ClickFunnels Review (2020)
Details, Features, Pricing etc.
Disclosure: I am an independent ClickFunnels Affiliate, not an employee. I receive referral payments from ClickFunnels. The opinions expressed here are my own and are not official statements of ClickFunnels or its parent company, Etison LLC.
Today, I am sharing a SUPER in-depth review of Clickfunnels.
So, in this review I will cover:
- What is a sales funnel
- What is ClickFunnels
- What I like about ClickFunnels
- ClickFunnels Pros and Cons
- An in-depth look at the ClickFunnels Pricing Plans
- Clickfunnels and it’s Competitors: Who’s the BOSS?
- ClickFunnels Complaints
- And whether or not you should buy ClickFunnels
So, let’s get into it.
Before starting the Clickfunnels review, let’s take a look at what are sales funnels.
So:
What are Sales Funnels?
It is essential to understand the importance of sales funnels and its function in generating maximum profit.
The whole point of building a sales funnel is to get a potential customer’s email.
Think of acquiring an email like getting a girl’s phone number.
It is the best step in starting a fruitful relationship.
But just like getting a girl’s phone number doesn’t mean you will seal the deal, getting someone’s email doesn’t guarantee you will make a sale but it does maximize your chances!
The sooner you get the email, the quicker you can begin starting a relationship with the potential buyer and pre-sell them on your product or service.
Sales Funnel Create An Emotional Connection:
Like a good movie or book, you want to create an emotional connection with your audience and build it up to a crescendo that is key in creating the gold standard of business currency: TRUST.
Once you have gained the visitor’s trust, it is far easier for them to make a purchase decision.
From there, the sales funnel method would require you to send the buyer to a sales page.
The sales page must stand out, one that you have specially designed and formatted in such a way so that people cannot wait to part with their money for a purchase.
Most of the time, the right sales page will comprise a catchy headline, accompanied by relevant videos or images, as well as bullet points that offer a quick yet informative reference on how the purchase would help one’s life.
All of these will work as one to keep your visitor excited, and hopefully, make a purchase.
Once your customer has entered their credit card and made the purchase, this is the best time to continue the journey of this lovely, warm fuzzy feeling that they have, and offer them a special single or additional One Time Offers (OTO), and other kinds of upsells and downsells.
Sales Funnel Makes Each Customer More Valuable To You:
The whole idea to increase the profit of each customer.
Let’s take a look at it:
Let’s say your company is seeing a conversion rate of 10% for each person that visits your sales funnel.
Now let’s say that item is worth $10 a pop, netting you a net profit of $5. You will get an average 10 sales and make $50 profit for every 100 visitors.
But what happens if you were able to upsell 30% of your customers, as they decide to splurge on $10 for an additional item, while another 10% will sign up for an annual package of $500?
It might blow your mind after crunching the numbers.
Now for every 100 guests who visit your sales funnel, you will sell ten items, a trio of extra items, and a single annual package.
This results in a profit of $600, which translates to a whopping 1,200% increase in profit.
Now the increased profit margins will allow you the necessary leverage to outspend your business rivals in crucial areas such as advertisements that will further increase the number of potential customers who will walk right into my sales funnel.
With so many different types of sales funnels available, it is essential to come up with one that has been tailor-made for your business model.
While that used to be challenging and difficult, it is much easier to implement with Clickfunnels.
So, let take a look at what is Clickfunnels and how does it work.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is a website and sales funnel builder for entrepreneurs. ClickFunnels was created so that entrepreneurs like you, who aren’t programmers and who don’t know how to code, can easily build beautiful pages inside of a sales funnel, to grow your company online!
It was developed over four years ago by Russel Brunson.
It was part of the first landing page builders to come out with easy drag and drop qualities that made it simple for people to make sales funnels quickly and effectively.
Clickfunnels makes the process of creating various types of web pages more comfortable and faster, without sacrificing conversion quality and potential.
Clickfunnels doesn’t require any prior coding or web design experience.
At its core, Clickfunnels is an application created to help you capture more leads, drive more sales, and increase the lifetime value of each of your current and future customers.
What Does Clickfunnels Do?
Clickfunnels allows you to create sales funnels, landing pages, upsells and downsells and create membership websites very quickly.
ClickFunnels also integrates with Stripe, Paypal, and many other types of payment processors. This has made ClickFunnels a go-to service for online marketers because it is easy to accept payments online.
Say for example you are a health and wellness coach and you offer an online course and do one on one consulting.
With the help of Clickfunnels, you can send traffic to your sales (aka landing) page and get people to opt-in your email list.
Once they have successfully done that, you can give them the option to get a FREE eBook or purchase your course. If they decide to purchase the course, they are then given an extra page to get one on one coaching from you.
You can do all this directly on the right on Clickfunnels without having a website or paying for any additional software.
Clickfunnels also allows with its analytics software where you can see how flourishing your sales page is. It also helps you to A/B test your sales pages very quickly so you can optimize your pages for the most leads and sales.
Is ClickFunnels A Scam?
ClickFunnels gets some negative feedback because of all the affiliates who are trying to promote it.
But no, ClickFunnels is not a scam.
It’s a REAL deal.
It’s a great tool with a fantastic affiliate opportunity. So many online marketers are using ClickFunnels to build 6 to 7 figure businesses.
When people ask, “How do I build a sales funnel?” ClickFunnels is the BEST option hands down.
No other program can currently do everything that ClickFunnels does.
What Integrations Do they Offer?
Even though ClickFunnels has its email service provider through Actionetics, it also integrates directly with all the best email marketing programs out there.
For payment gateways, ClickFunnels integrates with Authorize.net, Stripe, Paypal, Clickbank, Infusionsoft, and a few others.
The one shortcoming with using PayPal though is that it does not support One Time Offers or One Click Upsells. That’s why Stripe is a better option.
How Does Clickfunnels Work?
With ClickFunnels, several qualities put it a step above others.
Let’s break them down one after the other.
Of course, let’s start with the essential thing ClickFunnels creates complete sales funnels for users, enabling them to drive both buyers and leads similar to these sales funnels as soon as you have created them.
Also, it allows users to process payments, offers a flexible page builder to make customized build pages, features an autoresponder and affiliate management tool, allows for downsells and upsells, and so much more.
Besides, ClickFunnels allows you to set up your funnel pages very quickly and easily. It also has the option for built-in email marketing software.
This allows you to seamlessly synchronize your sales pages with your email follow up and get rid of email applications like MailChimp and Aweber.
With such automation, you can also free up more of your time to concentrate more on essential things like developing your business!
ClickFunnels enables you to carry out A/B testing on each of your pages within your funnel. Besides, you can build membership websites using ClickFunnels.
After your leads have registered, they will be able to gain access to use exclusive membership portions of the service that you have created and maintained.
So, what does all this mean?
You can build an entire business on Clickfunnels!
And You don’t need to have a separate website and pay for hosting because that is all included in Clickfunnels.
You can also enjoy features that permit you to manage, pay, and recruit your affiliates. And, of course, you will be granted access to all the analytics and metrics necessary to review your funnel performance, campaigns, sales, and conversions, in addition to A/B testing results.
The primary goal of Clickfunnels is leveraging the software to maximize the spending of each customer who engages in your product or services and transforming them into possible big spenders.
Now, let’s take a look at what I like the MOST about Clickfunnels as a user.
What Do I Like About Clickfunnels? (My Favourite Features)
#1: Beautiful Funnel Blueprints:
The first thing that I like the most about Clickfunnels is it;s Funnel Blueprints, Clickfunnels comes stock with a comprehensive database of beautifully premade templates.
They take just minutes to set up and are easy to use.
It also consists of a marketplace where you can purchase and sell FREE or PAID templates.
But don’t worry because buying templates isn’t necessary for most people, there is a huge variety of pre-built templates that come for completely FREE of cost.
#2: Easy-To-Use Visual Drag and Drop Editor:
The second thing that I like the most about Clickfunnels is it’s easy to use drag and drop editor. And I think it’s the best thing about Clickfunnels.
It’s really hard Back in the days when I used to make some minor tweaks on my sales page and then constantly relaunching the page to make sure that the adjustments appear the way I want them to appear
With the Clickfunnels editor, any adjustments you make will appear the same when you launch the page.
This will seriously save you from a lot of frustration and time.
#3: Lots of Features to Choose From:
The third thing I like the most about Clickfunnels is it’s Elements (also known as widgets) because they are the cogs in the sales funnel that lets you personalize your sales page.
This is another powerful feature that puts Clickfunnels in a category on its own because it comes stock with many powerful widgets that other landing page software currently doesn’t.
Things such as: SMS Sign up, Surveys, Pricing Tables, Progress Bars, Facebook Comments, FAQ Blocks and Countdown Timers, and Custom HTML can really help with conversions, and ultimately mean more money in your pocket.
#4: ClickFunnels Sharing & Affiliate Link:
The fourth thing that I like the most about Clickfunnels is that it allows me to share all of my funnels with both friends and clients and is a cool way to make some money on the side, too.
How can I do that?
First, click on Settings, and then select Share Funnel:
Now, you can easily select the funnel URL.
This means any time a visitor arrives at that particular URL; they will be able to include this specific funnel straight into their respective account, only if they happen to be a current member of ClickFunnels.
If they are not on the right side of earning money, this is where the upsell bit sets in, ClickFunnels gives them a chance to try out ClickFunnels for free for 14 days to obtain my funnel.
Apart from that, Share Funnel URL doubles up as my affiliate link.
In other words, I will be able to earn passive income through a recurring commission assuming the new user remains.
Why not learn how to get the most out of this feature by being a ClickFunnels consultant?
From there, I realized that it would require coming up with niche specific sales funnels to sell that to small-sized businesses.
Not that alone, I could also sell the very same funnels in the ClickFunnels marketplace, where different ClickFunnels users can purchase them.
Sales funnels have this inherent ability to be a great lead magnet or bonus across various niches and are a fantastic method to suck in visitors into my funnel through an offer that provides something that they will find useful.
#5: Fantastic On-Boarding Process:
The fifth thing that I liked the most about Clickfunnels is it’s fantastic on-boarding process.
Using Clickfunnels is not rocket science, but if you’re like most of the people learning new software can be a pain in the butt.
ClickFunnels has made it very easy to get started with its innovative onboarding 7-day challenge.
It pretty much assists you how to use the application by making it fun, so if you stick through it to the last day, you will know all the ins and outs of Clickfunnels.
Of course, you are not compelled to take the challenge, but you will get a chance to win some swag such as t-shirts and ClickFunnels stickers.
#6: Rich High Conversion Template Library
The sixth thing I liked the most about Clickfunnels is that it provides a very good number of pre-built templates.
It is required you have a template after selecting your funnel. ClickFunnels will treat you to tons of models, and all of them are tested and proven to work well.
With a bunch of proven and tested templates at your disposal, ClickFunnels speeds up your A/B testing stage because you don’t have to weed out models that are not functioning.
Now, let’s have a look at some upsides and downsides of Clickfunnels.
ClickFunnels Pros and Cons:
Before getting into some real examples, let’s take a quick look at the pros & cons of using the ClickFunnels application.
Pros:
- Cost effective (basic membership is $97/month and has everything you’ll need)
- Easy to use “drag and drop” functionality
- Can be integrated into WordPress sites/custom domains
- Can combine with Stripe to take payments easily
- Legitimate Page Builder – you can see adjustments as you make them
- Can be integrated with Convertkit or other email providers to send automated emails
- Can be used to market Digital or Physical Products
- Support is outstanding, will often create video screen grabs just for you
- Membership Area functionality
- You can share funnels among different people (funnel design business opportunity)
- Has a comprehensive split testing tool which enables you to split test different landing pages and declare a winner
- Plenty of pre-built FREE templates that you can use and customize right away
- Conversion tracking statistics so you can compare what offers to convert the best
- Email integration which allows for full marketing automation
Cons:
- Can be sometimes confusing if you are a novice internet marketer
- It’s more software that requires you to spend more time learning
- When ClickFunnels collapses, so does your landing pages
- URLs can be funky if you are using a free domain
- Support is great but can take a couple of hours to respond
As you can see, the pros surpass the cons. Some of the limitations are pretty nitpicky, including the URLs being messy, but that’s more of individual preference than anything.
I know there are loads of other landing page builders that people will opt for, including Thrive Architect by Thrive Themes.
For me, I’ve discovered the funnel step integration to be some of the simplest funnel software to design though.
With Thrive Architect, you’ll need to design the page and then link to the following pages in the sequence, and it’s all done within WordPress.
While I love Thrive and their themes, I do think that ClickFunnels is inherently more comfortable to use than TA, but it comes at a monthly cost.
ClickFunnels Pricing:
You might be wondering how much is Clicfunnels is for?
Well, it has 2 simple pricing plans. In the beginning, it had three different pricing plans, but they have now been consolidated into two separate plans.
Here are the Clickfunnels Pricing plans:
Standard Plan: $97
Etison Plan: $297
Here’s what will be included in both plans:
Backpack: that lets you have your affiliate program and will track your affiliates sales and clicks to let you know how much to give your affiliate referral partners
Actionetics: that will enable you to build smart action funnels that don’t only send emails, but provide you with the capability to track which channels your viewers are coming from, segment them based on the actions they take and who they are.
As far as it operates, there are no ClickFunnels coupon codes currently available.
However, you can purchase Funnel Hacks for $997 which gives you six months of Etison Suite for free with some additional freebies.
This brings down the cost to $166.16 per month.
ClickFunnels does make it less stressful for you to try their service with their free, 14-day FREE trial. It’s unlimited in all ways which let you give the program a full test before you fully commit.
How to Choose Which Plan is Right for You?
The best plan should fit your business requirements.
I would recommend it if you are not sure to start with the trial plan of the full Etison Suite (You can downgrade it to a starter plan at the end of the trial).
Starter Plan will enable you to have up to 20 funnels, it does not add the email auto-responder (Actionetics) and does not include the ability to set up your affiliate program (Backpack).
This plan is great if you wish to get going in Affiliate Marketing or you are just getting started, and you own a small business.
Enterprise Plan is limitless on the number of funnels, it has a Backpack, and Actionetics Included.
With no end to the total number of funnels or the traffic, this is great for serious Internet Marketing.
In most common cases it is desirable to have an email auto-responder, you can combine Clickfunnels with most third-party autoresponders, once you grow having an external email auto-responder can become a huge expense that could be saved by making use of Actionetics.
The backpack is also an excellent Affiliate program tool that is highly configurable; this is what Clickfunnels itself uses for their affiliate program.
If you want to get Clickfunnels for the Best price then Funnel Builder Secrets is no doubt the best deal (recommended). FBS is the upgraded version of Funnel Hacks Bundle.
Funnel Builder Secrets Includes:
- Six months access to the whole Etison Suite Plan
- 6 months access to funnel script software
- This Plan can save a lot of money for a business that makes use of multiple third-party tools, which you can integrate by making use of the full suite.
- Instant Traffic Hacks which is a comprehensive training course on the different alternatives to get traffic to your funnels. Although you could have the best website, the best products and the best funnels in the world and you won’t make a penny if you get no traffic.
- Funnel Hacks Master Class that teaches you how to hack a funnel, how Clickfunnels works, how to generate a product quickly, and how to build all of the most common kinds of funnels to take you up and running with the appropriate funnel for the job.
- Soap & Seinfield Email Sequences is a course which teaches you how to generate an initial Soap Opera sequence to build a rapport with your Email List and then how to establish an ongoing Seinfeld Email Sequence to engage your list and open your emails. Your email list is a significant asset that most businesses miss or implement poorly.
- Inception Secrets is a complete course on how to improve a product and full scripts for each of the important funnel types and comprehensive training on how to build and implement them.
How Does Clickfunnels Stand Against The Competition?
As the common saying, there are different strokes for different folks and the same applies to ClickFunnels and other alternatives such as LeadPages, SamCart, Rainmaker, etc.
Here is how Clickfunnels stacks up to the rest:
ClickFunnels vs LeadPages:
LeadPages can be termed as a market leader as far as building landing pages are concerned and have gained a level of unparalleled popularity.
It does, however, have a rather insufficient scope compared to ClickFunnels.
While you can end up with an attractive landing page quickly to help me collect leads, it will not be able to satisfy me regarding selling a product or service.
If you could recur, LeadPages’ strength lies in lead generation (as its name suggests), but leave the sales to funnel a bit to ClickFunnel.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart:
Where SamCart is concerned, this remarkable product allows me to conjure some of the better-looking checkout pages that also have a high conversion rate.
So, how is it any different from ClickFunnels?
Therein lies the distinction: SamCart is meant to be easily set up and sold right away, offering support for both Paypal and Stripe while featuring 17 different kinds of customizable checkout page templates.
However, it lacks the degree of flexibility that Clickfunnels drag and drop editor provides.
In other words, ClickFunnels can design virtually any kind of checkout page that I desire.
I would not like to be limited by Samcart’s necessary customizations and pre-made templates.
Apart from that, you may find out that Samcart is not up to the task of capturing leads and creating complete sales funnels.
Considering that both Samcart and ClickFunnels cost $97 each month, the flexibility of ClickFunnels provides it with an edge.
ClickFunnels vs Rainmaker:
I honestly can’t say much about Rainmaker, but I know a few other marketers that make use it.
The people that released it to make excellent products, but, again, the only advantage I see in Rainmaker is if you have decided to host everything on your hosting account.
I believe it’s just a bit easier to have someone else organize everything, which is what ClickFunnels does.
ClickFunnels vs MemberMouse:
MemberMouse is one of the strongest membership site platforms I’ve come across. With other popular membership solutions like Teachable or Thinkific, they host your content in the cloud.
But with MemberMouse you’re in charge of arranging everything yourself, and you do get a lot of features for the service you pay for, however, remember you are having a deal with all the hosting, etc.
So if anything goes wrong with the hosting, or backend or membership privileges of your customers…it’s all on you to fix it.
ClickFunnels Complaints:
Bad Part #1: Adding a funnel can be slow
Picking a funnel kind and template and adding it to your account will take up to ten seconds whenever you are doing this.
I know, not an enormous deal, however, it is Associate in Nursing annoyance.
Bad Part #2: There are funnel creation and visitor limits
The ClickFunnels base package includes a limit of twenty funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors per month. This kind of sucks when you first look at it.
But when you think about it, if you are getting 20,000 visitors a month you can easily afford to go for the upgraded unlimited plan.
Bad Part #3: Learning curve can be steep
While ClickFunnels boasts of a rather wide selection of options and functions, it is a bit discouraging to new users.
While the overall interface in ClickFunnels is excellent, it might take a few trials in building several funnels before getting the hang of things.
I know I did.
Should You Buy Clickfunnels?
So the answer to the present question falls into what reasonably web merchandiser you’re.
Let’s examine wherever you would possibly fall on the selling spectrum, and grasp if I might obtain the software package in your scenario.
Novice Niche Website Builder:
No, you don’t need the software.
Focus more on learning some WordPress basics, and learn how to build a site from scratch that gets plenty of organic traffic from Google.
You don’t get to worry concerning sales funnels or selling funnels at once.
You can start experimenting with freebies to your audience after you have mastered the art of organic traffic, and then it’s possible you might find the application to be worthwhile.
For straight away, focus on learning the basics, and you can worry about new ideas later on.
Small Business Owner/Consultant/Coach:
You are missing out if you are in this bucket and you don’t yet have a ClickFunnels account.
As a small business owner, any advertising you’d like to carry out on your own requires a landing page to be designed for special offers.
Granted you’ll use Elementor, Thrive Architect or Beaver Builder if you’d like.
But ClickFunnels offer you just as much if not more flexibility than any other page builder, and technically you don’t even need a website to launch it.
Most people that have their small businesses do have a site these days, but also if you don’t – ClickFunnels doesn’t require you actually to have a website to use the application.
You can use the custom URLs (they look a little messy) or use your custom domain and install it in the ClickFunnels integration.
Intermediate Niche Site Builder:
Do you have some traffic? Are you already making some money online?
Depending on your position among this vary, ClickFunnels might be worth it. If you are making $2,000 per month online from affiliate income, there’s enough there to justify the $97/mo probably.
The expense to check out some different offers to your audience.
You also probably have the ability to set up some group or membership funnel for your audience, and perhaps charge a premium for doing so.
There are plenty of uses for it, but at this point, it’s a judgment call.
I’d say 50/50 on if it’s worth the expense unless you already have a particular idea or offer in mind to test with your audience.
Advanced Niche Site Builder:
Yes, it’s worth the cost.
If you are making more than $2,500 per month, I will consider you an advanced marketer.
That’s $24,000 per year gross, and that means you are officially an advanced Niche Site builder.
You can afford ClickFunnels, and it will be useful to you if you are building a product or offering a service.
Is It Worth Getting ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels will offer a lot of value to anyone in buckets 2-4, with bucket being a “maybe.”
If you are a niche site builder that only makes $1,000 or less per month online, your money will probably be better used on other applications to help grow your organic traffic for your niche sites.
I think anyone outside the vary of that may solely win with the tool as long as they don’t let it simply sit as a membership that goes unused and they take action.
My Final Thoughts on Clickfunnels:
ClickFunnels is a leading software that offers immense value to its users.
From the easy-to-build funnels that are fully automated to the ability to perform split-testing and conversion tracking to help improve results, ClickFunnels provides so much to its members.
One of the greatest features of ClickFunnels is that they give a 14-day free trial for members to begin the process of learning about the application and implementing it into their business.
For a new company, the 14-day free trial is the greatest time to work through the free training to learn as much as possible about what ClickFunnels has to offer.
If you want a reliable company that has a lot to offer both new and seasoned entrepreneurs, ClickFunnels is an excellent choice.