Head-to-head
AWeber vs Leadpages
AWeber sends the emails and builds simple pages, starting free. Leadpages builds and tests the page, then hands the lead to an email tool. Which half do you need?
Quick answer
Pick AWeber if you need the opt-in page and the follow-up emails in one login, want to start free, and simple pages are enough; pick Leadpages if the landing page itself is what you are paying to improve, you will test it every week, and your email tool already lives somewhere else.
These two do different jobs. AWeber is an email platform that also builds landing pages. Leadpages builds and tests landing pages and passes each lead to an email tool, AWeber among them, because it no longer sends email itself.
My take. Work out which half of the opt-in is giving you trouble. If it is writing and sending the follow-up sequence, I would start on AWeber's free plan. If the list tool is settled and the page converts badly, Leadpages Grow is the plan that adds A/B tests.
Side by side
The two tools you are choosing between, plus one more worth knowing if you run paid ads.
| Tool | Free trial | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| AWeber | Free plan with no card; 14-day trial of Lite or Plus | Growing and emailing a list, with simple landing pages in the same login |
| Leadpages | 7 days, card required | Standalone landing pages and lead capture, not a full funnel |
| ElasticFunnels | 14 days, no card | Teams running paid traffic |
What you are really choosing between
Most people reach this comparison wanting one tool for the whole opt-in: the page that collects the address and the emails that follow. Neither covers both halves equally well. For this page we read both vendors' pricing, plan and integration pages and long-running user threads. We did not run a list or a campaign through either tool.
AWeber is the email half, with pages added. Its homepage sells email marketing and automation for small businesses, with landing pages, ecommerce, web push and more than 750 integrations. The free plan carries one landing page. Lite allows three, and on Plus, according to the pricing page, landing pages and automations have no cap.
Leadpages is the page half, with email handed off. Its pricing page promises unlimited traffic on every plan with no overage fees. Grow adds manual A/B testing and dynamic text replacement, and you need Optimize for Smart Traffic and heatmaps. Email left the product when Drip became a separate company, so a Leadpages form sends the lead elsewhere. The AWeber integration adds each subscriber to a list and triggers its follow-up sequence on submit.
That is why the pair used to be bought together. In a long-running r/marketing thread, a marketer describes running Leadpages with AWeber for ebook campaigns that were easy to set up and track. You can still buy both. What you are deciding is whether you need the second tool yet.
If you read AWeber's own AWeber vs Leadpages page, know that it still quotes old Leadpages plan names and prices. The Leadpages figures here come from Leadpages' current pricing page.
Where each one wins and loses
AWeber
What works
- The free plan has no end date: up to 500 subscribers, 3,000 emails a month, one landing page and one automation, and no card to sign up.
- The list, the opt-in page and the follow-up automation share one account, so a new subscriber enters the sequence without a connector between two tools.
- Inbox placement is what users praise. A tester on r/Emailmarketing who sent through several providers ranked AWeber first for fast delivery to Gmail inboxes.
- Plus lifts the limit on landing pages and automations, and more than 750 integrations link it to the rest of your stack.
What to watch
- The bill follows the list. Prices step up with subscriber tiers, and a self-publisher on Reddit reported a bill that went from $130 to $215 a month while the list stayed near 20,000.
- The same Gmail tester found the email designs a bit out of date, so expect to spend time styling templates.
- Its pages are basic. Split tests are for emails, Lite stops at three landing pages, and there is nothing like Leadpages' Smart Traffic or heatmaps.
- Selling through AWeber Ecommerce carries a transaction fee of 1% on Lite and 0.6% on Plus.
- The 14-day trial runs on a paid plan, and AWeber starts billing you automatically when it ends.
Leadpages
What works
- You get a clean, mobile-ready landing page live in minutes. Reviewers with no coding background single out the drag-and-drop editor and the template library, and the new AI builder can draft a branded page from a prompt in about a minute.
- Every Leadpages plan includes unlimited traffic with no visitor caps. Unbounce and Instapage both cap monthly visitors on their entry plans and charge more when a campaign works.
- A/B testing is included from the entry Grow plan, where several rivals gate testing behind pricier tiers. Smart Traffic visitor routing and click and scroll heatmaps are part of Optimize, the next plan up.
- It is more than a page builder now. You get full websites and blogs on a custom domain with free SSL, an embeddable Stripe checkout, lead enrichment, and more than 200 integrations to push leads to your CRM or email tool.
- It is cheaper than it was. The Grow list price has dropped, and a separate publishing-only product, HTML Pub, covers pages alone if you do not need the optimization tools.
What to watch
- Design control is the trade-off. Reviewers say the templates are limited and pages built on them look like every other Leadpages page, with little pixel-level control over styles. A brand with strict guidelines will fight the editor.
- The billing reputation is the real risk. Long-term reviewers report surprise annual auto-renewals, a cancel flow that does not always take effect, and refunds refused. Leadpages does not refund subscription payments, only future renewals, so its Trustpilot score sits far below its product ratings.
- No free plan, and the 7-day trial needs a card. You commit a payment method to try it and you are charged on day 7 unless you cancel first. Given the cancellation complaints, set a reminder.
- It has no funnel logic like ClickFunnels, and email is no longer built in since Drip became a separate company, so you still wire an email tool and a CRM alongside it.
- The price only makes sense if you use the conversion features. For someone who just wants to publish a page, lighter builders cost less. It pays off for a team that runs a new test every week.
What they cost
They meter different things. AWeber prices by subscribers, so the bill grows with your list. Leadpages prices by the page features you need and never counts traffic, so a month of heavier ad spend costs the same as a quiet one.
The AWeber figures below are monthly billing at 500 subscribers, the smallest tier. The Leadpages figure is its annual-billing view.
| AWeber | Leadpages | |
|---|---|---|
| Free way in | Free plan, 500 subscribers, no card | None |
| Trial | 14 days of Lite or Plus, then billed automatically | 7 days, card taken at checkout, charged on day 7 |
| First paid plan | Lite: $15/mo, three landing pages | Grow: $67/mo billed yearly |
| Unlimited landing pages | Plus: $30/mo, or $240 a year | Included on Grow |
| Split testing | Email split tests | Manual page A/B tests on Grow |
| Smart Traffic and heatmaps | Not offered | Optimize |
| Sends email | Yes, with automations | Connect AWeber or another tool |
| What raises the bill | More subscribers | A higher plan; traffic is never metered |
With a small list, AWeber costs far less, and its free plan may cost you nothing. Running both together means paying Leadpages and AWeber, which is what you are doing anyway if the integration is the plan. The gap narrows as a list grows, because AWeber's tiers climb with subscribers while Leadpages stays flat.
Both trials end in a charge. Put a reminder before day 7 if you try Leadpages, and before day 14 on an AWeber paid trial.
A third option, if you run paid ads
If your ads sell something on the page, the conversion you care about is the order, and both tools here stop at the opt-in form. Neither one keeps the ad click, the purchase and any refund on one record.
ElasticFunnels is a funnel platform for teams running paid traffic. What most teams come for is same-URL split testing: page variants rotate on the server behind one campaign link, so Meta, Google and TikTok keep their learning while you test. It also drafts pages with an AI builder or clones one from a URL, hosts the checkout with order bumps, one-click upsells and subscriptions, and keeps sessions, orders, rebills and refunds on one timeline with a CRM and automations working from the same data.
It is priced for that job. Starter is $97 a month, Growth $197 and Scale $497, with every feature on every plan and the tiers set by page views, brands, domains, seats and automation runs. Revenue through its own checkout carries a 0.5% fee. If you are growing a list with a free lead magnet, AWeber alone, or Leadpages feeding AWeber, is the cheaper way to do it.
The drawback is how little outside evidence exists. ElasticFunnels has been in development since 2023, which makes it younger than both tools on this page, and few independent reviews exist to check its testing and attribution claims against. Until your own volume runs through it, you are relying on the vendor's claims. Its 14-day trial asks for no card, so you can run a same-URL test on your own traffic before you pay. The full head-to-head is in ElasticFunnels vs Leadpages.
For a startup building its first list, AWeber is the default between these two. It sends the emails, which Leadpages cannot do, and its pages are enough for a lead magnet opt-in. You can start without paying and move to Plus once one landing page stops being enough.
Choose Leadpages when the email tool is already in place and the page is the bottleneck: paid clicks arrive, too few of them sign up, and you want to test headlines every week without watching a traffic meter. Connect it to AWeber or to whatever you already send from. Long-time Leadpages customers report renewals they did not expect, so note the renewal date when you subscribe.
Our default pick
AWeber
Pick AWeber if you need the list, the opt-in page and the follow-up sequence in one account, starting on a free plan.
Frequently asked questions
Can Leadpages replace AWeber?
Can AWeber replace Leadpages?
Do AWeber and Leadpages work together?
Which one is cheaper?
What if I sell through paid ads?
What we read on AWeber
From AWeber
Other sources
5 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.
- [aw-home] AWeber homepage and free plan FAQ
- [aw-pricing] AWeber pricing: Free, Lite and Plus by subscriber count
- [aw-price-jump] r/selfpublish: a creator on an AWeber price increase
- [aw-deliverability] r/Emailmarketing: a deliverability test across email providers
- [stack-history] r/marketing: landing pages and email automation, used together
What we read on Leadpages
From Leadpages
- https://www.leadpages.com/
- https://www.leadpages.com/pricing
- https://www.leadpages.com/product/ai-page-builder
- https://www.leadpages.com/product/smart-traffic
- https://www.leadpages.com/product/heatmaps
Other sources
2 discussions and reviews read for this page. Quotes are excerpts; open a link to read the original in context.
- [ppc-lp-expensive] Landpage Builder
- [ppc-landingi-cheaper] Landpage Builder
If your ad ends at a checkout rather than a sign-up form, ElasticFunnels is the tool on this page built for that, and its 14-day trial takes no card.
Related reading
Read the Leadpages review for the full picture on the page side, and the Leadpages pricing guide for every tier. If you want email and pages in one cheap account without AWeber, Systeme.io vs Leadpages weighs that bundle. Against another page builder, see Leadpages vs Unbounce, and for a step up to full funnels, ClickFunnels vs Leadpages. A paid-traffic team should read ElasticFunnels vs Leadpages. The funnel tool cost calculator prices each platform at your size, the six-question funnel tool picker points you to one, and the rest of our head-to-head comparisons cover the other close calls.