Should I use OptimizePress or LeadPages for my opt-in pages?
LeadPages is the way to go. OptimizePress will break your theme.
Why would you ever pay that much for LeadPages? OptimizePress is cheaper.
I heard LeadPages has the best conversion rates – is that true?
These are just a few of the questions I get from my readers every day, and it’s no wonder the issue is so cloudy. Try doing a Google search for “OptimizePress” and Google will finish your query for you, assuming that you want to compare OptimizePress to LeadPages and leaving you with pages of affiliate-link-spam posts from online marketers comparing and contrasting the products.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for affiliate marketing (it’s a successful part of my business) but ONLY when it’s done with the heart of a teacher. And these kinds of online marketers put a lot of work into writing affiliate-link packed articles and getting the SEO just right so they show up on the first few pages of search results. So good for them – they’ve cracked the SEO code! But they’re making it harder for the rest of us to make a real, informed decision about the tools we use to run our business.
I currently use OptimizePress on my WordPress site. I've used LeadPages too… and here’s a little confession: I used both at the same time. *gasp*
LeadPages and OptimizePress have a couple of key features in common, but they aren’t built to do the same thing. They are quite different, in fact.
In this article I’m gonna interview myself and break it all down for you so you know which product does what, dispel common myths about each and share my experience with both products.
Full Disclosure: I teach WordPress to solopreneurs. I have tutorials specific to OptimizePress AND I’m an affiliate for OptimizePress – but you won’t see a single affiliate link in this article – that’s not my purpose here. I also used LeadPages for a few months because I’ve seen so many people RAVING about it and there were a couple of features that I’ll cover below that I wanted to try, but I’m not a LeadPages affiliate (you’ll find out why later).
What Does LeadPages Do?
LeadPages has several key features:
- Create landing pages from brandable templates that are designed to capture an email address to grow your mailing list. Notice I didn’t say “customizable” and I’ll get to that a little later as well.
- Create sales/launch funnels that let you deliver content over time to build trust and culminate in a sale.
- Create opt-in boxes that you can embed on your website to capture email addresses.
- Automatically deliver your opt-in freebie upon opt-in.
- Create links that are delivered via email and when clicked on automatically subscribe someone to a mailing list.
- Let people text you to be added to your mailing list.
- Add a landing page to Facebook.
- Create sales page templates that link to external payment processors.
- You do NOT need a WordPress site or web hosting to use LeadPages, although you can add a LeadPage to your WordPress site with the LeadPages plugin. You don’t even need your own domain name to use LeadPages (but you probably should use one anyway).
What Does OptimizePress Do?
OptimizePress comes with 3 pieces: the OptimizePress Theme and two plugins (OptimizePress and OptimizeMember).
OptimizePress can be used as the entire theme of your website (which I don’t do or recommend), OR you can create single pages using OptimizePress’s Page Builder feature (yes!).
OptimizeMember gives you additional functionality to create online courses and membership sites.
OptimizePress has several key features:
- Create customizable landing pages designed to capture an email address and grow your mailing list.
- Create custom launch sequences that allow you to direct your visitor through a series of pages (videos or other key content) in order depending on when they sign up, culminating in a sales page. These can be for evergreen (always open) products or products that are only offered at certain times and where the cart closes.
- Create sales pages that automatically register customers for your online course or membership immediately upon payment.
- Create online courses that are restricted to paying customers and drip content over time.
- Create membership sites that capture recurring payments and restrict content to paying members only.
- Create different membership levels and packages so you can offer different service levels at different price points.
- You must have WordPress to use OptimizePress.
So as you can see, LeadPages is packed with features to help you grow your email list, and OptimizePress is a total solution that starts with the opt-in, the sales funnel sequence, the payment, registration and delivery of content.
TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT PRODUCTS.
So now that we’re clear on what both products do, it’s up to you to decide which one will most benefit you. It totally depends on your business, your goals, how much money you have to spend and where you want to invest your time.
I had been eyeing LeadPages ever since I started my business simply because it’s all anyone ever talks about. They have a lucrative affiliate program which I was interested in joining, and you have to be a PRO member to get access to that program, which costs $480/year or $67/month.
So I considered it, but ultimately decided to teach Opt-in Skin as part of the 5 Day Website Challenge because I wanted to show solopreneurs that you can build a pretty fantastic feature-packed WordPress site without spending a ton of cash.
But I always felt a little uneasy about not jumping on the LeadPages bandwagon… What if I’m wrong and LeadPages really is the bam-whiz-wammy? What if it’s totally worth it?
So why did you buy OptimizePress?
A few months after I started WP+BFF, I was looking for an online course platform that I could use to deliver this course I had floating around in my mind about how to automate online marketing with WordPress. I’ve set up marketing automation with many, many different WordPress sites, and with each one I’ve used a different set of tools but I’d yet to find one that was seamless (meaning it didn’t require any intervention from me from start to finish – truly passive income).
When I discovered OptimizePress I figured it was too good to be true – landing pages, sales pages AND payment and registration for my course all in one? RILLY? So I started lurking in my favorite Facebook groups for entrepreneurs, and I kept hearing that OptimizePress doesn’t work with common themes, and it will break your site, etc. And because I’m totally not afraid to break things (it’s a sickness really) I thought, “What the hell… It’s got a 30 day money-back guarantee, it’s $97 a year, I’m gonna give it a shot.”
OptimizePress is NOT one of those plugins that’s super-intuitive, that you can just activate and know exactly what to do. So after a weekend of tinkering, diving into documentation, watching the tutorials on OP’s website, I FINALLY figured out how it all worked together and a lightbulb went off – THIS is the tool I’ve been looking for, and it’s the one I’m going to teach to my clients to show them how to truly automate their online marketing!
Will OptimizePress break my theme?
Before I started recommending OptimizePress to my clients, I figured I should find out if it really does break themes. And there is some truth to that – the list of incompatible themes and plugins is here: https://optimizepress.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200553686-Incompatible-Themes-Plugins
OptimizePress uses a page builder that overlays the traditional WordPress page editor, and if you’re trying to use it with a theme that also has a page builder that overlays the standard WordPress editor, they may not play nice in the sandbox together.
Thesis is a theme that one of my clients had trouble with, so we had her install OptimizePress on a subdomain. You know how when you see “something.yourwebsite.com”? The “something.” part is a subdomain – not to get too techie, but it’s a 2nd WordPress site on the same hosting account. It’s pretty easy to set up, and other popular WordPress course plugins want you to install on subdomains too.
Does Divi work with OptimizePress?
I literally just tried it, and the page builders compete with each other. So you can use OptimizeMember to add membership functionality to your Divi pages, but you can’t use the OptimizePress page builder. If you use Divi for your website and want to use OptimizePress for a course, you can install it on a subdomain.
And if you use Divi and want to use a different online course/membership combo, I’m not gonna be mad at you. That’s the beauty of WordPress – you can always find a way!
What do you use for your landing/opt-in/squeeze pages?
I use OptimizePress as the home of my 5 Day Website Challenge and the BFF Academy. From the time you sign up for my mailing list til the time you join the BFF Academy, it’s ALL automated using a combo of SumoMe or Opt-in Skin, MailChimp and OptimizePress.
Wait, you don’t use OptimizePress for your landing page?
Um, nope. I don’t have a landing page (opt-in page, squeeze page, whatever you want to call it). I’m totally breaking all the rules. Some online marketing expert somewhere said that in order to increase the chances for someone to opt-in to your mailing list, you have to give them no other choices than to opt-in or leave.
Well, BFFs, I’ve tried it. In lots of different ways, and EVERY time I do, my list growth slows way down.
You’ll see people spouting off stats that this one LeadPage template converts at 72%, and this other landing page template converts at 65% and if you just use a landing page, you’ll increase your conversions by x%….
Now I’m no statistician (well, I was back in middle school for the wrestling and baseball teams, but that’s just because I had a crush on a boy that happened to wrestle and play baseball), but in order to say that with any amount of certainty you need to have a really large number of people visit that page and then you need to split test with a non-landing page, and there are ALL KINDS of variables that come in to play.
Am I saying that LeadPages didn’t do that when stating their conversion rates? NO, but I’m saying that until I’m getting Marie Forleo-sized traffic to my website, a 3% increase in conversions isn’t worth the time or the money tinkering with all of this stuff!
If my free SumoMe SmartBar and List-Builder Popup combined with Optin Skin embedded on my homepage WORKS for me, I’m keeping it.
So did you ever even try LeadPages?
Yes, I still had this nagging feeling that I needed to see what LeadPages was all about. I want to target people who were in the very early stages of starting their business and hadn’t yet decided if they were going to tackle their WordPress site themselves or hire it out. So I created a freebie called Should I DIY or Don’t Even Try? to introduce WP+BFF to them and help them make the decision!
I needed to set up a mailing list for the Should I DIY? people, but I ultimately wanted to get them onto my 5 Day Website Challenge mailing list… But I didn’t want to make them give me their email address AGAIN… that’s lame. What to do… What to do… Another idea popped into my brain – LeadLinks!!
So I signed up for LeadPages at the $67/month price (so I could get LeadLinks and access to the affiliate program) knowing that I could cancel within the first 30 days if I needed to. Then I promptly set up a LeadPage to capture leads for Should I DIY? and I set that LeadPage to autodeliver my PDF. Then I created a LeadLink to place in followup the email I sent out so that in one click, they could sign up for the free 5 Day website Challenge. I also tried out LeadBoxes throughout my site – and then I set up some Facebook ads to start driving traffic to my LeadPage.
That sounds like a lot of work and expense for two free giveways.
Is that a question?
So what happened with LeadPages?
LeadPages frustrates the hell out of me. I know it’s blasphemy to say it, but it’s the truth. And I also know that it’s designed so that you stick with their layouts that have certain conversion rates based on the design, but I JUST CAN’T.
I couldn’t find a template that fit with my brand. I couldn’t use my brand fonts. I couldn’t get my images to look right. I couldn’t get my copy to fit. I needed one more little box than what was on the template, and I couldn’t add one… So I gave in. These guys built these templates this way for a reason, I may as well bend to their will and try it out. These pages are supposed to load super fast and have all these magical powers, why not give it a shot?
So I set everything up, launched my add, promoted the page and waited. And waited. And waited.
Is it LeadPages fault? Of course not! My Facebook ad conversions were decent, so maybe Should I DIY or Don’t Even Try? sucks. Maybe I didn’t give it enough time. Maybe my bad attitude about LeadPages leaked into the universe and created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don’t know – but what I do know is that I’m doing just fine with my “perfect homepage layout” that I teach in the 5 Day Website Challenge, that it’s not costing me $67/month, that I’m not sad I’m not earning affiliate commissions from LeadPages and that my time and money are better spent developing relationships, great content and investing in things that help me become a better entrepreneur. So I cancelled my LeadPages account.
So do you NOT recommend LeadPages?
It totally depends on your goals. If you need to start collecting leads right away and have no time or desire to build a website, LeadPages is perfect for you. If you want to take advantage of all of it’s different list building techniques, it’s perfect for you. If you don’t like to make decisions and want just a few tried and true options, it’s perfect for you. If you don’t mind spending $67/month (which isn’t bad for all that it offers, BTW, I’m not going to trash the price), it’s perfect for you. If you're selling a higher priced product than I am, it might be worth it to you.
But don’t just use it because of the conversion rates or someone told you you need a landing page if you’re going to become a successful entrepreneur.
So which do you recommend, OptimizePress or LeadPages?
Both! Neither! They don’t do the same thing!!! #bizrantover #dropsthemic
