Best ways of implementing a landing page in 2020 [thread summary]

Hi Indie Hackers!
Earlier this week, I posted a question about setting up a landing page with a wait list. I got much more answers than I expected!

You recommended these tools:

1. Carrd
2. Divjoy
3. Grid studio
4. Landen
5. Netlify forms
6. One Profile
7. Shopify
8. Versoly
9. Waitlistr
10. Webflow

Since then I did some research and picked my winner. I was focused on finding the fastest and easiest to use solution that would produce me a modern looking landing page. Here are my notes from the process, with the winner is revealed at the bottom. No affiliate links or promotions included. Let's go:

New entries from the new comment section

Grid studio

Grid is an app to easily build and host websites. The key differentiating factor is the ability to build the page with Progressive Web App support without additional modifications. However, I didn't find a way to include an signup to the waiting list which is crucial for me.

Price – $20/month

✅ Simple pricing
✅ Building PWAs is built in
❌ You need to login with a social provider to test the app
❌ Could find an email signups support

Versoly

Versoly is an all in one tool to build a landing page and it seems to work as advertised – you pick a template, provide a copy and and are ready to go, hosting and analytics included. Haven't tested but looks solid, I would love to see more templates here.

Price – $15/month <500 signups, $29/month <1500 signups, $99/month after

✅ Super simple and reliable
✅ All you need (design, analytics, emails, hosting) is included
❌ Not that many templates
❌ Pricing can go really high

Original entries

Carrd

I would love to do a research on Carrd, but for some reason it is timing me out since Wednesday 🤷🏻‍♂️ hope it works for you

Divjoy

I loved Divjoy from the start and really wanted to use it, but I felt like there still would be much to do on my side. The app generates the starter React code with all the analytics, email backends working out of the box, so you can work on the real app from the start. However, it offers only 2 templates and I felt that if I was to modify something more serious I would have to spend more time on it

Price – $99/year (currently $59)

✅ Great tool to build React apps in general
✅ Easy to use and generate production ready code
❌ Not enough templates
❌ You still need to use 3rd party services

Netlify forms

I am using Netlify for my personal site and I love it, so naturally, I was excited to try out the forms. The product allows you to embed a form with a netlify tag and capture everything inside. Potentially would be a great feat with Divjoy or some Gatsby/Jekyll template

Price – free for <100 signups, $19/month for <1000 signups, 9$ every 500 signups later

✅ Nice tool if you have your page ready
✅ You don't need to pay anything if you have low traffic
❌ Expensive once you get the traffic (or somebody abuses the form)
❌ Requires you to have a working static page

Landen

I have never heard about Landen before (maybe because the project is young) but it instantly got me hooked. The app promises to build your landing page for you, without even designing it. I only had to provide a copy and my landing page was ready to publish, beautiful, with email capture and analytics already integrated

Price – $29/month
✅ No design skills needed, beautiful out of the box
✅ Analytics and email list ready to use
✅ Great price for the time saved
❌ Rather high price for just hosting a landing page

Shopify

Everybody has heard about Shopify and so have I. Somebody pointed out there is a 3 months free period and I was inclined to try it out myself

The platform itself is amazing, but is obviously focused on online shops and the landing page is only a small fraction of its functionality. Technically you can make a landing page in shopify, but as a newcomer to the platform I felt overwhelmed with templates, customising and adding an email. Overall positive, pass for me

Price – free for 3 months, $29/month after

✅ Free for 3 months
✅ You can build a landing page with many free or paid templates
❌ Templates are much more e-commerce focused
❌ Platform is complex and has it's own learning curve

Waitlistr

This is another new (to me) tool on the list. Waitlistr allows you to build your waiting list like you would build a Google form – but much prettier. I would definitely use it had an established business and was launching a new product. However it is not really a fit in the world of landing pages

Price – $12/month for <1,5k signups, $29/month after

✅ The fastest and simplest solution
❌ Focused on management of a waiting list, not on introducing the product
❌ You don't really want a google from to be your landing page

Webflow

All hail the no-code king, one and only – Webflow! Every Indiehacker knows Webflow and this was one of first shots of mine. However, Webflow still requires you to design the page and learning curve for the sign up management is quite steeper. Like with Shopify, the software is great, but overkills my problem

Price $16/month <1000 signups, $36 after
✅ Battle tested
✅ Webflow skills will probably be valuable in the future anyway
❌ Still requires design skills
❌ Steep learning curve

Done 🎉 Hope you found this post valuable! My winner is Landen, as this matched 100% my use case and I could build my site in 2 hours total.

I probably spent the whole saved time on writing this post 😅 If you found it valuable and are interested in building a side hustle selling your expertise, feel free to check out Socrates. I am building something for you!

Have a great weekend, Indie Hackers!