Instapage vs. Ion, by Rock Content

If you aren't too picky about having precise control over your page designs, Instapage is a great tool that will make it easy to build and publish pages quickly. It's easy to set up and intuitive to use. It seems like that audience (prioritizes speed over precision) is their target -- for control freaks like me, it comes up a little short. The pricing is pretty good for what you get -- a super-fast path to getting campaigns out quickly so that you can test and iterate your way to profitability. It plays really well with most other tools designed for the small, scrappy startup marketing team, too.

Incentivized

I don't give 9 ratings easily. Anyone wanting greater user engagement would benefit from ion interactive. I can slap together a simple interactive tool for a social post easily. I also have a plan selector with complex logic built in that would have cost me $50k to build without ion. Now I'm able to duplicate it and make adjustments to use it for various other applications. We've created a couple dozen fun interactive tools for social posts and now we simply re-purpose them easily to create new ones frequently. I just created a new page for our website that we'll want to be fluid; so the site developers suggested we simply embed an ion tool to give us real-time flexibility. Marketers in other divisions are jealous when they see all the fun stuff we're doing--they're gradually becoming ion converts

Incentivized

• I love how easy the setup was. The drag and drop design is easy for people who don't know code but it also allows coding options for those who do.
• Customer service has been easy to contact. They are quick with their response times and have suggested workarounds or provided videos to help fix any issues.
• They are constantly working on improvements to the interface and additional features.

Incentivized

• I love that ion interactive autosaves. So many of these platforms leave me terrified of disconnection or closing my laptop.
• This WYSIWYG actually works. I've yet to have a translation or code glitch.
• Fast load times are a huge bonus, as well as mobile-optimized display.

Incentivized

• Originally, we used Pardot and Instapage and I had to pull the coding from our Instapage landing pages and throw that into Pardot to get nice looking landing pages. When we transitioned to HubSpot, they took our existing pages and did this for us. But now they added an integration with Instapage and I am guessing this will solve any issues with using Instapage going forward for our website's landing pages.

Incentivized

• no revert option/revision history if you make a bad mistake
• some simple styles that should be just there for you have to be made through custom CSS
• some of their template options have some pretty bad designs and are not usable beyond a basic functionality level/have to be completely reskinned

Incentivized

Because unless I find something better to replace it with, we're probably going to renew our contract. Ideally, Ion interactive can update Liveball so it's easier to use, more functionality that includes forms and javascript options currently not in place

I've tried all of the other landing page services on the market, and this is literally the easiest to use. I am not a designer or software developer, just a simple guy and if I can learn how to use it, anyone can. That's what won me over. Their support and pre-made templates are awesome, but the usability is what I love!

Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported

Incentivized

Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.

Again, support is just awesome. I've never had any issues go over 24 hours and the people are friendly and speak English really well.

The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.

Incentivized

They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.

Incentivized

There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.

Incentivized

We also use Mailchimp's new functionality to build landing pages. It has some advantages since we use Mailchimp as our email marketing system. However it is not as user-friendly as Instapage - and we only use it for certain simple campaigns that don't need us to be creative with the landing pages. I wouldn't recommend Mailchimp as an alternative to what Instapage brings to the table!

Incentivized

I haven't had a lot of experience with templated CMS systems and was not involved in the original selection, though I was part of the renewal discussions. Most of the templates I've used have been html and created in house on an as-needed bases

Incentivized

Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.

Incentivized

• My company was so disorganized, calculating ROI was never going to happen. However, Instapage did allow us to meet our goal, which was to acquire a specific number of leads within a month.
• Instapage allowed me to make quick changes based on lead collection progress. When we were behind on our numbers, I could quickly make changes and A/B test different page layouts.
• I'm not sure if they continued to use Instapage after I left the company, but it was a very helpful lead collection tool and allowed us to meet our goals.

Incentivized

• So far the impact has been positive, but as we are new to the platform that opinion is based on relatively few interactive assets.
• There hasn't been any negative reactions or impact from Ion as of yet, but as I said before it's still early for us in terms of usage (less than a year).
• We do really appreciate the level of complexity and customization available in the platform.

Incentivized