If you’re familiar with digital marketing, you’ve likely heard of ClickFunnels, the landing page builder that pioneered online sales funnels. In this ClickFunnels Review, we delve into the good and bad to determine whether ClickFunnels is a legitimate business marketing software worth trying or if it is simply overhyped.
Since its inception, ClickFunnels has grown to become one of the largest marketing SaaS (Software as a Service) companies in the world. It’s no surprise that people love ClickFunnels because it’s all about making money for its users. More specifically, it is about providing businesses with software that assists them in converting site visitors into customers. It’s no surprise that ClickFunnels has exploded in popularity in such a short period.
There’s no denying that it’s well-known, but does that mean it is worthwhile? How much can we put our faith in the crowd on this one? It appears to be just another website and landing page builder, so what distinguishes it, and should you include it in your marketing stack?
In this ClickFunnels review, I’ll go over the basics of the software—what it is, the benefits and drawbacks, the features, customer service, and so on. This review is driven by personal experience with ClickFunnels’ StartUp plan, which includes the core ClickFunnels features as well as a slew of extras. I’ll also mention other reviews I’ve read because not every user will agree with me on the final verdict.
Whether you use it or not, it is an important player that anyone involved in e-commerce and online marketing should be aware of. What’s our rating before you get started? I’ll give it 4 stars. It’s definitely good, despite some drawbacks. Continue reading to find out why!
ClickFunnels Review Highlights
Listed below is an overview of the key points from ClickFunnels reviews (as of 2021)—keep an eye out for these in the rest of this article.
- ClickFunnels is an excellent landing page builder with a simple drag-and-drop editor.
- Simple and extensive integrations that allow you to capture emails and accept payments directly within the application. ClickFunnels is a business that creates sales funnels.
- A/B testing capabilities are built-in.
- Simple to learn and apply
- Dedicated to earning more money for its users
- They provide a two-week free trial.
Click here to go to the Clickfunnels website.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels began in 2014, but in just three years, it has “silently revolutionized the online marketing industry,” according to Forbes. Here’s how ClickFunnels works: It makes it easier for companies and entrepreneurs to sell things online using sales funnels, which are otherwise complicated marketing technologies (more on those in a second).
Russell Brunson, the creator of ClickFunnels, is as well-known as his product, and with good reason. He’s made a fortune from ClickFunnels as well as other marketing endeavors. He experimented with email marketing for a while before settling on sales funnels.
Russell Brunson is the bestselling author of Expert Secrets and DotCom Secrets, two books that his fans adore and which walk readers through his marketing strategies. Dotcom Secrets is available for purchase on Amazon (with over 400 reviews) or for free on his website. Expert Secrets is available for purchase on Amazon or for free on his website.
Brunson and his team created ClickFunnels as a way to help them build funnels more easily for various projects, as funnel creation would normally take weeks. They quickly realized, however, that their invention would be useful to others and had a lot of potential as a commodity.
What Exactly Are Funnels? How do Sales Funnels work?
Before we continue with this ClickFunnels Review, let’s define a marketing funnel. A marketing funnel is a process that takes people who don’t know you and turns them into customers. A sales funnel is a step-by-step process designed to guide a website visitor to the checkout page in e-commerce.
There is a less boring way of looking at it.
Step 1: Imagine a funnel.
Step 2: Assume this funnel is a metaphor, and instead of actual ingredients to pour down the funnel, you have metaphorical elements called web traffic or site visitors. Your site visitors are taking a look around, seeing what they can find. Your website is beautifully designed, and your content is excellent!
Unfortunately, this does not convert many of your visitors into customers. In a physical shop, this will be equivalent to customers coming in but not finding the cash register, so they leave empty-handed. Customers may be convinced to buy something in a physical shop. However, you may be farther away from your customers in a digital store. This is where your funnel comes in; it is designed to appeal to your customers using psychological principles. The funnel works in stages, drawing visitors in closer and closer until they reach a payment page.
If you think this sounds interesting, you’re right: it’s become a big deal in the world of online marketing. Russell Brunson became wealthy not only through the sale of ClickFunnels technology but also through its use.
Pros – ClickFunnels Review
I have some great news for you: ClickFunnels works!
ClickFunnels is a tool that saves you time and energy by automating tasks that would otherwise take a lot of technical know-how and/or a variety of third-party apps. ClickFunnels is a winner in this regard.
Produces Income
ClickFunnels’ emphasis on making money for the consumer is one of its strongest features. They make creating an account, uploading content, and accepting payments very easy. Plus, it’ll just take you a couple of hours to find out much of what you need.
Drag and Drop Builder
Several features are extremely useful in this situation. I like how simple it is to replicate pages and how I can save templates for later use. Their page builder is a key feature, and they’ve done a great job with it. It’s a simple drag-and-drop builder once you get used to it.
A/B testing
Built-in A/B checking is also a plus. All you should do is replicate a page, make your changes, and choose whether version A or B should be shown to which percentage of your traffic.
Great Selection Of Integrations
I believe ClickFunnels does a good job with API integrations. Email autoresponders and payment processors aren’t too difficult to use—they’re dependable and simple to handle.
WordPress Plugin
You’ll also find a WordPress plugin that allows you to integrate ClickFunnels pages into your blog. Working between ClickFunnels and WordPress without a plugin saves a lot of time and is a lot less of a hassle. With over 20,000 active installs, the Clickfunnels WordPress plugin has a good 4.4-star rating in the WordPress plugin repository.
All In One Place
Overall, it’s nice to have everything in one place: I can create landing pages, forms, and order forms all from one place.
All of this helps save time and money, which you would otherwise have to spend on developers, CSS, and hosting setups.
Affordability
You should be confident that the lower-tiered account is a good investment because the amount of money you can put into a StartUp account is very generous. The ClickFunnels Platinum Platinum may not be too much to ask if you have more than 20,000 visitors and need over 100 pages.
ClickFunnels isn’t flawless, but it does a fantastic job of combining useful resources and making them easily available. It arguably saves most users the hassle of trying to navigate funnels in a different way.
Cons – Clickfunnels Review
I have some bad news: while ClickFunnels is generally solid, it does have some flaws, and a full ClickFunnels analysis will be incomplete without examining the negative aspects as well.
Is it Overpriced?
The cost is a minor downside. There are only two monthly subscription options: $97 or $297. In the great scale of things, this isn’t a major disadvantage; it’s simply another investment in your business, and as I previously said, you get a good deal.
Unfulfilling Customer Service
Customer service, on the other hand, is shaky at best. They’ve been great with simple questions in my experience, but they won’t be very helpful if you ask them more complex queries, particularly about advanced features.
The user base that resembles a cult and software that is overly dependent on the founder
This is not an objective critique of their product, but I do have a minor gripe with their marketing that I believe deserves to be addressed in this ClickFunnels Review.
It’s difficult to avoid the hype if you get drawn into one of their funnels. They certainly have excellent marketing. However, it may become obtrusive in terms of user experience. You can either look at the objective functionality of the app and incorporate it into your own workflow once you sign up for it, or you’ll be confused and compelled to study Russell Brunson’s marketing techniques.
This means you’ll end up purchasing ClickFunnels “Culture” products like online classes, books, and attending seminars. Their Facebook group has over 100,000 members, and the majority of posts are people boasting about how much money they’ve earned and flashing their sports cars. Despite the fact that these figures are accurate, the users give the impression that they are more concerned with making fast money than creating excellent goods and services. ClickFunnels has aided people in accomplishing great things. Still, it has also helped in the proliferation of get-rich-quick schemes, online courses, the overabundance of coaches and specialists, and other spammy internet marketer material.
We all agree the founder is a marketing genius, but his brand and ideology are deeply ingrained in the product. All around, the landing page creator seems to be an extension of Brunson’s site, as much as I appreciate it.
It’s difficult not to get the impression that ClickFunnels spends more time and money on self-promotion than appropriate, particularly when certain aspects of their product (such as customer service) could improve.
Too Pre-made
This one is about the community rather than ClickFunnels. Although ClickFunnels allows you to customize any aspect of your funnel, many people stick to the same basic layouts. Because of the success of ClickFunnels, there are a lot of ClickFunnel-Esque looks floating about. The importance of diversity cannot be overstated.
Bugs and Outages in Software
ClickFunnels will sometimes go down or encounter any errors. Though it doesn’t happen very often, there’s nothing you can do but wait. If you overspend on ads or driving traffic to your funnels, and a ClickFunnels bug causes your pages to go down for even a few hours, you might lose a lot of money.
It’s also difficult to know whether your pages are working or not unless you review them often or wait for unhappy customers to complain. I also have some issues when cloning pages using the HTML publishing option, aside from uptime.
User Experience Changes A lot
The dashboard is constantly changing, the process for creating new pages and funnels is changing, a button will switch, pricing choices will change, and it appears that ClickFunnels is still working things out.
Consistency in my software is important to me, particularly if it’s a business solution.
Too Simple
Finally, I’ve heard a criticism that I don’t agree with: it’s too easy, and it’s too costly for its simplicity. These critiques usually apply to do-it-yourself methods, which can be less expensive upfront and give you more control over some data. However, I wouldn’t overemphasize this for less advanced users who are primarily looking for reliability and an easy-to-use toolkit.
Pricing for ClickFunnels: How much does Clickfunnels cost?
The Clickfunnels Standard Plan and the Clickfunnels Platinum Plan are the two pricing options available from ClickFunnels. Even their basic plan is on the expensive side. Clickfunnels costs $97 per month, while Platinum costs $297 per month. For what it’s worth, you can also try out the program for 14 days for free, so you don’t have to commit to an expensive contract right away. You get two months free if you pay annually rather than monthly ($997 for ClickFunnels and $2,997 for Platinum).
The primary distinctions between an entry-level account and a premium account are as follows: the standard account receives the main service, the funnel-builder, with some limitations on the number of pages (100), visits (20,000), custom domains (3), and only some of the full list of features.
Both plans, however, have unlimited contacts, unlimited members, all advanced funnels, A/B split tests, and a few other features in common.
Platinum includes the following features:
- One-time payments (a Backpack feature that allows you to characterize a product as a one-time payment product for your payment gateways).
- Subscription plans (another Backpack feature, but unlike one-time payments, this allows your customers to pay for a subscription service).
- 3 SMTP integrations (StartUp has 1).
- Unlimited funnels, pages, and products.
To summarize the variations, the basic Clickfunnels plan basically includes ClickFunnels’ core function, which is called (you guessed it!) ClickFunnels. It’s not difficult. Platinum, on the other side, bundles ClickFunnels with two additional services—Followup Funnels and Backpack—as well as giving you access to the entire ClickFunnels feature collection.
What is FunnelFlix?
Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels, made his money selling information goods and online courses initially. ClickFunnels seems to be attempting to push the “Netflix” model with FunnelFlix, but with information goods, which I believe is distracting and misleading when you’re only trying to use the software for marketing. There is some valuable information in there, but there is just too much of it, and you must sift through a lot of fluff to find something useful. As a result, we didn’t cover FunnelFlix in this ClickFunnels analysis because we’re primarily interested in the software.
Overview of Features – Clickfunnels Review
What do you think of ClickFunnels’ functionality in general? I believe they are reliable, and you will receive all you require. They’re mostly intuitive, and they give you a lot of leverage. The design editor and integration management system are two clear examples of this, and they’re both really critical features, so I’ll break them out.
A/B split testing is a minor function, but it is important.
The split test essentially lets you pick what percentages of your traffic you want to see per page if you replicate a page and make adjustments to the copy, allowing you to test conversion rates very easily. It’s a fantastic feature that’s also extremely simple to use.
I also believe ClickFunnels is overall flexible and simple to use for other settings, such as your account details or integrations. Perhaps very tech-savvy people will find them restrictive (a common theme among some criticisms), but given that the service is intended to be simple to use, I thought the basic features were adequate.
There are several different types of pre-built funnels available, each geared toward a different kind of business, and you can also create your own funnel from scratch.
Backpack and Followup Funnels
In this Clickfunnels Review, I’ll only mention ClickFunnels Platinum for a moment. ClickFunnels Platinum, in my view, is a bundle of three products: ClickFunnels, Followup Funnels, and Backpack.
What is Followup Funnels? It’s what many people refer to as an email auto-responder or simply an auto-responder, but it’s a bit more complex than that. Followup Funnels’ main goal is smart analytics that results in smart auto-responding, but the auto-responding includes snail mail, email, and a few other goodies. Backpack (formerly Backpack CRM) is a platform that works in tandem with Followup Funnels to help you manage your affiliate program more effectively.
But, are these features or distinct products? Followup Funnels sounds to me like ClickFunnels trying to sell a shaky email auto-responder, but I could be wrong. As a result, Clickfunnels Platinum is a little more confusing and takes away the coherency that comes with the original ClickFunnels.
Here is a complete list of StartUp features.
- Membership funnels
- Unlimited members
- Auto webinar funnels
- Hangout funnels
- 20 funnels
- Order pages
- Upsell pages
- 100 pages
- 20,000 visitors
- unlimited contacts
- 3 custom domains
- A/B split tests
- Email integrations
- Optin funnels
- ClickPops
- ClickOptin
- All advanced funnels
- Sales funnels
- Downsale pages
- Share your funnels
The complete list of ClickFunnels features, as well as ClickFunnels Platinum features, can be found here. If you’re in a situation where you can afford to try Platinum for a while, and you also need an efficient, simple way to increase sales, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. By the same token, I don’t believe Followup Funnels and Backpack provide such a significant benefit that you can’t live without them: for the majority of users, the Standard Clickfunnels plan will provide a sufficient package.
Clickfunnels Review – Page Builder
This is most likely ClickFunnels’ most important feature, so I wanted to pay special attention to it. In fact, I believe that a large part of why I gave ClickFunnels such a high rating is due to its excellent landing page builder. ClickFunnels distinguishes itself from page-building software and promotes its funnel approach, but I primarily use it for this landing page builder.
Anyway, there is a good selection of templates with good designs, though as you might expect, only the ClickFunnels-created templates are free. Because templates are organized by funnel type, poking around isn’t too tricky.
You can also save specific templates and create personal page templates, and they are fairly easy to find. As you can see, you can play around with the basic settings and open the editor.
When you open your pages in the editor, you’ll be using a drag-and-drop builder. It’s a little more complicated than some other lightweight page builders, but it’s still straightforward to use.
The editor employs a page structure comprised of four major components: sections, rows, columns, and elements. Consider these components to be interconnected (this article has a helpful diagram). Sections are made up of rows, columns, and elements. Each page can have multiple sections. Rows and columns are both contained within sections, but columns are expressly contained within rows. You can have a row with one column or up to four columns this way. Elements are dynamic bits that go inside columns and make your page more interactive for its visitors.
It may appear not very easy, but it is pretty simple to grasp. Everything is colour-coded—in the above screenshot, the selection is a light green box because it is a section, but if I hovered over an element, it would be orange.
The sidebar also allows you to edit by section, row, column, and so on. All of your page’s minor details and components can be moved or changed. The template editor allows for a lot of customization while also providing a lot of control. You can do just about anything—mobile previews, colour, text, settings, and just about anything else you can think of. You can also add your own CSS, Javascript, and HTML if you know how to code.
One minor criticism I’ve heard (but haven’t personally experienced) of the builder is how grid-like it is—you have to work within those columns and rows. Personally, I don’t think this is a big deal because the builder gives you enough control without sacrificing usability, but it’s worth mentioning.
Overall, I really like the page builder. It simplifies the design of your landing page and serves ClickFunnels’ goal of making it easier for you to make money online.
ClickFunnels Integrations
Integrations are simply other marketing tools that you integrate into the ClickFunnels software. You can add the following integrations to your ClickFunnels account: email, SMS/text, webinar, and actions. For instance, you might add MailChimp to your ClickFunnels because you like their auto-responder software and are a subscriber. Simple!
ClickFunnels has a number of notable partners that you can easily add to your integrations. Here is a complete list:
- GetResponse
- HubSpot
- InfusionSoft
- Active Campaign
- Aweber
- Mad Mimi
- MailChimp
- Convertkit
- Maropost
- Ontraport
- SalesForce
- Sendlane
- GoToWebinar
- GVO
- PureLeverage
- HTML Form
- ShipStation
- Shopify
- Twilio
- Webinar
- Jam Studio
- YouZignConstant
- Contact
- DripInterspice
You can search for these in your integrations section or simply click the search bar, and they will appear. It’s pretty self-explanatory; just select and add the one you want.
The procedure for handling integrations is also simple, but you may need to consult the documentation for your third-party applications to determine what ClickFunnels needs. Overall, the process is straightforward. Integrations are a bit more technical in concept than some other functions, such as the page builder, so having an easy way to integrate and manage them is very helpful.
Payment gateways are an extension of integrations. Payment gateways are incorporated and are referred to as integrations on other software systems, but they are given their own section on ClickFunnels. Billing integrations are another name for them in ClickFunnels. Payment gateways are just what they sound like: they’re integrations that let your customers pay for your products. If you don’t use a payment gateway, your shop won’t be much of a shop.
Below is a list of payment gateways that you can integrate:
- ClickBank
- Taxamo
- Ontraport
- Stripe
- Infusionsoft
- Warriorplus
- JVZoo
- Blue Snap
- Easy Pay Direct
- NMI
- Recurly
Managing all of these integrations is fairly simple—as long as you’re all set up with whatever tool you’re attempting to integrate with, you should have no trouble adding it to ClickFunnels. In my experience, these integrations usually go smoothly, and you shouldn’t be too concerned about them.
ClickFunnels Review – Ease of Use
If you haven’t already guessed, ClickFunnels’ main selling point is its simplicity—as their ad says, “Don’t waste any more time with ‘tech guys!'” As I mentioned earlier in this ClickFunnels review, the leading service ClickFunnels provides is tools that allow the inexperienced to save time and money. As a result, assessing ease of use is critical.
Short answer: It’s simple to use, but you should have some prior experience.
Longer answer: It may be overwhelming for a first-timer—and by first-timer, I mean new to the world of e-commerce and marketing—but the learning curve is far from impossible. I would estimate that the learning curve for most people would be no more than a couple of hours. So if you’re really behind, pick up the books mentioned earlier in the review by Russell Brunson.
In any case, ClickFunnels is unquestionably more straightforward than building funnels from scratch. They have a reasonable amount of documentation, which may not be perfect, but it appears to me that most questions should be covered, and you can always contact a customer service representative if necessary.
Aside from that, some aspects of ClickFunnels are pretty simple to grasp. The core features of ClickFunnels—the funnels themselves—are relatively simple to use. A unified menu makes it simple to navigate to all aspects of your funnel management process, from template selection to the drag-and-drop editor. Some settings, such as email integrations or payment processors, will require some knowledge, but it’s nothing compared to the knowledge needed to code the funnels—all its stuff you can find out by Googling or visiting the docs hub.
In the end, ClickFunnels isn’t a mind-blowingly easy tool, but it does have a slick user interface. They may have a habit of changing things regularly, but it is unlikely to cause you a considerable inconvenience.
In terms of usability, we give it a 4 out of 5 ratings. It blends choice and customizability with ease, and while I would recommend that all potential users have a basic understanding of technology, it ultimately succeeds in terms of user-friendliness.
Who is ClickFunnels intended for?
Who is the most likely to gain from ClickFunnels? Small companies and startups, in general, would benefit the most from it (speaking from personal experience). However, there are naturally differences in funnel types that appeal to different businesses.
Consultants, speakers, coaches, professional service providers, people solely involved in e-commerce or network marketing, and even those providing B2B services are likely to benefit the most from ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels, in general, works well with those who offer more innovative products or who run their own businesses. The pre-made funnels are heavily geared toward these industries: for example, if you’re a florist, the pre-made Daily Deal Funnel may be a good way for you to market. There would also be good support if you tried to centre everything around yourself and your brand. The same is true for people who sell content such as courses or books.
Of course, you also can start with a blank funnel, and I don’t think you should choose ClickFunnels based solely on their pre-built funnel forms. However, if you’re a small business with a limited budget and a need to make your traffic work harder for you, ClickFunnels is unlikely to be a waste of money or time. It’s something I’d suggest to someone who wants to improve their landing page.
ClickFunnels Review – Customer Support
Customer service at ClickFunnels is a complex subject. I applaud ClickFunnels for providing good on-site documentation. I believe their documentation falls just short of industry standards for SaaS firms, but it is still adequate. There are a number of categories on their docs page, each with its own set of posts. It’s straightforward, but it’s not lacking in substance.
In terms of direct customer service, they have a chat feature inside the dashboard after you log in, but I’m not a fan of it. They’ve been generally helpful with easy questions and troubleshooting… However, I’ve found them to be unhelpful when I’ve had more advanced questions. For example, they took three months to respond to one particular HTML publishing query. By that time, I’d devised a solution. Most users won’t need that level of assistance, and to be honest, most SaaS companies don’t provide it. So I applaud ClickFunnels for giving it a shot.
Furthermore, I’ve noticed a pattern of reviews mentioning terrible customer service experiences. Notably, when features did not work as promised or when there were strange site malfunctions, customer service representatives were allegedly either unresponsive or unhelpful. One particularly infamous reviewer recounts how, due to a site error, some of his customers were locked out, and other non-paying visitors gained access to members-only content. When he contacted customer service, he discovered that they were uninterested and unhelpful. It’s an odd, improbable scenario, but it demonstrates the point.
Overall Support Score
I would still not say ClickFunnels fails in customer service—I believe the team understands that their services are not perfect or involve unfamiliar tools to their users. However, they have invested enough resources in their support to make it adequate. At the very least, fundamental questions would be answered, and they are pretty responsive. Most users, including myself, would not say ClickFunnels provides exceptional customer service, but it does meet the bare minimum, which is adequate. Therefore, we rate it 3 out of 5 stars in this category.
Review of ClickFunnels – Final Thoughts
So, what’s the overall verdict? It’s good—4 out of 5-star! It’s a strong competitor in the marketing software industry and well worth a look.
Yes, there are a few disadvantages: If you require a more hands-on solution to your marketing needs with more outstanding customization capabilities, you may want to investigate third-party options that can be linked together. After all, if you go with ClickFunnels, you may get unlucky and end up dealing with unhelpful customer service representatives or software glitches. Their self-promotion may also irritate reader.
But here’s the kicker: In the end, I don’t think all of these drawbacks outweigh the robust landing page creator, let alone other benefits like the fast learning curve, solid integrations, and decent templates.
Overall, ClickFunnels achieves the primary goal of making it easier to funnel traffic and increase conversion rates. Even adverse ClickFunnels reports agree that it can be beneficial for entrepreneurs who aren’t familiar with the internet. I’m confident that the page builder provides enough options for the vast majority of potential users. ClickFunnels is a fantastic tool if you’re looking for a simple but effective sales solution or landing page editor. After all, it didn’t gain popularity by making false promises, which is why I gave it 4/5 stars.
Flexoffers
