In this day and age, the way your business operates online can make or break you.
How do most businesses currently have a presence online?
Websites.
The fact of the matter is, however, that websites have dramatically evolved over the past decade – and the methods of old are no longer practical for modern day business.
Back in the day, it would suffice to have a simple website with a home page, services, pricing, about us, and contact pages.
A potential customer would go to your site, scroll around, visit the different pages and consume content as they please.
However, if you are a business spending any money on advertising, you want to control what customers are learning about on your site, present offers at the right time, and maximize the revenue you make from each person.
How does one achieve this?
Using sales funnels.
Enter ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is the easiest way to make high converting sales and marketing funnels.
It is a unique tool created specifically to turn potential customers into buyers.
It really is an all-in-one solution to create sales funnels and includes landing pages, email integration, billing, webinars, membership sites, and so much more. No wonder it has quickly become a favorite tool for marketers.
Below is my detailed ClickFunnels Review, including favorite features, pricing, pros/cons, and comparisons against competitors.
But First, What Exactly Is a Sales Funnel?
Sales funnels (also called marketing funnels) are multi-step campaigns that are designed to move potential prospects through your sales process, and turn them into buyers.
Image a real-life funnel. At the top, you pour liquid in, which narrows down towards one fixed destination.
In sales, a similar event takes place. At the top, visitors arrive at your website, but not all who enter make it out of the other end as buyers.
Many things have to occur from the time a visitor enters your funnel, to the time they take action and successfully complete a purchase.
By breaking down the customer’s journey into smaller steps, you can be more precise about how and when you present an offer to your audience.
The detailed steps in a funnel might look something like this:
- Unqualified lead arrives at landing page
- Page communicates the first offer (something free to collect an email)
- Once email is collected, main offer is pitched
- Lead becomes a paying customer
- More email communication delivering customer value
- Further relationship building
- Recurring sales
ClickFunnels also has a graphic that explains this in a simple way:
What is ClickFunnels?
As mentioned earlier, ClickFunnels is the best sales funnel software around today.
The company makes the bold claim of giving you everything you need to market, sell, and deliver your products online – and they definitely deliver.
A standard funnel will use an opt-in page (to collect email addresses), an email auto responder (to send emails to your customers), plus an additional sales page with some content and an order form, possibly followed by additional content, a membership site, etc.
Previously, you would have to use different platforms and tools to accomplish all of these tasks such as:
- Create a website
- Find Hosting
- Find an autoresponder service
- Find membership site software
- Find split-testing software…etc.
But ClickFunnels takes care of everything with their platform. You not only save a ton of money by not having to buy different products/services, but you also avoid the technical mess of having to set everything up, and can focus on what’s really important – growing your business.
ClickFunnels offers a Free 14-Day Trial, so you get to explore the tool and really see if it’s right for your business.
Favorite Features
*Quickly Create Pages Using Templates and Elements*
Before getting too far, it’s important to understand that a funnel is a collection of pages put together in a strategic order, with the goal of converting as many prospects into customers. And a page is simply a collection of various elements designed to get someone to take a certain action.
ClickFunnels offers more than 50 different elements to help you build the perfect page. The editor is extremely easy to use and all you have to do is drag and drop different elements on to the page, and update the text and appearance to fit your needs – no coding skills required!
ClickFunnels also makes your life easier by providing you with a ton of free templates.
In fact, ClickFunnels provides over 37 types of pages for you to mix and match with. These are broken down into the following 10 categories:
- Presell Pages: Survey Page, Article Page, Presell Page, Clickpop Page
- Optin Pages: Squeeze Page, Reverse Squeeze Page, Lead Magnet, Coupon
- Thank You Pages: Thank You Page, Offer Wall, Bridge Page, Share Page
- Sales Pages: Video Sales Page, Sales Letter Page, Product Launch Page
- OTO Pages: Upsell Page, Downsell Page
- Order Forms: Two Step Order Page, Traditional Order Page, Video Sales Letter Order Page, Sales Letter Order Page, Product Launch Order Page
- Webinar Pages: Webinar Registration Page, Webinar Confirmation Page, Webinar Broadcast Room, Webinar Replay Room
- Membership Pages: Access Page, Member’s Area
- Affiliate Pages: Access Page, Affiliate Area
- Other Pages: Application Page, Ask Page, Store Front, Home Page, Hero Page, Hangout Page, Live Demo Page
The pre-built templates are fully customizable, and are what most users use.
You are able to choose a template, edit or replace the elements with your own, and your new page is ready to go.
You can also link any funnel you create with your own email marketing service (if you don’t use the one included in ClickFunnels), and use the ClickFunnels built in billing system.
This is also a great time to mention that ClickFunnels provides very useful and easy to understand training videos when you first sign up. I highly recommend going through those because they quickly enable you to use the tool at its full capacity, and you’ll have more fun playing around.
*Create One-Click Membership Sites*
One of the best features with ClickFunnels is the ability to easily create membership sites and deliver content to your audience in one place.
Your membership site will come complete with registration pages, membership access pages, and content pages which you can easily lock or drip feed to your customers according to purchases they made in your funnel.
ClickFunnels membership sites allow you to send out emails, easily manage your emails, and build a community all while removing the stress that’s associated with other solutions such as Kajabi, or WordPress platforms.
It’s really handy to not have to buy a separate software or plugin to create membership sites.
*Email Integration & Actionetics*
With every funnel comes email list building opportunities.
ClickFunnels supports email integration with all of the major email automation platforms such as:
- Active Campaign
- Aweber
- Constant Contact
- ConvertKit
- Drip
- Get Response
- Hubspot
- InfusionSoft
- Mad Mimi
- MailChimp
- Market Hero
- Ontraport
- Salesforce
- Sendlane
- And others
However, ClickFunnels also has their own powerful automation tool called Actionetics.
Although you can create, schedule, and deliver emails as with any other email marketing platform, Actionetics is so much more.
I love Actionetics because it not only replaces your email marketing but messenger marketing and SMS marketing softwares as well. This takes automation to a whole new level and helps you communicate the perfect message to your customers, exactly when they need it. A video overview of Actionetics will be provided further below.
*Billing and Payment Integration*
An amazing feature within ClickFunnels is the ability to collect all of the billing details from your customers right on your sales page. Selling is made so much easier when customers don’t have to leave your site.
ClickFunnels integrates with major payment gateways such as PayPal, Stripe, and InfusionSoft, among others.
ClickFunnels Pricing
You can read my full pricing post here, or get the summary below.
While you can start with the Free 14-Day Trial, there are three different pricing options with ClickFunnels:
- $97/month
- $297/month
- $997 bulk discount plan (recommended)
I’ll go into detail for each of these plans below.
1. ClickFunnels Standard Plan – $97/month
The standard plan includes all of the features you would need within ClickFunnels, but with limitations on the number of funnels (20) and pages (100) you can have in your account, as well as how many visitors (20K) can view your pages per month.
You also do not receive advanced functionality such as ClickFunnels own email marketing and affiliate tracking tools.
2. ClickFunnels Etison Suite – $297/month
This plan includes all the bells and whistles of the standard plan, without any limitations. It also comes with two additional products produced by ClickFunnels called Actionetics (email marketing) and Backpack (affiliate management platform) .
In Actionetics – you can manage all of your contacts that subscribe to your list, send email broadcasts, and create a host of other automations.
The difference between the two plans really is the limitations, and Actionetics/Backpack. If you are a basic user and don’t expect to use more than 20 funnels in your account – the Standard Plan should suffice.
However, if you plan to have an affiliate program or want to keep your email marketing within ClickFunnels and not use a third party software, the Etison Suite is for you.
You can always start on the lower plan and upgrade if needed.
For anyone that’s serious about their business, the ClickFunnels Funnel Hacks System is the deal of the century.
The $997 Funnel Hacks System contains robust training programs bundled with 6-month access to the ClickFunnels Etison Suite.
This is an incredible deal since outside of this program, 6-months of Etison Suite alone would cost you $1782.
Not only are you saving $785 but you’re getting a ton of trainings and guides to help you get the most out of ClickFunnels!
Click here to learn more about The Funnel Hacks System!
ClickFunnels Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Creating funnels is very simple, easy, and quick
- All-in-one platform with everything your business needs to win
- Split testing and conversion tracking included
- Email integration with all of the major email autoresponder platforms
- Payment processing capabilities within ClickFunnels
- ClickFunnels is always adapting and upgrading to the times
- There is always support available (whether live or not)
- Incredibly active Facebook Group Community
- Free 14-Day Trial – allows you to try it risk free
Cons:
- As awesome as ClickFunnels is, it definitely is not a cheap solution and requires a continuous subscription to use
- Support isn’t always the fastest and may take from 1 minute to 24 hours depending on the issue
ClickFunnels vs. Everyone Else
Many people ask how ClickFunnels compares to other landing page builders such as Leadpages, Unbounce, and Infusionsoft.
For the most part it’s not really a fair comparison because each of these tools excels is one area or the other.
The chart above gives a thorough analysis – but I’ll highlight some of the major comparisons below.
ClickFunnels vs Leadpages
Prior to ClickFunnels, Leadpages was the big dog.
Leadpages is simply a lead capture software – nothing more. You can create landing pages, lead boxes, collect leads…that’s pretty much it. Additionally, the Leadpages templates are also limited on customization.
ClickFunnels is far more versatile – it’s much easier to use and does so much more than create lead capture pages.
Simply put, Leadpages is really just a landing page builder, while ClickFunnels is focused around building highly integrated funnels.
ClickFunnels vs Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft is not a landing page or sales page builder. It has some of that functionality built it, but that’s not what it’s known for.
At it’s core, Infusionsoft is a CRM platform – one that allows you to manage your entire customer database. ClickFunnels has this capability with Actionetics, but it’s not nearly as advanced as Infusionsoft.
Infusionsoft is also extremely expensive and forces every new customer to pay $2000 for a mandatory kickstart coaching package just to learn how to use the complex system (which is notoriously difficult to use).
ClickFunnels Affiliate Program
There are two main paths people go down as ClickFunnels users.
Those that choose to use the tool for their business – in hopes of one day achieve the Two Comma Club (over $1M in revenue).
And those that are interested in earning passive income as a ClickFunnels Affiliate and winning the Dream Car Contest (where they pay $500/$1000 towards your dream car if you reach 100/200 active monthly signups, respectively).
With a whopping 40% monthly recurring commission, ClickFunnels easily has one of the greatest affiliate programs of any platform out there.
That’s right – you get paid an ongoing 40% commission on every affiliate signup you make through the ClickFunnels Affiliate Program. But, what does that really equate to?
The basic plan is a $97/month investment and the Etison Suite plan is a $297/month investment. therefore you make $38.80 per basic plan and $118.80 per Etison Suite plan…each and every month!
On average, every 100 signups will bring in $4000/month in affiliate commissions (more or less depending on how many Etison Plan users are in there).
Click here to learn more about becoming a ClickFunnels Affiliate.
The Bottom Line
ClickFunnels is hands down the greatest platform if you are looking to easily build high converting sales funnels.
Because it was built from the ground up to be the best sales funnel builder, it beats out all of the competition in that regard.
On the surface, it may not be the cheapest product out there – but if you use it to its full capacity, your business will become more profitable and you will save money from not having to use other tools.
If you’ve read this far into my ClickFunnels Review, I recommend you see for yourself with a Free 14-Day Trial here.