If you are a small business owner or an affiliate marketer, you’ve probably heard about ClickFunnels – an online sales funnel builder that helps you increase conversions and make more money.
But, is it really worth the hype?
There’s no denying that ClickFunnels is the market leader in its niche. Even if it’s not right for your business, you should at least be familiar with it.
This honest, in-depth review will help you find out everything you need to know about ClickFunnels to make the right choice for your business.
We will discuss all the exciting features, pricing, and pros and cons of the software in detail, so you can figure out how exactly it can actually help your business grow.
Ready? Let’s get started!
Contents:
What are Sales Funnels?
To understand the ClickFunnels software, you need to know how sales funnels work.
So, let’s get to that first.
In the digital marketing world, a sales funnel can be best described as a multi-step process that converts prospective browsers into actual buyers.
The series of steps involved take a visitor from being aware about your business to developing interest, making a decision, and finally taking action and successfully completing a subscription/purchase.
If you think about it, a sales funnel is not all that different from a real-life funnel. You pour a liquid inside at the top of the funnel, and it filters out through the end to reach your desired destination.
In the same way, visitors pour in at the top of a sales funnel, and come out through the end as customers. Unlike the real-life funnel, though, not all visitors end up buying from you.
A sales funnel typically starts off with a landing page that entices visitors to sign up and leave their email addresses – usually by providing them with incentives, like free eBook downloads, online quizzes, or email newsletters.
Once you obtain customers’ emails, you can interact with them, build trust, and develop relationships to stimulate purchase decisions.
The next steps in a sales funnel mostly include sales letters, upsell offers, and thank you pages that all lead to a customer successfully subscribing or completing a purchase.
It might seem simple, but creating an effective sales funnel that’s guaranteed to increase conversions can be a complicated and difficult task. Thankfully, this is where ClickFunnels comes in.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was launched in 2014 by co-founders Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson. Today, it’s a $360 million SaaS company, entirely self-funded!
Many people believe ClickFunnels is simply a landing page builder.
But, it’s so much more than that.
The platform essentially lets businesses create a series of web pages, or a sales funnel, which direct users towards an end goal.
While building an effective sales funnel on your own can be complicated, ClickFunnels simplifies the process for all kinds of business owners and marketers – newbie or expert!
The software comes with multiple, tried-and-tested sales funnel templates for various types of businesses. Whether you run a consultancy agency or an online clothing store, you can be sure you’ll find a great, conversion-optimized funnel for your business.
ClickFunnels offers two plans for businesses to choose from:
They both come with their own set of features and pricing – you get what you pay for. Check out the Pricing section near the end of the review for more details on the two plans!
ClickFunnels: How it Works
ClickFunnels provides users with ready-to-go sales funnels, so most of the technical stuff has already been taken care of.
But, that doesn’t mean it lacks customizability features. If you ever feel the need to tweak some of the pages, you can easily do so using the in-built drag-and-drop page editor (that also supports custom code).
Now, let’s dig into the details and find out what ClickFunnels is really made of:
Pages to Funnels
A powerful sales funnel is made up of a series of pages aligned strategically to optimize the sales process.
Before we talk about the different funnels offered by the platform and how you can customize them, let’s discuss the key pages that make up an effective funnel:
Squeeze Page (Opt-In Page)
Most of the pre-designed funnels in ClickFunnels start off with a squeeze page (or, opt-in page). Here’s an example of a squeeze page:
The sole purpose of this page is to capture important information about visitors so that you can retarget them. Usually, that important information is their name and email address.
Sales Letter Page
Just like its name suggests, the purpose of the sales letter page is to sell your product or service. These pages can also be used at the start of a funnel.
Here’s an example of a sales letter page:
This page highlights the features, benefits, and value of your product or service with a video or a letter, and comes with an enticing call-to-action at the bottom that lets visitors easily make the purchase.
Application Page
An application page is like an extended version of the squeeze page.
Instead of collecting just a single piece of information, it lets visitors enter additional contact or personal details, such as phone numbers, addresses, and other valuable data.
Upsell/OTO Page
The upsell, or one-time-offer (OTO) page is designed to entice customers to buy an expensive product at an exclusive, discounted price just as they’re about to check out with a smaller purchase.
Here’s an example of an upsell/OTO page:
If customers have already entered in their billing details by this point, falling prey to a delicious, one-click upsell offer is fairly easy!
Thank You/Offer Wall Page
This page is typically displayed right after customers complete a purchase or subscription.
It thanks them for their action and displays a list of other products they might be interested in.
Funnel Builder
Now that weve discussed some of the key pages included in most funnels, let’s talk about how you can actually build a funnel in ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels offers you two ways to build a funnel – the Cookbook Builder and the Classic Funnel Builder approach.
Let’s look at each one in detail:
Cookbook Builder
The Cookbook builder is a recent addition to ClickFunnels. It’s basically a guided process to help you quickly create the right funnel for your business.
With this method, you can choose a funnel based on the industry you’re operating in, such as B2B or retail, and the type of funnel you wish to create, such as a lead funnel, sales funnel, or an event funnel.
Classic Funnel Builder
The classic funnel builder is more DIY and straightforward than the cookbook builder.
It lets you create a funnel based on your goal, like collecting emails, selling your product, or hosting a webinar. You can also choose to build a custom funnel, although that option requires you to make a lot more design decisions later on.
Types of Funnels
First of all, there’s no single type of funnel you can use in every situation.
It all depends on your ultimate goal.
Looking to sell your product or service?
Or maybe you just want to capture email addresses?
Whatever it is, ClickFunnels probably has the answer.
Every pre-built funnel template in ClickFunnels is designed to achieve optimal results for a specific purpose.
There are three basic types of funnels in ClickFunnels:
Let’s look at each one in detail:
Lead Funnels
If your main aim is to generate leads, ClickFunnels has a couple of funnels to help you out.
You can either choose to go for a basic email/messenger lead funnel or an application funnel.
The basic email/messenger lead funnel is simply a tempting squeeze page followed by a thank you page. The primary goal of this funnel is to build an email list you can retarget later.
An application funnel is really just an extended version of the basic lead funnel. Instead of collecting a single piece of information, this funnel attempts to gather more details about the visitors.
Here’s how a typical application funnel is designed:
Sales Funnels
If your end goal is to sell a product or service, a sales funnel is what you’re looking for.
But wait, it’s not that simple.
ClickFunnels has several sales funnels for you to choose from – each one optimized for a particular situation.
A tripwire, or ‘unboxing’ sales funnel uses a low-priced product to lure in customers before unleashing an irresistible upsell offer. Here’s how it works:
For expensive products, visitors might need more convincing – you can choose a longer sales letter or video sales funnel for that purpose.
Another type of sales funnel is the product launch funnel. This one is geared towards educating potential customers about your new product or getting them excited about its release.
Here’s how a typical product launch funnel goes:
Event Funnels
Maybe you’re not looking to just build a list or sell a product.
Your goal might be to get people to register for a virtual event or a webinar.
You guessed it – ClickFunnels has a funnel for that, too!
Webinars and other virtual events are a great way to generate leads, network with industry leaders, and make sales – all at the same time.
Now, there are two ways to create a virtual event funnel on ClickFunnels – live or recorded.
ClickFunnels doesn’t support live streaming, but you can always integrate 3rd party software, like Zoom or YouTube Live.
But if it’s a recorded webinar, you can host it directly on ClickFunnels.
Here’s what an event funnel looks like:
An event funnel is usually accompanied with emails sent before and after the event. That’s why it’s so important to capture the email addresses during registration. In case someone misses your live event, you can always send them a replay email!
ClickFunnels: Key Features
Now that we know how ClickFunnels works and what types of funnels you can use – let’s dig into the details of some of the key features of the platform:
The Etison Editor
Each page inside the funnels is customizable – thanks to ClickFunnels’ Etison Editor!
The Etison Editor is the platform’s drag and drop builder, which lets you tweak your web pages as you see fit. You don’t even need to know any code!
Each page in ClickFunnels is divided into separate sections. You can easily insert and edit elements and adjust the text, color, and padding within each section with a simple drag and click of your mouse.
If you do feel you need to make a change that’s outside the scope of the editor, you can always use CSS code.
Membership Sites
Membership sites are one of our favorite ClickFunnel features.
You can easily set up an exclusive members’ area in your funnel that lets users login and access resources, like a digital product or training course.
Here’s a short video to help you set up a Membership site:
Customers can sign up and access the membership area instantly, or you can ‘drip-feed’ them content through automated emails.
ClickFunnels offers a one-click solution for building a community of members and sharing valuable content, without the headache of all the technicalities involved in setting up a membership site on your own.
Order Forms
Enabling a seamless checkout experience is crucial to reduce cart abandonment rates.
And one of the best ways to do that is create an easy-to-use order form that collects customers’ purchase and billing information.
With ClickFunnels, you can quickly create one-page and two-step order forms to make the checkout/purchase process a breeze.
The traditional one-page order form simply collects all the details in one go.
Two-step order forms typically collect customers’ email addresses on the first page, and then proceed to collect the rest of their information. In case a customer decides to abandon the checkout process midway, you can always retarget them via email!
Automations
Along with helping you collect customer data, ClickFunnels also lets you retarget visitors through the automations tab.
This feature comes with both the Basic and Etison Suite plans, and lets you automate short email sequences sent right after a sign up or purchase.
You can also get notified each time a customer opts in or buys your product.
Backpack
Backpack is ClickFunnels’ very own affiliate program manager.
It only comes with the Etison Suite plan – but it’s totally worth it!
This exclusive feature makes it super easy to create an affiliate program for your business – a popular solution to exponentially multiply website traffic and income.
You can change commission plans, do payouts, provide easily downloadable banner ads and example sales copy, and generate trackable affiliate links – all within ClickFunnels.
Actionetics
Actionetics is ClickFunnels’ exclusive marketing automation feature available only with the Etison Suite plan.
It takes the platform’s basic automation tab a few (big) steps further by integrating your marketing automation with your entire funnel!
That’s right. You don’t even need a separate email automation software.
You can set up personalized automated email campaigns within ClickFunnels for different audiences – like based on customers’ purchase history, geographic location, gender, or any specific interaction they had with your funnel.
But Actionetics offers much more than just automated emails.
You can also retarget visitors through Facebook Messenger, SMS/text messages, ads, and desktop notifications.
Plus, Actionetics offers some seriously amazing analytics for your campaigns:
Product Integration
Awesome – you’ve made a sale!
All you need to do now is deliver the product to your customer.
Thankfully, ClickFunnels makes product delivery an incredibly easy task.
Digital Products
Selling digital products through ClickFunnels is simple. You can just send a customer to a thank you page where they can download it right away.
If you’re selling multiple digital products, ClickFunnels also lets you grant instant membership access to your customers as soon as they make a purchase. They can then immediately browse other digital products on your site.
Physical Products
For eCommerce stores, ClickFunnels offers integration support with ShipStation.
ShipStation gives you access to hundreds of dropshipping and eCommerce companies. Integrating the platform into ClickFunnels takes care of all production, packaging, and shipping concerns.
Here’s how you can integrate ShipStation with your funnels:
Split Testing
The smallest change in your page design or funnel can make a world of difference in your conversions – that’s why split testing is so important!
ClickFunnels lets you run A/B tests for images, copy, buttons, headlines, and more.
Here’s how you can split tests on the platform:
Customer Support
Okay, let’s be honest. ClickFunnels offer decent support, but it’s nothing out of the world.
They don’t offer 24-hour live chat support, which is kind of disappointing. But they’re actually pretty helpful when you do get to talk to them.
It usually take several hours to hear back from their support team, and there are more than just a few complaints out there about their ability to fix problems
But all in all, there are more positive reviews about their support than the negative ones, so we can safely assume that it’s adequate.
ClickFunnels: Pros & Cons
ClickFunnels is a brilliant software – but it’s not perfect.
While there are more than a handful of benefits of ClickFunnels, it doesn’t come without limitations. You need to look at both sides of the coin to make the right decision for your business.
Let’s dig into the pros and cons:
ClickFunnels Pros
There’s a reason ClickFunnels is so popular – it has tons of benefits for your business!
I mean, let’s face it. You wouldn’t see so much hype surrounding it if it didn’t help countless marketers make loads of money.
Here are some of our favorite things about ClickFunnels:
Ease and Automation
ClickFunnels pretty much simplifies the entire lengthy process of building a sales funnel.
That’s one of the biggest benefits it offers to digital marketers.
It automates manual processes like coding, designing web pages, and using other software for payment processes, email integration, and more.
You don’t even need to know any techy stuff or build a funnel from scratch. You can just pick a ready-to-go template and add in your content – that’s it, you’re good to go!
Various Types of Sales Funnels
There’s no one-size-fits-all sales funnel out there. And ClickFunnels knows that.
The platform offers so many different pre-designed funnels to choose from – whether you want to sell products, generate leads, or attract event registrations, you can easily find the perfect funnel for your business.
And if you’re not 100% satisfied with the pages, you can always edit them using the drag-and-drop builder, or even CSS code.
Advanced Features
The best part about ClickFunnels is – it’s not all about funnels.
There are tons of features to help you maximize your conversions and profitability, like email autoresponders, membership sites, and order forms.
If you go for the Etison Suite plan, you’ll have access to advanced marketing automation tools, an affiliate program manager, and more.
Analytics
ClickFunnels lets you analyze the performance of your funnels and campaigns with easy-to-use stats and analytics.
This is must-have feature for any SaaS platform, and ClickFunnels does an excellent job with the analytics it offers. You can also split test multiple elements in your pages to see what brings you the best results.
ClickFunnels Cons
Like we previously mentioned, ClickFunnels is no perfect software. It does have its limitations – which is why it might not be the right choice for everybody.
Here are a few areas where ClickFunnels can definitely use improvement:
Limited Plans
A major drawback of ClickFunnels is that it only offers two plans to choose from – Basic and Etison Suite.
The problem is, you can’t really purchase additional features if you’re using the Basic plan. If you need to use Actionetics or Backpack, for example, you’ll need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan.
Unfortunately, the Basic plan is just that – basic. It limits you to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors. If you want to grow your website, the only option you have is to upgrade – which can be quite expensive.
Slow Loading Times
Every time you add a funnel or template to your account, the platform takes about 10-12 seconds to process it. It might not much, but it can get irritating real fast – especially if you’re trying out different templates.
Might be Tricky to Understand
Even though you don’t need to be a tech-nerd to figure out how ClickFunnels works, a new user might get confused at first.
But that’s only because there are so many features and options to experiment with.
Luckily, there’s a 14-day trial that gives you enough time (and hands-on experience) to get a hang of it and decide whether it’s worth your money.
Frustrating Support
We admit it. ClickFunnels’ could really use better support.
There’s no 24-hour live chat support available, and the support team can sometimes take several hours to respond.
ClickFunnels isn’t the cheapest funnel builder out there. But it does offer a lot of value packed into two distinct plans:
Wondering which one is right for you? Here’s a brief overview of each plan:
ClickFunnels Basic
This plan is like the bare minimum of ClickFunnels.
It’s relatively low-priced, but offers very limited features. With this plan, you can only have a maximum of 20,000 visitors/month, 20 funnels, and 100 pages.
Also, you’ll need to find your own marketing automation and affiliate management software – Backpack and Actionetics are not offered with this plan.
ClickFunnels Etison Suite
For an extra $200 a month, this premium plan lets you unlock the full potential of ClickFunnels.
With the Etison Suite plan, you can enjoy unlimited visitors, funnels, and pages. You also get access to Actionetics, Backpack, and other cool features.
ClickFunnels FAQs
How long does a funnel take to show results?
That really depends on how effective your copy is, along with the quality of your product or service. ClickFunnels simply offers you ready-to-go funnel templates. The key is to make good use of those funnels.
How many funnels do I need to maximize my conversions?
There’s no magic number. Usually, all it takes is one killer funnel that you can keep on improving by split testing and tracking performance. But on average, ClickFunnels users see the best results with at least 3 funnels. Don’t use more than 15 – that’s just overkill.
Can ClickFunnels easily integrate with my site?
That depends on your website. If you’re using WordPress, integrating it with ClickFunnels is a smooth process. For Squarespace sites, integration might be a bit more difficult.
Can I purchase some additional features without upgrading to the premium plan?
No. Unfortunately, if you want to access just Actionetics or Backpack, you’ll need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan.
I’m not very tech-friendly. Can I still use ClickFunnels?
Yes! ClickFunnels is designed for both newbies and experts. But obviously, you do need to have a basic idea of how to use a software to get started.
Final Thoughts
Is ClickFunnels worth it? You have 14 days of risk-free trial to find that out for yourself.
If your goal is to sell a product, generate leads, or promote a virtual event – go for it. ClickFunnels is packed with the best funnels, amazing analytics, and advanced features to help you maximize conversions and multiply your earnings.
If you feel the software is not for you after the free trial, you can simply choose to opt out. No risks there!
What did you think of this review? Did we miss anything? We’d love to know! Drop us your comments, feedback, and suggestions below.
Disclosure: Kaizen Sigma is an independent ClickFunnels Affiliate, not an employee. Our agency receives referral payments from ClickFunnels. The opinions expressed here are our own and are not official statements of ClickFunnels or its parent company, Etison LLC.
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