Table of Contents
Both platforms give you the ability to build landing pages and sell your products, but they have some distinct differences that are likely to affect your decision-making process. In this Leadpages vs. SamCart comparison, we’ll go into the fine details of each platform to help you understand the difference between them.
Leadpages is all about landing pages, but it’s also capable of building full websites that are both eye-catching and functional.
SamCart is a little different and does away with the unnecessary extra time spent building and managing a full-on store. You can just go straight to selling your product, complete with tons of in-built analytics and marketing tools.
| A quick comparison: | ||
| Platform | Leadpages | SamCart |
| Pricing |
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| Page-builder and design |
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| Payment processors |
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| Marketing and analytics |
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| Blogging |
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| Integrations |
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| Customer support |
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What Is Leadpages and Who’s It For?
According to Leadpages, they are the ultimate lead generation platform. You can draw in customers, secure leads, and increase your sales – all with Leadpages. Build a website to host your e-commerce store, design high-converting landing pages for various purposes, and manage your customers.
Leadpages is popular with coaches, consultants, and just generally small businesses and freelancers. It’s easy to use, even for beginners, and the end results of the landing pages created are truly inspiring.
What Is SamCart and Who’s It For?
Simply put, SamCart is an online shopping cart, but it has some additional perks. Although you can’t build a full website with SamCart, that’s not its intention. SamCart is intended to help small businesses, creators, artists, or coaches bypass the need to build an entire site and just get on with selling their products.
It is also loaded with built-in marketing and analytics features while also allowing a wide range of billing models and payment processors. These built-in features and payment options are a big incentive to use the platform.
Pricing
Leadpages
There are three pricing plans: Grow, Optimize, and Scale. Every plan includes unlimited landing pages, the AI page builder with monthly AI credits, blogs, A/B split testing, and email and live chat support.
If you’re unsure, you can always try it for free for 7 days.
Grow Plan
The Leadpages Grow plan costs $99/month or $948/year (equivalent to $79/month). It includes:
- Up to 4 custom domains
- 3 blogs
- 40,000 AI credits per month
- Manual A/B testing with up to 6 variants
- 5 active integrations
Optimize Plan
The Optimize plan is $199/month or $1,908/year (equivalent to $159/month). In addition to the Grow features, you’ll get:
- Up to 6 custom domains
- 5 blogs
- 80,000 AI credits per month
- Smart Traffic A/B testing and heatmaps
- 10 integrations
- 3 team seats
- Priority email support
Scale Plan
The Scale plan is $399/month or $3,828/year (equivalent to $319/month) and is aimed at agencies and larger teams. It includes:
- Up to 10 custom domains
- 10 blogs
- 160,000 AI credits per month
- Automatic optimization with up to 12 A/B variants
- 25 integrations
- 10 team seats and up to three workspaces
- A dedicated customer success manager
SamCart
For SamCart, there are two regular pricing plans and an Enterprise (“Done For You”) plan. The two regular plans are Core and Pro.
All plans come with unlimited products, pages, and checkouts, plus a quality library of templates. Payments through SamPay cost 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction.
SamCart offers a 7-day free trial, the same length as Leadpages.
Core Plan
The Core plan costs $79/month or about $59/month billed annually. It includes one team seat, SamPay, Stripe, and PayPal payments, and email and chat support. Upsells, order bumps, A/B testing, and the affiliate center aren’t included.
Pro Plan
The Pro plan costs $199/month or about $149/month billed annually and gives access to 10 team seats. In addition to the Core features, you’ll get:
- One-click upsells
- Order bumps
- A/B testing
- Affiliate center
- Subscriptions with Subscription Saver
- Customer portal and advanced analytics
- Custom checkout branding
Enterprise Plan
The Enterprise plan includes everything in Pro, unlimited team seats, and a dedicated customer success manager with white glove support. It’s customized to you, so you’ll have to contact the sales team directly for prices.
Features and Functionality Comparison
Page Builder and Design
How the page builder functions and the flexibility and freedom you have with design options are very important. Those without a technical background in web development often really appreciate the type of drag-and-drop builder that both of these platforms have. In that sense, they share a lot of similarities.
Leadpages
Leadpages gives you the ability to build both landing pages and an entire site with no limits on the number of pages you publish. It also gives you a selection of prebuilt templates specifically designed for both landing pages and full websites.
The drag-and-drop builder is easy to use, and you won’t need any coding skills. Alternatively, you can also choose to build from scratch without the use of a template, where you might need code.
Everything you need to create attention-grabbing and high-converting landing pages is included. You can add opt-in forms, pop-ups, or alert bars to any page. In addition, all pages are mobile-responsive, so you don’t have to worry about getting penalized for not having a mobile-friendly site.
Overall, Leadpages does provide nicer-looking and more professional templates than SamCart, and the drag-and-drop builder is easier to use.
SamCart
SamCart also features a drag-and-drop page builder, as well as pre-designed templates, and will let you publish unlimited pages. The checkout pages are easy to edit and design how you want, and it’s no mystery why, as SamCart was originally an online shopping cart builder.
You can design the checkout pages exactly how you want and add the fields and forms you need. There’s a helpful Sandbox mode that allows you to test the checkout before it goes live.
While the SamCart page builder is intuitive and easy to use, Leadpages is just that little bit better. Although, the ability to design your SamCart checkouts is a standout feature that often wins over prospective users.
Payment Processing and Customer Billing
With any e-commerce store, it’s crucial to understand which payment processors you can use, any additional fees charged, and the billing models you can make available to your customers. Typically, all payment processors will charge some fees, but neither Leadpages nor SamCart charges additional transaction fees on top of that.
Leadpages
With Leadpages, you can sell products from your website or landing pages with the built-in Leadpages checkouts. You can also accept recurring payments for service subscriptions or courses, but remember that checkouts require a paid plan with e-commerce enabled.
You do have far fewer payment processor options, though, as it’s only powered by Stripe. However, Stripe is a secure and very popular payment processor, so this may not be an issue. If you really wanted to, you could also integrate a different payment processor, like PayPal, but it’s not natively supported.
As you can see, Leadpages doesn’t offer anything outstanding in the way of payment processor options and variations in billing models for customers. SamCart definitely wins in this category.
SamCart
SamCart has quite a few advantages over Leadpages when it comes to payments. You are able to offer customers a wide range of billing options – from one-off payments, subscriptions, and trials to special payment plans of your choosing. There’s even a “Pay What You Want” offer, and you can also easily offer refunds or partial refunds.
In terms of payment processors available, there’s a range to choose from. The Core plan supports SamPay, Stripe, and PayPal, and Pro adds Braintree, Easy Pay Direct, and Authorize.net. That said, Stripe or PayPal are the recommended payment processors as they are the most popular ones. There’s even a “Buy Now Pay Later” option using processors like Klarna or Afterpay.
If you subscribe to the Pro plan or above, you’ll have access to the Subscription saver, which is an automation that prompts the customer to continue with the payment if it is declined. If the customer doesn’t correct the payment details, then the subscription is canceled. This means that you won’t keep providing valuable course materials or services to a non-paying customer.
Marketing and Analytics Tools
In order to promote your products and make sales, you need to be marketing effectively and have a solid understanding of your customer base and their preferences. Whether these tools are built-in or can be integrated, they are essential to any e-commerce business.
Leadpages
Leadpages does rely heavily on integrations, but there are a ton of marketing integrations available, and that means you can connect the exact tool you want. You can also join their virtual workshops to help you develop a marketing strategy and get the most out of the tools you connect.
Leadpages does include built-in real-time analytics for all your pages, pop-ups, and forms. Every plan also includes A/B split testing, and Optimize adds heatmaps and Smart Traffic.
Leadpages also gives you access to marketing campaign reports. Overall, the built-in analytics tools are basic but functional. For anything more detailed, you can integrate a third-party analytics tool.
SamCart
SamCart provides a built-in sales and reporting dashboard. It includes what’s called “Smart Pixel Tracking,” which is an advanced customer behavior analysis designed to help you better understand how your customers are finding your products.
The Pro plan is actually where the majority of the features become available. It’s from this plan that you can access one-click upsells, order bumps, subscriptions with Subscription Saver, and custom checkout branding.
Pro also includes A/B testing and advanced analytics.
Another benefit SamCart brings is an affiliate program. When you engage in an affiliate program, you let others act as your marketing team to bring in customers for a commission.
Overall SamCart takes the prize for marketing and analytics for a couple of reasons. One is that SamCart offers far more built-in features, whereas Leadpages relies heavily on integrations. The other reason is the affiliate center, which offers a lot of potential for anyone using SamCart and can really boost your sales efficiently.
Blogging Functionality
Whichever platform you choose, you can produce an effective, professional blog.
Leadpages
Every Leadpages plan includes a built-in blog with categories, scheduled posts, and SEO settings.
A better solution to add a blog to Leadpages is to integrate DropInBlog. By following a few short steps and copying the provided code, your blog will be activated on your Leadpages site. You can then develop and optimize your posts in the DropInBlog dashboard, and when you publish, they’ll appear immediately on your Leadpages site.
SamCart
For SamCart, integrating DropInBlog is super easy. To create a blog on SamCart, you’ll need to go through the same process as with Leadpages. Simply add the HTML block to the page you want your blog to appear on and paste the provided snippets of code.
Benefits of Using DropInBlog
When choosing a blogging platform, there are a number of reasons why DropInBlog can benefit your e-commerce venture.
For a start, just having a blog can improve your visibility in SERPs, increase organic traffic, and boost conversion rates. DropInBlog makes blogging easy, and its content editor is similar in style to WordPress, yet you won’t need any plugins or have security concerns.
DropInBlog saves you time and hassle reformatting page designs every time you upload new content. It automatically adopts your page CSS and style and drops straight into place.
It also has a number of helpful blogging features like post scheduling, comment management, social sharing buttons, and the ability to add multiple authors. DropInBlog also has a really helpful SEO Analyzer tool to optimize your content.
Integrations
Integrations are what give a platform its flexibility and scalability. Even if there are a ton of built-in features, it’s still helpful if there’s a possibility to integrate alternative tools. This also means that you can upgrade to better apps with greater functionality as your business grows.
Leadpages
Leadpages offers a huge selection of integrations from a well-organized integrations page. Almost anything you could think of, you can connect – analytics, marketing automation, live chat, social media, payment processors, or scheduling tools. Some of the most popular integrations include:
Obviously, this means that Leadpages doesn’t offer as much built-in functionality. But to each their own – some people will prefer that they can integrate the specific tools they want.
SamCart
In contrast, SamCart doesn’t offer as many integration options, but with Zapier, the number increases. Much of what you can do with SamCart exists out of the box and comes included.
However, if you still want more and can’t find the integration you want, it’s possible to use other integration methods – like using HTML embedding to easily connect DropInBlog.
Customer Support
The need for customer support is a given – no matter how easy a platform is to use, there will come a time when you need assistance. Platforms with a poor track record of customer support or limited options to make contact or find solutions are a big red flag.
Leadpages
Leadpages provides email and live chat support on all plans, priority email support on Optimize, and a dedicated customer success manager on Scale.
With email inquiries, you can generally expect a response within 48 hours. There is also a Help Center, packed with documentation and guidance to assist you in finding solutions yourself. Moreover, you can access webinars and training courses or seek support through the Leadpages Facebook community.
It certainly seems as if Leadpages goes the extra mile regarding customer support, and reviews back that up.
SamCart
Customer support is not SamCart’s strong suit. Core and Pro include email and chat support, and only Enterprise comes with a dedicated customer success manager.
While there are also webinars, courses, and documentation available online, SamCart’s customer support could be better overall.
Final Thoughts
In this Leadpages vs. SamCart comparison, we found out that while the two platforms are very similar in many ways – they are also quite different. For example, SamCart is better suited to those that want to get on with it and sell products more directly. On the other hand, Leadpages is better for building landing pages or a full e-commerce site, giving you the flexibility to choose which tools you need.
SamCart’s entry plan is a bit cheaper ($79/month vs. $99/month), and it includes far more selling features, whereas you’d have to use integrations to get the same functionality with Leadpages. Of course, by having a wide variety of integration options, Leadpages gives you more flexibility. Both platforms have a drag-and-drop builder and template libraries, but Leadpages gives greater design options and far nicer templates.
The main clincher comes down to payments and customer support. SamCart simply runs laps around Leadpages in terms of the payment models you can make use of and the variety of payment processors to choose from. However, SamCart is pretty lacking in customer support, while Leadpages provides a lot of assistance to their users.
All in all, they are both very good platforms that perform equally in some categories and very differently in others. Choosing between them will come down to where your priorities lie and what your business requirements are. Or perhaps you would like to know more about how SamCart stacks up against Shopify?
FAQs
How does the checkout process differ for Leadpages and Samcart?
SamCart has made the checkout process smooth and simple, which boosts conversion rates. Leadpages checkouts are more on the clunky side in comparison. Leadpages doesn’t have a one-page checkout like SamCart, which means customers leave the page to enter the checkout.
How does the flexibility of templates compare between Leadpages and Samcart?
Leadpages takes the lead when it comes to templates. There are plenty to choose from, and they’re all mobile-responsive and professional-looking. You can also edit them without too much trouble.
SamCart, on the other hand, has fewer templates, and you can only make major changes if you subscribe to the Pro plan or higher.
Can I use DropInBlog on both Leadpages and SamCart?
Yes. With DropInBlog, you can get professional-level blogging on both Leadpages and SamCart. It’s very easy to integrate and gives you all the features you need and then some.
