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Clickfunnels Review: Is It the Best Sales Funnel Software? (2023)
Published by Al Rose, Date Updated: August 22, 2018
Likes
- Widely tested and high converting funnel templates
- Clickfunnels are the established market leaders so in-depth training available
- Simple integration with email and payment systems
- Accurate split testing feature
- Generous affiliate program
Dislikes
- Email service only available on premium pricing tier
- Customer support is still a work in progress
- Inundated with upsells
Table of Contents
Are you looking for a tool that will help you build and maintain marketing funnels?
In terms of marketing automation and online marketing in general, Clickfunnels is now amongst the most prominent companies out there. It’s one of the most popular tools out there that lets you easily build sales funnels.
But does Clickfunnels live up to the hype?
This Clickfunnels review assesses their strengths and weaknesses and takes a deep dive into each feature so our readers can make an informed choice on whether this marketing funnels software suits their business plans.
Why I Picked ClickFunnels for My Online Business
I had to select something and invest the time to make it work, because our future growth was on the line. I took a gamble and bought ClickFunnels as my first sales funnel software, and it delivered for my needs for growing my online business.
Why am I now less a skeptic and more a guarded fan?
Because my sales increased, customers found us more easily, and best of all, I didn’t need to hire a whole crew of people to run it.
ClickFunnels’s sales funnel templates allowed us to implement a marketing process fast. I quickly learned how to send out our essential messages. We were able to test customers’ responses to our messaging and adjust quickly, instead of waiting for complex analytics to tell us what to do. (That’s A/B testing if you’re into the lingo.)
Another factor influencing my decision to buy ClickFunnels was the 14-day free trial period.
Unlike other software packages, this two-week timeframe is long enough for you to learn the basics as well as more advanced functions for building marketing funnels for your online business. Any gaps you don’t fill in this first go-round are covered in a review guide available even after the trial period is over.
I had to take a chance, and luckily, I didn’t lose this bet. I want each of you to have the benefits of what I’ve learned about the software and how it’s helped my business so that you can make an informed decision. I’ll start with ClickFunnels pricing.
Features Table
BASIC
$97
Per month
- 20 Funnels
- 100 Pages
- 20,000 Unique Visitors
- Unlimited Contact Leads
- 3 Custom Domains
- A/B Split Tests
- Email Integrations
- Optin Funnels
- ClickPops
- ClickOptin
- All Advanced Funnels
- Sales Funnels
- Membership Funnels
- Unlimited Members
- Auto Webinar Funnels
- Webinar Funnels
- Hangout Funnels
- Order Pages
- Upsell Pages
- Downsale Pages
- Share Your Funnels
- Priority Support
- Priority Template Requests
PLATINUM
$297
Per month
- 70 Funnels
- 300 Pages
- 100,000 Unique Visitors
- Unlimited Contact Leads
- 20 Custom Domains
- A/B Split Tests
- Email Integrations
- Optin Funnels
- ClickPops
- ClickOptin
- All Advanced Funnels
- Sales Funnels
- Membership Funnels
- Unlimited Members
- Auto Webinar Funnels
- Webinar Funnels
- Hangout Funnels
- Order Pages
- Upsell Pages
- Downsale Pages
- Share Your Funnels
- Priority Support
- Priority Template Requests
Free Trial Period
As I mentioned, you have access to a free trial period, and over that 14 days, you can learn most of what you’ll need to know to gauge how well this software will work for your business. That was enough time for me to consider how I could use ClickFunnels to help my marketing strategy.
Two Level of Packages
You can buy in at two levels of pricing. The difference is in quantities of what you want the software to do. Almost all other features are the same.
How did I decide which one was right for us?
The Basic Account is what you would think of as a starter package. It costs $97 a month, or if you want to commit to a year, $997 (that’s two months free). At the Basic level, you get a total of 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 unique visitors. This is where we started.
If that’s not enough for your business, try the Platinum package at $297 a month or $2,997 for the year (two months free again). Here you’ll have 70 funnels, 300 pages, and 100,000 unique visitors to work with. This is the level we’re at now.
No Long-Term Commitment
Another nice feature is no contract, meaning you aren’t locked in for a long service commitment. One month’s notice is all it takes to terminate your account.
You can also upgrade from Basic to Platinum at any time. And unlike other packages, there are no upfront service fees to get started, no hidden training fees, and no add-ons necessary to make the system function with full sales funnel capabilities. What you see in the trial period is what you get.
Funnel Hacks
If you want to become what I would call a super-sales-funneler in a short amount of time, various people offer funnel hack training programs. These are often $2,000-3,000, run for six weeks or less, and promise you the ability to do anything you can imagine with the sales funnels.
I haven’t set out to achieve ninja status, not when I have a business to run, but some people might find this attractive.
Premium Template Designs
While we found good options in the boatload of predesigned templates, let’s say those aren’t enough for you. ClickFunnels offers you the option of buying even more “premium” themes for creating your funnels.
The prices vary from $47 to $297 per design and the costs also depend on the type of funnel you choose to build. (But try the ones already available first. We’ve found everything we’re looking for set up already.)
Outside Integrations
Do you have email responder system you’re already comfortable with and don’t want to change? We use Mailchimp and found it integrates easily with ClickFunnels.
Other confirmed integrations include GetResponse, Aweber, and Infusionsoft’s email. According to ClickFunnels’s broad user group, just about any HTML form integration seems to work.
We found receiving payments from customers to be straight forward too. ClickFunnels hooks up to PayPal, along with shopping cart software like Stripe, Infusionsoft’s payment function, and ClickBank. It works well with most others too, according to users. The list is long!
One thing to note is that multiple integrations can become unwieldy with time as you are relying on different software platforms performing optimally at the same time. If you want a more all-in-one solution, Infusionsoft, the business software which we use in our larger projects (reviewed here) could be a better fit.
Training
ClickFunnels offers “done for you” funnels for opt-ins, membership, advanced uses, sales, upsell pages, shares, webinars, and more. Overwhelmed? Don’t be!
They also offer great tutorials on when and how to use these designs to meet your business needs – and it’s all included in your monthly fee.
The Pros
Bottom line, we’re all looking ways to reach our customers, offer them more value, and close the sale. Once we earn that customer, we want to hold on to them forever. In other words, sales funnels turn our visitors into our buyers for life. But first, we need to understand how they make their purchase decision, and why they choose you as the place they’ll buy from.
What does this have to do with the benefits of ClickFunnels?
It’s simple. Their prebuilt templates make it easy for you to put a sales funnel together and send it out without coding experience. Customize it with your logo, your text, and your messaging, and off it goes.
Landing Page Builder
It all starts with the landing page, the place where potential customers come to your website first. Right now, they’re still a visitor. You want them to leave their email address, so you can send them marketing messages. We found a first name is nice too, so we can individualize and personalize an email with a salutation.
The landing page builder in ClickFunnels is easy to learn and easy to set up. It’s a fast way of getting a decent landing page. The squeeze page funnel sends a nice thank you note too for signing up.
Here’s an added benefit. There’s a WordPress plug-in to link ClickFunnels directly to our WordPress site, making it seamless to work between the two.
Sales Funnel Templates
Once you have a potential customer’s email address, the next step in the sales funnel process will be to develop a trust relationship with them. As you can imagine, in the virtual world where people are bombarded with messages to buy-buy-buy, you’ll want to do this carefully. That’s where these prebuilt templates shine.
Why is trust vital before you ask them to buy your product?
Here’s an example: Most people don’t know their sofa’s structure breaks down with use. (Did your kids use it as a trampoline?) An informative email about how and why replacing your furniture regularly is important to your physical health goes a long way toward getting them to think about you as a trusted resource when they are ready to buy.
In fact, that’s another step in the funnel. Now you might be ready to send them information about a sale. If they’re interested, they’ll pull out that credit card and make the purchase. That gives you yet another opportunity to sell more.
Prebuilt sales pages and funnels templates cater to many different types of marketing goals. For example, webinars are notoriously difficult to set up and execute on most platforms. Infusionsoft, the other software platform we use in our business’s larger operations simply doesn’t have this kind of specific built for purpose feature.
ClickFunnels has webinar funnels templates that completely remove that headache from your to-do list. We’re considering doing a webinar series on home decorating ideas as a test of how this could work for us.
In short, it’s easy to select a type of funnel based on what you want to achieve, pick a template for the ‘look’ of that messaging, and customize the pages (this customization is one advantage when comparing ClickFunnels vs Leadpages). The drop-and-drag feature allows you to edit the appearance quickly, again, without coding experience.
Change the number of columns on a page or the boxes with images – move them around as you wish. Add your product links and payment info, and you’re golden.
Clickfunnels Page Templates
Upselling
It all starts with the landing page, the place where potential customers come to your website first. Right now, they’re still a visitor. You want them to leave their email address, so you can send them marketing messages. We found a first name is nice too, so we can individualize and personalize an email with a salutation.
The landing page builder in ClickFunnels is easy to learn and easy to set up. It’s a fast way of getting a decent landing page. The squeeze page funnel sends a nice thank you note too for signing up.
Here’s an added benefit. There’s a WordPress plug-in to link ClickFunnels directly to our WordPress site, making it seamless to work between the two.
Split Testing
I already listed the many categories of sales funnel templates included at no extra cost. There are tutorials to help you understand which would be best for your business goals. We tested a few and found standards we like, but we’re also experimenting with split testing.
That means we’ll send two similar messages (A/B) with narrow differences (a single page) to two segments of the same audience, to see which one produces more click-thrus and sales.
The analytics reporting feature is easy to understand, meaning we can adjust our strategy immediately to maximize message benefits to our broader customer base.
Cloning
Let’s say our split testing produced great results on one funnel and we want to use it again for another sales effort. We can change the lead magnet page (a free giveaway that gets them interested in this sale) and use the rest with minor modifications.
Now we have a proven messaging sequence that results in click-thrus and sales, and we can use it win multiple sales campaigns.
Page Widgets
As part of the many things you customize to your liking through the drop-and-drag design function, you have prebuilt widgets you can enter on any page. Some of these are self-explanatory, like price lists. Another we’ve learned from is the survey link.
Going back to our sofa example, in one of the early emails where we were building trust with the customer, we asked them to take a quick survey about the age of their living room furniture.
We then shared the results in the next message, which brought many people closer to the buy decision. The best part was we could put this survey link in with a couple of clicks.
Payments
Nothing goes to our bottom line without a customer payment, and that’s been easy to implement too. It’s a simple process since we integrate ours with Stripe (one of the providers on the integrations I listed earlier).
Free Trial Period
Since most sales funnel software providers don’t offer you the ability to test-drive their package before you buy, the 14-day free trial with ClickFunnels is stellar in this regard. This is enough time to send out a funnel and see how it works for you.
But is that enough time to learn everything?
Self-Help Tutorials and Onboarding
I mentioned training before, and I want to emphasize it again here as a major benefit. The many how-to videos ClickFunnels offers on every aspect we’ve ever needed made learning the things a breeze. Their supporting documentation is also a solid resource.
Not to be overlooked is the fun way ClickFunnels onboards you when you buy their software. You’re offered an optional challenge to complete in the first week.
Moving through four different games, you learn how to set up a funnel, where and how to learn about the many funnels offered, and how to attend Funnel University. It’s fun, and you learn so much from this valuable process. I highly recommend taking advantage of it. There are prizes too!
Online Community
Like almost any widely-used software package, a robust, active online community has developed among ClickFunnels users. There is an official Facebook group, and another group for affiliates. Both are extremely active. People regularly share tricks and tips and offer sound advice when you post a question.
Affiliate Commission
As if streamlining your sales funnel process wasn’t enough of a financial benefit, ClickFunnels offers you the opportunity to earn affiliate commissions. When another business clicks on a URL link set up through your business, they are given the opportunity to sign up for the 14-day free trial. If they buy the software, you earn a commission.
We’ve earned affiliate commissions by creating a series of furniture-specific messaging we offer our suppliers, the vendors we buy from, about the general category of their product (like sofas).
Mistakes to Avoid with ClickFunnels
Most of the mistakes we learned from were our own fault. We wanted to use every function and aspect we could, because the possibilities excited us. Learn from our errors and avoid these things.
Lookalikes
Not only are there a lot of ClickFunnels users out there, but many sales funnels outside their network are copying their styles and templates. Make yourself stand out by spending time on your emails to brand them. The more they are unique to your business, the more likely your audience is to pay attention.
Subdomains
ClickFunnels gives you up to three subdomains with your account. This means you can set up a sales funnel and direct the activities to a URL outside your own website.
The risk here is that any search engine links will then go to the ClickFunnels-branded webpage and not your own. Your company’s rankings on search engines will also drop because your company domain name won’t be clicked on as frequently.
Split Testing with Cold Leads
You might be tempted to use split tests to convert lookers to buyers. Don’t do it. You want to make sure the people receiving these messages have already expressed an interest in your product, ergo, warm leads. Cold lead testing tells you nothing about how to move the buy needle.
Low Quality Lead Magnets
When you give something away for free, make sure it represents the value of your products and services. If it looks cheap or is perceived as low quality, people will think that’s what your business is overall. Remember that you’re building trust, so make this your best offering.
The Cons
Is ClickFunnels the perfect sales funnel system?
No software is perfect, and it’s easy to find glitches or things you wish it did better after you’ve pushed the boundaries of what it can do. Here are a few we’ve run into.
Limits on Marketing Funnels, Visitors and Services
The two levels of service offered would appear to be adequate if you’re a small business just getting into sales funnels who needs to generate leads. But – and this is a big one – it’s harder to justify growing into the higher level. When you’re ready to move up, it’s a big move.
That being said, there are also certain services that are only available at the higher Platinum Suite plan. While the package information says you have set limits on funnels, pages and visitors, it’s actually unlimited.
Also, ClickFunnels’s built-in email provider, Actionetics, is only offered to Platinum Suite plan holders. The same is true for BackPack, the system where you can build your own affiliate links. While not deal breakers for us, some might wish they could keep the lower service level but with these services included.
If your business is growing rapidly and you need to get to grips with more advanced email marketing and CRM systems, then our Infusionsoft vs Clickfunnels page could help you decide if you are ready for a systems change.
Landing Page Only
If the only way you plan to use ClickFunnels is for your landing page, other service providers offer that for less money. Shop around to make sure you need all that ClickFunnels offers. You might not need its versatility or functions. LeadPages and SamCart are two to explore if you don’t need customizable sale funnel templates.
Customer Support
It’s a good thing the system comes with such great tutorials and documentation, because dealing with customer service can be a hassle. Live chat wait times can stretch to over an hour. Sometimes your issue means an engineer needs to get involved, and that sometimes doesn’t happen.
Based on our experience, customer service is an area where they could improve. However, when you look at other reviews, you’ll see that this isn’t everyone’s complaint.
Their Version of Upselling
We received a large volume of communications from ClickFunnels, urging us to move to the higher service level when we weren’t yet ready. There’s a certain irony in this, since we’re trying to upsell to our clients too, but we didn’t like being on the receiving end of so many emails. It was a good lesson for us to remember with our own company, though!
Is ClickFunnels Right for Your Business?
Let me start off by debunking something I’ve heard thrown around, that ClickFunnels is a scam or a pyramid scheme or some other way to fool you into parting with your hard-won cash. It’s not.
They offer an excellent software package that does what it says it will do – help you create sales funnels that work. And creating sales funnels with Clickfunnels is super easy.
The Right Fit
If you’re a small-to mid-sized business owner ready to attack the sales funnel process but lack the funnel experience or coding expertise to do it well yourself, ClickFunnels could be for you. Then again, if you have some of those skills and want to save time and money by not recreating what’s already offered, this is a good fit too.
You do need to have something ready to sell, though. This isn’t a business purchase you make before you have the business established. You’ll need somewhere to send customers to buy and something to offer them first.
Consider Your Sales Cycle
Before you begin a trial period, think about how you want your sales cycle to work. Factors such as when you gather an email address, what you offer as a free incentive to sign up, and how you’ll prove your value and earn a customer’s trust are things to decide on before you engage in a sales funnel process.
Once you have a firm handle on how you want your system to work, compare ClickFunnels to other packages. Some we looked at include LeadPages (collects leads, but not good for making sales) and SamCart (lack of complete sales funnels).
We also did a lot of research into our audience before we bought any software, too. This work was done to understand why our customers would come to us, so we could maximize the effectiveness of anything we implemented. Again, investing too early would be a waste of money if you don’t already know who you will be marketing to.
The right balance of functions and ease of use for us was clearly ClickFunnels, and our experience during the trial period underscored our choice.
Make sure you’re willing to stay on board with ClickFunnels too. If you’ll send out a couple of funnels and then not go further, the high price point is probably not a good investment. This is the kind of business activity you need to invest time and effort into to get an understanding of its rewards.
As you utilise Clickfunnels and your business grows, your sales cycle can become more complex. Your customer list will also become longer. At this stage you may need to assess if Clickfunnels is still the right fit.
Other software like Infusionsoft provide worthy competition to Clickfunnels in terms of email marketing and especially their CRM system.
Like us you may end up using both software for different parts of your business. If you want our opinion on how these two compare you can find on our page: Infusionsoft vs Clickfunnels.
Lots to Learn
Like any software package, you get out of it what you put in. Make sure your team takes its time to move through tutorials and read the documentation before you try a funnel for your online marketing campaign.
The system has so much to offer, it can be overwhelming to some, and they give up before they go that one step further. Stick it out and you will be rewarded.
Does It Work?
The answer is yes, when you put in the time and energy to use it. ClickFunnels helped us increase our leads, increase the number of leads who convert to sales, and increase our bottom line net investment. We hold on to our customers rather than lose them, meaning any time we spend in the sales funnel is an investment well-spent.
I have also seen my friends be successful selling services with ClickFunnels. Friends who are consultants, speakers, coaches, and online course or webinar providers have benefited, because the templates are laid out for them.
The best way to understand how it will work for you is to do your homework ahead of time and make a commitment to try out as much as you can during your free trial period. This is a business investment to grow your reach if you take the time to make it happen.
Still not sure?
Just ask me your questions below in the comments below.
Frequently asked questions
Clickfunnels is a drag and drop online software which helps you to create a series of web pages, called a sales funnel. These funnels are then used to lead your visitors to an eventual goal. This goal could be a sale, or signing up for a webinar or email list. No coding is required from the user when creating these sales/landing pages and template funnels for different goals are provided.
There are two offers with Clickfunnels – the Basic package which is priced at $97 a month and the premium service called the Platinum package which is priced at $297 per month. For the Enterprise package you will be getting access to more landing pages and funnels along with the Actionetics software. Actionetics is an email marketing and CRM tool which allows you send out broadcasts, set up autoresponder emails, track open/bounce rates plus many other marketing tools.
Clickfunnels have been in business since 2014 (i started using it in late 2014) and it has over $50 million in sales. Its founder Russel Brunson is a well known internet marketer and author of the best seller, Dotcomsecrets. Clickfunnels has also been covered by news outlets like the Huffington Post and Forbes.
Russel Bronson is the founder of Clickfunnels, founding the company in 2014. The company was entirely self funded by his firm, Etison LLC. He still runs Clickfunnels today.
Once you have signed up to Clickfunnels, i would recommend going to their info site at http://docs.clickfunnels.com/getting-started-introduction-to-clickfunnels
Here they will give you a detailed walkthrough of how to use the software effectively. There are also plenty of helpful videos on youtube.
In order to cancel Clickfunnels, go to the ‘Account’ tab on your membership homescreen and scroll down to ‘Account Billing’. Here you can alter your Clickfunnels membership.
The below info page from Clickfunnels will show you the step by step method to delete a funnel.
https://docs.clickfunnels.com/funnels/creating-deleting-archiving-a-funnel/how-to-delete-or-archive-a-funnel
For an all in one solution which is very easy to use, Clickfunnels is worth the monthly fee in my opinion. You also get access to template sales funnels and landing pages that have been proven winners through years of testing. These benefits alone make it a worthwhile investment for me. Competitors like Infusionsoft will give you features that Clickfunnels does not have but that is at a cost way over Clickfunnels’ basic package if you want multiple users.