface, creator-focused landing pages, and flexible pricing.
As such, it’s a popular choice for artists, bloggers, photographers, YouTubers, and other individual creators.
Check out our review of ConvertKit for more details!
The Main Differences
In a moment, we’ll take a closer look at the main features that both platforms have in common and provide a detailed breakdown of how they compare.
But before we get to that, here’s a quick overview of the main differences between the two tools — just in case you’re short on time:
- ConvertKit has a broader feature set. As we mentioned already, the biggest difference between the two platforms is that ConvertKit is a complete marketing software solution while Leadpages is purely a landing page creator with some extra lead-generation tools.
- ConvertKit has more sophisticated email marketing and automations features. Leadpages email marketing and automation tools are very limited (more on this later), whereas ConvertKit’s are very advanced. You can send out broadcasts, set up sequences, and even build sales funnels to automatically deliver email content to your prospects at the right time.
- Leadpages offers a better landing page builder and page templates. As you’d expect, given that it’s a dedicated landing page solution, Leadpages excels in this area. We found Leadpages’ page editor to be more intuitive and flexible than ConvertKit’s. We also preferred Leadpages’ template library.
- ConvertKit has better commerce features. ConvertKit Commerce is a complete eCommerce solution that you can use to create buy buttons, set up different pricing options, and sell all kinds of digital products like ebooks, newsletters, music, coaching, etc. You can sell digital products with Leadpages, too, using the checkout widget, but it’s not as intuitive or sophisticated as ConvertKit commerce, plus it’s only available on the higher-priced plan.
- ConvertKit is more affordable and offers a free plan. ConvertKit has a much lower starting price than Leadpages, which makes it more affordable for creators. It’s also the only platform of the two to offer a free option.
- Leadpages may be a more economical choice if you have a large list. ConvertKit’s starting price may be lower, but its flexible pricing structure means you pay more as your subscribers increase. If you already have more than a couple of thousand subscribers on your list, Leadpages will probably work out to be better value for money.
Landing Page Builders
Both platforms come with drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG-style page editors that you can use to customize your landing pages and preview any changes you make in real-time.
Another thing they have in common is that both platforms’ page editors both use grid-based systems, which means you can only move elements to set positions on the page.
However, Leadpages page editor was undoubtedly the better option of the two. Here’s why.
First off, the Leadpages editor lets you drag in your own widgets and page sections (using pre-set templates) from the left-hand sidebar.
There’s a ton of these to choose from. For example, there are pre-made FAQ sections, pricing tables, etc., and widgets for images, buttons, progress bars, countdown timers, and forms.
The forms widget, in particular, is excellent and gives you a ton of customization options so you can build high-converting forms. If you’re on the Pro version, you also get access to the Checkout widget, which enables you to start taking payments for products.
In the ConvertKit page editor, you can’t drag in widgets and sections from the sidebar — you have to work with the elements that are already on the page template you choose.
This limits what you can do with it. In fact, I’d hesitate even to call it a true page builder; it’s more of a customizer.
However, you can change the page’s design by editing things like background images, text, colors, fonts, and other styling options.
Aside from that, there are a few other neat features in the Leadpages landing page builder that ConvertKit lacks, like the Leadmeter bar.
Leadmeter is an optimization checker that evaluates your landing page and provides tips on how to better optimize it for conversions — and the animations option, which enables you to make your pages more interactive by animating certain sections and elements.
Overall, the ConvertKit page builder just felt very boxed in. Leadpages gets the win here.
Page Templates
Both platforms provide a library of landing page templates that you can start from and then customize to fit your business.
These include templates for different kinds of pages, like thank you pages, webinar pages, event pages, product pages, etc.
But again, we have to give Leadpages the win here. On the whole, we definitely felt the templates on Leadpages were higher quality than those on ConvertKit.
This is no doubt because the Leadpages team has carefully selected only those templates that generate the best possible conversion rates based on thousands of tests.
You can even rank the templates in order of their average conversion rate.
Pop-Ups and Sign-Up Forms
Aside from landing pages, you can also use Leadpages and ConvertKit to build other conversion-focused elements.
With Leadpages, you can build pop-ups and alert bars using the integrated builder, which is very similar to the page editor.
You can choose from a pop-up or alert bar template and then customize it by changing the design.
ConvertKit doesn’t have a pop-up or alert bar builder, but it does have an awesome integrated form builder that you can use to build inline forms, modal forms, slide-in forms, or sticky bars (similar to alert bars).
As with Leadpages, you can start by choosing a form template and then customize it to change the fields, styling options, and other settings.
Email Marketing and Automations
ConvertKit might not have as good a landing page builder, but it really shines when it comes to email marketing and automation.
You can use ConvertKit to send out one-off email broadcasts to your subscribers or use the email sequence feature to send out a series of sequential emails at set time intervals.
There are some more advanced features too, such as:
- Resend to Unopens. Automatically resend emails out to prospects that don’t open them with a different subject line in order to maximize your open rates.
- Templates and snippets. Create and save email templates and reusable blocks of content to save time.
- Automation tools. Use automation rules to group subscribers into segments based on their actions and add them to specific sequences for personalized customer journeys.
You can even build your automated journeys on a visual flow chart. ConvertKit makes it easy even for complete beginners, so you don’t need any technical knowledge to get started.
Leadpages doesn’t offer anything quite this sophisticated. It only offers a few very simple automations.
For example, you can use the form widget to automatically send users to thank you pages and email them a file when they join your list.
Pricing Comparison
Now we’ve covered the key features, let’s talk about the cost. Here’s a quick overview of the different pricing plans available on both platforms.
Leadpages Pricing
Leadpages offers two different paid plans: Standard (from $37/month) and Pro (from $74/month).
There’s also the Advanced plan, but you’ll need to contact Leadpages directly for a quote.
All LeadPages pricing plans come with all the basic features, unlimited traffic and leads, free hosting, and chat and email support.
However, upgrading to the Pro version will unlock a few extra goodies, including 3 sites (instead of 1), phone support, unlimited A/B testing, and online sales and payments (Checkout widget).
The advanced plan comes with all of the above plus advanced integrations, 5 client accounts, and a 1-1 onboarding call.
ConvertKit Pricing
ConvertKit has a flexible pricing structure. The cost of each plan will depend on how many subscribers you have, but assuming you have zero subscribers, the Creator plan starts at $9/month, and the Creator Pro plan starts at $25/month.
There’s also a very generous free plan available, which allows you to build unlimited landing pages and forms, send email broadcasts, sell digital products, and access basic community support.
Upgrading to one of ConvertKit’s paid plans bags you extra features on top of the core landing page and email functionality, like automated funnels and email sequences (Creator plan) and subscriber scoring (Creator Pro plan) as well as live chat and email support.
There are a few more features besides that too. You can see a full list of everything in each plan on their pricing page.
The Bottom Line
ConvertKit’s generous free plan means it’s a good free alternative to Leadpages if you’re not ready to invest in a paid tool just yet.
ConvertKit’s paid plans also start at roughly a quarter of the cost of Leadpages, so it’s a very affordable option if you’re a solo creator with a small list.
However, ConvertKit’s prices depend on the number of subscribers you have, so once you have more than a few thousand subscribers, it gets pricey fast.
While Leadpages’ starting price may be higher, there are no caps on subscribers, so if you already have a large list or you expect to grow quickly, it’s probably going to be a more economical choice.
Which Software Should You Choose?
That covers pretty much everything you need to know about each platform, so let’s get to the big question: which is best? Here’s what we think.
- Leadpages is best for small businesses with 2,000+ email subscribers. It’s also the best choice for anyone who’s only looking to build high-quality landing pages/generate leads and doesn’t need access to all the other bells and whistles.
- ConvertKit is best for independent creators with very email lists. It’s also the best choice if you’re looking for a full-stack marketing solution or are more interested in lead nurturing tools (email marketing and automation) than lead generation tools (landing pages). The generous free plan also makes it a good free alternative to Leadpages.
Good luck!
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