OptimizePress 3.0 Is Version 3.0 Worth The Upgrade?
OptimizePress 3.0 Is Version 3.0 Worth The Upgrade?
OptimizePress has been around for over six years now and aside from an overhaul in version 2.0, it's remained largely the same. Is this plugin still worth its price? Has it been overtaken by other WordPress plugins? Does it offer the features you're looking for? Read on to find out in my full OptimizePress review and ultimate guide!
But why would you want to buy something like this plugin? Can't you just use a regular page builder? Well, yes, but that's probably not a good idea.
In reality, when you create landing pages, you usually pay good money to send visitors to sales-optimized pages. This means that you need to have the highest conversion rate possible if you want to get a good ROI for your ad spend.
So how do you achieve that? You need to make sure you've all the essential components of a landing page so that it is conversion-focused, with things like strong CTAs, social proof, testimonials, etc
The key point is that different niches require different types of sales pages with different features.
And while it would be possible to use layouts and templates from a standard page builder like Elementor or BeaverBuilder, using a plugin designed specifically for sales page creation is a much better investment, especially if this is a major focus of your marketing team.
Let's take a look at this plugin and whether it's a good idea to buy it. When you're done, you can also check out some of my other reviews in the WordPress plugins section.
For the sake of beginners, what is OptimizePress?
OptimizePress is a page builder for WordPress that uses a simple drag-and-drop interface to allow anyone to create landing pages, sales funnels, and all the things you need to create a successful eCommerce and marketing website. Pricing starts at $99 with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Create a landing page, add an opt-in, add a membership link, and add your drip feed content to the membership tiers. It may sound complicated, but once you get the hang of it, OptimizePress is very logical to use.
When using OptimizePress3.0, some features make creating lead-generation pages as easy as possible. No matter what you want to use these pages for, the general creation process is much the same.
There are a few key features that make OptimizePress worth considering.
Easy drag-and-drop page creation of sales pages and landing pages.
Membership pages and paywall creation.
Opt-in forms with integration
Responsive design that works well.
Standard WordPress themes and plugin support.
30 free templates to get you started right away.
Content drip feeding support for paysites.
There are many features in OptimizePress, but these are key for marketers and site owners. Each of them contributes to its performance, but also its usability. That's a difficult balance, but I think this plugin gets it right.
The live editor is a real benefit, which we'll go into in a minute. Its ability to integrate membership pages on the other side of your landing page is an opportunity not to be missed. So is the ability to integrate opt-ins into pages. Responsive design is mandatory unless you have a dedicated mobile site, and the requirement that OptimizePress plays well with other plugins is also a must-have.
The templates are mostly of very high quality. There are a few not-so-good ones, at least they aren't something I like, but we all have different tastes.
Finally, content drop feeding is a really strong point of this plugin and is one of the reasons you should buy it.
OptimizePress3.0 is one of the products that's often featured in roundups about landing page builders, so you know right away that you have got a solid product.
Features
The benefits may look compelling, but it's the features that are worth the money. Some are more important and useful than others.
I think these are the most important features that are worth checking out when using OptimizePress to understand if it works for you or not:
Live Editor - OptimizePress's page builder
OptimizePress templates
Excellent Integration
Custom elements
Responsive design
Support, customer service, and documentation
New OptimizePress 3.0 user interface
Live editor
The Live Editor is an integrated page builder that lets you create pages in real time.
This is a real bonus if you're short on time because you can create, edit, refine the pages and see the changes immediately. You don't have to load the page into a browser and refresh it, it happens automatically.
Landing Pages
There are 60 landing pages included in OptimizePress and another 280+ are available as a premium purchase. Since one of the main focuses of OptimizePress is to create sales pages quickly, you'll find that many of these templates are landing pages optimized for lead generation and conversions.
The quality of design and build of these templates is a standout feature of the plugin and one of its greatest strengths. As long as a template matches your brand design, you can insert a template and create a page in no time.
Custom elements
Custom elements are where the customization magic begins. There are over 40 custom elements in OptimizePress. From buttons to opt-in boxes, from image placeholders to audio players. Every element imaginable for every type of page is included here.
Responsive design
The requirement for a fully responsive design needs no emphasis and is a key feature of OptimizePress.
The pages work quickly and seamlessly on all device types and screen sizes. The templates provided are all responsive and still look good on the smallest screen.
Integration
OptimizePress 3.0 has integration built-in with many email marketing programs like Aweber, and Get-Response which comes in very handy for email marketers when automating your email campaigns and is one of the main reasons that I bought it.
Documentation
The key to a product's value is its support and documentation. Fortunately, OptimizePress doesn't let you down on either count. The knowledge base is well populated, the manuals are clear and concise, and many contain images to aid understanding, there are also many videos for those who learn better by seeing them. There are a few that are still "Coming Soon" after so long in production, but most are available.
New OptimizePress Dashboard
I have had reason to contact the support team several times, and they were very slow to respond but the past six months have shown that there are no major problems finding good support if you run into problems.
This is where you'll spend a lot of time setting up new sites and adding new pages. From here you can control many of the features of OptimizePress 3.0, such as adding extensions, setting up email providers, adding scripts, and much more.
The dashboard looks simple because it is simpler. It's a central point from which you can access other features. It's clear and user-friendly and makes managing OptimizePress easier than ever.
Lightning Builder
The Lightning Builder is another new feature of OptimizePress 3.0.
With its new drag-and-drop page builder that builds on the live editor and takes it a few steps further. You can create a page from scratch using drag-and-drop or take one of the many OptimizePress themes and customise it in the page builder.
At the top of the screen is a new control panel that gives easy access to elements, settings, preview tools, and more. It makes working with the page very easy and should also speed up the creation of the page. Select an option at the top, choose an option from the pop-up menu that appears, place it on the page, configure it to your liking and continue.
New template delivery system
OptimizePress 3.0 brings with it several new templates and a new template deployment system. Previously you had to download a template. Now they're all stored in the cloud, presumably on AWS or some other service.
This speeds up the download process considerably. It's only a small improvement since you'll probably only download one or two templates and then never do it again. But it shows that the developers are looking at the big picture and not just adding new features to make the product look better.
Page Loading
The developer doesn't go into detail, but pages do load faster when you switch to OptimizePress 3.0. Existing pages created with OptimizePress 2.0 will load quickly, but if you create a page from scratch with the new Lighting Builder, you should notice a significant difference.
I created a site with both versions and OptimizePress 3.0 seemed better and faster to me.
User experience
The user-friendliness of this tool is one of its strengths but I found manipulating images sometimes very frustrating and the blog page creation tool was awful, but that’s not unusual for WordPress users. I’ve only ever found one program to work well and that’s Divi. But that’s another blog post you can read about here.
If you understand the basics of WordPress page creation, you should be able to create a simple landing page in less than an hour. Of course, it's even faster once you get to know the plugin better.
There are no major problems in terms of design, tool layout, navigation or general usability. Some of the menus and user interfaces look a little dated, but that doesn't detract from the quick creation of these pages.
After installation and registration, the plugin adds a new menu to WordPress. From there you can choose a template or design a page from scratch. You can use the live editor to create pages and can immediately see what's happening.
Advantages and disadvantages
As with any product, there are pros and cons to OptimizePress. How convincing or distracting they are will depend entirely on what you want to achieve with them.
Pro
Some of the positives notes of OptimizePress 3.0 are:
Price - It's one of the most affordable page builders for sales pages with so many features. There's nothing like it in terms of the different features, the quality of the design, or the templates.
Templates - The free templates are excellent and there are many of them. The premium templates are also very good. Each design is worthy of a premium website and works seamlessly.
Ease of use - If you know your way around WordPress, you can set up your website in minutes and publish it in less than an hour. Once you're familiar with how it works, the time to launch is drastically reduced.
Works well with other plugins - Not just email or membership plugins, but several other plugins that many website owners use on their sites. I tested SEO, caching, optimization, translation, and CRON job plugins and couldn't find a single problem. That's not to say that every plugin will work because it won't, but I haven't found a single one that didn't.
OptimizePress 3.0 page speed
OptimizePress 3.0's new codebase loads faster on most devices. This is noticeable even without page load time measuring devices and is a big advantage.
Disadvantages
No matter what product you buy there are good and bad points depending on who you are. There will always be room for improvement and this product is no different.
Outdated design - Even after the OptimizePress 2.0 redesign, version 3.0 still looks a bit dated. This doesn't detract from its usability, but you have to wonder how the developers will update it to version 4.0 since the design has looked much the same for years.
Lagging behind the competition - I like OptimizePress3.0, but the competition seems to be catching up and maybe even overtaking it. The plugin is solid and works with all the latest versions of WordPress, so it's always up-to-date, in this respect but it doesn't always feel that way.
Support although good is slow which can be pretty frustrating. It can take a while for a message to be acknowledged and even longer for it to be resolved, and it seems that developer support and general customer service are limited. For most users, this shouldn't be a problem, but if something happens and the knowledge base doesn't help, your options are limited, which isn't good if you're pressed for time.
If you use the live editor, your data won't be stored in the standard format, which may mean that some plugins won't work properly. This also means that removing the plugin may destroy some of the pages you create with Optimise Press. This isn't a hindrance if you know this in advance, but could otherwise be problematic.
OptimizePress prices
As part of this review process, I looked at value for money. The next point in this OptimizePress review is the different price levels available and whether or not the product still offers good value for money. Pricing is a real strength of OptimizePress.
It's cheaper than many of its competitors and more expensive than others. It still offers good value for money considering the number of features included with it.
There are three pricing tiers for OptimizePress: Core, Publisher and Pro. Each one builds on the other and increases in price. The one-time fee includes the ability to create unlimited pages and a year of updates and support. The last point means that the cost should essentially be seen per year if you need the latest version of the app.
Core
The Core Optimise Press plugin costs $99/year and includes:
Unlimited pages
Up to three unique websites
Unlimited leads
The Optimize Member plugin as part of the price 1-year support and updates
The core package is aimed at individuals or business owners with up to three websites. With some membership plugins, the ability to drip-feed content often requires an upgrade or purchase of a more expensive version. With OptimizePress, it's already included in the basic version, which is good to see.
Publisher
The Publisher version of Optimise Press costs $149/year and includes:
Unlimited pages
Up to ten unique websites
Unlimited leads
The OptimizeMember plugin as part of the price 1-year priority support and updates
A/B split testing tool
Extended element library
Video background element
Page binding actions
The Publisher version is aimed at marketers or businesses who manage multiple websites and want slightly more advanced page designs. The testing tools are invaluable to marketers, so it's nice to have them included.
Pro
Pro is the top tier and costs $199/year. It includes:
Unlimited pages
Up to 30 unique websites
Unlimited leads
The OptimizeMember plugin
1 year of first-in-line support and updates
A/B split testing tool
Advanced elements library
Video background element
Page engagement actions
Exclusive plugin library
Funnel Builder
The website does not expand on what else you get for your extra $100 except the ability to jump the queue if you have an issue or the ability to use it on an extra 20 websites.
Conclusion - Should you buy OptimizePress?
I have been using version 3.0 for about 6 months. I’m a marketer who wanted to quickly create attractive landing pages that integrated with Aweber, collected email addresses, and exchanged them with my mail plugin and works mobile, so I'm glad I bought this plugin.
If I were a website owner who just wanted to create a membership site and didn't rely so heavily on the funnel, side of things then I probably wouldn't have bought it - there are plenty of other choices for this. The plugin has a strong marketing focus and many of its core features are geared toward the needs of marketers. If you're a marketer or you want to improve your marketing, OptimizePress 3.0 is the way to go.
If you're not going in that direction, I'd look elsewhere.
OptimizePress isn't the newest, nor the most powerful, and is not the most attractive on the backend. Some of the usability has a learning curve, but in terms of performance, site usability, and the sheer number of features offered, it's hard to find fault with OptimizePress. The pricing plan is competitive and only paying $99 per year for this product will be hard to beat.
Overall It’s an excellent buy and will give users the professional results we all like to see.
For more info about OptimizesPress 3.0 go to my recommendations page at https://www.emailmarketingrocks/recommendations