With e-commerce and online shopping being what it is today, it’s no surprise that there was a need for building the sales funnel into the online shopping experience, and that’s exactly what Russell Brunson has done through the use of ClickFunnels.
To date, there are 50,000 ClickFunnels users, AKA, “Funnel Hackers”, that use ClickFunnels as either their main website or an addition to their current website flow.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of Brunson, and even if you have, it’s still pretty incredible that he built up his ClickFunnels from his completely self-funded trial-and-error methodology.
In fact, Brunson was onto something, and now we have what the e-commerce community knows as ClickFunnels.
While difficult to build at the beginning, ClickFunnels is one of the most opportune ways to help convert web traffic from simply visitors to leads and ultimately clients, and there are many ways that they help entrepreneurs do exactly that.
Whether you want to build an email list or sell your products or services, I believe that this amazing platform has something to offer for any entrepreneur.
There is a lot of information out there about how to bring your site better conversion and get your business to take off, but can ClickFunnels really help you? Does using ClickFunnels make good financial sense? Are there any alternatives?
After you read this article, you’ll understand:
- What ClickFunnels are
- How much ClickFunnels Costs and the ClickFunnels pricing structure
- Features of ClickFunnels plans
- ClickFunnels alternatives
- How to make money with ClickFunnels
Before making any strategic business decision, it’s important to fully grasp the option and think about its financial implications against the risk and reward. With ClickFunnels, there’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get started without further ado!
What Are ClickFunnels?
So, after reading that first section, you may be wondering, what exactly are ClickFunnels?
Well, it’s likely that you’ve heard of the term “click” in relation to the internet, and if you’ve dealt with sales at all, you understand the idea of sales “funnels,” or the journey that a customer goes through when making their purchasing decisions.
ClickFunnels is an online software company that helps to streamline the e-commerce customer experience, allowing entrepreneurs to better convert viewers as well as upsell their clients.
ClickFunnels offer your potential clients step-by-step support so that they will actually stay on your purchase website and see it through instead of leaving for whatever reason.
There are a variety of reasons why customers way leave an e-commerce site before completing the purchase, and some of those reasons include:
- They are confused by what they see or what they need to do
- They get lost on the site
- They don’t see a solution to their problem
- They are overwhelmed
These are just a few of the problems that ClickFunnels solves. That said, if you’ve ever tried to create an online business, the task of creating a website was probably daunting.
ClickFunnels makes this easy for anybody to create a website with absolutely zero coding knowledge required.
With ClickFunnels, it gives you the best chance to not only create a pleasing website to the eye but also helps you learn how to have people convert from website visitors to paying clients.
ClickFunnels allows you to create a simple checkout design for your website that also gives you the chance to implement smart shopping and 1-click upsells, as well as automation of Facebook and Instagram marketing messages. You’ll have one simple dashboard for reference and control.
You’ll have templates to choose from, or you can take matters into your own hands and create your own. While ClickFunnels is technically software, it actually doesn’t require any additional platforms or installation, so you can do everything directly from your web browser.
You can also duplicate, or share, your funnel, making a copy of it and allowing you to share it with other users or edit it directly on the copy.
This is a great way for you to quickly share your website layout across a different account at any time.
ClickFunnels works with any niche and any business, and their website does, in fact, discuss different elements of how it can be used with different business goals and niches.
So, sounds great, right? It may be overwhelming at first to consider taking on the design of your sales site so that you can gain more traction through your e-commerce business, but using ClickFunnels has led to a lot of success for a lot of entrepreneurs.
They also offer a 14-day trial, so it’s worth a shot. Let’s talk about what ClickFunnels will run you in terms of price.
ClickFunnels Pricing Summary: Is It Worth It?
When it comes down to ClickFunnels pricing, there are two basic plan options that you’re looking at: ClickFunnels Starter, and ClickFunnels Platinum/Enterprise.
We’re going to break these down plan by plan so you can see what features you’ll have access to, and you can also take a look at the chart for a visual breakdown.
How Much Does ClickFunnels Cost and What Does it Include?
You can expect to pay either $97/month for the Starter plan, and $297/month for the Platinum/Enterprise plan.
That’s quite a stark difference, but it all lies in the details. Let’s examine what exactly those details are and which plan might make more sense for your endeavor.
ClickFunnels Starter Plan Details: $97/mo
When you sign up for the ClickFunnels Starter plan, you’ll gain access to:
- 20 funnels
- 100 landing pages
- 1 user access
- 3 domain names
- 3 payment gateways
- Live support
These are the basic features that you’ll have access to when you sign up for the Starter plan, but you’ll still be missing out on a few features, including follow-up funnels, email automation, segmentation, and a few more.
You can see exactly what you’re missing by checking out the Platinum/Enterprise plan.
ClickFunnels Platinum/Enterprise Details: $297 per month
While you’ll be paying a substantial amount more per month, the features may justify the price bump depending on your needs.
When you use ClickFunnels Platinum/Enterprise, you’ll have access to:
- Unlimited funnels
- Unlimited landing pages
- 3-user access
- 9 domain names
- 9 payment gateways
- Unlimited follow-up funnels
- Priority support
In addition to these main features, you’ll get email marketing, segmentation, lead scoring, backpack, branded affiliate platform/features, as well as subscription plans.
By the way, you may have heard about Clickfunnels “Etison Suite”. I just wanted to let you know that if you're wondering what happened to that package, just know that the Platinum plan is the revamped version of the Etison Suite.
As we said, depending on your business needs, you may consider using the Platinum/Enterprise plan, and as we can see, there are plenty more features to enjoy.
At $297 per month, I'd encourage you to pony up the investment and get the best package which will help you get the priority support you need (if you're new to ClickFunnels), but also for you veterans, the $297 per month package will give you more pages, more domains, Actionetics, the complete affiliate dashboard, and much more.
With that, we still think that the ClickFunnels pricing plans are well worth the dollars spent and should return on the investment for most people.*
Which ClickFunnels Pricing Plan is Right For Me?
Now that we can see a clear pricing plan breakdown of each ClickFunnels subscription, we’ll dive a bit more in detail into the true functionality of each plan and what business needs can be satisfied by each respective plan.
While it’s always great to have more, if there isn’t a real business need for what is offered by the ClickFunnels Platinum/Enterprise plan, it may be best to stick with the Starter plan.
It will be clear which plan makes sense for you after the following two sections, so let’s get thinking.
Does ClickFunnels Offer Chat Support?
Yes, ClickFunnels does offer chat support that can answer any questions that you might need help with. The platinum plan gets you priority support over the standard plan, but at any rate, you're still in good hands when it comes to their support team.
One thing to note though is that their team encourages you to self serve through their help system to try and solve the problem without having to talk to a human.
ClickFunnels Starter Plan
If you look at the general offerings of the starter plan, it may look good at first glance. But, after you consider what is truly offered, you can see there is a big difference between the Starter plan and the Platinum plan.
With the starter plan, you’ll only be able to have one user, and a limit of 20 funnels. This is ultimately not very many when you need to create a variety of different pages. What’s even more unfortunate on the starter plan is that you won’t have access to follow-up funnels.
Without follow-up funnels, you will miss the opportunity to follow up with leads who didn’t complete the process and are still not converted to clients. This follow-up funnel is discussed by Brunson himself as something that made his profit 16x more impressive.
Okay, so those are a few limitations; depending on your needs and your business size/market, they might work for you. But what about email marketing?
This is another feature that is unfortunately absent from the $97/month plan, and you will definitely need email marketing to help maximize your ClickFunnels account and average order value.
There are other marketing platforms that can be integrated with ClickFunnels, but as you may have guessed, they aren’t free, and $97 is pretty pricey for a small business to begin with.
Don’t ignore it and don’t leave it out— even though it’s not included, you still need it. If integrating ClickFunnels with a separate marketing tool doesn’t sound too great to you, we do have some alternatives that could work for you in the meantime.
We’ll cover those alternatives in a few sections below. Let’s discuss the Platinum plan and whether or not that’s right for you.
ClickFunnels Platinum Plan
With the possibility to manage 9 domains and unlimited access to sales funnels, follow-up funnels, as well as landing pages, marketing agencies and larger companies will definitely benefit from the ClickFunnels Platinum plan.
The affiliates platform is also especially useful if you manage affiliates or influencers who partner with you; you can track your top affiliates and view commissions that are paid as well as owed.
You’ll also gain access to their email marketing tool called “Actionetics”, which is necessary for the true and optimized success of your ClickFunnels.
Actionetics is also another important element of ClickFunnels, as you will receive smart analytics on visitors and when they complete any forms or give any information on your website, Actionetics gets started.
Actionetics will then use their information to get valuable data on this client so that you can understand who they are and how you can best provide value to them.
You can then create marketing funnels and custom funnels to market to them via email, pop-ups, text messages, social media, and more. There is so much potential there to create a real, customized service that is based on real website actions and client profiles.
Depending on your needs and what is viable for you, the Platinum plan won’t leave you wanting more, and you’ll have access to all of the tools you need as well as priority support if you need help.
If the $297/month is a viable price point, we recommend going for the ClickFunnels Platinum plan.
You’ll have much more opportunity through this plan and even if you don’t know how to use ClickFunnels, you’ll be able to use the site to build them into your website very easily.
If you can’t spring for the $297 a month and your operation is still quite small, you can use the available sales funnels where it counts and get things going for an eventual upgrade to the Platinum plan.
ClickFunnels Discounts
There are two sets of enhancements and discounts that you can get with the Platinum plan as well, so if you’re looking to get more out of your plan even still, one of these options may be for you.
ClickFunnels can be overwhelming for someone who has never used them before, and especially if you are a big business with complex or large website pages, you’ll need a bit more guidance and training.
This is one of the special discounts/coupons; if you purchase six months upfront, you’ll get additional training and support to make sure that your ClickFunnels takes off.
The second option is a yearly bundle that will save you almost $600, which is a great offer if you have the cash in hand and know you’ll be using this service for a while.
Both of the plans come with extra tips, masterclasses, extra bonuses and training. According to Brunson, having this wealth of knowledge is worth more than a college education, due to all of the profit increases you’ll see.
In any case, let’s review the two options:
- 6-month pack with extra training: $1997 (you won’t save anything, you’ll actually be paying $215 more, but it could be worth it if you need the extra support and bonus material)
- 12-month pack with extra training: $2997 (total saving of $567)
Keep in mind that these are only available for the Platinum plan; the Starter plan comes as-is. You do have the option to pay annually for the monthly Starter plan if you so choose. You can even upgrade from a monthly plan to a yearly plan once signing up. You’ll get a discount on your monthly rate when you pay per year.
ClickFunnels Free Trial
When you're looking at ClickFunnels pricing, it’s great news that they offers a free trial; you can test things out and get started to see how you feel about using ClickFunnels.
Your credit card is required to start your free trial, and while this is a common practice nowadays, some people are turned off by this requirement.
You can still cancel, however, and you won’t be charged for the plan; giving your credit card information secures your spot and makes your transition to a paid plan simple, but if you want to cancel and choose not to continue, you can absolutely do so.
In my opinion, I think nowadays, that it's standard practice to offer a free trial because people just want to make sure what they are buying is worth it for them.
ClickFunnels allows you to test drive the complete system completely free for 14 days. It's super easy to cancel as well.
ClickFunnels Help & FAQ
Here are some commonly asked questions that you may be wondering about by now!
Is ClickFunnels legit?
ClickFunnels has a lot of great marketing and is really hyped up as one of the best ways to boost your conversion to astronomical levels. We really love what ClickFunnels has to offer, and their track record is proven and researched.
While you are likely to see a lot of great success with ClickFunnels, it’s important to remember that ClickFunnels is a means to an end— it’s a tool that will help you with your conversion and your website performance.
Stay grounded and focused, learn about how ClickFunnels works, and become a pro so that you can implement the funnels as effectively as possible into your website.
ClickFunnels is legit in that they provide what they offer, they will help you increase conversion and sales, and your website will be more streamlined and attractive when you finish with your design.
Does ClickFunnels host the pages, or can I host them?
ClickFunnel does all the hosting; they are considered a “software-as-a-service” platform, and this allows you to have access to the updates and new features on their site. This makes sure that your funnels stay in good working order and provides you with better uptime. Your HTML is able to be exported whenever you like, as well as your contacts, so you’ll still be able to save outside the host platform itself.
Can I add a Custom Domain To ClickFunnels?
Yep! ClickFunnels offers up to three custom domains on their Standard plan with up to nine custom domains on their Platinum plan.
Can I cancel ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is a no-contract service, so you can cancel at any time. It’s very easy to do via the website, so you won’t have to even talk to anyone in order to get your service canceled.
If I cancel ClickFunnels, do I lose all my data?
You won’t “lose” your data per se, but you will no longer have access to it. Your data, however, can be saved as CSV files (contacts and members) before you cancel. If you just want to pause your service, they’ll ensure that it stays backed up for your eventual return.
Does ClickFunnels Offer Anything Besides a Funnel Builder?
Why yes, ClickFunnels offers a complete array of products. With ClickFunnels being their bread and butter, Russell Brunson has released an absolutely massive amount of info products that help his Funnel Hackers further their mission with the use of ClickFunnels.
Some of these extras are below:
- His “Secrets Trilogy” – Consisting of three in-depth books. You'll find Dotcom Secrets, Expert Secrets, and the newly published Traffic Secrets.
- Tons of Info Products – Funnel Builder Secrets, High-Ticket Secrets, The One Funnel Away Challenge, Funnel Flix, and much more.
- Live Events – Funnel Hacking Live
Anybody who's followed ClickFunnels or Russell Brunson knows that Russell really cares about his audience. Not only do you get so much included in the clickfunnels price, but Russell and the gang constantly deliver on so much more.
Can You Get ClickFunnels For Free?
Yes, you can get ClickFunnels for free, in a sense. So, a little bit later, you're going to see that ClickFunnels offers an affiliate plan that pays pretty handsomely. If you want to get ClickFunnels for free then all you have to do is promote the system, earn the commission, and then you won't have to pay for it out of your own pocket.
How Much is ClickFunnels?
As mentioned above, ClickFunnels comes in a few different pricing models. The Standard plan costs $97 per month with some heavy limitations, specifically three custom domains and a page cap of 100.
I've hit this page cap quite a bit since I test a lot, and I can promise you that it's annoying. If you can swing it, I highly recommend the Platinum plan. It's a much better value for your money.
What Kind of Price Models Does ClickFunnels Offer?
Click Funnels offers two pricing options.
- Monthly
- Yearly
A Real Review of ClickFunnels
After considering the above points, it can be a difficult decision to decide whether or not to use them for your website. Of course, all of the marketing on the ClickFunnels website points to a resounding yes, but is this really the best solution?
As I also mentioned above, I think the ClickFunnels pricing model is straightforward and easy to understand (also it's pretty inexpensive in my book).
We’re going to leave our real review here so that we can help you to make an informed decision. We’ll review some of the features, how they truly work, and what you can do with them. We’ll also examine cost vs. benefit and see if ClickFunnels is the right solution for you.
There’s no doubt that sales funnels are useful; online shopping and e-commerce is one of the most popular ways to buy things nowadays, and if a business is unsuccessful at providing them with a seamless and easy sales process, they won’t see the true results that they could be achieving.
It seems terrible to say, but even if your product or service is truly the best in your market, a badly created sales website is going to be a hindrance to your profitability and sales figures.
We can say for certain that yes, you will increase your conversion rate with ClickFunnels. This is the main premise, and it will be done no matter your business, product/service, niche, or business size.
ClickFunnels offers a variety of landing page templates and sales funnels that are very simple to implement and customize through their drag-and-drop editor, which allows accessibility to the software for even those who are less tech-savvy. In addition to easy implementation, ClickFunnels also offers a lot of support and training docs, as well as bonus material for certain plans, which helps users to navigate this potentially new online arena.
There are some vital features to the ClickFunnels software that set it apart from other services and make it what it is today. Let’s examine those features and discuss their true value.
ClickFunnels Features
ClickFunnels didn’t skimp on the features and functions, and there are plenty of things for an entrepreneur to enjoy in terms of building an effective and aesthetically-pleasing website that is built to convert.
The following features are the distinguishing ones of ClickFunnels. Let’s take a look.
Sales Funnels
Of course, the main feature of ClickFunnels is its sales funnels, but these sales funnels are going to be built into your landing page through their easy drag-and-drop tool.
They not only offer sales funnels that are pre-built and pre-defined, they categorize them into easy-to-understand purposes and help you to decode which sales funnels contribute to which goal.
For instance, if you’re looking to generate leads, you will probably want to consider something like the Lead Magnet Funnel, or the Squeeze Page Funnel.
Of course, you can use sales funnels to help you achieve other goals as well, including selling products, give value, survey users, create an event, and more.
You can access a video that explains each sales funnel, also giving you tips and tricks that can increase the performance and results from the funnel.
If you want, you can also create your own custom sales funnels, which will allow you to achieve any specific online objectives that you set for your business. The flexibility in creating your own funnels is valuable.
Templates and Editor
We love the beautiful templates provided by ClickFunnels, and the editor is pretty much the best we’ve seen in simplicity as well as functionality and user-friendliness.
All of the templates as well as the editor were clearly designed for ease of use and to help users have a positive and even fun experience creating their website, landing pages, and funnels.
Even a beginner could go to town making their sales funnels with a really easy learning curve. There are so many different things you can do on the editor as well, including:
- Content blocks to drag into sales funnel, including FAQ section, pricing table, timer, progress bar, and more.
- Fonts
- Background images, colors, videos
- Forms for surveys and SMS opt-in, as well as billing address and more.
- Media and embedded videos
- Pop-ups
- Social media
- SEO
- Customization through CSS
All in all, the editor and templates from ClickFunnels are very powerful and they are definitely worth it.
Functionality and Integration
The functionality and integration of ClickFunnels, on the whole, was very good; while you won’t have access to email marketing through the Starter plan, they make it very easy to integrate with other systems.
Not only that, the payment gateway integration is very simple and very effective, and it works with many different payment gateways, which is nice.
You’ll also get automatically-tracked analytics helping you to understand how your page is performing and what your customers respond well to.
All in all, ClickFunnels is definitely a powerful tool and delivers on its promises. While we’d love to see email marketing in the Starter plan in some form, as well as follow-up funnels, the service is really powerful and once you start using their editor software you’ll never look back.
ClickFunnels Alternatives
If you aren’t sure about ClickFunnels still and you’d like to check out some alternative services, we’ve got the information just for you. It’s important to weigh all options before making a decision, so checking out some other services isn’t a bad thing at all.
We’ve provided four of the most-discussed options below, so let’s take a look.
Kartra Vs. ClickFunnels
Kartra is an all-in-one online marketing software platform that allows you to have access to sales funnel templates online. While Kartra may be a better option for budget considerations, ClickFunnels is still a better platform for marketing and sales.
The funnels on ClickFunnels are widely tested and renowned as high-converting funnel templates, meaning the results you’ll gain is very effective. This is the top win for ClickFunnels over Kartra.
The thing we like about Kartra is that they offer a relatively simple design and they also allow all plans access to email marketing, something that ClickFunnels doesn’t offer on their Starter plan.
Even still, the integrations on ClickFunnels are effective, and if you’re looking for real marketing and sales results, ClickFunnels is the winner in our eyes.
Builderall Vs. ClickFunnels
As you’ll see with Builderall, you’ll gain access to generally lower prices, as well as other features like SEO optimization, funnel and page building, email marketing, payment gateway integration, and more.
All of these features that Builderall offers ClickFunnels also offers, including SEO optimization on the page editor, so there’s nothing new there.
The digital marketing platform that is Builderall is a pretty solid platform and allows you the tools to create an attractive website, landing page, blog, mobile app, and more, the track record of ClickFunnels isn’t going to be beaten by Builderall.
Again, budget is going to be the main draw here for Builderall, but their software is still relatively new; ClickFunnels has been proven to deliver results and there is no doubt that the tools and documentation offered by ClickFunnels make it easy to learn funnel building skills and get things moving quickly.
DropFunnels Vs. ClickFunnels
DropFunnels has some benefits, and it has been found to be quite useful, especially for a single brand domain. As you may have already guessed, the DropFunnels pricing points are lower than those of ClickFunnels, with some similarities and differences.
DropFunnels is a WordPress-based editing tool that allows you to create unlimited sales funnels and pages, as well as track links and optimize for SEO.
ClickFunnels is mainly focused on creating sales funnels and optimizing site performance. You can also integrate multiple domains, which isn’t possible on DropFunnels.
The page builder and drag-and-drop editor is much easier to use than the setup that DropFunnels offers, so it will take longer to get on top of the software design element and get up to speed.
If you are a newbie to website design and need streamlined tools, ClickFunnels makes things easier for you.
What’s more, DropFunnels is more about a single-domain site that wants to focus on SEO or becoming a blog, whereas ClickFunnels actually helps more with sales conversion and has a very successful track record in doing so. You can still optimize SEO with ClickFunnels though, and you’ll get many other features that DropFunnels can’t provide as well as better results.
LeadPages Vs. ClickFunnels
LeadPages also offers a somewhat similar drag-and-drop editor that makes using the system pretty simple, and they have a good base of pre-built templates; the LeadPages editor may be better than some of the others on this list, but is still not quite as high caliber as that of ClickFunnels.
LeadPages doesn’t offer any email marketing services at all, so if you’re looking for this functionality, skip it. You’ll have to have an integrated email marketing service regardless of which plan you choose.
Not only that, they don’t offer any live support, don’t allow for full creation of marketing funnels due to limited features, as well as the lack of checkout pages.
All in all, LeadPages will be much easier on the wallet, but it’s very basic and won’t offer the depth and success of ClickFunnels.
How To Make Money With ClickFunnels
While we’ve talked mostly about giving money to ClickFunnels in this article, there is also a way for you to make money through ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels offers an affiliate marketing program that allows people to make money on those that they recommend to the service.
The great thing about being a ClickFunnels Affiliate is that you get a payout from ClickFunnels not just for a one-time referral fee, but for the life of the referral. That means that as long as your referral is a ClickFunnels customer, you’ll be getting a piece of that pie.
You can be a ClickFunnels affiliate without being a member of Click Funnels, but you’ll probably have a better chance of gaining referrals if you actually use the service and can speak to it; if you don’t, why are you promoting it?
There are three different affiliate tiers for payouts:
- 20% Badge Commission
- 30% Approved Affiliate
- 40% Qualified Affiliate
So, every time your referral pays ClickFunnels, Click Funnels pays you based on the tier that you’re on.
In order to get bumped up, you’ll have to apply and be approved (30% approved affiliate) and then if you sign up 40 members or more, you can be approved as a “qualified affiliate.”
As you can see, there is plenty of potential to earn some good money through the ClickFunnels affiliate program!
Conclusion: Is ClickFunnels Right For Me?
There’s no doubt that Click Funnels is a valuable and effective way to boost your conversion, leads, and website performance via sales funnels. It’s also one of the easiest platforms to use to do so, and they have a huge margin of success.
Ultimately, deciding whether or not ClickFunnels is right for you comes down to evaluating your e-commerce and website goals, the feasibility of Click Funnels in terms of your budget, and how much you feel they can help you to build your website profitability.
The great thing about Click Funnels is that they offer a free trial and you can cancel your plan at any time, so you really don’t have anything to lose by trying them out for a bit!
