GemPages Review (2024): Is It Worth The Hype?

Sometimes it feels like Shopify store owners have to wear a hundred different hats. At times, you have to be a salesperson; at other points, an SEO specialist, but to get things up and running, you need to be a web designer.

Your store design is vitally important to the success of your online business, as it it's is one of the most powerful tools in your belt to stand out from the crowd and deliver a branded, unique user experience.

With so much riding on your web design, it’s no wonder some find Shopify's basic themes a bit limiting. In addition, the lack of granular design control can be frustrating – especially if you have a specific vision for your store's aesthetic.

Luckily, apps like GemPages allow you to do more with your storefront. So, in this GemPages review, we’ll look at what it offers, how much it costs, and how easy it is to use.

There's lots of ground to cover, so let’s get started!

What is GemPages?

In short, GemPages was initially created to empower online merchants to become their own web designers and achieve their creative vision.

It's described as a “launchpad” for startups and SMEs, creating a doorway to complete creative freedom – without writing a single line of code.

The first progress towards GemPages as we know it today started in 2017. However, after a hiatus for redevelopment, the app is now back in full swing.

Complete with a design-focused custom dashboard and new features, GemPages is definitely worth a second glance.

Today, the popular Shopify app enjoys an average 4.9-star rating from 3800+ reviews in Shopify's app directory. It's also been used to publish over 1.800.000 web pages, including for the likes of heavy-hitters such as TurtleBeach, Davines, and Moschino – to name a few!

GemPages Key Features

GemPages provides Shopify users with an intuitive drag-and-drop page builder . From here, you're encouraged to create different page types, including:

• Landing pages
• Home pages
• Product pages
• Collection pages
• Blog posts
• Advertorials
• Other brand pages such as Terms and Conditions, Legal, About Us, and more

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the available design tools:

GemAI: The Image-to-Layout Tool

Like many modern website design tools, GemPages has evolved in recent years to include innovative new capabilities, powered by AI.

GemAI Image-to-Layout is an exceptional capability included in GemPages premium plans. It was the first artificial intelligence tool created by GemPages, to help business leaders build attractive Shopify store pages in seconds.

The solution works by converting visual assets and references into editable layouts in seconds, saving businesses time they can channel back into growing their store.

You need a GemPages version 7 account to access the feature, but once you’re in the right place, using GemAI couldn’t be simpler.

All you need to do is access the GemPages app on Shopify, and find a reference you want to base your new layout on.

This could be a URL, or a specific image. Once you’ve got your reference, open the editor, and click on “Image-to-Layout”. From there, select “Create new Page”, or “Create a landing page from an image or link”.

Insert your resource, and click “Generate”, and the AI tool will create a selection of layouts based on your unique input.

You can sort through the options to find your favorite, and once you have your layout, you’ll be able to customize different components.

Notably, the number of layout sections you can generate with AI will vary depending on the GemPages plan you choose. Additionally, it’s worth remembering that the generated elements will use the “GemPages Element” default settings.

Though there is a slight learning curve involved in editing and customizing your pages, the feature does remove a lot of the complexity of building an attractive site layout.

It’s also a great way to ensure your website’s appearance is unique to your brand.

The Editor

Alt-text: GemPages Editor

GemPages provides a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface for building, customizing, and optimizing your Shopify store pages.

Its extensive library of 100+ pre-built elements, categorized by function like design, sales, and marketing, facilitates efficient page creation.

An intuitive options menu enables fine-tuning of individual elements. This includes adjusting fonts, sizing, color, and other design aspects to achieve your desired aesthetic.

GemPages’ elements are divided into three categories:

1. Design
2. eCommerce
3. Marketing & Conversion

Design elements include:

• Text blocks
• Icons and images
• Carousels and accordions
• Parallax
• Excerpts
• Tabs
• Headings and titles

eCommerce elements include:

• Related products
• Image and product lists
• Product descriptions
• Price
• SKU
• Variants
• Swatches
• Cart button
• File upload
• Quantity
• Counters
• Toolbars
• Banners

And finally, you can also include marketing elements, some of which include:

• Stock Counter
• Countdown Timer
• Contact forms
• Video backgrounds
• Pricing cards
• Hero banners
• Vimeo and YouTube embeds
• Social sharing features
• Google Maps
• Checkboxes
• Video popups
• Dropdowns
• Submit buttons
• Before and after image comparisons

However, suppose you boast some coding know-how. In that case, you can customize these elements by right-clicking and editing the HTML, CSS, and/or JavaScript yourself.

CRO Templates

With GemPages, you don’t have to start the web design process from scratch. The app comes with over 80+ templates explicitly designed to meet the needs of specific industries and communicate your store’s value.

For example, there are themes based on fashion, food, sports, jewelry, art, etc. Many of these templates are available on GemPages's cheapest plan.

However, there are a few more professional-looking ones that only become accessible when you pay for the Business plan or higher.

In addition, all templates are fully responsive for an excellent mobile, tablet, and desktop experience.

You can also save your own store templates or just template sections to reuse on another page or store. Lastly, it's worth mentioning that you can export and import themes seamlessly.

This is especially handy if you're looking to extend your brand across several sites.

Search Engine Optimization

The pages created using GemPages come with clean code to ensure SEO friendliness. Also, within your page settings, you can edit SEO tags and descriptions.

Plus, you can add an image for social sharing, configure your H1 H2 tags, and insert image alt texts.

You can also achieve maximum website responsiveness by checking how your store appears on tablets and mobile devices.

On top of this, GemPages ensures fast page loading speeds with its high-speed CDN. You also benefit from preload resource hints and lazy loading features, which only load elements when they're actually needed, which again boosts page loading times.

GemPages Theme Sections

One of the great things about GemPages is how easy it is to make granular changes to specific components of your site, at scale.

Whether you’re building a store for the first time, or updating your website, you might need to alter things like your “Contact Us” section, or Hero banner, on multiple pages at once.

When this happens, you don’t want to have to edit each page separately.

Fortunately, GemPages offers the “Theme Section” feature. This gives you the option to deploy pre-made “sections”, for everything from FAQs to testimonials, in seconds.

You can deploy these sections across multiple pages on your Shopify store instantly, and update them all at once.

Theme Sections are great for giving your store a unified appearance and design across all pages immediately.

Notably, the sections you create can vary depending on the version of GemPages you’re using. The standard solution comes with sections for things like your “Contact Us” section, trust signals, product benefits, CTAs, and FAQs.

For more advanced sections, such as your footer and header, you’ll need to use GemPages version 7. On the plus side, Theme sections are available on all paid plans, and they’re very easy to use.

All you need to do is go into the “GemPages Editor” and click on a section. From there, you can choose to “Create theme section” and give the section a name.

To extend your section across various pages on your store, simply head to the “Library” section on the top of the Editor page, and click “Saved Library”.

From there, you can choose the section you want to add to all of your pages. Plus, if you decide to make changes to your section, the alterations will automatically sync across all of the pages where that section is used in the future.

Customer Support

GemPages provides customer support via live chat and email. The team is active from Monday to Friday, 8 am to 6 pm (GMT + 7).

During this time, they promise to assist you within minutes. Your request will be dealt with within 24 hours outside of these operating hours.

An online self-help center also answers a wide range of questions and looks at features and integrations in more detail. And finally, you can check out their tutorial videos.

These walk you through GemPages’s elements and explain how to create more advanced functionality on your web pages.

GemPages Third-Party App Integrations

Another exceptional feature of GemPages, is that it can integrate seamlessly with virtually any app in the Shopify app store.

There are hundreds of apps to choose from, which can enhance how you build your website, as well as the features you can access on your store.

There are two ways to add third-party apps to GemPages. The first option is to visit the “integrations” marketplace on the GemPages website.

Here, you can find integrations for:

• Email marketing (and other forms of marketing)
• Customer analytics
• Customer retention, loyalty, and rewards
• Navigation and search
• Popups and notifications
• Order tracking
• Privacy
• Product bundling
• Product feeds
• Product review
• Product options
• Sales and conversion
• SEO
• SMS
• Store design
• Subscriptions
• Social proof and trust badges
• Timers and counters
• Upselling and cross selling
• Wholesale pricing
• Translation

The alternative option is to integrate third party apps with the GemPages Liquid element. This is a slightly more complex option as it does require some coding knowledge.

To leverage the Liquid option, you’ll need to access the code of the app you want. How you get this code will vary depending on the app in question (some will require you to request documentation).

Once you have the code, you can visit the GemPages dashboard, select the “Edit” button and drag and drop a Liquid Element into the ideal spot on your page.

Right-clicking on the element will allow you to edit the code, and insert the information you have from the app.

GemPages Academy

GemPages doesn’t just give business owners the tools they need to build more attractive, and lucrative Shopify stores.

The team behind the solution also ensures business leaders have the resources they need to facilitate positive growth. GemPages Academy is an excellent resource for beginners and growing companies in the ecommerce world.

It includes dozens of articles and courses, designed to help you make intelligent decisions about the development of your business. There are solutions for beginners and experts alike, packed with screenshots, videos, images, and useful guidance.

The great thing about the Academy is you can choose resources based on how you prefer to learn. There are step-by-step tutorial videos, informative blogs, and a range of other tailored options to match your needs.

What’s more, if you’re a paid user, you’ll get access to a range of extra perks, such as a premium course option, advanced materials, and even discounts on certain Shopify apps.

The resources are all extremely easy to use, with insightful recommendations and tips that can help you strengthen user experience, increase conversions, and more.

You can even access articles that look at the latest trends and statistics in the ecommerce landscape.

GemPages Pricing

GemPages offers a free trial if you want to check the app out before buying. After that, you'll have to choose from three premium plans for more advanced features, which are billed monthly.

The BuildPlan

For $29 per month, you get everything in the Freeplan, plus:

• You can create product and collection pages.
• You can create blog posts.
• Access to pro themes and block templates. These are pre-designed blocks that you can simply drop into your website without having to add much customization.
• You can hide the header and footer on pages where you’d like to draw more attention to your main content.
• You can place an add-to-cart button anywhere on your website that remains visible as visitors scroll.
• You can insert pre-designed sections and templates from your library into your web pages. You can also export them to other stores where GemPages is installed.
• Access to the custom code editor.
• Live chat support.

The OptimizePlan

The Optimizeplan will set you back $59 per month, for which you get everything in the prior programs, plus:

• Generate unlimited sections with GemAI Image-to-layout.
• Publish up to 100 sections when using the Theme Section feature.
• You can schedule content ahead of time.
• Access to priority customer support

*GemPages pricing is handled alongside Shopify’s 30-day invoicing system to match its billing cycle.

GemPages Pros and Cons

Now that we’ve covered everything you need to know about GemPages for Shopify, let’s remind ourselves of the tool’s most significant advantages and disadvantages:

Pros 👍

• Intuitive drag-and-drop builder that makes building and customizing Shopify pages easy, even for those with no technical background
• 80+ CRO templates catering to different page types and across diverse needs
• Free plan available. Paid plans offer more features at a lower cost than its peers
• Access to a wide range of third-party app integrations, streamlining the design process
• Receive reliable customer support within 24 hours or just a few minutes during office hours

Cons 👎

• It doesn’t support any eCommerce platform other than Shopify
• Website analytics features aren’t currently built into the platform

FAQ

Last but not least, if you’re still left with a few questions about GemPages, the answers to these FAQs might remedy that:

How compatible is GemPages with my Shopify theme and apps?

GemPages is compatible with all Shopify themes. Plus, GemPages has partnered with dozens of popular Shopify apps across different categories like marketing and sales to improve your store and make things easier.

If you want to use an app that's not on GemPages’ list, GemPages' versatile Shopify app element lets you add third-party apps to your page effortlessly.

Which GemPages plan is right for me?

GemPages customizes the ideal plan depending on your specific needs:

1. Free Plan: Perfect for beginners or those new to page builders. If you're not ready for a paid plan but want to create one professional-looking Shopify page with GemPages, the GemPages free plan is an excellent starting point.
2. Build Plan: GemPages’ most popular choice for business owners seeking extensive customization beyond Shopify theme limitation, running marketing campaigns, or testing winning products through a custom landing page.
3. Optimize Plan: Ideal for growing and profitable stores looking to optimize conversions, benefit from high-priority support, and access advanced features to scale your stores.
4. Enterprise Plan: Tailored for scaling businesses aiming to surpass limitations, with highly prioritized and dedicated support from the GemTeam. Recommended for Shopify Plus users.

To maximize savings, opt for an annual plan and enjoy a 20% discount compared to monthly plans. If you're still uncertain, GemPages offers a money-back guarantee for all plans within the first 30 days of your subscription.

Can you explain GemPages’ AI capabilities?

GemAI, GemPages AI capability, is designed with the goal of making page-building for Shopify sellers even more effortless and efficient. As part of GemAI, GemPages' first AI feature, Image-to-Layout, can generate editable layouts from reference images or URLs and is proven to empower sellers to create essential pages like landing pages and product pages faster.

What do other customers say about GemPages?

GemPages enjoys stellar reviews in Shopify’s app directory, achieving an average 4.9-star rating with thousands of happy customers.

Users praise it as the best page builder app for Shopify and call it easy to use with an excellent customer support team.

They also praise the functionality it adds to your store. In addition, GemPages continues to update its services, so users regularly enjoy new features.

GemPages Review: Our Final Verdict

So, there you have it; you’ve made it to the end of our GemPages review!

All in all, for a web page builder for your online store to be worth your while, it needs to meet a range of criteria.

They should be more intuitive and versatile than what your eCommerce platform already provides, add extra functionality, and provide beautiful templates.

GemPages fulfills all of this and more. So it’s not surprising the app’s achieved high praise on Shopify’s app directory.

With a wide range of stunning templates, impressive page speed, search engine optimization, and a great variety of functional building blocks, GemPages is the perfect choice for any new online merchant. In addition, it’s easy to use and quick to set up – which is always a plus!

Will you be checking GemPages out anytime soon, or have you perhaps already given its free trial a go? We’d love to hear how it went. Share your experience in the comments below, and visit our blog for more articles like this.