GemPages Reviews: Detailed Pros and Cons to Weigh Up

When building Shopify stores, several page builder apps are highly recommended, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. GemPages has consistently ranked among the top drag-and-drop apps for creating Shopify pages and is a popular choice for many e-commerce businesses.

However, GemPages might not be the best fit for everyone. Before deciding to install the app, we will guide you through GemPages reviews on detailed pros and cons to weigh up. Making sure that you could find the most suitable page builder app on your own.

GemPages Overview

Launched in 2017 to support eCommerce efforts, GemPages is designed for merchants who want to build their Shopify web pages quickly without needing coding skills. Similar to other page builders, it offers customizable templates and an easy-to-use interface with various page options for designing your store.

• Features: GemPages focuses on providing AI-powered tools to boost conversions and sales funnel, specifically designed to create pages that drive conversions and marketing campaigns.
• Pricing: GemPages offers tiered plans, including both free and paid options with unlimited page publishing, making it more budget-friendly for users needing many pages.

Now, let’s take a quick look at GemPages’ features and pricing plans in this table:

Categories	GemPages
Pricing Plan Overview
Free plan	Paid plan 1	Paid plan 2	Paid plan 3
1 published page	$29/mo  Unlimited published pages with 300 built-in sections	$59/mo  Unlimited published pages and built-in sections	$199/mo Unlimited pages and features
Main Features
Page types supported	Product Page Landing Page Home Page Collection Page Blog Post Other custom pages
AI-powered Image-to-Layout feature	✅
Sales Funnel Plan	✅
Section Builder	✅
SEO & loading speed	✅
Product Quick View	❌
Global blocks	❌
Built-in extensions	Sticky Add to Cart
3rd-party integrations	30+
Page templates	100+
Section templates	142+
Elements	60+
Others
Analytics	❌
Support	Live chat Support
Reviews/ Ratings	4.8/5 ⭐ 4,479

The table highlights essential features to consider before selecting a page builder app. Now, let's explore the detailed features, pros, and cons that GemPages offers to online store owners.

Key Features of GemPages 

1. Interface

Just like other Shopify page builders, these apps are specially designed to focus on making it easy for users by offering a simple drag-and-drop editor. Gempages' interface also allows you to easily add, move, and edit elements on your pages without needing to know how to code, making it accessible for everyone to create beautiful web pages.

The buttons and options are easy to find, not hidden in menus. Gempages also gives you a clear overview and makes it easy to review without constantly refreshing or switching screens since it includes a sidebar that shows an outline of your page.

The interface supports responsive design, allowing you to preview how your pages will be on different devices, so you can easily make sure they’re optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop views.

2. Customization Capabilities

When discussing Shopify Gempages, it's essential to consider its customization and design features. This page builder gives you complete control over how your online store looks and functions.

GemEditor is built around "Elements," which are the basic building blocks of your webpage. Around 80 elements are grouped into categories like design, eCommerce, and marketing. For example, design elements include text sections, icons, images, slideshows, and interactive features like parallax scrolling.

GemPages also offers a unique Image-to-Layout feature, powered by AI, that turns images or URLs into editable page layouts. Using advanced algorithms, it analyzes and recreates the design and structure of the references directly in the GemPages editor.

If you need to add some custom code to style your pages, Gempages also supports this with its Liquid Element feature. Just type "Liquid" in the element search bar, drag it to the desired block, and add your code in the settings section.

3. Template Library

Like other Shopify page builders, the Library is a crucial aspect. Because of the variety and usefulness, it's one of the most important features that Shopify store owners need.

• Sections & Templates: GemPages offers around 80 pre-made templates for pages and over 400 sections suited to different industries and design styles. For those who may not have much design experience or are looking for ideas, these templates are perfect. You can freely adjust every detail to match your preferences since they are really customizable.

• Saved Library: With GemPages Theme Sections, you will have the ability to use pre-made sections on different Shopify pages and update them all at the same time.These sections can be saved in this library for your next reuse that you don’t have to build from scratch.

4. Sales Funnels

Sales Funnel plans are one of the outstanding features of GemPages. Apart from the existing templates optimized flow the customers journey, these plans allow you to visualize and plan a smooth buying experience for customers. It includes all steps from sales pages to upsell and downsell pages.

This optimized funnel also helps you identify the most appropriate upsell products with high conversion rates, along with A/B Offer Testing feature.

Here are the pricing details for GemPages Sales Funnel:

• Build Plan: No commission on upsell revenue up to $100.
• Optimize Plan: 1% commission on upsell revenue between $100 and $5000.
• Enterprise Plan: No commission on unlimited upsell revenue.

5. SEO and Loading Speed

Now, let's dive into the SEO features of Shopify GemPages. To help your store rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs), the GemPages app offers built-in SEO tools.

1. To access these SEO settings, click on the setting icon above the right corner of the screen. Then, select the "Publish Settings" option to open the settings popup.
2. Here, you can edit the SEO page title, page URL and handle, SEO description, social sharing image preview, lazy loading, advanced settings, and layout settings.
3. As you can see in the interface, after creating your page, you can use the SEO checker by Avada integration to check on the page score for further optimization. 

It also offers features like high-speed CDN, lazy loading, and preload resource hints to further improve page performance and ensure quick loading times.

6. Third-party Integration

GemPages also helps to boost your Shopify store's capabilities by integrating with a lot of third-party apps and tools. These integrations cover areas like improving conversions, enhancing design, marketing, customer reviews, and product displays.

Currently, GemPages integrates with around 90 apps across various categories. For merchandising, you can also use the Liquid element to easily add these apps to your pages with GemPages. These partnerships help create a more robust store setup and a better user experience overall.

7. Customer Support

GemPages offers customer support through live chat and email, available Monday to Friday from 8 am to 6 pm (GMT + 7). Though it’s not a 24/7 support or emergency showing up, the team is ready to help with questions or technical issues promptly.

There is also an online self-help center with FAQs, detailed guides, and tutorials, allowing users to solve problems and learn on their own.

That’s all about GemPages key features to help you have a thorough understanding about the app. To further help you in deciding on whether you should invest in, let’s move on to explore GemPages pros and cons.

Pros & Cons to Consider before Choosing GemPages

Pros of GemPages

Known for its focus on AI integrations, GemPages highlights the following key features:

1. Empowered with AI tools 

GemPages has an AI-powered "Image-to-Layout" feature that lets you create editable layouts from images you upload or find online. 

This tool is particularly useful for those who want to copy a specific design style or replicate the layout of a successful store, allowing for quick creation with the option to add personal touches and content. 

However, it’s necessary to note that the complicated design can not be built just by using this tool. To use this feature, you'll need to upgrade to a higher plan starting at $29 per month.

AI Generated content is also included from 100 rewrites per month from the free plan. If you need more, then with Enterprise plan, you are going to have 200 rewrites monthly.

2. Conversion-focus with comprehensive sales funnel

With templates built based on customer behavior, these pages from GemPages are highly-focused on conversions by giving you insights on how visitors interact with your store, so you can see where they drop off and where they spend the most time. 

Its plan helps you improve each step of the customer journey. The optimized sales funnel guides customers smoothly from discovering your products to making a purchase, which increases your store's conversion rate. 

Plus, using upsell and downsell strategies can raise the average order value, while special offers and new product introductions help build customer loyalty. You can also easily create effective pages without needing to code with GemPages pre design templates following this sale funnel.

However, additional pricing is there and of course it comes expensively. It’s important to weigh up the budget versus the need for this plan at the beginning of building a Shopify store journey.

3. Performance optimization

Despite extra code added in, page builders are usually still making sure to keep merchants' store loading speed fast by using optimized and minimized code, GemPages also does the same. 

GemPages understands the importance of SEO for bringing in organic traffic, so its pages are designed to be SEO-friendly. This includes using clean coding and allowing users to customize SEO tags and descriptions.

Users can easily edit SEO titles, meta descriptions, image alt texts, and configure header tags for better search engine visibility.

Features like lazy loading and Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration also help improve page load speeds, a key factor in SEO. While not the top Shopify SEO app, GemPages comes very close.

4. Wide range of documents and tutorials

GemPages has an enormous library of blogs, guides and tutorials for users. Categories are fulfilled from Store building & customization, Store setup, Store optimization and Premium; enough for merchants to build up a comprehensive Shopify store.

Learning curve for a Shopify page builder is also difficult, so to make it easier, GemPages also provides lots of video tutorials to help its users master the app. Apart from that, you can go for additional resources like Help Center, Customer Support and their Community for further information.

Cons of GemPages

1. Few Templates for Different Industries and Page Types

GemPages offers around 100 templates, which is fewer than other page builders. Most of these templates focus on landing pages and are grouped by the sales funnel plan. So the limitation in variety can cause frustration, especially for those needing templates for different industries or special occasions. 

Additionally, important templates like Blog List Pages, Search Pages, and Coming Soon pages are missing, so you’ll have to create these from scratch. Also, without device mode previews, it's harder to check responsiveness and decide if a template is right for you.

2. No Global Blocks Feature

While GemPages is great for conversion optimization, it doesn't have a "Global Blocks" feature. This means you can't create reusable sections like headers, footers, or CTAs that automatically update your entire store. As a result, you might find yourself repeatedly editing these elements on multiple pages, making it harder to keep your branding consistent.

*Note that Global Blocks and Section Builder are different features.

• Global Blocks are all about reusability. They let you create pre-designed elements like headers, footers, and call-to-action sections that you can use across multiple pages on your website.
• Section Builder,  on the other hand, is focused on designing individual pages. Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to customize each page with unique sections and layouts.

3. No Built-In Analytics and Conversion Optimization Tools

While GemPages is great for creating pages with tools like AI-powered layouts, it falls short in offering some essential features. The absence of built-in analytics means users can't easily access key insights about user behavior and website performance, making it harder to make data-driven decisions and optimize pages effectively.

Moreover, although GemPages calls itself a high-CRO-focused page builder, the built-in extensions for CRO are limited. With only 4 CRO elements and Sticky Add to Cart, other essential features like Frequently Bought Together, You May Also Like, Predictive Search, or Back to Top are missing. This may require you to install additional third-party apps.

4. Lack of animation and transition to engage customers

GemPages offers only 4 animation styles for page elements and 3 styles for hover effects, and options to adjust speed. For more advanced transitions, you'll need to customize your pages using code. 

The limited number of animation styles compared to other page builders can make creating highly engaging and interactive pages harder. Additionally, the template previews don't show animations, making it challenging to visualize how your page will look when published.

5. Limited Live Chat Support

GemPages provides a 24/7 live chat support with priorities depending on the higher plans. But, when comparing with other page builders that put a dedicated support team on live chat support even for free plans and newcomers, then GemPages might me less competitive in terms of this a little bit.

However, it is understandable that a free plan might be less beneficial for merchants, but this point is acceptable.

Now, let’s look at the GemPages pricing details to understand the cost structure better.

GemPages Pricing Plans

GemPages' pricing is similar to that of other page builders. It has a free plan for basic use and paid plans that give you access to more features, such as unlimited pages and advanced sales funnels, as you upgrade.

Free Plan:

The free GemPages plan is meant for individuals and new startups. It lets you create one webpage, which is great for a landing page or an "About Us" section. You will be allowed to use GemAi Image-to-Layout for 60 uploads, but there are still some limitations.

The free plan includes a drag-and-drop builder for basic editing but doesn’t have the Instant Landing Page, Theme section, Sales funnel plan, and other advanced features. Additionally, if you want to use the conversion optimization features available in paid plans, remember that you can’t switch back to the free plan once you upgrade.

Build Plan - $29 a month:

This plan aims to grow businesses and those looking to expand beyond the Shopify theme limitation. It offers more features than the free plan, allowing you to customize pre-built templates for different page types and publish slots at an unlimited number.

This plan also includes 300 GemAI Image-to-Layout uploads, 20 Theme sections, and 100 rewrites/month for AI-generated content for quicker page creation. It also uses image compression to keep your pages loading fast. However, it still doesn’t have the "Instant Landing Page" feature for rapid page creation, which is available in the higher plans.

*A sales funnel plan is also included in this paid plan: There is no commission on upsell revenue from $0 to $100.

Optimize Plan - $59 a month:

Designed for expanding stores with big growth goals, the Optimize Plan removes all design elements limits and includes features like the "Instant Landing Page" for quicker page setups. It also has a traffic limit for managing resources. 

The Optimize Plan is tailored for growing and successful stores that want to boost conversions, take advantage of high-priority support, and use advanced features like Sales Funnels and Post-Purchase Upsells to help scale business.

*Sales funnel plan: 1% commission on upsell revenue from $100 to $5000.

Enterprise Plan - $199 a month:

Made for large companies needing full control, this plan includes all features from the Optimize package plus unlimited Theme Sections and 200 rewriters per month of AI-generated content. However, despite its many features, the cost is quite high compared to other Shopify page builders, depending on what the app offers.

This plan is designed for businesses focused on growth and overcoming limitations. It provides top-priority support from the GemTeam and is ideal for Shopify Plus users.

*Sales funnel plan: Total Upsell Revenue around >$5000 with no commission.

Is GemPages a Good Fit for Your Needs?

1. Who is it for?

GemPages is ideal for individuals or businesses looking for a page conversion-focused solution without needing advanced coding skills.

If your main goal is to optimize conversions on specific pages, like landing pages, GemPages might be a good fit. It offers AI-powered tools that help you create pages faster, and pre-made pages based on a sales funnel would make it easier to convert more customers.

GemPages is an excellent option for individuals or small businesses with technical skills who want added features like Theme section or CDN speed optimization for their marketing campaigns.

2. Who is it NOT for?

While GemPages has a lot to offer, it may not be the best choice for every business. Here’s why some merchants might want to consider other options:

• Budget-conscious businesses: If you’re still figuring out your conversion optimization needs, GemPages' subscription model could be limiting. You might feel the need to upgrade to a higher-tier plan at first. However, some of the advanced features for further optimization, like Global blocks or CRO built-in extensions, are missing.
• Focused on Easy Store Design: Relying entirely on pre-made templates isn’t enough. Creating similar blocks or sections individually in GemPages can be time-consuming and repetitive. Doing this for each page design takes a lot of effort, leading to repeated challenges. Additionally, the lack of animation styles makes designing pages even more difficult.
• Need for Tracking and Analytics: Even though GemPages offers various optimization tools, the lack of built-in analytics stands out. Analytics are crucial for businesses to track and understand customer behavior, helping them make informed decisions and improve their store. With this feature, you might be able to find workarounds or rely on extra third-party tools.
• Beginners and Those with Limited Technical Skills: Although GemPages offers robust features, its full potential might be difficult to access for complete beginners or those with little technical know-how. Additionally, the reported delays in live chat support can slow down the design process. If quick help is needed for troubleshooting or using the platform, these wait times could be frustrating, particularly for those new to such tools.

Wondering if there’s another option that might solve the problems with GemPages or offer better features? Check out the list below—it could have what you’re looking for.

GemPages Alternatives

1. EComposer Landing Page Builder 

When looking up “Page Builder” on the Shopify App Store, we came across the EComposer app, which has an impressive rating of 5.0/5 stars and over 4000 reviews from merchants. This high rating and its “Built for Shopify” badge caught our attention, so we decided to try it.

We were impressed. EComposer is a new app that lets you create beautiful and professional pages without needing coding skills. It offers many advanced features, with pre-designed templates and elements for different page types. Plus, you can build custom pages that aren’t available in Shopify by default.

Even if you need special designs for a specific niche or seasonal promotions, EComposer has plenty of options. The designs stay up-to-date with current trends to help boost conversions. You can also customize by mixing and matching templates or sections through copying and pasting.

EComposer offers several key features:

• Easy Drag-and-Drop Editor: Customize pages effortlessly with a simple editor, see how they look on different devices, and tweak designs for each one.
• Exclusive Features: Create custom views, search pages, and cart pages, and use global blocks to keep your store’s design consistent.
• Pre-Made Templates: Choose from up to 300 templates and over 1000 sections to quickly build and edit pages.
• Built-in Extensions: Improve shopping experiences with tools like Ajax Cart and Color Swatches without needing extra apps.
• Third-Party Integrations: Connect with over 50 essential tools for online stores, covering your core needs without overwhelming you with options.

EComposer lets you add custom code, like JS and CSS, for more personalized designs. Its Section Builder, and Global Blocks are great for creating consistent brand kits. AI tools like ChatGPT can help you write product descriptions and website content.

EComposer Pricing Plans:

• Free Plan
• Basic Plan – $19/month
• Pro Plan – $39/month
• Premium Plan – $99/month

Rating & Review: 5.0/5 (4,158 reviews)

So What Makes EComposer Better Than GemPages?

• Built-in Extensions: EComposer has over 25 built-in features for CRO optimization and supports 50+ third-party integrations, all without needing extra apps installed.
• Wide Range of Templates: EComposer continuously creates enormous premade templates and section layouts for various page types, keeping designs that match every requirement.
• Top-Notch Customer Support: With a 5.0-star rating and 24/7 live chat, EComposer provides excellent support to cover your back whenever needed.
• Unique Features: EComposer includes Global Blocks for reusable sections, built-in page analytics, and 35 animation styles for engaging pages.

2. LayoutHub Page Builder

LayoutHub is another competitor to GemPages that you might consider. It helps Shopify users create attractive websites with minimal coding skills. The platform is easy to use with its drag-and-drop interface and pre-designed templates, making it simple to build professional pages.

Although it may offer fewer customization options than other builders like GemPages or EComposer, LayoutHub still provides a solid selection of templates and designs crafted by e-commerce experts to boost your conversion rates while ensuring you do not break the bank. Their support team is also known for being helpful and responsive.

LayoutHub key features: 

• Easy-to-Use Editor: Create professional pages effortlessly with a straightforward editor.
• 24/7 Support: Receive help from their expert support team anytime, day or night.
• Smooth Integrations: Easily connect with apps like Ryviu, Stamped.io, Loox, Growave, and Yotpo.
• Excellent Performance: Designed by experts to work well on any device and meet user needs.
• Fast and SEO-Friendly: Optimized for quick loading times and better search engine rankings.

LayoutHub pricing plan:

The features offered are sufficient for building a Shopify page, making it a cost-effective choice for those needing basic functionality.

• Free Plan
• Basic Plan – $14.99/month
• Pro Plan – $29.99/month
• Premium Plan – $59.99/month

Rating & Review: 4.9/5 (2,923 reviews)

3. Beae Page Builder

Beae—Landing Page Builder is an app that lets you design eye-catching web pages easily with a drag-and-drop editor. No coding is needed. It provides over 160 templates to help you quickly create and personalize your pages.

Beae also includes features to improve customer conversions and make your pages more straightforward and SEO-friendly.

Beae key features: 

• User-Friendly: Easy to use, perfect for those without coding or design experience.
• Versatile Page Creation: Build different types of pages.
• Mobile Optimization: Create pages that look great on mobile devices.
• SEO Optimization: Quickly improve pages for better search engine rankings.
• Section Builder & Online Store 2 Compatible: Add various sections to your existing pages easily.
• Form & Popup Builder: Create forms and popups to collect customer emails for marketing and upselling.

Beae pricing plan:

Beae offers three subscription plans. The free plan includes one published slot, similar to other options. Besides this, there are two additional paid plans:

• Pay as you go Plan – $14.99/month
• Unlimited Plan – $99.99/month

Rating & Review: 4.9/5 (770 reviews)

Final Words

That wraps up our review of GemPages. Overall, it’s a solid option for creating Shopify pages, and its reputation is well-deserved. By looking at its features, pricing, and pros and cons, you should better understand what the app can do.

We hope this review helps you decide if GemPages is right for your business. Choosing the right page builder can impact your online store's success, so pick the one that best meets your needs.

If you don’t have a Shopify account yet, now is a great time to start. You can get your first month for just $1 on any plan and explore everything Shopify offers.