ClickFunnels Review: A Non-Affiliate’s POV

Note: I am not an affiliate for Clickfunnels but I use Clickfunnels for clients sometimes. This Clickfunnel review is based on my experience. I mainly use Unbounce, Instapage, and Leadpages for myself and for clients.

Use this Clickfunnels review to get to the reality.

Is it good? Hyped? How much does clickfunnels cost? Then, some more.

What about alternatives? Varied purposes, various use cases, and hence various tools (make a prudent choice. Read this Clickfunnel review for a complete picture).

I’d use the following combination: Unbounce, Instapage or Leadpages (for sales funnels and landing pages) in combination with OptinMonster, ConvertKit, and Drip.

For selling digital products, memberships, and online courses, go with the free-until-you-wanto-to-pay options such as Podia, Payhip, and Thinkific

Looking to build a pure e-commerce business by selling products or services? Just use Shopify. Other businesses can use websites designed with WordPress or Webflow.

Use PartnerStack (or Tapfiliate & ShareaSale) for running and managing your affiliate or partnership program.

Why a Non-biased and non-affiliate Clickfunnels Review?

This blog uses affiliate links (here and there). I am an affiliate myself. Much as I learnt from Pat Flynn, I never promote or push products that I don’t find much value in. I don’t want to ever write (much less sell) products I don’t believe in.

There are other products I do push. Clickfunnels is not one of them. Nah. Nah.

Clickfunnels is building an army of affiliates (and there’s nothing wrong with that).

There are many affiliates already leading to tons of information which could be unfairly biased and one-sided (now, that’s a problem). I don’t give rat’s shit about what affiliates think.

I obviously don’t care what the folks at Clickfunnels think.

All I care about is that you make the right decisions

Clickfunnels Review: From the Heart

This is a completely non-biased Clickfunnel review. I am happy for you if you decide to use it. My intent is to tear it apart and build it back together so that you can make an informed decision.

If you’ve been around on the Internet and if you have anything to do with Internet marketing, digital marketing, or sales funnels, you’d have heard of Clickfunnels

Clickfunnels promises you to help set up full-fledged “sales funnels” at the click of a button.

A few more clicks here and there and you can work off a set of templates and set up entire sales funnels within no time.

Drag and drop. Just like that.

Tempting indeed!

The questions you need To Ask Yourself

The Clickfunnels full package gives you bells and whistles on top of the sales funnels building a feature set that you’d get anyway.

The premise of Clickfunnels is that you’d be able to set up full-fledged, working, and high-converting sales funnels for your business.

The question is this: Would you be able to pull it off without Clickfunnels? Is it hyped? Are there any alternatives to Clickfunnels or is there a cheaper workaround to this instead of having to shell out anywhere from $127 to $208 per month?

That’s why I wrote this clickfunnels review.

Let’s dig in:

Is Clickfunnels Worth it?

The starting price for Clickfunnels is $97 monthly and the Clickfunnels platinum package will set you back by $297 per month.

Further, there’s a ridiculous TwoComma Clubx that takes the cost of Clickfunnels to a stratospheric $2497 (just for a few more domains, support, and courses?).

Clickfunnels cost is exorbitant (for the function it delivers) and you could use some of that cash for advertising itself.

I’ve used Clickfunnels for my clients before (and I still do) and I am in the right position to tell you whether or not Clickfunnels is perfect for you (or not).

What Does Clickfunnels get you?

What you get with click funnels is this:

• Ability to set up funnel pages quickly. Pages like the Opt-in page, interstitial pages for upsells and cross-sells, and the “thank you” pages.

• Clickfunnels has autoresponders (emails) features using which you can do lead nurturing. All the good stuff about automation is somewhat possible with Clickfunnels.

• You have a way to do A/B testing for every single page that’s a part of your funnel. Like do A/B testing for your main landing page, do A/B testing for even for your thank you page.

• You have a way to create membership sites with Clickfunnels. After your leads signup, they can gain access to exclusive membership areas that you can create and maintain.

• Clickfunnels has integrations with Stripe and Paypal. This allows you to accept payments for your products, services, or membership sites at the end of the sales funnel.

• Clickfunnels has features to allow you to recruit, manage, and pay affiliates.

• Obviously, you have all the metrics and analytics you need to review your campaigns, funnel performance, conversions, and sales (on top of A/B testing results).

• Total Cost of clickfunnels: $297per month or $2497 per month for Clickfunnels VIP program

Other Costs You’ll Incur (On top of Clickfunnels Cost)

Remember that the $297 per month is only for Clickfunnels. You’d still have to spend on getting traffic to your sales funnels such as:

• Blog posts (the time you spend writing them yourself or if you hire others to write for you)

• Social Media Management (and tools for monitoring and managing your social media presence)

• Email Marketing (You’ll still need standalone email service providers such as Drip, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or Campaign Monitor). If you have a huge list of subscribers (or multiple lists), your email marketing costs will make up for a sizable chunk of your budget.

• Any amount of money you’d spend on paid traffic (including Native Advertising, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads).

• Any other expenses for people, tools, or advertising that you might be spending on

Clickfunnels Alternative (beat Clickfunnels cost)

Create Landing pages with Unbounce, Instapage, or Leadpages. That’s it. You don’t need anything else beyond these three powerful landing page builders.

Each of these landing page builders come with pure drag-and-drop functionality, lots of templates, integrations with other tools in your marketing stack, and more.

With Unbounce, Instapage & Leadpages, you could build all the landing pages, thank you pages, and other funnel pages you need to build complete funnels.

Build as many as you need (the more, the better).

Besides, the tools also come with A/B testing, fast loading pages, alert bars, pop-ups, and superior support (not including access to Facebook groups and communities)

Build your sign-up forms, exit-intent forms, Slide-ins, and welcome mats or full-screen opt-ins with OptinMonster.

While not as advanced as OptinMonster, Convertkit and MailerLite also provide slide-ins, opt-in forms between blog posts, sticky bars, and exit-intent pop-ups.

Use Drip or Convertkit for Marketing Automation. If you want to start for free, try MailChimp too.

For accepting payments, you could just use Stripe or Paypal.

Online Courses & Membership sites? Clickfunnels is a Dinosaur

I’d never recommend Clickfunnels if you want to build a serious membership site, sell digital downloads, or sell online courses.

You can choose Podia, MailerLite (sites), Payhip and even Strikingly — for building your perfect membership site (along with launching online courses or to sell digital downloads).

Podia also comes with its own email marketing system, messaging system, ability to sell webinars, landing pages for each of your products (along with your main storefront), and more.

Other options for selling digital products, memberships, online courses (much better than Gumroad).

Truly, if your focus is to run a membership site, forget Clickfunnels.

First, Clickfunnels is not an LMS or a membership site software.

Second, it’s trying hard but clickfunnels is still buggy.

Third, Customer service is virtually non-existent.

Clickfunnel’s Inbuilt Affiliate Marketing System

PartnerStack offers automated affiliate management, global compliance, affiliate dashboards, and a simple and easy way for you to start your affiliate program or partner program.

Or use Tapfiliate for launching your affiliate marketing programs.

Optionally, you can use Shareasale. With all of the above affiliate management tools, you can have a whole army of affiliates already waiting to signup with you and then promote your products and services.

You could manage to do everything for a fraction of the cost that you’d have to shell out for Clickfunnels.

Writing about each of the tools above is beyond the scope of this clickfunnels review, but there are several reviews and blog posts written (on this same site).

Go on, and read them

Clickfunnels Alternative Combination That Just Works

Unbounce, Instapage or Leadpages for sales funnels and landing pages.

Drip, MailerLite, or Convertkit for email marketing Automation = Complete Control and Infinitely Scalable.

PartnerStack or Shareasale = launch complete affiliate partner programs or partner programs.

Note: Use Podia or Payhip if you’d like to build a membership site, launch online courses, or if you’d like to sell digital downloads.

What’s Clickfunnels Really good for?

If you are the kind of person who doesn’t like to touch code, doesn’t like to waste time building multiple pages, and wants everything basic to happen from a single platform, Clickfunnels is awesome for that.

Don’t mind the $297 price tag or the ridiculous $2497 package? You’d be able to deploy sales funnels in a few minutes. But that’s all that you can do.

You can launch an affiliate program for your business. You can do email marketing. Add multiple domains. But, that’s it.

Do you want to have marketing automation kick-off after your leads start coming through for much less than the cost of click funnels? There are so many ways to do that.

If the thought of working with different platforms and tools only to stitch them all together is daunting for you, go for Clickfunnels by all means. You’ll still be spending a premium for it, though.

Watch out For These Before Investing In Clickfunnels:

You’d have to consider pricing and costs for absolutely every tool you use (or your choice — and hence the opportunity cost — of not using tools as well).

Specific to Clickfunnels, here’s what you should be looking out for:

Clickfunnels Pricing and Cost

Why pay $97 per month [Updated: Clickfunnels pricing is as follows: Basic plan is $US 127 per month; Pro plan is at $US 157 per month; and the funnel hacker plan is $US 208/per month — for something that’s just as old as my grandfather is?

Why does it seem like click funnels is the only sales funnel builder in the world? Haven’t you heard of the likes of Unbounce, Leadpages, or Instapage? — cheaper and get the job done very well.

Besides, what exactly are you getting for $97 $US 127 per month (and going up?), going up to $2479 per month or so (for lessons on funnel hacks?). [This seems to have been removed from their website now, seeing that its ridiculous anyway]

There’s a little something called FunnelFlix Platinum which is a part of Clickfunnels Platinum (optional) but no cost or pricing details included. This is a closed private-group style training (with videos and courses).

Clickfunnel Platinum itself gives you Unlimited everything — funnels, priority support, unlimited visitors, and more.

Clickfunnel Platinum is priced at $297

It’s not like clickfunnels guarantees anything (including better conversion rate or more leads or profit-earning sales funnels — all that’s on you anyway).

Nothing guarantees you anything. Period.

The Hype That Clickfunnels Is..

Any product with an army of affiliates tends to have hype around it. Too many blog posts and even videos extolling the virtues of the product. For some products, the hype is worth it because the products are really good (affiliates or not).

I am not against affiliates (they do what they have to do).

I do affiliate marketing too, but only for products that I love (and you’ll love them too).

But this is also when you have to watch out for the hype and look even more carefully than you normally would.

The right way to do affiliate marketing is to recommend products that are awesome, when they provide value, and when they kick ass. That’s all I do. That’s what most responsible affiliates do.

I know of a few other products like The New Kajabi and SamCart for instance. Kajabi is overpriced for what it does.

SamCart is alright but I don’t see how creating a few checkout pages makes it any special.

The Drag and Drop Builder

The Clickfunnels Drag and Drop builder is good – it allows you to tinker with your pages, build exactly what you want, and you also have templates to start out with.

The page builder itself, however, is much like what you get with Leadpages.

The Clickfunnels Vs LeadPages comparison isn’t fair though (again, outside the scope of this clickfunnel review).

Leadpages is leagues ahead, more affordable, has great support, and the team bats for your success.

Unbounce, on the other hand, is fluid. You can literally click, hold, and drag any element absolutely anywhere on your pages without getting cornered into a row or a column.

See the Unbounce Landing Page Builder Preview (No Opt-in Needed)

I find that awesome. But you take a call…

Clickfunnels Features Overload

I don’t like any product that tries to do too much. Besides, charging exorbitant prices for features that others provide is pointless.

Clickfunnels tries to do too many things at once (and they mean well for you, Mr. Marketer and Mr. Entrepreneur).

But just because they threw a funnel pages builder, an affiliate program manager, analytics, and A/B testing together, Clickfunnels wants to charge you an arm and a leg for it.

One, there’s a question of feature overload.

Further, there’s also a question of whether you’d really have to spend so much to get those features packaged into a single account.

Additionally, all these features could seem intimidating for first-time users (any idea why clients came asking us for help?). SaaS products should be easy to use — these are the times we live in.

Meanwhile, many of the features promised won’t work well. Buggy, non-responsive, hard to integrate, and lack of support. Enough said.

Clickfunnels Bandwidth

Clickfunnels keeps track of the number of visitors to your funnel pages.

Unbounce tells you that you’d spend say $50 for every 5000 visitors in a month. When you cross that limit, you’d be asked to upgrade.

On the contrary, I don’t see pricing details or mentions of click funnels cost for overage in bandwidth for Clickfunnels.

What happens when you cross 50,000,000 visitors in a month? God only knows.

Non-responsive Clickfunnels customer support

I’ve heard plenty of stories from my clients about Clickfunnel’s non-responsive support. Truly, they don’t bother explaining things to you after you signup and become a customer.

Hence, this was the trigger for writing this clickfunnel review was when I had to struggle to get simple things solved with the Clickfunnels support team.

Accordingly, here’s what Miles Beckler has to say:

Further, their feature set is bloated so that means that it’s not going to be easy for you to figure out how to:

• Set up a custom domain for your funnels
• Change URL paths to memorable URLs
• Figure out how to add important tracking elements such as Facebook Ad Pixels, Google Adwords Tracking Codes, Retargeting scripts, etc.
• Send simple email marketing campaigns. The email marketing tool inside Clickfunnels is a nightmare to use.

Clickfunnels: Just Don’t Buy

This is 2023. There are some excellent products out there that are more capable while they can bury Clickfunnels, 9 feet into the ground.

Now, with AI landing page builders, AI-driven copy, and AI-driven everything, there are smarter solutions to try out.

Moreover, I faced these challenges when I went about building sales funnels for my clients and that’s precisely why I wrote this clickfunnels review.

In conclusion, have you used Clickfunnels or do you use it right now? How do you find it?

Did you find this clickfunnels review useful? What do you think about Clickfunnels?

Tell me all about it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or my LinkedIn Brand page.