Having read our previous posts, Three Reasons Why You Need to Be Using Landing Pages, The Anatomy of a Landing Page – Best Practises for Creating Successful Landing Pages and Three Key Elements to Creating A Successful Landing Page Form you’ll be keen to get started and create some landing pages. There is a common misconception that creating landing pages is expensive, time consuming and requires a web developer or involvement from the IT department but thankfully there is a way to create landing pages without all the fuss. There are a number of software platforms on the market that can help you to create business boosting landing pages and in this blog post we compare Hubspot and Unbounce, two of the biggest players for creating landing pages.
In a hurry? Download The Simple Way to Create Landing Pages Tip Sheet.
Unbounce Features
At Napier we have experience of using both Unbounce and Hubspot for creating landing pages. Unbounce is a really popular platform and a Hubspot alternative that allows marketers to build customised landing pages that optimise conversions, without the need for an IT team. In today’s mobile-friendly world the ability to create landing pages that are fully responsive is a must, regardless of the page visitor’s device or browser and Unbounce makes this possible.
Other advantages of this platform include the ability to A/B test your page which gives you great flexibility, as well as giving insight into what prompts your website visitors to convert. As we’ve discovered, landing page design is crucial and Unbounce offers users a huge amount of creative license to manipulate the look and style of their landing pages with a drag and drop content editor and a myriad of high quality templates. Landing pages need to look at home amongst your main website pages and match your brand guidelines. The ability to use custom domains is another plus point for Unbounce.
CRM connectivity is also vital – once you have obtained the leads, the data needs to be actionable. Unbounce has integrations with most of the popular CRM and communications platforms such as MailChimp, Salesforce and interestingly Hubspot. Unbounce also allows users to access vital statistics about their landing pages such as page views, impressions and click through rate. So far in our Hubspot vs Unbounce comparison, Unbounce is looking pretty good – How does Hubspot fair?
Hubspot features
Napier became a Hubspot partner back in 2015 and one thing to make clear is that whilst Unbounce is designed purely for landing pages, Hubspot by comparison is a fully integrated marketing automation platform that includes landing pages as part of its offering. Hubspot is a complete marketing package.
Hubspot also offers A/B Testing and responsive templates however there are not as many customisation options or templates as Unbounce. As Hubspot is designed to be used as an integrated marketing tool kit, it offers superior reporting to Unbounce and users can make use of ‘Smart Content’ to display relevant content depending on visitor type and offers queued questions which enables the landing page forms to offer different form fields to collect additional data from a returning visitor. This smart marketing approach takes lead generation one step further as it allows users to collect more relevant data that can be used to profile and qualify leads through lead scoring, making identifying new targets easier. Naturally the landing pages link seamlessly with Hubspot’s CRM module making it the ideal choice if you plan on nurturing your leads through email campaigns.
Ease of Use
The Unbounce interface is clean, with 2 side menu’s with the main ‘working’ panel in the centre. It’s easy to find the highlighted ‘Create New Page’ button and once clicked, the drag and drop editor is reasonably intuitive, however the multitude of customisation options can be a little overwhelming for the beginner. Getting to grips with all the options is a case of playing around and testing all the features with the added support of the Unbounce Academy that offer tips and videos.
In comparison, Hubspot landing pages can be found as a menu item in the main user interface so users need to navigate to the landing page menu option. Creating a page is straightforward but users need to have an idea of how they want their page to look as selecting a template is one of the first stages. Once a page is created it is not possible to modify or switch the template without starting again. The chosen template dictates the layout but there are options to add images and format the text. You can of course also use your own HTML Templates.
Cost
The cost is probably one of the biggest differentiators when comparing Hubspot and Unbounce. Unbounce starts from $99 per month escalating to $499 per month for the most advanced package. Hubspot’s monthly cost starts at $200 for 100 contacts plus an extra $100 per each additional 1000 contacts added, topping out at $2,400 for 10,000 contacts and a fee of $10 per 1000 contacts added. There is no doubt that choosing Hubspot might seem like a big commitment when looking at cost alone but remember it does offer more than just landing pages. It’s worth mentioning that both platforms offer a free trial so it’s worth talking the time to investigate the Hubspot free trial and the Unbounce free trial.
Both Unbounce and Hubspot can help to create successful landing pages that convert visitors to leads but marketers need to consider their costs, the platform’s functionality and how follow up will be carried out. The key point to highlight is that marketers wanting to create landing pages need to think about the goals of the campaign and assess the different options that platforms offer to find the best option. So in going through our Hubspot vs Unbounce comparison do we have a favourite? In reality you shouldn’t be choosing between these two systems. If you need simple landing pages created quickly, then Unbounce offers great value and functionality. For marketers who want to implement marketing automation, particularly if they’ve bought in to the Inbound Methodology, then there would be no question that HubSpot is worth the money.
For an ‘at a glance’ Hubspot vs Unbounce Comparison check out our comparison matrix…
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| Landing Page Creation |  |
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| Responsive Landing Page Design | |
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| Custom URL’s | |
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| Email Auto Responders | |
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| Dynamic Forms | |
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| A/B Testing | |
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| CRM Integration | |
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| Lead Scoring | |
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| ROI Analytics | |
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| Social Media Integration | |
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| Full Marketing Automation Platform | |
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| Pricing | $200-2400 per month (plus additional costs for adding contact over threshold) | $99-499 per month |
