Engagifire vs Lead Monster. I bought 'em both, let's review

I heard about Lead Monster through the company I bought optin software from earlier this month (awkward). I learned about Engagifire from the facebook comments on Lead Monster's main page (also awkward). Both seemed to do the same thing and both offer a return within 30 days, so I thought I'd just get both and see how each works out.

I bought all the OTOs for each (except for the last for each) so there might be some features not available to everyone at a basic level. The products are similar, but each one separates the features between the levels differently. Ex: Split testing for EF is in the "elite", whereas in LM it's standard in the basic level. But LM makes you pay extra to set up an optin on another person's site ("Authority Monster"), whereas EF gives it in the basic package.

Optins
EF has 66 premade

• 36 optins
• 8 video
• 4 teespring
• 24 "premium" - which is a mix of everything, including "yes/no"

LM has 109 premade

• 11 landing pages
• 37 optins
• 16 video
• 10 webinar
• 14 yes/no
• 11 niche optin
• 10 small popup (intended for when people try to close a page)

It might look like LM has more, but if you take an optin that is blue and change it to green, have you really made a new optin template? There's nothing really "niche" about the LM niche optins, you're going to have to fill in any optin with copy and content anyway. So when you weed out the fluff, I think the amount and types of optins from both EF and LM are comparable. Still, plan on creating your own eventually.

Both allow you to create your own optins and both allow you to save them as templates to use in the future.

Editing
For LM the "create your own template" is easy to find. For EF you will have to scroll to find the "empty form."

The first time you're in the editor for EF a little guide will pop up to help you through the basic first steps. I found it helpful, but you can close it whenever you want. It also lets you work on whatever it's showing you.

Both editors are clunky.

For EF, just click off the popup you're working on and then it will cooperate.

LM has an "add element" button directly in the center of the optin form you're trying to create and it gets in the way right from the start. You can move things around it, but it's still there, which makes no sense. It aught to be to the side of what you're working on.

Each time you add an element to LM there's a popup that offers a selection of things to choose from. With EF the items are in a sidebar next to your work. Any sort of settings you do in EF also show up on the side. There are some tasks that will popup over the work, but for most of the time, the optin you're working on is always visible in EF.

Every time I moved an element in LM I had to go back and change the background for just that element. So say the background for your box is blue and you add in the little "submit email" button. But you move it up a line...now the background for just THAT element is gray.

While editing one of the elements in LM the edit box wouldn't go away. Even after deleting the element, the edit box just floated to the top of the screen and stayed there till I refreshed.

Backgrounds

• LM has 80 background images to choose from, but 12 are of the creators or their product (wut?)
• EF has 91 background images.
• Both let you upload your own.
• Both let you select a solid html color
• LM lets you have gradient colors, where the top is 1 color and the bottom is another.
• EF lets you set up a video in the background.

Next
For LM, you save the template and publish the campaign. You can add your autoresponder to it if you haven't integrated it already by going to the dashboard and clicking the email icon on your new campaign. This was a must for me because I self host and the "integration area" doesn't have a spot to paste html code. After that you select "Generate Script." This lets you pick which style of popup you want for that particular optin (slide in, scroll, etc). You can select any style and generate the code to get it.

EF works differently. After saving your optin you set it up to work 1 particular way. You can change it if you want, but it's intended to work only 1 way (at least from what I understand.). If you want the optin to work 2 different ways (scroll/exit intent) then you'll need to make another campaign.

EF also lets you create buttons for people to click on to generate a popup. No html color choices though, just generic colors.

Framed sites (popups on other people's websites)
"Remote commander" and "Affiliate monster" are ways you show popups on another person's website that you show inside an iframe (or similar). I haven't played around with either of these. In fact, I'm not sure how I would personally use these features, though others may find a use.

Tutorials
LM has a FAQ page and short pdfs
EF has videos! A clear win.

EF also has a tour guide for the main dashboard as well as the optin editor.

Red Flags
EF membership portal is on a subdomain of wishloop.com. The main domain just has a basic wordpress instal with all that crap WP fills a fresh instal with. My personal reaction was "Oh wait, did I not buy into something real?"

LM has sales pages filled with grammatical errors. That continues into the instructional pdfs. This might not have anyhting to do with the product, but it just send up a red flag for me personally because my thought is "If you don't know the difference between 'have' and 'has', how bad is your software code going to be?"

Other
There's a lot more to test, but I've not done so - or had the time.

In the end I think it comes down to the editor, and since EF has the better editor I'm inclined to support it more. I think what interests me most with LM is the Heat Monster upgrade, which EF doesn't (currently) have. But I don't think it is something that is necessary. More like "Hey, I have an idea or 2 for this later" sort of thing.

Others are certainly welcome to chyme in.