Unbounce Review: A Landing Page Builder Worth The Money?

Finding the right landing page builder will ideally reduce your bounce rate. With a name like “Unbounce,” that’s your expectation. Depending on the page builder review you follow, Unbounce is the best thing since sliced bread. 

But, a few things have come out since sliced bread, including competing landing page builders like Clickfunnels, Sendinblue, or Wishpond. So, with all your options in mind, is Unbounce a worthwhile investment? Find out more in our Unbounce review. 

What is Unbounce? 

Unbounce was a company founded in 2009 by Rick Perreault. According to the story, he was frustrated waiting for developers to finish making pages for every new campaign. As a result, he and a group of other marketers and coders combined to make Unbounce. 

Back then, they describe surviving on baloney sandwiches and beer, the breakfast of champions for most college students. These days, the team is a big bigger (215 people) and supports 120 thousand customers.

Unbounce’s primary claim to fame comes from its AI-driven software platform. Its more developed feature is its AI copywriting features. However, it also has a “Smart Builder,” which automatically builds landing pages for you. 

They aren’t the only company using AI to build websites. Another company, B12, performs a similar service. Of course, landing page builders are made more to boost your conversion rate, while building entire websites is better for more complex offerings. 

Who is Unbounce best for?

Unbounce is best for businesses that already have a fully developed and realized product and sales pipeline. This is mainly because Unbounce can assist digital marketing teams with funnel creation. However, the cost of this product can big a big spend for people just starting. 

However, solopreneurs can make better use of this than some other platforms. In some situations, you will find it far more cost-effective than SEMRush. 

Unbounce is also particularly handy for freelancers who build landing pages. There’s a client-sharing feature that lets you share the completed page (without giving it up). So, if you want to protect your income stream and are afraid of clients running off, Unbounce can help. 

Unbounce Pros and Cons

Unbounce pricing

Unbounce provides four different pricing levels you can choose from:

• Launch
• Optimize
• Accelerate
• Concierge 

Regardless of your chosen payment plan, Unbounce is kind enough to allow unlimited creation across all levels. You also get a 14-day free trial to try out any of these levels. 

The Launch Plan

The Launch Plan is the cheapest option you can pay for. It costs $99 per month or $74 per month if you decide to pay annually. It is one of the cheaper builders you can get on the market but is more expensive than Sendinblue. 

Here’s what you get:

• Up to 500 conversions and 20 thousand visitors
• Access to one domain
• Two users

Conversions include any time a visitor completes the goal of your landing page. So when someone pays for your product or fills in a lead generation form.

So this means you are paying about 18 cents per lead, which means that your CPC (Cost Per Click) heavily depends on your industry. This can be above average for many industries that pay for online advertising, especially when filling out mailing lists. 

The Launch Plan also lacks many of the most powerful features (A/B testing, AI-driven features, etc.). So, using this plan is mainly useful for testing out whether it’s ideal for you long term. 

The Optimize Plan

For those who need more, the “Optimize” plan is the first level that leverages AI technology. Namely, it matches people to the best landing page where they are most likely to convert. As a result, the monthly cost behind this level goes to $145 ($109 /mo. if you pay annually).

You also get a few more features:

• Up to 1,000 conversions and 30 thousand visitors. 
• Support for up to five domains. 
• Unlimited users 

The Accelerate Plan

The Accelerate Plan gives you even more conversions, visitors, and domains. It costs $240 per month or $180 per month if you pay annually. Here’s the breakdown of what it offers:

• Up to 2,500 conversions 
• Up to 50 thousand visitors 
• Ten domains 

The Concierge Plan 

The Concierge Plan is built for customers who want to give up the controls. If you don’t want to bother with the software, you get a dedicated success team assigned to your case. As a result, the cost starts at $625 per month or $469 if you choose the yearly option. 

You can expect even more growing room:

• Starting at 5,000 conversions and 100 thousand visitors 
• Starting at 25 domains 

The costs you see on the Concierge Plan are the minimum you can pay for the team and extra features. If you need more room for conversions or visitors, you’ll need to pay more for the privilege. 

Unbounce features – how does it work?

The image you see above is one of the dashboard. Much like our reviews of other page builders, we will start with the first available tab and work our way down, so this review is easy to follow.

Going through the smart builder tutorial

You’ll find that the dashboard starts you right away with the page builder tutorial. That way, you get a good idea of the design experience behind this software. 

It doesn’t take long before you get immediate awareness of their AI features, as you can insert your headline. The system suggests a more compelling alternative based on how other landing pages work. 

If you don’t want to hire a professional copywriter, AI software can be helpful. Shortly, you’ll find out if this AI system provides good recommendations.

Navigating the smart page builder

The smart builder is simple, which will appeal to those who dislike complex building software. Navigating using the top bar from left to right will show your options:

• Content – This lets you view the different sections, images, text boxes, and buttons inside.
• Style guide – Provides a general style for your entire pages, like fonts, colors, and spacing.
• Settings – This allows you to add a title, meta description, background image, and other general page design features. 
• Conversions – This lets you track the elements you decide to be conversions. For example, form submissions. 
• Apps – Lets you add integrations like social media, Google Reviews, and eCommerce features. 
• “Lightbulb” – Recommends copy changes based on their AI recommendations. 

The design tool is simple and easy to look at, but it is in beta. You can see this beta system acting up during the copy recommendations, as I found it could not make any recommendations beyond the first headline. 

With this in mind, we’ll look at the classic page builder. Because it’s not in beta, this builder is more likely to be complete. 

Using the classic page builder

To start with the classic editor, you are given your choice of 101 templates. These templates are sorted by industry, use (eBook, webinar, etc.), or general lead generation. You’ll also notice the other two content types: popups and sticky bars, which we will revisit shortly.

After selecting the template, you’ll be brought to the classic builder. Because it has been around for longer, it looks much more complicated than the smart builder.

You’ll notice a few similarities if you are familiar with other page builders. However, the design of Unbounce’s classic editor can be a bit overwhelming at first. 

Thankfully, you don’t have to spend much time guessing where everything is. Your most basic editing elements are right in front of you. The drawback of this decision leads to limited screen space. 

Using the landing page tools

Regardless of what landing page platform you decide to use, the editing system is relatively similar. 

Editing “contents” on your landing page

Unbounce relies on a classic drag-and-drop interface that gives you complete control of page development. Unlike pages being put into a grid, you can control where you place page elements, which you can find under the “contents” section.

You can also choose to click on the elements on your page, which will change the far-right side of the screen to allow for style. To close “contents,” you can either click on the small arrow in the middle left or the “contents” tab on the bottom. 

Editing the background and properties of your pages

Clicking on the background (away from any page elements) will allow you to change the general properties of the screen. For example, the properties tab on the far-right display will enable you to change the background style (image, color, etc.). 

Page properties will allow you to change keywords, titles, metadata, and a general description. You can also use page properties to create an accelerated mobile page (AMP landing page) version of your site, which typically loads faster and is favored by Google. 

The last tab, “goals,” lets you set the goal for the page. In our example, the goal is to get someone to fill out the form. Once that form is filled out, you use one of your conversions.

More than a simple landing page builder: detailed edits. 

Finally, the far-left of the page reveals all the item types you can add. This includes buttons, images, embedded videos, and custom HTML features. You can even add custom JavaScript and CSS stylesheets from the links at the bottom of the screen. 

On our other landing page reviews, you might notice there are way more options. That’s not to say that Unbounce is weak by comparison, but more is available elsewhere. 

Going to the middle screen is your editor, which is one of the best parts of this. Other landing page builders are more static and grid-based. This is nice for people who like to put “things in things” with sorting. While nothing says you can’t do that, Unbounce is more flexible than some professional landing page builders. 

The drag-and-drop interface has few limits, allowing you to move content around quickly. You’ll notice that its location is automatically sorted under the “contents” tab when you do this. 

What does this mean? Unbounce allows for excellent customization, especially compared to other grid-based editors. But this editing power also expands to two additional features: popups and sticky bars.

A/B testing and variant testing 

One of the more powerful elements of Unbounce comes from its A/B variant features. You’ll be able to find this in the upper-left corner by pulling down the “variant” drop-down menu. 

Once the variant is created, you’ll need to publish your page to test it. You can do this by clicking “publish” in the upper-right corner. 

From there, you’ll see your statistics, which include visitors, views, and conversions. Lower than that, you’ll see the page traffic mode, which consists of three options:

• Standard – send all the website traffic to one page (your default landing page)
• Smart traffic – let the AI system decide where your traffic goes based on their perspective of what’s most likely to convert a visitor.
• A/B test – lets you set up your website to choose between two (or more) page variants to decide which one is the winner.  

When testing different customer experiences, Unbounce is an excellent tool. However, needing to pay extra for those features makes testing a bit outside of some budgets. 

Building popups and sticky bars 

If you want to get a website visitor’s attention, a popup is a great way to do so. But if you want to get their attention more subtly, option number two is using a sticky bar. Sticky bars are the distant cousin to popups you find on the bottom or top of the screen (rather than the middle).

Like the page builder, building popups and stick bars starts you off with templates. There are 42 popup templates and 21 sticky bar templates, which are enough to start with. After you select your template, click the “start” button in the bottom right. 

You’ll see a familiar site: the same landing page builder as before. So, if you want our opinion on that, scroll up a bit. 

The sticky bar builder is also identical but a bit simpler, given you only need to work with one row. The main difference is that you can choose whether it appears on top or bottom. Also, you can’t embed a video in a sticky bar. 

Across all the building tools, you’ll also notice the ability to switch between mobile and desktop views. This can be handy, as a sticky bar might be more effective than a popup on mobile devices. Controlling when your ads appear is a significant part of making beautiful landing pages. 

What integrations come with Unbounce?

Unbounce has a lot of different integrations that help you hit your target audience. Those integrations are powered mainly by Zapier, for which you get a free account alongside signing up with Unbounce. 

The integrations include a wide range of incredibly popular tools. Some of them include landing page building features, such as HubSpot and Infusionsoft (better known as Keap these days). 

You can also integrate with GoToWebinar, which is helpful if you sell live coaching. Finally, you can use the integrations panel to set up email notifications and marketing features. 

This does bring up one major weakness of Unbounce: the lack of email marketing features. Where most of the landing page builders include a complete suite of marketing tools, Unbounce doesn’t feel the need to have them. As a result, you’ll need to leverage outside tools for email automation and marketing. 

Adding custom domains to Unbounce 

Unbounce allows you to connect custom domains. You can make these connections by entering the URL and following the on-screen steps or connecting a WordPress account. Either way, the process of connecting your domain is pretty simple. 

Under the starting plan, you have the option to include one domain. You’ll need to pay for the privilege if you want any more. Alternatively, you can add a subdomain under the “.unbounce” URL. Business owners who prefer a professional URL will want to stick with adding a custom domain. 

Because of your ability to connect domains, Unbounce will handle the hosting for you. Of course, if you have an existing WordPress account, this isn’t very sensible, as having a URL through them means you pay for hosting with them. 

Adding users or clients to your account

Unbounce is a solid solution for copywriters or designers who want to help other businesses get conversions. You can also use it to add colleagues to your Unbounce account. 

The Launch Plan starts you off with two users, all plans beyond this allow unlimited users. So, if you plan on selling your services and want to provide a preview (without giving up the whole file), you can use Unbounce to get this done. 

Unlimited users at the second pricing level makes it the most cost-effective option. This is why the “Optimize Plan” is recommended among what they offer. 

Unbounce user reviews – what do people say about its customer service? 

Depending on who you ask, Unbounce is either great or terrible, much like all user reviews. This is mainly because Trustpilot users give it a measly 2 out of 5. However, G2 users are on the other end, giving it a 4.5 out of 5. 

 Most people mention how easy it is to use the landing page builder. Others say that some integrations are a bit painful. Also, switching between desktop and mobile editing can be a pain. 

Some people have gone on record about the customer service is unhelpful. The most damning review on Trustpilot calls them a “clown-car” company.  

Trustpilot seems to be mostly abandoned by Unbounce, as they get less attention there; other sites, like G2, have more responses. So, overall, most people say it is positive based on the hundreds of reviews they get.

FAQs

Wrap up

Unbounce is precisely what it advertises itself as: a landing page builder. Some of the other page builders focus on being a complete marketing suite. Meanwhile, Unbounce has decided to focus on one thing, which is good and bad. 

On the one hand, Unbounce’s experience has made it a great product. The page-building software is excellent and easy to use. Despite being cluttered, you don’t miss out on much.

On the contrary, the lack of alternative tools (email automation, marketing, etc.) makes it far weaker than other builders. Because of this, Unbounce isn’t an all-in-one solution, as you will need other tools. 

Despite lacking tools, Unbounce charges comparable rates to a few other landing page builders. Given the limited user count, Unbounce places tremendous pressure on you to pay more as you grow. Because of this, Unbounce is great for designers, copywriters, and freelancers who can justify the extra cost or those who already have an existing email marketing platform.