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37 Comments

What would you use to rapidly create landing pages?

I'm a developer in my day-job, but I'm still new to the webdev world. As such, I don't think it's worth the effort to hand-code my landing / marketing pages.

What resource would you use if you wanted to make multiple landing pages quickly?

  1. 5

    https://carrd.co/ is a good option and by far the cheapest.

    If you plan on building a SaaS product have a look at https://versoly.com/, it works great for devs as well as we have an editor built in so you aren't limited by the page builder.

    1. 2

      thanks, I'll keep you guys in mind! Also going to DM you my initial thoughts as someone looking at your site for the first time, hopefully that is useful input! :)

    2. 1

      Third Carrd. I’m a professional web dev at my day job too. I built a landing page for ZenJournal with Carrd.

    3. 1

      I second carrd.co. Used it and been really happy with it.

  2. 3

    If you are looking for a non-static pages with login, admin etc.. I suggest you have look at https://divjoy.com
    You can drag-&-drop what ever components you want, customize and export your html/js code. DivJoy author @Gabe is making good progress on it and also active member on IH.

    1. 3

      Thanks for the shoutout @prakis! If you end up wanting to use Divjoy here’s 50% off: https://divjoy.com?promo=indiehackers

  3. 2

    No one's mentioned Stackbit yet, so am leaving it here. Generate a static site in minutes, without touching any code. Plus free hosting on Netlify, Github. Great for MVPs I feel, but easy to build upon since you're a dev already. Even more themes here - https://jamstackthemes.dev/themes/

    1. 1

      I used it for my personal site and it literally took me 15min to get everything up and running (using one of the available templates). And then it's just a matter of editing the content. It's great for MVPs.

  4. 2

    I'd recommend using a static site generator. You won't need any server side language (nothing to keep up to date or worry about) and you'll have a lot of options for the deployment.

    Hugo[1] is pretty powerful and easy to run, and has instruction to deploy on various infrastructures[2] and a few themes available[3]

    Having to make changes by editing files might seems daunting, but it means you can put everything under source control, instead of having to keep backups of a database.

    [1] https://gohugo.io/
    [2] https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/
    [3] https://themes.gohugo.io/

    1. 2

      How do you handle form submissions?

  5. 2

    I know it's "awful" but nothing beats WordPress! Really.

    Purchase a landing page template theme from someone with a modern look, and make sure to keep all the plugins up-to-date, and use as few plugins as possible (to minimize the likelihood of your page being hacked.)

    It was simple to create the landing page for https://virtualairwaves.com/ with WordPress

    1. 1

      WP seems simple but it requires a lot of extra plugins etc.

      Themes/Builders, popup plugins, seo plugins, blog plugins and the list goes on and on.

      I checked your page speed it scores 29/100 that means you will be ranked lower on google and a lot of visitors you get to the site will end up leaving before the page loads.

      https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fvirtualairwaves.com%2F&tab=mobile

    2. 1

      Thanks for the advice! Did you already have experience with WordPress? What made you lean towards a self-managed solution over something like carrd.co or versoly.com?

      1. 1

        I had no prior experience with WordPress. I did it myself (hosted on AWS, and cached with the free tier of CloudFront) because there were a few custom features I wanted that I didn't see in sites like carrd.co.

        If Carrd.co, or something similar, does everything you want, go for it!

        1. 1

          Got it, thanks for the useful insight!

  6. 1

    https://carrd.co/ has many mentioned, but yea +1 @Kevcon80

    I've tried a lot landing page builders, putting down some of my favourite for your reference:
    https://tilda.cc/
    https://www.landen.co/
    https://www.leadpages.net/

    You might also wonder why Unbounce and Instapage cost really high, because these tools already bundled many marketing tools you need, so you can stick with one place.

    I'm using the classic Squarespace (no brainer) for my side project, it works pretty well so far.

  7. 1

    Webflow.com, but that's because I'm a designer and I have very specific ideas about how my page should look. Webflow lets you rapidly build without limiting design possibilities.

  8. 1

    It's more expensive than something like carrd, but I've been happy with www.landen.co
    The analytics and integrations are pretty good, and once you get the hang of it the designer lets you create some pretty cool stuff.

    1. 1

      Thanks for this! I'm not very price sensitive on this, I want something that works out of the box that looks great. Tried Unbounce at first, and was disappointed with the default themes. Will keep this in mind alongside lead pages

  9. 1

    Start by using Carrd.co for a landing page, other tools available with simple GUI builder.

    Avoid WordPress like the plague until you know what you are doing and have a genuine need for a multi-page site with extra tools.

  10. 1

    I've just started using Webflow for https://easyauth.io and it's been great. I also got a UI kit for Webflow so I can just drag and drop components into a page and edit the content. Saves me a ton of time.

  11. 1

    I've used https://unbounce.com in the past. It's pretty quick and easy to setup. Plus, you can make use of some other functionality such as forms, Zapier integrations, etc.

    1. 2

      Thanks for this, most people have been linking website builders, whereas I was looking for something more like a SaaS like this.

    2. 1

      Lowest price for unbounce is $99 a month?

      1. 1

        At one point they had a free plan, don't see any mentions of that anymore. Looks like they up'd their prices too. Good for them.

  12. 1

    I'm surprised no one has mentioned Webflow yet. I've been using Webflow for the past four to create multiple websites both landing pages and full-fledged static websites.

    If you are a developer, then it takes very little time to understand how the designer works. You can make quirky animations to make the landing page a bit more fun. Doing changes to the design doesn't consume alot of time too. You can also copy and paste parts of the webpage to other projects so creating landing page variations is easy.

    1. 1

      I have seen a lot of other comments from founders and non designers.

  13. 1

    I really enjoy using Jekyll - https://jekyllrb.com/. It gives you a ton of autonomy and there are a lot of themes out there to get things up and running quicly. Combined with a hosting solution like Netlify (Drop) - https://app.netlify.com/drop, you can develop a robust workstream that will allow designers/developers to build off of later.

  14. 1

    I use bootstrap studio. It's easy to create good looking sites fast. It had a learning curve for me but nothing too steep. It's a payed software, if you don't want to pay, you can look at something else like grapesjs , it's a javascript framework to create website builders. you can just build your own website builder. it's pretty sweet and not difficult at all , if you know how to copy and paste JS. I would recommend wordpress too, but elementor is basicly grapesjs, or seems like it is to me.

  15. 1

    https://www.strikingly.com

    They have a free plan. You can be up and running in 5-10 mins. No affiliation to them.

    1. 1

      do they have email integrations? or code embed in free plans?

  16. 1

    I used to use WordPress but I got anxiety every time I had to create a new page, so I switched to Carrd.co. Here's a website of mine that's still a work in progress, but it's all done with Carrd and I'm pretty pleased with it (https://simplecanje.com/)

    Once you grasp the concept that sections are the same as pages, then it all kinda makes a lot more sense.

  17. 1

    I'm a bit biased as I'm a WordPress developer, but I can recommend it for quickly building landing pages. Plus, if you're already paying for a server or hosting, the rest can be pretty much free.

    You can use the following plugins to get up and running fast:
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/elementor/ - trusted page builder
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/ - for SEO
    https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/ - for quick JS and CSS optimizations

    I hope this helps.

  18. 1

    Well, a pretty simple setup is a WordPress site, Elementor Page Builder (a builder i trust) for building different landing pages and a domain mapper plugin (for example: https://wordpress.org/plugins/multiple-domain-mapping-on-single-site/).

    Then all additional landing pages will be on the same setup (cost-effective) and the only thing you will have to purchase are of course domains and then with the domain mapper plugin you will map pages with the domains so they will act as stand-alone sites (and seem like).

    I've tested this myself an hour ago and it worked perfectly. Mapped a domain to a page using that plugin and I had a landing page that looks like a stand-alone site but it is in fact just a regular page on a WordPress site of mine :)

    1. 1

      Interesting approach! Have you experimented with analytics using this method at all? For example, conversion rate?

      1. 1

        Not yet, I was just testing how this was possible and if I could accomplish without too much work.

  19. 1

    I'm working on a landing page builder for Mobile Apps, but would expand it to other niches when I finish the foundation. So if you need a mobile app landing page builder let me know so I can provide you early access to Pageam.com.

    To see possibilities, take a look at starter templates in https://pageam.com/template/

    1. 1

      Hey, your templates look great! I find myself not being super interested because of your niche, most users will be on an actual computer for my business. Not sure if that’s a bad thing or a good thing for you, but I wanted to provide that feedback for you!

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