If you are searching for no-nonsense online marketing tools to use for your campaigns, then you may have encountered ClickFunnels. You are reading this ClickFunnels review because you want to find out if the business platform is worth your time and money. Read on…
Currently, among the most powerful tools for sales funnel creation on the market, ClickFunnels is an all-in-1 platform. It offers the convenience of a shopping cart, autoresponder, and email service, among others in a single sales funnel platform.
ClickFunnels is one integrated system that comes with lots of features that can help you build landing pages, sales pages, and webinars, and allows you to create billing pages. As a landing and sales page designer/editor, it offers a wide array of funnel and page templates to choose from.
If you want to build a webinar registration landing page, for example, you can choose from the platforms different sample pages available. This way, you will have bigger chances of coming up with a successful page.
ClickFunnels’ webinar template includes landing, thank you, live webinar, webinar replay, and sales pages. This is how thorough ClickFunnels can get!
In a nutshell, the system will let you incorporate all core marketing and sales elements necessary for a functional and effective sales funnel. These include landing pages, autoresponders, and web hosting, among others.
Unlike most of its more traditional competitors, ClickFunnels is a time and money saver. This is because it comes with all the necessary tools for running a successful and efficient online business. This way, you can gain more clients, market to them, and earn bigger profits – at a more rapid pace!
ClickFunnels’ main selling point is obviously its convenience and ease of use. This will probably weigh heavily in your buying decision. You can create funnel pages quickly - even if you are not tech-savvy – and save time and money in the process. This is possible with the many useful tools available on the platform.
If you are a newbie to the eCommerce and online marketing niche, you may find the platform a bit overwhelming – but not impossible to learn and master. To an ordinary user, the average learning curve for ClickFunnels would be a maximum of a couple of hours. Having said that, using the platform is a lot easier than making your own funnels without any help.
ClickFunnels also has a decent amount of documentation. While it may not be faultless, it does cover the most common concerns that users may have. If necessary, you can also get in touch with the customer support team, although most users no longer find the need to do so.
Overall, most aspects of the platform are easy to learn and get used to. The main features or the actual funnels are easily manageable. Navigating the entire funnel page is easy through the cohesive menu – from the template selection to the drag & drop editor.
Given that some payment gateways or email integrations need some basic knowledge, it is only a small fraction of what you need if you are to code the funnels yourself. You can actually gain the basic knowledge you need on your own. You can also visit the resource center or use Google.
To sum it up, ClickFunnels isn’t as simple as you may want. But, overall, it has an intuitive user interface and is well-streamlined.
The company also makes frequent changes to the platform. However, these changes are often minor and will not interrupt you from what you’re doing.
ClickFunnels offers a combination of convenience with customizability and choice. The system is quite user-friendly. That much can be said about the platform. But, some basic knowledge of the technology would definitely help.
As mentioned, ClickFunnels is packed with lots of functional and easy to use features. Following are the platform’s main features:
The software offers 22 different professional sales funnel templates intended for various types of business. These funnels are categorized into 4 main groups: lead capture, sales page, event, and membership funnels.
Each type comes with its own set of free and paid templates. This will make it easy for you to come up with a professional-looking funnel page within a few hours – even if you have zero web design skills!
Using the editor allows you to make all the pages of your funnel appear just how you want them to. ClickFunnels Pages have sections with set numbers of columns and rows. Thus, you can easily drag & drop what you need.
You can use the easy to use editor to start creating pages from scratch or modify and existing template. When using a template, you have the option to choose page components, and move them. By editing an existing funnel, you can save precious time you would otherwise spend creating from scratch.
With ClickFunnels’ wide array of essential elements, you have the flexibility to design your pages exactly the way you want. These include input forms, buttons as well as video and headline widgets that users will see on your sales funnel’s front end. The platform offers advanced elements as well including progress bars, surveys, and pricing tables that will help convince your potential customers to sign up or provide their email addresses.
Most elements you can find on the platform are customizable. Some of the common properties you can change are fonts, margins, and background color. This means you can make your website look and feel unique in every way.
One great thing about using ClickFunnels is the ease with which you can share your sales funnel with other people. Whether you are creating a website for a family member, a client, or a friend, they can start using the funnel you created for them right away after clicking on the link. No file transfers and FTP uploads necessary. Everything happens within the platform!
The Share Funnel link can be found in the settings tab of each of your funnels. If the users are already members, they can add the funnels easily to their accounts. Otherwise, they can first register. The share URL likewise serves as an affiliate link. Thus, you may get recurring commissions if the new users stay.
The platform offers lots of tutorials to help you get acquainted with the service. After signing up, you’ll be introduced to an onboarding process known as the 7-day challenge to test your learning curve. It involves 4 games, each of which has steps that you need to complete.
In each step, there is a short video and a task. The video explains what you need to do to complete the process. Though the entire process is optional, you can win a prize from ClickFunnels by completing all steps.
Aside from the main features, there are other ClickFunnels features worth mentioning. These include the following:
An automation software, Actionetics allows you to keep track of your leads’ stats when visiting your funnel. It helps you understand what your target audience needs. This allows you to market and tailor your products through your sales funnels. It can prove vital for marketing automation.
The tool allows you to set up affiliate programs. In this day and age of social media influencers and online presence, affiliate marketing has become highly popular and successful.
These funnels provide valuable help for your target audience in signing up for webinars, which are quite popular these days. The webinar funnel serves as an important source of info, as well as future services.
The integrated shopping cart lets you track purchasing habits on ecommerce sites. While other similar tools need other programs, this tool is incorporated in ClickFunnels’ tools suites.
Setting up landing pages is simple with ClickFunnels page components. The platform allows for easy adding of infographics, social network signups, rates, videos, buttons, and texts, among many others.
With ClickFunnels, you have a wide range of funnel templates to choose from. These include Squeeze, Sales, Subscription, Lead Capture, Events, and a lot more, depending on your marketing campaign requirements.
You can use a combination of Stripe and PayPal for your payment processing. This will allow you to take payments for your services, products, and memberships as the last stop in your funnel. You can also manage your affiliates easily.
Integration in ClickFunnels is precisely how it sounds like. It pertains to various marketing tools that you can incorporate into the software. Some types of integrations that you can choose to add to your account are email, SMS, webinar, and actions.
If you like to include MailChimp in your funnel because you like its auto-responder, for instance, you can easily do so, provided you are duly registered with MailChimp.
The notable ClickFunnels partners that you can easily integrate into your system are the following:
To incorporate any of these tools, just go to the integrations section of the platform. You can likewise click on the search bar. This will then bring out the tools list. Everything is self-explanatory. You only need to click on your preferred integration to add it.
Managing your integrations is likewise an easy process, but you may need to check the documentation of the third-party software to know exactly what ClickFunnels needs to work well. Overall, however, the process is quite straightforward.
By concept, integrations may be a bit more technical than some ClickFunnels built-in features like the page builder. Thus, it would be great to have an easy way of managing and adding integrations.
Although a type of integration in itself, payment gateways deserve particular mention. Although it is considered as just another integration in other platforms, payment gateways are provided its own section in ClickFunnels. These are called billing integrations. Simply put, payment gateways allow your clients' convenient methods of paying for your stuff. Following are the payment gateways available for your ClickFunnels account:
With ClickFunnels, managing all your integrations is very straightforward and convenient. Just make sure that you properly set up whatever integration tool you are incorporating into your account. This way, you can be sure that they will seamlessly work with ClickFunnels. They will run smoothly without much maintenance work after integration.
As mentioned, the ClickFunnels editor makes it possible for you to come up with funnel pages that look exactly how you want them to appear. ClickFunnels Pages are designed with sections having set numbers of columns and rows. This means you can achieve what you want just by a simple drag & drop process.
With the easy to use ClickFunnels editor, you can either start creating a page from scratch or edit an already existing template. The platform offers a wide selection of templates for practically every category you can imagine.
A total of 22 professional sales funnel templates are included in the platform. These are grouped under 4 categories that encompass all types of business.
When using a template, you can likewise choose the components you want to include in the page. You can also move them anywhere in the page you prefer them to be. Imagine the time you can save from merely editing or improving an already existing sales funnel, instead of creating one from zero.
The platform also offers a wide selection of elements that provide flexibility to your customized page. These include both basic and advanced elements and widgets. Most ClickFunnels are customizable, allowing you to alter basic properties like color background, margins, and font sizes.
Simply put, you can make completely unique pages not like any other. This can help in making potential clients sign up or leave their email address, exactly why you put up your funnels in the first place.
If your idea of great customer support is lightning-fast responses to your concerns, then you may be disappointed with what ClickFunnels has to offer in terms of customer support. You may find the platform’s customer support a bit on the slow side.
However, customer support speed is not really an issue when talking about ClickFunnels. Now, why is that so?
For one, ClickFunnels is highly reliable and easy to use as it is. Thus, you will not have much need to get in touch with the customer support team often. In fact, you can get support from any of the ClickFunnels Facebook groups in the rare instance that you have a question or concern.
The good news is, the company recently hired additional customer support staff. They are also currently working on improving the guides and tutorials. Thus, you can expect customer support services to significantly improve soon.
At any rate, the current state of the platform’s customer service shouldn’t influence your buying decision in any way. After all, you actually do not have much need for it, and the features alone are convincing enough.
ClickFunnels offers two pricing models, with each plan having its own set of features. The two are the Standard (Basic) Plan ($97) and Full Etison Suite Plan ($297). There is actually a third plan that costs only $19, the Share Funnel Plan, but you should be extremely cautious before considering this plan.
The plan is ideal for beginners. It costs only $97/month. It comes with a limit of 100 total pages, 20 funnels, 3 customer domains, and 20,000 visitors each month. For most users, these limits are often sufficient. Take note that you can actually exceed the visitor limit by sending over 20,000 visitors to your pages. Most actual ClickFunnels customers claim that it was never an issue with the platform.
The plan comes with all the features of the Standard Plan – only in unlimited quantities. After all, at $297/month, you will be paying a lot more for this plan! The main difference between the two plans is in the number of available Sales Funnels, Backpack (affiliate program), Actionetics (email auto-responder), and the landing pages monthly allocation.
Most beginners get too excited upon hearing this plan and grab it right away – only to regret it later on. So, don’t get excited yet, and avoid getting tripped up like most other newbies. As its name suggests, the plan involves a funnel that was created by someone else who has decided to share it – for a fee, of course! In theory, the plan sounds really great. The catch is, you are only allowed to edit the specific funnel you are given. To put it simply, this is quite a limited plan.
Experts suggest that you consider this plan ONLY if:
To sum up everything in this review, ClickFunnels is a good product overall. It is a legit tool that can help you gain an edge in the highly competitive online marketing niche. It is definitely worth a try.
The product has a few cons. There’s no argument in that. If you are looking for a marketing tool that allows you a more hands-on approach and more customization flexibility, then it may be better if you look somewhere else. You can try third party options that you can mix and match together.
If you ignore the cons, and still decide to go with ClickFunnels anyway, you may have the unfortunate luck of ending up with some software glitches and having to deal with their unhelpful customer support staff. You might also find the company’s blatant self-promotion annoying!
However, if you consider everything, you will realize that none of these cons can outweigh all the product’s pros. These include the rock-solid landing page builder, reliable integrations, superior templates, and relatively short learning curve.
The thing is, ClickFunnels delivers on its main goals: to make funneling traffic a lot easier for you, and to improve your conversion rates! After all, these are your very objectives in online marketing, right?
Clickfunnels Is a Website and Sales Funnel Builder for Entrepreneurs
Although this ClickFunnels review recommends the product, there are ClickFunnels alternatives that you can consider as well. After all, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What suits one user does not necessarily suit your needs.
Many consider Builderall as the top competitor of ClickFunnels. The two are neck and neck in terms of user ratings. Builderall is soon coming out with ver. 3.0. This could make things even more interesting. Builderall is also a good option if budget is a factor for you.
Second on the list of top ClickFunnels competitors is Leadpages. It offers some similar features as ClickFunnels, although some important features are lacking. It is also more affordable.
If you want more customization flexibility, then Thrive Themes will earn your nod. The problem is, the software kit is professional grade. It may not be suitable for you – unless you are a professional website builder yourself!
The platform offers an amazing selection of landing page templates. It is also better at handling the business aspects compared to ClickFunnels. If you put a lot of premium on your website’s design components, then Ontraport is worth checking out.