TLDNR: Instapage Raised Prices, Added Features & Limitations. Their Customers Raised Concerns To The Announcement, Instapage Deleted Concerns From Their Blog, And Banned Customers From Commenting
Unfortunately in the past week or so, I’ve been on the receiving end of a perfect example of ‘what not to do’ if you want to build a raving fan base.
I’ve been a customer of the landing page software Instapage for about two years now.
Up to this point, I’ve had little to no issues.
Just minor stuff that they’ve always taken care of relatively quickly.
In a nutshell:
I pay them $233 per year so I can create beautiful landing pages easily and in a relatively short period of time.
For example, here’s one I’ve created for myself. Not bad huh?
Anyway, overall good software, which I’d recommend previously.
Recently, they decided to add some features, add some limits to the number of landings pages, raise prices, and really do a complete restructure of their price plans.
No big deal, right? Happens all the time.
I get it.
That’s business.
I have absolutely no problem with that.
In fact I support them.
They are investing in their business, and doing what they can to grow.
Based on my usage, my increase would have been about 10x, so instead of paying $233 per year, I’d be paying about $1356 per year. (This was originally going to be $2500+ per year for a comparable plan, but they made some changes it looks like to their pricing plans due to customer feedback-kudos to them)
It’s likely that I wouldn’t have stayed a customer because of this huge increase, but, I’d have considered it, and weighed the pro’s and con’s of staying vs going somewhere else.
When Instapage announced this change on their blog, there was a lot of upset people. I can understand that.
I have 93 total pages, 77 live pages.
The amount of time it would take to reconfigure everything for all of these client campaigns, design the pages in a new platform, etc. would be considerable! So, I get it that people are frustrated.
And people vented.
Nearly all were polite and upfront and just expressed their concerns about what this means for their business.
By far the biggest concerns people had was over the limit to 50 landing pages. It’s hard to run an agency or even to be a freelancer with a few clients and stay under 50 landing pages.
But that’s life, right?
Up to this point, no biggie.
That’s business. Take it or leave it.
Here’s where Instapage ran into a problem:
They started deleting any comments from their blog, deleting comments from paying customers, if they were in any way critical of the new pricing.
Here’s some of my comments that were removed:
It’s their blog, they can do what they want with it, right? Sure.
But, when paying customers, the customers that allow them to even be posting on their blog in the first place, have valid concerns, and they delete them, well, there’s no denying, that is bad business.
To take it one step further, they are banning people (paying customers) that voice concerns. Banning them from commenting on their blog!
Instapage can do whatever they want with their business.
Just like I can do whatever I want with my business.
But to treat people a customer in this manner, it’s just disappointing.
It isn’t something I’d expect from Wal Mart, let alone an industry leader in their field.
Sweeping things under the rug and not addressing valid concerns is one thing, but completely dismissing these concerns is something else.
Looking For Instapage Alternatives?
Some of the more popular alternatives you could use instead of Instapage would be:
- Unbounce
- LeadPages
- Thrive Themes
- Active Campaign
- Wishpond
If you want to read about more alternatives to Instapage, check out this post from Adespresso.