If you’ve got an online business and are looking for the best support system to increase your sales, or to revamp and scale up your business, then ClickFunnels might just be what you need right now.
Over the next few minutes, we’ll let you know about some of the key features of ClickFunnels, how they might work for you, and how much it will cost you to get on board. With that information, you can decide if ClickFunnels is right for you or not.
What Is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels presents itself as an all-in-one marketing and sales platform, with all you need to help your online business grow. But whilst it’s true that ClickFunnels could, in theory, run your entire sales operation, no-one really buys it for that. They buy it because it does one thing very, very well – it builds sales funnels.
We have a guide that goes into sales funnels in great detail, but here’s the TL;DR version…
What Is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel starts with a lot of leads or prospects, who have been brought to your landing page by responding to an email or through paid advertising. We’ll assume they’re at the top of your sales funnel (the wide-open end!). As they move down the funnel, they’re guided by targetted messaging and personalised offers towards the one product you want them to buy, based on how they’ve responded to your messages.
If the funnel’s done its job well, when your leads get to the bottom of the funnel they’ll be presented with a choice: buy the one product that they need, or buy nothing at all. ClickFunnels’ response-driven targetting helps to make that choice a ‘no-brainer’ for your lead, and maximises your conversion rates.
A 30-second History of ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels was started in 2014 by Russell Brunson, who in six short years has become an immensely respected internet marketing guru.
Starting as an email marketer of sales technique books, Brunson came up with the idea of automating the sales process by applying the sales funnel concept. His vision of a no-coding-required sales tool that would run every step of the funnel process became a reality, and is now available to everyone as ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is sold as a SaaS (Software as a Service) monthly subscription, with two price plan which we’ll cover later in this review. and has a current user base of over 137,000. Since launching the company, Brunson’s ClickFunnels platform has processed sales of over $6.6 billion for a user base of 137,000 eCommerce companies.
More impressively: as of August 2020, Russell’s training, teaching, and software has created 728 internet marketing millionaires.
Russell Brunson’s books are still selling well, and he’s constantly updating them to reflect current trends in the market. A millionaire himself many times over, Brunson has been offered a ‘back seat’ executive position at ClickFunnels so that he can take life easy and enjoy his wealth. But once a salesman, always a salesman: Russell just wants to keep showing people how to build great sales funnels, and continue working on his books.
How ClickFunnels Works
Again, we cover this in great detail in our guide [Which is Better in 2020: ClickFunnels or a Website? — Scheduled], so for this section, we’d like to give you an analogy.
Imagine you run a physical high street store selling laser printers. Shoppers walk past your store every day, and many of them take a glance at your window display. Let’s say 2% of them are intrigued by your ‘50% off all Epson Lasers’ sign and decide to walk through your door (In a sales funnel, the 50% sign would be your lead magnet, and walking through your door would be like arriving at your landing page.)
Now imagine your best salesperson (which is probably you!) goes to meet the shopper as the door. As you welcome them, you ask them what type of printer they’re looking for. You find out what features they need, and you subtly walk them towards the display rack that holds the printer you think is the best fit. (In a sales funnel, these question/answer sessions would be conducted by a targetted email campaign, managed by ClickFunnels.)
Convinced that your suggestion is the best printer for their needs, the customer goes with you to the till and gets out his credit card (the checkout stage of the sales funnel). Just before they scan their debit card, you tell them they can buy a 5-pack of ink cartridges at a special discount of 30% (the OTO, or One Time Offer), but it’s only available as part of a package deal.
They agree to the extra ink (well, who wouldn’t?) and as you package up the printer you ask if they want to sign up for a store card, which offers a permanent discount of 10% off everything you sell (the membership page).
ClickFunnels can automate all of the steps you’ve just taken, up to and including the choice of product if your online business deals with actual physical items. The bonus is that ClickFunnels, and all the other sales funnel tools that came after, can run unattended and apply the same personalised experience to every lead that makes it to the top of the funnel. That’s what ClickFunnels is good at, and that’s why it has over 137,000 users.
Who Is ClickFunnels For?
Virtually all eCommerce business owners can benefit from a sales funnel platform, whether it’s a true all-in-one solution such as Kartra, or a fully-featured landing page designer like Unbounce. But if you’re selling a digital product and you want to increase the number of leads that are directed to your landing page, then ClickFunnels is hard to beat.
Of course, there are a lot of alternatives out there, and some are even free. However, ‘free’ can also mean a lack of features, so the price point shouldn’t always be the deciding factor. (It’s a bit like buying a new electric car for $20,000 but refusing yourself the extra battery because it costs $995, even though you know you’ll be needing the extra power in a few months.)
Are There Genuinely Free Alternatives to ClickFunnels? (Yes, There Are!)
We also wouldn’t recommend ClickFunnels for some niche products, as there are specialised tools that are tailored to specific products and they are far more effective than a generic funnel builder. For instance: if you sell a range of on-line training courses or a range of video-based products, a specialist sales platform like Kajabi should definitely be your first choice. Similarly, Shopify is great for overseeing the sale of physical products, and has store-front features that ClickFunnels can’t offer.
But we definitely would recommend ClickFunnels to any business that wants to improve the ‘back end’ of their sales process; ClickFunnels is just a great tool for quietly sitting in the corner and driving qualified leads to your door. Hour after hour, day after day, and with no intervention from you unless you want to tweak the price of a bump offer, or run an A/B split test to see which of two landing pages performs best.
What Features Does ClickFunnels Offer?
One of the great things about ClickFunnels is that you don’t need any technical or design knowledge to build your funnels. ClickFunnels comes with the Edison Editor, which is an easy-to-use drag and drop interface on which you build all your landing and sales pages. It’s the place where you’ll spend most of your time initially as you build and configure your funnels.
To make it even easier to design your pages, ClickFunnels comes with a range of pre-designed, eye-catching templates which are tried, tested, and proven to convert.
Pre-designed Templates Included with ClickFunnels
The range includes funnels optimised for many different types of business, and fo many different functions. Here’s a list, although it’s by no means comp[lete as new funnels are being made available every day – usually by experienced users who offer their funnel designs through the ClickFunnel user community.
- Sales funnels – Introduces the features and benefits of your product at every step until visitors are converted into new customers.
- Opt-in funnels – The Opt-in funnel gets your visitor’s email address, in exchange for a free product like a checklist or an eBook.
- Membership funnels – These persuade your customers to sign for a membership, which gives you guaranteed repeat sales every month.
- Webinar funnels – Drives traffic to pre-recorded webinars which either promote your product or are a product in themselves.
- Check Out funnels – Essentially the last stage of a sales funnel, these ensure the checkout process is fast and secure, and also deal with abandoned carts.
Affiliate Program
Apart from the actual product itself, ClickFunnels produces a vast array of sales and marketing resources, including training courses rightly regarded as the best in the business. The Affiliate Program gives you the chance to market those resources and get paid a commission for every eventual sale.
The Affiliate Program works so well because, as a user of ClickFunnels yourself, you will have been through that training and appreciate just how excellent it is. So this gives you the chance to let other people know just how good it is, and earn money at the same time! Affiliate programs are an excellent way to add a passive income stream to your existing business, they help you add value to your product, and ClickFunnels gains users. It’s a genuine win-win!
We have a guide which covers all the ways you can make an extra passive income by becoming a ClickFunnels Associate. It’s an easy way to make easy money, so we’d love you to check it out.
How to Make a Passive Income with ClickFunnels. Our Detailed Guide
Share Funnels
This feature is another fantastic plus for users of the ClickFunnels platform. You can share or exchange funnels with other eCommerce entrepreneurs, and take advantage of their proven success. As you become more proficient with funnel building, you can even share some of your own designs and receive ‘rent’ every time they’re used. And if the business that’s using your funnel decide they want to run their own, they will ultimately sign up for a ClickFunnels subscription and you’ll receive a commission for adding a new user.
Training
We’ve already talked about the training briefly, but it’s worth mentioning again – it really is that brilliant! As soon as you become a user, you get access to the full range of training resources which goes under the cover-all title of FunnelFlix. Russell Brunson and his team of industry-leaders offer training on just about everything to do with sales and marketing. Even if you decide not to choose ClickFunnels as a product, it’s worth going through the excellent training, if only to get some new profitable ideas on how to use a sales funnel. There’s a great course called the OFA Challenge (‘One Funnel Away’ Challenge) which is definitely worth a look. You can use our link to find out more.
Find out more about Russell Brunson’s excellent OFA Challenge!
Follow Up Funnels
Often referred to as the ‘second’ funnel, this is ClickFunnels’ autoresponder feature. Follow Up Funnels is an extension pack that gives you advanced automation in your email system, and it’s available exclusively with the Platinum subscription plan.
This automation tailors your marketing messages to reach your users based on their business profiles and interactions. Here are some of the things that you can do with Follow Up Funnels:
- Thank you messages (for enquiries, or for new customers)
- Email reminders (you have unpaid items in your cart…)
- Targeted email marketing of new products
- Filtering to create customised email lists
- Informing membership sites of exclusive marketing campaigns
- Making product suggestions based on landing page
- Follow-up offers for newly-converted clients (upsells)
- Providing reasons for visitors to opt-in to future promotions
- Reminding your customer to renew a guarantee or policy
- Sending payment confirmations (don’t just leave it to PayPal!)
Backpack
The Backpack feature is also available with the Platinum plan, and gives you a chance to run your own network of affiliates, who promote your product for a slice of commission. Backpack automates your entire affiliate network and looks after things like multi-tier commissions and making sure all your sales content is available.
Find Out How to Promote ClickFunnels
Okay, we’re sure you now have a pretty good idea of what ClickFunnels is, and how you can benefit from using a sales funnel. Now let’s find out how much it will cost you!
Dropshipping Pitfalls Explained
ClickFunnels Pricing
ClickFunnels likes to make it easy for you to ‘test the waters’ before you jump right in, so there is a 14-day trial available (although we recommend the OFA Challenge – you get training from Brunson himself on how to build a complete funnel, and then you can start using it immediately!)
During the trial, ClickFunnels will grant you full access to all of its features without any restriction. You can jump right and start building funnels, and increasing sales.
At the end of the trial period, if you decide to stay with ClickFunnels, there are two price points.
ClickFunnels Basic Plan
The Basic plan comes in at a subscription fee of $97 a month. You won’t get access to the Follow Up Funnels autoresponder, but that can always be replaced by an external email platform like GetResponse or MailChimp.
However, if you are a small business owner with a few well-performing revenue streams, or if you’re just dipping your toe into the eCommerce ocean, then the Basic plan might be all you need. Here are some features you’ll enjoy:
- 20 different Funnels.
- 100 Funnel Pages.
- 20,000 visitors to your pages.
- Unlimited leads/contacts.
- 3 custom domains only.
- 3 payment gateways only.
- Email integrations (ClickFunnel email solution or personal).
- Opt-in Funnels.
- Sales Funnels.
- Webinar Funnels.
- Membership Funnels.
- Up-sell pages.
- Down-sell pages.
- Order pages.
- Shared Funnel feature.
- Only one SMTP integration.
- FunnelFlix.
- Funnel Hacker’s forum.
ClickFunnels Platinum Plan
This plan is really aimed at businesses making large-volume sales. We wouldn’t recommend it for a beginner, but if the extra impact of Follow Up Funnels is important to you, then this is definitely the plan to go for.
Weighing in at $297 per month, this plan is definitely a big commitment, but those users who’ve signed up to the Platinum plan are well aware of the advantages of unrestricted ClickFunnels, and they’re happy to pay the (admittedly large) hike of $200 per month.
The Platinum plan is definitely only worth it when you’re good and ready, but here’s a list of what’s included (just in case you’re tempted!). With Platinum, you get everything in the Basic plan, plus:
- No limit Funnels.
- No limit pages.
- No limit unique visitors.
- No limit leads/contact.
- Access to follow-up Funnels.
- Access to Backpack (affiliate management centre).
- 9 payment gateways.
- 9 custom domains.
- Priority chat support.
Can You Really Make Money With ClickFunnels?
Yes, you really can! The direct way, as we’ve mentioned, is by becoming a ClickFunnels Affiliate and promoting the product, along with all the training resources. There are users who have become so successful at marketing ClickFunnels that they’ve made it their main revenue stream These guys are known as ‘Superaffiliates’, and at least three of them are making over $1m a year in affiliate commission.
Let’s look at that figure again: Over one million dollars. EVERY YEAR! In fact, since the launch of the Affiliate Program, ClickFunnels has paid out over $63m in commission and, in just 2019 alone, they paid out over $23m.
So can you make money with ClickFunnels? Hell, yes!
Of course, the other way to make more money is by increasing your sales. We can’t guarantee that ClickFunnels will help you do that, but every case study we’ve seen suggests that ClickFunnels is responsible for driving more traffic, collecting more emails, and converting more leads.
And we use ClickFunnels ourselves, so we know that it makes a difference. At the least, it pays for itself, so it’s unlikely it will affect your bottom line. And, with ClickFunnels configured correctly, you should start to see a definite uptrend. We did!
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Honest ClickFunnels Review: Conclusion
There are plenty of websites and blogs out there that fly the flag for ClickFunnels, and bombard you with pop-ups and nag screens – almost begging you to sign up for a free trial. They’re not wrong – the people who run these sites are all ClickFunnels Affiliates and they all know how good the platform really is – but it can be a bit too ‘in your face’ at times!
We’re also ClickFunnels Affiliates, which means we’re also aware of how good the software is. Is it the best funnel builder? Probably, but there are lots of other good tools out there, which you owe it to yourself to look at before you commit to ClickFunnels (or to anybody else).
We’ve run quite a few side-by-side comparisons which include some of the major players in the market, so we’d love you to take a quick look through some of them before you make any decisions:
Unbounce vs ClickFunnels: Two of the Greatest Sales Tools go Head-to-Head (Updated for 2020) — Pending
Leadpages vs ClickFunnels: We Compare Key Features (and End Up with an Unlikely Winner!) — Pending
Shopify vs ClickFunnels: We Compare 5 Key Features (And Come Up With a Surprising Result!) — Pending
Kajabi vs ClickFunnels: We Compare 5 Key Features (Which is Best?) — Pending
Kartra vs ClickFunnels: We Compare 5 Key Features — Pending
In our honest opinion, ClickFunnels deserves its place as a market leader. The training that’s available and the community that’s grown up around the product are both superb resources: you get the feeling that every existing ClickFunnels user can’t wait to welcome you to the team and start showing you how to build high-performing funnels.
And the product itself is excellent. It has its faults (that hefty price tag for one!), and there are some things it can’t do. But what it can do is build sales funnels, and it does that very, very well.
If you’ve got any questions about ClickFunnels or some of the other products we’ve mentioned, we’d love to help, so please get in touch. We may not have all the answers but, like the title says, we’ll be completely honest.
