Why is Prefinery the Best KickoffLabs Alternative in 2024?

Both greet you with the campaign creation wizard right after you signup, but one makes everything easier for you than the other. We and our customers think it's Prefinery, but don't take our word for it — we encourage you to try both.

KickoffLabs's entire campaign configuration is through their wizard, so if you want to modify anything on the campaign you just get brought back to the wizard. Setting up a campaign seems quicker, but it assumes you know what you're doing from the start.

Both wizards require the bare minimum information to set up your whole campaign dashboard according to your specs. With Prefinery, there is a quick-to-follow checklist to help guide you through your dashboard which you can refer to at any time. KickoffLabs greets you with introductory videos.

Getting support assistance for either is just a few clicks away. You get detailed help docs and email support.

KickoffLabs provides customizable landing pages, which can be useful if you don't already have your own website, but there's a catch: KickoffLab's main pricing point is the number of "uniques" per month.

A KickoffLabs "unique" is a person that views a Kickofflabs powered form, an API call, or an email sent. In other words, every form view, landing page view, form submission, API call and sent email counts as a unique, and that can ramp up very quickly for a viral campaign. Monthly plan accounts will also be automatically upgraded to the plan that supports the number of views you need based on usage.

With Prefinery, you get unlimited form views, unlimited API calls, and unlimited emails, plus we'll never auto-upgrade your subscription.

Also, chances are you already have your own website, or perhaps would rather use your favorite, more feature-packed landing page builder which Prefinery seamlessly integrates with. Why pay more for something you already have, right? So, while Prefinery doesn't offer hosted landing pages, it does integrate with most landing page providers. KickoffLabs does offer simple landing pages; however, they're no where near as full-featured as what is offered by dedicated landing page providers.

Prefinery's waitlist/leaderboard system can use four different ranking algorithms - by signup time, by most referrals, position skipping, and most points. KickoffLabs on the other hand only has a most-points ranking system.

When it comes to rewards, Prefinery supports three reward types. You can automatically set emails to be sent on earned rewards, auto-invite a lead to your beta, give them points to move up the waitlist/leaderboard, and even only trigger the reward on a custom event. KickoffLabs can only trigger rewards based on # of points earned — that's it.

When it comes to branding, Prefinery — right out the box — will not have any kind of branding anywhere in your campaign for any of our paid plans.

With KickoffLabs on the other hand, be prepared to shell out around a hundred bucks per month just to completely get rid of their name off your campaign assets.

Using Prefinery you can create unlimited email automation setups based on triggers, making Prefinery more like a drip-style email service. Prefinery's behavior-triggered emails can be used to promote your campaign and keep users highly engaged.

You can directly edit the email HTML, if that's your thing, but we make it more convenient with fully customizable email layouts by using an easy, visual, block-based editor that you can use to create beautiful emails from scratch. Or, you can customize one of Prefinery's built-in templates.

KickoffLabs only gives you a fixed set of emails, where you can edit the subject or body with very few personalization merge tags/variables you can use, and you cannot add more emails. This means you can't build complex drip campaigns, like send email 3 days after the lead opts in.

Need double opt-in? Want to create your own custom email templates? Send emails with your own domain? They all come free with Prefinery. KickoffLabs on the other hand needs you to subscribe to their Business plan first.

No other competitor offers specific features around running pre-launch or closed beta campaigns. With Prefinery, you can invite and send unique invitation codes to your leads. You can also choose from 4 different waitlist algorithms for how leads are ranked.

You can also choose from 4 different waitlist algorithms for how leads are ranked. KickoffLabs on the other hand only offers 1 of those ranking systems.

KickoffLabs offers basic analytics, and works okay if you just need an overall view of how your campaign is doing.

Prefinery also offers an overview, while also allowing you to go into the nitty-gritty as it tracks more KPIs like opt-ins, referral source, conversion rate, individual email metrics, demographics and form responses.

Both offer a lead database that lets you search, sort, and filter lead information with customizable columns, but Prefinery tracks more data points with every lead. No other competitor offers the ability to dig this deep into lead data. Once your list gets massive, you'll appreciate this even more.

Furthermore, accessing each lead's profile in Prefinery shows a ton of info, including their notes (that you can add per lead), email history, webhook history, referral history, rewards history, etc.

Direct integration for apps Slack & Mailchimp are supported by Prefinery as well as KickoffLabs, though the latter also directly integrates with Facebook Audiences, and Klaviyo.

Both also offer webhooks, custom JavaScript and 3rd-party integration via no-code automation tools (like Zapier) which means you can also easily integrate either with any other app, including the ones already mentioned above.

But when it comes to API, Prefinery's is the most robust at a fraction of the cost in comparison to others so you'll have more integration options outside of Zapier, and can send/receive more data points.

If you missed it earlier, API calls in KickoffLabs counts toward your monthly uniques limit. With Prefinery, you get unlimited API calls.

Over the past 16 years Prefinery has smoothly handled HUGE campaigns, some with more than 500,000 leads. Many of our customers come from from competitors that just couldn't handle the load.

Prefinery has been around since 2008 — that's 16 years of experience — and was around years before any of our competitors.

Both Prefinery and KickoffLabs have opt-in consent features requiring leads to agree to your terms when signing up, and record this on the lead's profile which you can reference as needed.

Prefinery was the first to offer GDPR compliance. Privacy, Security, and Cookie policies are duly published and our Data Processing Amendment includes the EU's SCCs (Standard Contractural Clauses). Everything is encrypted whether at rest or in transit. Prefinery doesn't use Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, or other trackers when you visit our homepage or use Prefinery.

With regards to account access, KickoffLabs only supports a limited number of team members on an account. Prefinery provides it for free and with no limits on the number of team members. You can specify their privileges (role-based access control), require 2FA for all team members on account, and audit log of who did what and when for all changes to the campaign.

Prefinery respects you and your leads' privacy.

KickoffLabs bills you for uniques — the total of unique form impressions, API requests, or emails sent — consumed per month. This can get pricey fast as your campaigns scale. Also, you get auto-upgraded to a more expensive plan once you've exceeded your current plan's limit.

With Prefinery, your leads will continue to be able to sign up even if you've reached your lead count limit — no person will ever be turned away! While an unlimited number of people can submit your signup form, if you go over your limit you won't be able to view those additional subscribers until you upgrade your subscription, but they can keep coming in. Also, no surprise plan auto-upgrades!

At the end of the day, even if we never try to sell ourselves as the cheapest solution out there it eventually becomes more cost-effective to use Prefinery with your own website or with a dedicated, more powerful landing page builder.

Because KickoffLabs bills for uniques and Prefinery bills for leads, it is difficult to provide an apples-to-applies pricing comparison.