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“More value than a 4-year college education!” is a pretty bold claim. ClickFunnels offers results that sound miraculous – which they’d better be, given the pricing. ClickFunnels charges just shy of $97.00/month for 20 sales funnels and up to 20,0000 visitors per month to your site. That’s a bit pricey for small businesses, even if it might be manageable for bigger companies. So, is ClickFunnels worth it?
You could do worse than buying into the hype around ClickFunnels. It’s a solid bit of marketing kit, all things considered. It also offers a 14-day free trial (which is important when you consider how much cash you’re expected to hand over).
But before I dive into the details, let’s get one thing straight – ClickFunnels is not a dedicated email marketing service. It’s for marketing, sure, but it’s oriented toward the sales funnels and landing pages kind of marketing. Emails are there, but not to the extent you’re probably hoping for.
If you want a dedicated email marketing service that’ll help you target the right customers, send automated emails, and build your audience, ActiveCampaign is my top recommendation1. Read on and you’ll soon see why.
If you came here wondering “how much is ClickFunnels?”, you’ve got your answer already – it’s pretty expensive. But don’t head out just yet – after extensively testing ClickFunnels, I found ways it could be worth it for big businesses AND have some recommendations for how you can get the most out of it without overpaying
Short on Time? These Are ClickFunnels’ Pricing Plans in 2024:
ClickFunnels1– ClickFunnels’ cheapest plan is better suited to smaller businesses or entrepreneurs, but it’s still not cheap and there’s no email marketing. Read more below.
ClickFunnels is one of the more sophisticated tools for building sales funnels out there, and you’re able to design almost any scenario you can imagine. You can make one-click upsells in your cart, or sales letter funnels on your webpage. You can even A/B test different versions to see which performs better. Its drag-and-drop editor is also quite easy and intuitive to use, too. So, what’s the catch?
Unfortunately, ClickFunnels doesn’t offer a free plan like these other marketing services. There is a 14-day free trial that gives you access to all of ClickFunnels’ features, but you have to enter your payment details to access this. So, remember to cancel within 2 weeks if you don’t want to subscribe.
Now, ClickFunnels does offer a discount for paying yearly, but its plans are still pretty expensive. There isn’t a budget option here – ClickFunnels is intended for business owners with money to spend.
Plus, the full cost of ClickFunnels isn’t that apparent at first, because they’ll try to upsell you stuff – like the ability to pause your account or access training courses – at every point along the way.
ClickFunnels offers two plans– ClickFunnels and ClickFunnels Platinum, priced at $97.00/month and $297.00/month respectively. It’s certainly on the pricier side of marketing software, particularly when you consider that you’ll need to sign up for ClickFunnels Platinum to access email marketing.
Again, ClickFunnels isn’t a dedicated email marketing service. It’s designed to help you build sales funnels to generate leads and increase your profits, so email marketing is treated as a nice bonus that gives you multi-channel selling capabilities. If you’re just looking for an email marketing service to send out newsletters, this isn’t the service for you.
Seriously – a dedicated email marketing service like ActiveCampaignoffers far better value for your money1 if you’re looking primarily for an email marketing service (EMS). While the sales funnel builders aren’t as extensive, this EMS provider offers far more email marketing features.
Don’t get me wrong, if you run a big business and can afford the steep price, ClickFunnels’ marketing tools can help boost your conversion rates. What I am saying is that it’s not the right option if you’re looking for an EMS, because, at its heart, that’s not what it was designed to do.
ClickFunnels has a simple drag-and-drop editor for building sales funnels.
ClickFunnels’ cheapest pricing plan
is pretty well suited for smaller businesses or entrepreneurs looking to build an income online. But note that it doesn’t come with email marketing.
First and foremost, ClickFunnels is a way to build and manage sales funnels. A sales funnel is any process that guides a customer through what’s commonly referred to as the “buyer’s journey” – awareness, consideration, and purchase.
At each step of the sales funnel, you’ll have things like ads on social media, landing pages, free content to hold customer attention, coupons, exclusive deals, and more. Email marketing can, and often does, play a role in sales funnels, but it isn’t always used as the primary marketing channel.
ClickFunnels’ cheapest plan costs $97.00/month. This allows you to build up to 20 sales funnels, to create 100 pages for those funnels, and to connect up to 3 payment gateways to make your funnels as seamless as possible.
It’s worth noting, however, that you’re limited to 20,000 unique visitors to your sales funnels each month on the basic plan. So, that’s 1,000 unique visitors per funnel, assuming you’re maxing out your plan.
If you go over that, you won’t be charged any fees or upgraded to a more expensive plan. Instead, a ClickFunnels affiliate badge will be placed at the bottom of all of your pages.
Sure, your funnels won’t be shut down, but this doesn’t give you much scope for growth. And, honestly, it feels like a sneaky way for ClickFunnels to make even more money out of you.
The basic plan also gives you live chat and email support, a bunch of help documents, and a help bot to make it easy to find the right support channel. Plus you’ll get access to FunnelFlix, which has training videos, talks from sales leaders, and, of course, training from ClickFunnels’ Glorious Leader himself.
Seriously, ClickFunnels’ biggest sales point is that it was founded by Russel Brunson, who has a huge following in the online entrepreneurship space. He’s the first person you see on the ClickFunnels website, and it’s hard to ignore the cult of personality that’s sprung up around him among ClickFunnels’ most avid users.
Again, if you want email marketing, you’ll have to look elsewhere – it’s completely missing from this plan. Even if all you want is a basic auto-responder, you’ll have to integrate third-party software with ClickFunnels to set up that functionality.
Thankfully, that’s easy enough to do. ClickFunnels can integrate with most EMS providers.
The ClickFunnels Platinum plan costs a pretty pricey $297.00/month. It allows you to build unlimited sales funnels with an unlimited number of sub-pages, to connect up to 9 payment gateways, and to get priority customer support.
You also get unlimited visitors per month, meaning you can grow your business’s website without worrying about reaching a cap. If you get a lot of traffic, this price could definitely be worth it.
Plus, this tier includes email marketing. That said, the problem with using ClickFunnels for your email marketing is that you don’t get a full EMS. Because this platform is hyper-focused on helping you to build sales funnels, email marketing is simply treated as a “follow-up funnel”.
ClickFunnels’ email marketing is extremely basic, with a distinct lack of insightful analytics.
Clickfunnels does offer an autoresponder that you can connect to your sales funnel and pages and use to send one-time email “broadcasts”. However, if you want to split test your emails, you’ll have to set it up manually.
The analytics are also extremely basic. With each “follow-up funnel” you can see how many emails were sent and opened and how many contacts clicked the link, but that’s it. If email marketing isn’t a priority then this might be all the information you need, but if you’re serious about building your business through email, you’ll need more than that.
In short, if you want to invest in your email marketing, consider ActiveCampaign instead. Given that ClickFunnels’ email marketing lacks complex automation, highly specific contact list segmentation, and even email hosting, it doesn’t even hold a candle to top EMS providers.
ActiveCampaign’s Plus plan, for example, offers unlimited “customer success pipelines”1, or sales funnels, and you can have up to 25,000 email contacts before you get anywhere close to the cost of ClickFunnels Platinum.
ActiveCampaign’s plan also offers far better analytics than ClickFunnels’ Platinum, with graphs showing where and when your contacts opened your emails. You can also click into individual contacts to see how many times they’ve opened and clicked your emails, and even the last time they did so.
It’s for this reason that I recommend ActiveCampaign over ClickFunnels if you want email marketing. But if you’ve got the cash to spare and you want to focus your marketing efforts on sales funnels, look into ClickFunnels – websites with a large volume of visitors could see a nice increase in customers.
ClickFunnels Platinum Plan Pricing
Price
$297.00/month or $2,997/year
Sub-users
3
Email marketing?
Included, but limited to basic email responders and transactional emails
Sales funnel limit
Unlimited, with unlimited sub-pages
Learning resources
Access to FunnelFlix plus additional courses and weekly peer reviews for your funnels
Canceling Your ClickFunnels Account is Surprisingly Easy
I’m always wary of trial accounts you need to use your credit card for, and it doesn’t surprise me that ClickFunnels requires a credit card for its 14-day free trial. After all, it’s banking on you either forgetting to cancel in time or loving the service so much you decide to hop on the ClickFunnels train.
With your free trial, your card will automatically be billed on day 15 after signup if you don’t cancel. This will be your billing date each month going forward. Thankfully, canceling your account is pretty easy. All you need to do is go to your Account Settings, select Account Billing, and click the Cancel Account tab. Click the yellow button that says Cancel My Subscription, and that’ll take you to an exit survey (which, unsurprisingly, you’re required to fill out).
ClickFunnels does provide a step-by-step guide on how to cancel your account – even if it is well hidden.
At the end of the survey, tick the box that says you understand your sales funnels and domains will be shut down, and that you’ll lose all of your customer data. Then, click the Cancel my account button. That’ll take you to yet another popup asking you to confirm. Type confirm, hit Proceed with cancellation, and you’re done.
You can also email ClickFunnels to request a cancellation, but, honestly, I wouldn’t use this option given the lack of certainty you’ll get a response in time.
Now for the small print…
ClickFunnels’ terms and conditions state that you’ll get an email reminder of your trial ending at least 7 days before you’re charged. You also have to contact ClickFunnels at least 24 hours before the trial ends to cancel it. So, in essence, you’ve got 13 days – or 12, if you want to play it safe – to decide whether it’s worth it to you.
If you’ve got a paid subscription and you want to cancel, or you’ve accidentally been charged, you’ll have to give 10 days’ notice of your intention to cancel. The terms and conditions say you can send a cancellation request through your dashboard, as outlined above, but also that you have to give notice of cancellation via email. Personally, I’d do both.
When you cancel, you can access your account up to when it would have been your next billing date. So, you don’t have to worry about losing customer data or your hard work. Your account data will be deleted 30 days after cancellation, and you can reactivate your account if needed up until then.
The T&Cs also state that, by taking out a trial, you authorize ClickFunnels to automatically charge your card unless you cancel. You’re not entitled to a refund if your cancellation request isn’t sent in or received in time, nor do you get a prorated refund for the days you don’t use.
If you cancel your annual subscription with ClickFunnels before the end of the year, the company will kindly provide you with credit for its other subscription services. This is the sole exception to the rule.
Finally, hidden in the T&Cs is something a little sneaky. If ClickFunnels can’t take payment from you, you’ll be charged to put your account on pause until the bill is settled. It’s not specified how much you’ll be billed, but I assume it’s the same $9.99 it attempts to upsell you when you try to cancel your trial account.
Long story short, if you want to cancel your account, don’t wait around.
Alternatives to ClickFunnels
As I mentioned earlier, ClickFunnels isn’t a dedicated EMS. The email marketing features you get aren’t extensive enough if email is your primary focus.
That’s not to say that ClickFunnels is bad (just read our ClickFunnels review first), but rather that it might not offer the right marketing tools for your business. Plus, it’s an expensive service to begin with, so it’s likely too expensive for freelancers or small businesses.
With that in mind, here are some alternatives:
ActiveCampaign’s Lite plan1– You’ll get far more for your money with ActiveCampaign if you want to go all-in on email marketing. With the Lite plan, you can have up to 5,000 contacts without even reaching the cost of the basic ClickFunnels plan, plus 500+ automation templates to build email sales funnels. I recommend ActiveCampaign’s Lite plan if you want powerful email sales automation.
AWeber’s Pro plan1– If you want to optimize your email marketing, AWeber’s A/B testing tool will automatically pull a selection of contacts either from your full contact list or any specific segments – you don’t need to add contacts manually as you do with ClickFunnel. I recommend AWeber’s Pro plan if you want to optimize your email marketing on a budget.
GetResponse’s Professional plan1– When you’re getting started with your online business, you need something simple. This plan allows you to run paid webinars (with up to 300 attendees) with unlimited sales funnels, up to 5 users, and unlimited marketing automation for your emails. I recommend GetResponse’s Professional plan for entrepreneurs who want to build an online business.
Benchmark’s Pro plan1 – On the ClickFunnels basic plan, you’re limited to 20,000 unique visitors to all of your sales funnels per month. However, this Benchmark plan allows you up to 10,000 contacts (with unlimited email sends) before you even have to consider paying ClickFunnels prices. I recommend Benchmark’s Pro plan for small businesses with a moderately sized customer base.
Sendinblue’s Free plan1 – If you’ve got absolutely no budget to work with, or simply need a trial that lasts longer than 14 days, Sendinblue has a great plan. The free forever plan doesn’t require a credit card, and you can send up to 300 emails a day. It’s pretty great if you’re just getting started or need to balance your checkbooks for a while. I recommend Sendinblue’s Free plan for new businesses on a budget.
ClickFunnels Is Great for Boosting Conversion Rates, but Falls Short as an EMS
My biggest takeaway from researching Clickfunnels is that it isn’t designed with email marketing or budgeting in mind, but instead caters to entrepreneurs who are already making money. If you have the capital to afford it, ClickFunnels is a great tool for building sales funnels and learning marketing insights. But it’s not for people on a budget or burgeoning businesses. $97.00/month for the base plan is a big ask of anyone’s budget, particularly if you’re just starting out.
If you’re that commercially established, there’s a good chance ClickFunnels will work for you. I mean, ClickFunnels is pretty good if you want to build an online business or an additional income stream. It’s easy to use, quite elegant, and makes building sales funnels and landing pages a breeze.
Saying that, email marketing is largely ignored by ClickFunnels, and it makes it difficult to recommend if that’s your priority. Email functionality is there, sure (on the higher-tier plans anyway), but it’s considered a supplementary marketing channel. All you get is a basic autoresponder and some transactional emails, as well as a degree of automation based on where your emails fit in your sales funnel.
My favorite budget-friendly EMS is ActiveCampaign1 as it goes far beyond ClickFunnels’ basic autoresponder by offering great automation capabilities and slick email templates. You can have up to 5,000 contacts on the Lite plan without coming close to the cost of ClickFunnels’ base plan, too, which will give you a lot more room to grow.
With email marketing only available on the $297.00/month ClickFunnels plan, almost every EMS will offer a cheaper plan to get you started. ActiveCampaign is one of the best alternatives because its Plus plan is significantly cheaper than Clickfunnels Premium plan but still offers more in terms of email marketing, like advanced automation and a more in-depth email editor.
What companies use ClickFunnels?
On its homepage, ClickFunnels lists success stories from business owners and freelancers who work in e-commerce, coaching, network marketing, and blogging. The majority of ClickFunnels customers are small businesses with under 200 employees, working primarily in marketing, advertising, healthcare, or health and wellness.
Who needs ClickFunnels?
Given the high level of automation it offers with sales funnels and landing pages, ClickFunnels is ideal for entrepreneurs who want to build passive income streams. However, its pricing can be prohibitive for newer entrepreneurs and small businesses, and if you’re looking for email marketing, you’ll only get (basic) features on the higher-tier plans. If you need more advanced automation, contact list segmentation, or even just better analytics, you’ll have to factor in the cost of an additional service.
Emma is a freelance content writer who specializes in thoughtful and insightful blogs and articles. Her main passion is the intersection of human behavior and modern technology, particularly in the context of marketing and cybersecurity. Outside of work, Emma loves video games, superhero movies, crochet, and cuddling her German Shepherd.
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