Leadpages is an online software company, based in Minneapolis, MN, that specializes in web landing pages and opt-in forms. The company is relatively new (founded in 2012) but has grown to over 150 employees. Leadpages is now recognized as an industry leader in this fast-growing marketing niche.

The company reports over 40,000 customers and 1 million landing pages worldwide.

Leadpages works seamlessly with WordPress websites via a free plugin and customers can create an unlimited number of landing pages and opt-in forms across multiple domains. Landing pages can be used for many purposes such as product launches, live webinars, sales pages, and thank you pages.

Customers are fully permitted to use one Leadpages account for all the websites in their family and lines of business (including client sites), but the number of connections to an email marketing service (like AWeber or ConvertKit)  is limited to one unless you have an Advanced agency plan.

Pricing for LeadPages starts at $25 per month (when paid annually).  The next tier of annual pricing starts at $49/month for the Pro plan. The Pro plan includes Leadlinks, Leaddigits, A/B split testing, and access to their affiliate program.  I use and recommend the annual Pro plan.

12 Key Benefits of Leadpages

Features of this popular web-based service include:

1. Create an unlimited number of landing pages on Leadpages server and directly on your own hosted website.
2. Integration with all major email service providers (including ConvertKit which I now use and recommend).
3. Capability to create landing pages as seamless GoToWebinar registration pages.
4. Automatic re-direction of traffic that lands on your old landing pages or 404 error pages to new landing pages.
5. Extensive library of available landing page templates sorted by best conversation rates in the industry.
6. Landing page designs that are mobile responsive and compatible with Facebook.
7. Built-in split testing capability to monitor which opt-in lead pages work best for your website.
8. Leadbox pop-up windows that appear when your website visitors choose to select a link or image to discover more about your platform or to sign up for your mailing list.  Leadboxes can also be integrated with sites that run on the Rainmaker Platform.
9. Leadlinks capability to connect your existing subscribers to a Leadpage for a webinar, etc (existing subscribers don’t have to re-confirm their identity).  This feature is available with the Pro plan.
10. Leaddigits capability to capture opt-in leads via a SMS text message (great option if you are speaking to an in-person audience). For example, you could advise your audience to text the word “slides” to a Leadpages issued phone number to receive a copy of your presentation.  This feature is available with the Pro plan.
11. Very responsive and helpful customer service via their email support ticket system. I’ve used it often on behalf of my business and for clients.
12. Upload and automatically deliver a “lead magnet” (e.g. free ebook incentive) from your Leadpages account.

Note: This option is not compatible with a double opt-in subscription model because double opt-in means subscribers re-confirm their subscription request via email after they fill out an online form. I recommend using a double opt-in model with the “lead magnet” delivered after email confirmation to minimize spam, but it is not required.

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My Lesson Learned

I spent a significant amount of time trying to design my own opt-in forms when I was using Constant Contact as my email marketing service.  The forms looked unprofessional and delivered poor results.  When I switched to AWeber as my email marketing service, I used opt-in plugins like Pippity and OptinSkin to generate leads, but the results were still not favorable.

While the opt-in designs looked better, they were never effectively integrated into blog posts and web pages, and I was frustrated by the difficulty to add background images to opt-in forms. When I researched what successful websites were using, I noticed other features such as:

1. Landing pages for specific events (e.g. webinars) or promotional videos.
2. Opt-in boxes with professional background images that appeared over the screen (called lightboxes) when I clicked on an opt-in button or link.
3. Professionally designed opt in forms in sidebars and at the end of blog posts.
4. Opt-in pop ups on mobile devices.
5. Pop ups that display when I am leaving a site.

This led me first and foremost to the discovery of Leadpages which is not free, but the cost of not generating new leads (and then new customers) each month on dedicated and intentionally-clear landing pages is even more expensive for any part-time or full-time entrepreneur.  Leadpages is also a great resource to use if your website is under development (or going through an extreme makeover).  With Leadpages, you can redirect your domain name to your temporary landing page through LeadPages. That way, you are still building your email list even without a live website.

Full Transparency

I have an affiliate relationship with Leadpages so if you decide to invest in Leadpages via this link (or any of the Leadpages links in this post), I am eligible for a commission from the good folks in Minneapolis at Leadpages. There is no extra cost to you and your use of my affiliate link helps support the growth of Graceful Resources.

If you start using Leadpages, I would encourage you to set up an affiliate relationship with them as well.  You’ll want to spread the word too.  The software and customer support is that good, and I would use and recommend it even if there was no affiliate program.

What questions do you have about LeadPages?

If you have any questions about LeadPages, please let me know via response to the free Graceful Journal email mailing list or my contact form.  I am here to help.

ConvertKit is in a crowded marketplace of email marketing software services.  You may already be familiar with some of the other popular brand names in this space:

1.  ActiveCampaign
2. AWeber
3. Constant Contact
4. Emma
5. GetResponse
6. iContact
7. InfusionSoft
8. Mad Mimi
9. MailChimp
10. VerticalResponse

I’ve personally used AWeber, ConstantContact, and MailChimp. I like them all. They’re not perfect. No software solution is, but they all do their core responsibility as advertised: They securely maintain your email mailing list and allow you to distribute marketing messages to these contacts.

I’m not going to try to convince you that ConvertKit is the best email marketing software on the planet.  One size does not fit all small businesses. But I am here to try to tell you that ConvertKit may be the best email marketing service for entrepreneurs in the digital economy. I specifically mean people like you and me who are trying to gracefully profit from our passion in life, and who attract an authentic audience by creating and sharing valuable blog content.

ConvertKit is not the cheapest nor is it the most expensive email marketing service in the marketplace (it starts at $29/month for your first 1000 subscribers).

What it does offer is the user friendliness of MailChimp with a lot of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities of InfusionSoft.

It’s user interface is almost too simple to be a powerful resource to segment and tag your email mailing list subscribers for strategic growth. But when you immerse yourself in complexity for so long (like I have a bad habit of doing), you expect things to be difficult to be good.

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ConvertKit Makes It Easy

Here are eight benefits of ConvertKit that are worth checking out.

You’ll be charged $29 to open a ConvertKit account, but you have 30 days to cancel your account and receive a refund. For $1 per day, it may be the smartest software test month of your entrepreneurial journey (along with 14 days to try out Rainmaker Platform which I am growing more in love with by the week).

1. Only One List 

   Unlike email marketing services likes AWeber and MailChimp that charge you per email per list (even if it is the same email address), ConvertKit only charges you once per email because there is only one list. All subscribers to your mailing list have their unique profile where you can tag and segment them with ease. ConvertKit makes it easy.

2. Nice Looking Opt-in Forms  

   One of my biggest frustrations with  AWeber is that their opt-in forms are well unattractive out of the box and difficult to configure.  Yes, you can customize them if you know what you’re doing (or use an opt-in designer tool like OptinMonster), but doesn’t it make sense to be able to make attractive opt-in forms if you are just starting out? ConvertKit makes it easy.

3. Built-in Landing Page Templates

   This is a very nice and unexpected benefit of ConvertKit.  Landing page templates allow you to create an entire page dedicated to your opt-in. This is a feature you can pay separately for with software like LeadPages.  You can host your landing page with ConvertKit at no extra cost or on your own site.  ConvertKit makes it easy.

4. Easy-to-Follow Autoresponder Sequences

   Autoresponders is a term for an automated sequence of emails you can send out to your subscribers. ConvertKit makes the process intuitive by displaying all of your email messages in one view in your account dashboard. You can even drag and drop your messages to change the sequence. ConvertKit makes it easy.

5. Broadcasting While Excluding

   Broadcast emails are one-time messages that can be written and distributed at any time to your subscriber list.  Since you only have one list, ConvertKit makes it easy to send a broadcast while excluding certain segments of your list. For example, you way want to send out a notice about a sale on one of your products, but you don’t want to send it to customers who have already purchased the product. ConvertKit makes it easy.

6. Tagging Based on Your Subscribers’ Activity

   ConvertKit lets you tag (and then segment) potential leads in your subscriber list based on their activity on your website or through your email message. For example, you may include a link in one of your ConvertKit emails to assess interest in a new product. If one of your subscribers clicks on the link, ConvertKit can automatically tag that person as being interested. ConvertKit makes it easy.

7. Easy to Understand Analytics

   When you login to your ConvertKit account, you will see an easy-to-understand subscriber graph that shows you by the day which forms are growing your subscriber list. ConvertKit makes it easy.

8. Integration with Other Software Applications (including the Rainmaker Platform)

   ConvertKit integrates directly with other software apps like LeadPages, OptinMonster, Shopify, and countless other apps like Typeform through Zapier. ConvertKit is also one of of only a handful of email marketing services that have been selected to integrate directly with the Rainmaker Platform.  If you are a serious about creating and sharing content online through a blog, podcast, course, etc., ConvertKit coupled with Rainmaker is a powerful combination (and Rainmaker is the foundation for this website – here’s why).  If you want to maximize email opt ins, I also use OptinMonster on this site (here’s why).

ConvertKit is designed for entrepreneurs in the digital economy

If you are serious about profiting from your passion in the world, I encourage you to try out ConvertKit for yourself. I’m confident you will be happy with all that it can for you and for your customers. ConvertKit makes it easy.

Savings Opportunities

1. If you prepay for a full year of ConvertKit (click here to get started), you can get 12 months for the price of 10 months (this is what I opted for).
2. If you use this other promotional link, you can fully test out ConvertKit free of charge for the first month.

Full Transparency

I have an affiliate relationship with ConvertKit so if you decide to invest in ConvertKit via this link (or other ConvertKit links in this post), I am eligible for a commission from the good folks in Idaho at ConvertKit. There is no extra cost to you and your use of my affiliate link helps support the growth of Graceful Resources.

If you start using ConvertKit, I would encourage you to set up an affiliate relationship with them as well.  You’ll want to spread the word too.  The software is that good, and I would use and recommend it even if there was no affiliate program.

What questions do you have about ConvertKit?

Please let me know via response to the free Graceful Journal email mailing list or my contact form. I am here to help.

Managed WordPress Hosting Lessons Learned

For several years, I used a shared hosting plan through GoDaddy for several websites. Site performance and technical support was generally acceptable for my number of site visitors but I now use and recommend WP Engine (more on all the reasons why in a moment).

As I learned more about online content marketing, my blog posts got better. This led to a couple blog posts going viral across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. This growth in turn caused my site to crash temporarily at the worst possible time.

To better prepare for my next blog launch, I evaluated the shared (c-panel) hosting plan through Bluehost. The performance was even worse so I switched back to GoDaddy to try their new shared (c-panel) hosting plan.

The performance was equally disappointing.

(First Lesson Learned: Avoid the lowest shared hosting cost plans.  There’s a reason it costs less than $10 per month.)

Thereafter, I researched managed WordPress hosting plans instead and invested in GoDaddy again because cost was the driving factor.  Since GoDaddy was new to the Managed WordPress Hosting space at the time, their pricing was the lowest compared to WP Engine and Bluehost (it still is).

Once I experienced the website response time of Managed WordPress Hosting, I was very pleased. The difference in page load time was clear from day one.

However, my site on GoDaddy kept going down almost daily and this was before I even spread the word about my new site. Furthermore, when I called their tech support, I often waited 20 minutes or longer to speak to a live person (who may or may have been an expert in WordPress installations.)

(Second Lesson Learned: Partner with a hosting company that specializes in WordPress installations and one that you can reach a live person when needed.)

If you are considering using Bluehost, I strongly recommend their Managed WordPress Hosting solution called Optimized Hosting for WordPress, and not their basic $3.99/month shared hosting plan.  If you are using GoDaddy because of cost, select their Managed WordPress Hosting service.  WP Engine though is a safer investment, in my opinion, based on my research and customer experience.

Update (Summer 2016):  For the record, I regularly work with GoDaddy for clients and I want to give credit for their warm customer service. Their staff are well trained in phone manners and the response time to get someone on the phone has dramatically improved (I typically wait less than three minutes).  My experience with Bluehost in terms of wait time is now the opposite.  Their queue to talk to someone is often more than 20 minutes. I know it can be a reflection of peak customer service, but I’ve never waited more than 1 minute to speak with someone at WP Engine.

When I consider how much my family pays per month to the wireless company for our smart phones or to the broadband company for our internet and television, the monthly cost of a managed hosting plan through WP Engine or even an all-in-one web solution like Rainmaker, is a lot less, and worth every penny for the peace of mind.

I’ve included more information on the differences between WP Engine and Rainmaker in the Managed WordPress Hosting 101 section below.

WP Engine Summary

WP Engine, based in Austin, Texas, is the largest fully managed WordPress (WP) platform provider in the world.  WP Engine services more than 200,000 domains for 30,000 clients in 120 countries.

Tech support is available 24×7 and all staff are subject matter experts in WordPress installations.  Phone support is offered to Professional Plan customers and chat support to Personal Plan subscribers. (Off the record, they can help a Personal Plan subscriber on the phone too if needed.)

WP Engine only hosts WordPress sites and they deliver exceptional performance for customers in the areas of website scalability, speed, and security.

Personal plans for one website through WP Engine start at $29/month for one WordPress installation.  Each additional site is only $14.95/month.  WP Engine offers a 60-day risk-free money back guarantee and there are no annual contract requirements.

Customers can also get two months for free if they prepay for an entire year.

WP Engine Key Benefits

WP Engine WordPress Hosting offers the following key benefits:

1. Custom-built EverCache Technology to speed up the delivery of content on websites. No separate caching plugins needed.
2. Security scanning for hacking attempts to secure customer sites. If site is ever hacked, WP Engine will fix it for free.
3. Proactive installation of WordPress security updates.
4. Automatic daily site backups that can be restored to a site in a moment.  Customers can also create a manual backup of their entire site at any time (and it only takes a minute to do) and then restore their entire site to that snapshot just as quickly. This is one of my favorite features of the WP Engine customer dashboard and it has come in handy a lot.
5. Over 100 of WP Engine’s 270 employees are dedicated to WordPress technical support for customers.
6. WordPress Multisite capabilities for Professional Plans and above.
7. Proprietary LargeFS Storage feature that extends customer local file storage into Amazon S3, thus creating practically infinitely sized storage for customers.
8. Only managed WordPress hosting platform with Git for version control fully integrated with WordPress. This staging environment allows customers to safely test new plugins or updates before pushing changes to the web.  This is a big deal.
9. Library of resources for customers to enable WordPress best practices.

Managed WordPress Hosting 101

In a Managed WordPress environment, you are only sharing your site with other WordPress blogs.

Think of a Managed WordPress environment like a planned community for homes. In a planned community, there are rules for all homeowners that restrict some choices (e.g. no plastic pink flamingos in the front yard), but it protects the value of other homes. Accordingly, it costs more to live there.

A Shared C-Panel hosting environment, on the other hand, is like living in an apartment complex. It’s very crowded and you never know what type of music your next door neighbor likes. If it’s loud, it impacts where you live too.

Following the same analogy for Managed WordPress, another option to consider is the Rainmaker Platform (especially if you have only one site, you are planning to offer digital products or courses on a membership-based site, and you’ve never used WordPress (so you don’t need to unlearn the native WordPress interface).

Rainmaker is owned and operated by Rainmaker Digital (same company that offers the StudioPress themes I use and recommend when hosted on WP Engine).  New for 2017: Rainmaker Digital launched  StudioPress Sites, a solution that integrates StudioPress themes and managed WordPress hosting. The Rainmaker Platform, in contrast, is a complete custom-designed turn-key WordPress solution (and it includes their Managed WordPress hosting solution called Synthesis).

Think of Rainmaker like owning a fully-furnished vacation home that includes all maintenance, security and cleaning services. It’s not inexpensive real estate, but it does offer extra peace of mind so that you can focus on a great vacation experience for you and your guests.  The rules to live here are also stricter.  Rainmaker does not allow customers to install their own WordPress plugins such as those from LeadPages and OptinMonster to attract more subscribers to your email lists (although there are still ways to integrate them into Rainmaker as I do), but they do have a lot of common plugin features built-in to the platform.

This site runs on the Rainmaker Platform and I could have matched the exact same look and feel of this site on a self-hosted WP Engine site, but since I also recommend Rainmaker (here are more details as to why), it is appropriate for me to be paying for it and putting it to practice myself.

For comparison, here is an example of WordPress sites that I set up for my family or clients on WP Engine:

1. LilyPetersonPhotography.com
2. HomeschoolersofWyoming.org
3. AtleeLittleLeague.org

Full Transparency

I have an affiliate relationship with WP Engine so if you decide to invest in WP Engine via this link (or any of the WP Engine links in this post), I am eligible for a commission from the good folks in Austin at WP Engine. There is no extra cost to you and your use of my affiliate link helps support the growth of Graceful Resources.

If you start using WP Engine, I would encourage you to set up an affiliate relationship with them as well.  You’ll want to spread the word too.  The hosting is that good, and I would use and recommend it even if there was no affiliate program.

What questions do you have about WP Engine, Rainmaker, or WordPress hosting in general?

Please let me know via response to the free Graceful Resources email mailing list or my contact form. I am here to help.