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6

I'm curious as to what the everyone thinks the "best" landing page services are for a cash-strapped startup.

I'd like your thoughts if you've extensively used (not just poked around with a free trial):

  • HubSpot
  • Performable
  • Unbounce
  • Some other I haven't listed

Here's my criteria for what I think makes a "best" product (in this order)

  1. Affordable - Is it startup friendly? (less than $50/month)
  2. Customer service - Is the product easy to use, are there videos and how to articles, and can I actually reach a real person when I have a question.
  3. Features - Does it do what you want it to do?

I know most of these services have free accounts and I will be testing them myself soon when I get some time.

I'm posting this question because I'm especially curious as to what other people think who may have used more than one landing page service or a particular service for an extended period of time. Thanks in advance!

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Hubspot acquired Performable. Their products are now combined into one suite. – mtrifiro Jan 13 at 14:25

6 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I'm not a co-founder of any of those companies:)

I'm a big believer in the same thing, Andy. Get the stuff off your plate that shouldn't command all your time and move on to the pressing issues.

Unbounce is my tool of choice. I'm probably one of the most experienced users of their platform you'll find, having been in their private beta and sent feedback to them extensively. I've used it repeatedly for about six to nine months. This WEEK I've used it every day. Ironically it is a tool that's not necessarily built for web startups, but their focus on marketers' needs for landing pages serves us entrepreneurs really well.

The answers to your three questions are all Yes. The team is incredibly responsive and transparent about their product plan, and they're hyper-aware that increasingly their user base includes web startups, especially earlier stage companies with landing page needs.

We couch a handful of sales pages in our site using iframes, and the a/b and conversion metrics are wonderful, especially because it's all simple. Mock up your page, drag/drop everything, publish, ready to rock. You can set up a mini-site or augment your own site by just dropping in pages you want to measure conversions/sales on.

I'm happy to answer any specific questions you've got...hit me up on Twitter.

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Thanks for the answer, Derek! I'm going to be trying out LaunchRock, HubSpot, Performable, and Unbounce and compare them in a blog post soon. It'd be great if you could answer my Unbounce questions when I run into them. – Andy Cook Feb 17 '11 at 14:35
Andy - would be awesome if you considered writing the comparison on our Beta (www.mokabla.com)... thats what I was created it for. You can link it back to your blog of course. Thx for the answer to my question as well! – shaymus Feb 18 '11 at 18:21
up vote 3 down vote

I'm co-founder of Unbounce and thanks for raising this question. As both David and Kristen mentioned, Performable and Hubspot do more than landing pages while Unbounce is just about creating and testing landing pages so it really depends on your needs.

However, Unbounce is startup friendly with a FREE version and regular pricing starting at $25 per month. We also sponsor/partner with Lean Startup Events (like this on http://boston.theleanstartupmachine.com/) and offer significant discounts to startups.

There is another company that recently launch focused on coming soon/lead gen pages for startups http://launchrock.com/ Might check them out as well.

Hope this helps

Cheers, Rick

PS - As of July 2012 $50 is minimum unbounce account

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up vote 2 down vote

I'm the CEO of Performable. Thanks for including us on your list of services you'd like to know more about.

We do have landing pages in our product but that is just one of the many things you can do with our software. We excel at making it easier to measure, act & optimize your marketing with a specific focus on the customer lifecycle.

We do offer a startup plan for self-service customers like yourself. If you're interested in that shoot me a note but first try it out yourself.

Cheers, David

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Thanks for the response, David! I'm going to look into options more in the next couple months and I'll be sure to check Performable out. I've heard you speak before at StartupBootcamp and really liked what you had to say, so I'm sure Performable is a well built service. Hope everything's going well – Andy Cook Feb 14 '11 at 21:51
up vote 2 down vote

Kirsten from HubSpot here - similarly, landing pages are only one small slice of what HubSpot helps customers with as they get found online via inbound tools, convert, nurture, win and measure their marketing efforts. We are targeted at SMBs and though we don't offer a $50 product, our lowest price offering at $250 per month includes landing pages, site creation, blogging, email and nurturing and a whole lot more.

Customers who use us have seen great results: www.hubspot.com/roi and there are plenty of videos about how to use the tools both at www.hubspot.com/products and at success.hubspot.com.

Ultimately our customers do tell it best - so Hopefully a user will chime in here soon.

Happy to share a 30day trial with you when you are ready! Kirsten

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up vote 1 down vote

Maybe if you or one of your friends/colleagues know a bit about HTML and CSS, you could use Wordpress (drupal, joomla) + Google Analytics, both are FREE! ...and you can get almost any information (how to videos, guides, etc) ou may need on the internet!

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Hi Roland - Thanks for the reply. I do know a lot about Wordpress and Google Analytics and could piece something together myself. I' a big believer in focusing on your core though and outsourcing the rest, so I think I'd rather just find an affordable program. Great idea though for someone who doesn't have any funds to play around with! – Andy Cook Feb 15 '11 at 14:19
up vote 0 down vote

I am currently using Unbounce to create landing pages and I am very happy with it. I only needed to create a couple of landing pages, nothing else, Unbounce is a great and affordable service if landing pages is what you are trying to build.

I have to say also that the integration with mailchimp is very sweet!

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