Clickfunnels | Is it Legit or Publicized Excessively? | Honest Review
If you’re in touch with the world of digital marketing, you’ve probably at least heard of Clickfunnels.
It is an all-in-one sales page and funnel builder software packaged with many useful sales tools and integrations, and many training programs.
With its ability to create conversion orientated landing pages and powerful sales funnels, Clickfunnels is a clear leader in the sales industry as a sales funnel software.
There are hundreds of Clickfunnels reviews online. However, between all of them, there are so few honest reviews. So, I went into writing my own review for Clickfunnels.
In this review, I’ll go through the gist of Clickfunnels, what it is, the positives and the negatives, the features, customer service, and so on.
What Are Funnels? How Sales Funnels Work
Before continuing with this ClickFunnels Review, let’s clarify what a marketing funnel is.
In marketing, it’s a process that takes people who don’t know you and turns them into customers, e,g: a marketing funnel.
In e-commerce, a sales funnel is a series of steps designed to guide a website visitor to the checkout page.
In a physical store, you can take your customers into buying something. In a digital shop, you may be a little more distant from your visitors.
This is where your funnel comes in. It’s designed to appeal to your customers through the principles of psychology.
The funnel works step-by-step, bring traffic in closer and closer until visitors end up at a payment page.
If you think this sounds cool, you’re right. it’s become a huge deal for online marketing.
What Can ClickFunnels Do For You?
Clickfunnels allows you to offer more to your customers.
Once the customer gets into the sales funnel, you can take them through several landing pages that ensure he ends up being a high-paying customer at the end.
However, Clickfunnels has more to offer to ensure your online business runs smoothly.
Here are a couple of things reviewed that you can use Clickfunnels for:
1) ClickFunnels Can Help You Build Marketing Pages That Sell
For you to make money online from your business, you are going to need to make several webpages.
These webpages are also called marketing pages. ClickFunnels makes it easy for you to make these webpages.
Remember, you want to take a visitor through the whole process and turn them from your site’s visitor to a paying customer.
Some of the marketing pages that you will need for your business include sales pages, order pages, webinar pages, and checkout pages.
2) You Can Host Courses With ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is ideal for any kind of business, including online tutoring.
If you offer online courses, having ClickFunnels as your marketing tool will come in handy.
The software features a Membership Area that makes it easy for online tutors to design their courses.
Setting up the members’ area is quite easy and should only take you a couple of minutes.
One bonus of using ClickFunnels for your online courses is that it helps in managing other aspects of your business, such as sales and marketing.
The only downside to ClickFunnels for hosting courses is that the platform won’t support your marketing video. You will, therefore, have to use a different platform such as YouTube.
3) You Can Launch a New Product Witch ClickFunnels
Launching a new product is never easy, whether your business runs online or not.
For online business owners, it is notably more challenging to convince people to get on board with your new product.
ClickFunnels makes it easier for you to launch a product thanks to the Product Launch funnel.
With this funnel, you get to create brand awareness first and convince potential customers why they need the product.
By the time you get to the actual launch, clients are convinced that it is a worthy investment, boosting your sales of the new product.
4) ClickFunnels Can Help to Build an Email List
ClickFunnels Build an email list, another challenge that many online business owners face.
But with ClickFunnels, it should only take you some time before you have an impressive subscribers’ list.
One of the best strategies for building your list is by offering a free incentive at the beginning of your marketing funnel.
Say, you placed an ad for a life coaching lesson in time management.
Through ClickFunnels, you can set up a marketing campaign that offers your site’s visitors a free package on a time management course.
By doing this, you can build your email list to a significant number from where you can generate some impressive leads for your business.
Top ClickFunnels Features
We’ve already mentioned that ClickFunnels is an all-in-one marketing solution for online business owners.
As such, the platform comes equipped with several lucrative features that make it easy for online business owners and marketers.
Here are the top ClickFunnels features that you should know:
- Drag-&-Drop Page Builder
- Ability to build sales funnels without coding skills
- Up-sell and down-sell feature
- Ability to share funnels with others
- A/B testing feature
- Integrated analytics to track your sales data
Let’s have a look at its features that make this platform stand out from the rest.
1) Drag & Drop Page Builder
Building pages in a funnel can be difficult.
But with ClickFunnels Drag & Drop feature, you can easily design the pages to look however you want.
The software comes with pre-built template pages for sales pages, order pages, checkout pages, and others.
Choose whatever template you want, then proceed to drag and drop features such as images and texts to whatever place that you want.
Instead of spending hours designing one page, a couple of minutes will be enough for you to create an attractive landing page that will keep your clients hooked.
You will quickly get through the funnel building process up until the launch phase within no time.
2) Ability to Build Sales Funnels Without Coding Skills
You don’t need to have any prior coding knowledge for you to build a sales funnel.
ClickFunnels has made everything easier. There is a wide range of marketing funnel templates readily available on the platform.
You only have to choose one and tweak it to suit your needs.
What if you are a pro at coding?
ClickFunnels gives you the option of designing your pages and building your sales funnels from scratch.
If you have some coding knowledge, this would be an excellent opportunity to put your skills to the test.
3) Up-Sells and Down-Sells
Just as they are about to check out, ClickFunnels allows you to set up a page that offers your customers a deal.
If you run an online tutoring business and the customer was just about to purchase part 1 of 4 for a particular course, you can offer them the entire 4-part course at a discount.
Often, customers will see this as a better deal and go for it. This is what we call an up-sell.
If your customer takes the offer, you may decide to pitch in a second up-sell.
This time you could, perhaps, offer them a different but relatable course.
Your customer may choose to either accept or decline the offer. If so, then your sales funnel can direct them to a related by a lower-priced offer.
This persuades them to reconsider their decision and gives you a second chance to convert them.
4) Share Your Funnels with Others
You don’t always have to build a sales funnel from scratch.
ClickFunnels lets its users share funnels on the platform.
This means that you can use a friend’s exact funnel for your business or share with them yours.
A significant advantage of this feature is that it helps you save some time.
If you run a marketing business and build sales funnels for customers, this feature could come in handy.
Through this feature, you can also earn some commission.
Whenever you share a funnel with someone who does not have a ClickFunnels account, they will be prompted to take the trial.
When they become a user, you get to earn some commission.
5) A/B Test Your Offers
Whenever you build a sales funnel for any of your offers, you need to ensure that you have the best-performing sales funnel.
You are, therefore, likely to design several funnels and comparing them before choosing one.
With ClickFunnels A/B testing, you can easily compare two funnel templates and determine the better performing one.
Besides, the templates that already exist in the software are already tested.
You won’t waste much time deciding which model performs and which one doesn’t.
The A/B split testing feature doesn’t work on templates only.
You can use this feature to compare variants of your ads, landing pages, media pages, opt-in pages, and other elements of your marketing campaign.
By doing so, you can choose the best performing variations for every page, allowing you to design a premium marketing campaign.
6) Integrated Analytics to Track Your Sales Data
If you run an online business, you need to keep track of your data.
Where are most of your customers coming from?
What are they buying most?
Which marketing strategy works best?
If you are using different tools to perform all these functions, it may be a challenge for you to keep up with all this data.
However, because ClickFunnels is an integrated marketing solution, you quickly have access to all this data in one platform.
Through the Sales Analytics feature, you can quickly tell what progress you are making with your sales funnels.
You can, for example, tell where most of your hot leads generate from.
Identifying this can help you focus more on the hot leads and turn them into customers without spending so much money on advertising.
Pros – ClickFunnels
I’ve got some good news: ClickFunnels does its job!
ClickFunnels is intended to save you time and energy—to do what otherwise requires a lot of technological proficiency and an array of third party applications. In this respect, ClickFunnels succeeds.
1) Makes You Money
One of the best things about ClickFunnels is its focus on making money for the user.
They make it very easy to make your account, put up your content, and start taking payments.
Plus, it’s pretty easy to pick everything up. It’ll probably take you a couple of hours to figure out most of what you need, max.
2) Automate Sales Processes
When running an online business, the sales process is one of the most crucial elements. After all, it is a process that rewards you for all your hard work.
It is crucial that the sales process, just like any other process, runs smoothly from beginning to end.
ClickFunnels allows you to automate the entire process so that you don’t have to do any of the integration manually.
If you already own a store on the platform, you can incorporate ClickFunnels into the system and automate the entire process.
Should a customer make an order at any point in the sales funnel, the order is automatically sent to your store for processing.
Another tool that makes the sales process easier with ClickFunnels is payment integration.
The software integrates with several payment platforms to allow your customers to pay for your products and services at the end of the sales funnel.
3) Generate More Leads
As an online business owner, you will continuously be looking for ways to generate more leads for your business.
One way to do this is by placing ads on social media.
Even with an ad on Facebook, how do you get people to click on it?
ClickFunnels offers a solution for this.
Witch ClickFunnels software, you can design beautiful and attractive landing pages that are sure to get people to click on your ad and enter your marketing funnel.
Through the platform, you can also build an impressive email list that will then help you generate more leads by giving certain offers.
Because not all the leads will turn into actual sales, you want to ensure that you have as many leads as possible to increase the chances of a higher number of sales.
4) All In One
Overall, it’s great to have things so centralized: I can build my landing pages, create forms and order forms, and trigger emails all from one platform.
All of this really does save you time and money, resources you’d otherwise need to spend on developers, CSS, hosting configurations, and so on.
5) WordPress Plugin
You’ll also find a handy WordPress plugin that lets you add ClickFunnels pages to your WordPress website.
It saves a lot of time and is much less of a hassle than working between ClickFunnels and WordPress without a plugin.
The Clickfunnels WordPress plugin is also rated a solid 4.4 stars in the WordPress plugin repository, with over 20,000 active installations.
6) Access To The ClickFunnels FunnelFlix Program
As a paying member of ClickFunnels, you will get access to the FunnelFlix program.
The program contains a collection of all of Russell’s teachings and training on online marketing strategies.
What’s more, is that the program also includes some useful tips that Russell paid for from other online marketing experts.
Once you get a ClickFunnels account, you will have access to a dashboard that helps you navigate the entire software.
You can access all the courses available on ClickFunnels at the upper-right hand of the panel.
NOTE: FunnelFlix is more than just a collection of live training, it has some of the best courses on sales, marketing, and mindset from successful trainers such as John Reese, Tony Robbins, and such.
Cons – Clickfunnels
I’ve got some bad news.
Even though ClickFunnels is overall strong, it has quite a few areas that need work and a good ClickFunnels review wouldn’t be complete without looking at the ugly side as well.
1) Overpriced
Despite the fact of how good ClickFunnels software is I must also mention that it’s not the cheapest one.
The lowest plan starts from $97 per month what makes it hard to get for many people.
While I totally understand the value this tool is delivering to its users but I still think there could be a cheaper plan for beginners who just starts and are not sure about their financial situation.
2) Average Customer Experience
One of the biggest drawbacks that ClickFunnels has is its support system.
ClickFunnels support service is a bit slow as compared to other options.
An inquiry may take a few hours, which is not a good option if you need a quick fix.
In my experience, they’ve been fine with basic questions, but if you ask them more difficult things, especially about more advanced features, they won’t be very helpful.
I have also to mention that not so long ago they have integrated priority support for ClickFunnels Platinum members.
But again, it’s only available for those who’re paying $297 per month.
3) Too Templated
This one isn’t on ClickFunnels but more on the community.
While you have the ability to customize extensively within ClickFunnels, many people use similar designs.
Considering the popularity of ClickFunnels, this has led to a large amount of ClickFunnels looks floating around. Diversity is important.
4) Software Outages & Bugs
Every now and then, ClickFunnels will go down or experience some errors. Though this really doesn’t happen often, there’s little you can do but wait.
If you’re investing a lot in advertising or driving traffic to your funnels and a ClickFunnels’ glitch brings your pages down for even a few hours, you can potentially lose a lot of money.
It’s also hard to know when your pages are working or not unless you constantly check or wait until you hear from angry customers.
Barring uptime, I also deal with some glitches when I clone pages using the HTML publishing option.
5) Constantly Changing User Experience
The dashboard changes often, the flow of creating new pages and funnels changes, a button will move around, pricing options change, etc and it seems ClickFunnels is still figuring things out.
I like consistency in my software, especially if it’s a business solution.
6) Take Some Time To Master
I think that ClickFunnels great tool. But if you want to get the most of it you have to master how to use it right.
ClickFunnels offers an insane amount of training. However, it will take some time until you watch everything and get used to all the most important features of the tool.
But once you’ve built a few funnels yourself, everything will get a lot easier.
ClickFunnels Pricing
ClickFunnels has two pricing plans; their Clickfunnels Standard Plan and their Clickfunnels Platinum Plan.
Even their standard plan starts on the pricier side. Clickfunnels is $97 a month and Platinum comes in at $297 a month.
For what it’s worth, you also get a 14-day free trial to try out the service, so at least you don’t need to commit to an expensive plan right away.
If you pay annually instead of monthly, you get two months free ($997 for ClickFunnels and $2,997 for Platinum).
A bit expensive huh?
Well, some would say so, and I can see why especially if you compare to LeadPages, a similar (overlapping, but definitely not identical) service which starts at $25 a month.
However, it is important to keep in mind ClickFunnels’ main service is to make funnels more efficient, and it does a pretty good job. I personally consider it a good investment.
The main differences between an entry level account and a premium account are as follows: the standard gets 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.
However, both plans have unlimited contacts, unlimited members, all advanced funnels, A/B split tests, and a few other commonalities.
Platinum has a full list of features, including the following: one-time payments (this is a Backpack feature that lets you characterize a product as a one-time payment product for your payment gateways)
Subscription plans (another Backpack feature, but unlike one-time payments, this lets your customers pay for a subscription service)
3 SMTP integrations (StartUp has 1); unlimited funnels, pages, visits, and custom domains. Priority support and template requests as well as Followup Funnels and Backpack.
ClickFunnels Integrations
Integrations are exactly what they sound like: other marketing tools you integrate into the ClickFunnels software.
There are a few different types of integrations you can add to your ClickFunnels account: email, webinar, SMS/text, and actions.
For example, you might add MailChimp to your ClickFunnels because you like MailChimp’s auto-responding software, and you are registered with them. Easy!
ClickFunnels has quite a few notable partners you can add to your integrations easily. Here’s a full list:
- Active Campaign
- Aweber
- Constant Contact
- Convertkit
- Drip
- GetResponse
- GoToWebinar
- GVO PureLeverage
- HTML Form
- HubSpot
- InfusionSoft
- Interspire
- Mad Mimi
- MailChimp
- Maropost
- Ontraport
- SalesForce
- Sendlane
- ShipStation
- Shopify
- Twilio
- Webinar Jam Studio
- WordPress
- YouZign
If you go to your integrations section, you can search for these or just click the search bar, and they’ll come up. It’s pretty self-explanatory, just click the one you want and add it.
The process for managing integrations is also straightforward, though you might have to check your third-party software’s documentation to find exactly what ClickFunnels needs.
Overall, you’ll find the process pretty simple. Integrations are a little more technical conceptually than some features, such as the page builder.
So, it’s much appreciated to have a very simple way of adding and managing integrations.
Related to integrations are payment gateways.
Payment gateways get integrated and on other software platforms are just called integrations, but on ClickFunnels they get a section separate from integrations.
They may also be known to ClickFunnels as billing integrations.
Payment gateways are also what they sound like: they’re the integrations that allow your customers to pay for your stuff.
Your shop won’t really be much of a shop unless you’re using a payment gateway.
A list of the payment gateways you can add:
- Paypal
- Stripe
- Infusionsoft
- Warriorplus
- JVZoo
- ClickBank
- Taxamo
- Ontraport
- Blue Snap
- Easy Pay Direct
- NMI
- Recurly
Managing all of these integrations is pretty easy as long as you’re all set up with whatever tool you are trying to integrate with, you shouldn’t have any problems adding it to ClickFunnels.
In my experience, these integrations usually run smoothly and you don’t need to fret much about them.
Customer Support – ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels’ customer support is an area that consists of some nuances.
I commend ClickFunnels for having decent documentation on-site.
I think their documentation is just barely industry-standard for SaaS companies, but still sufficient.
Their docs page has a series of categories, each with their own articles. It may be simple, but content-wise it’s not too shabby.
As for the direct customer service, they have a chat feature inside the dashboard after you log in, but I’m not too pleased with it.
They’ve generally been helpful for simple questions and basic troubleshooting but when I’ve had more advanced questions, I’ve found them pretty unhelpful.
With one specific HTML publishing question, they took three months to get back to me. By then, I figured out a workaround.
Most users won’t need that kind of support and to be honest, most SaaS companies don’t provide that level of support. So I give ClickFunnels kudos for trying.
Additionally, I’ve noticed a consistency among reviews pointing out bad experiences with customer service.
Notably, in instances when features have not worked as promised or when there were weird site malfunctions, customer service reps were supposedly either unresponsive or unhelpful.
One infamous reviewer in particular recounts how, due to site error, some of his customers were locked out and how other non-paying visitors gained access to members-only content.
When he contacted customer service, he found they were apathetic and unhelpful. It may be a weird, improbable scenario, but it illustrates the point.
I would not say ClickFunnels fails in customer support.
I think the team largely understand that their services are not perfectly easy to use and/or involve tools new to their users, and they have put enough resources into their support to make it decent.
At least basic questions will be answered, and they’re pretty responsive.
Maybe most users, myself included, would not say ClickFunnels has an exceptional customer support
But it mostly meets a bare minimum that makes it at least good enough. In this category, we give it a 3 out of 5 stars.
Conclusion
ClickFunnels is not a perfect tool, but it does its job at selling online since it comes with all the required tools to convert visitors into paying customers.
It will not only let you create an unlimited amount of sales funnels but you’ll get all the tools and training on how to market and grow your online sales.
ClickFunnels is not a cheap option for sure, but considering how much revenue sales funnels can bring in it’s definitely worth of investment.
This software offers all the solutions that anyone would need for their online business. The ease of use and different available templates to choose from make it lucrative for any online business owner.