A 3k word guide on Clickfunnels vs Convertkit? Does Hanson really not have better things to do with his time?
Look, I know what you’re thinking.
Why not just pick one and jump right in?
To that, my answer would be-- Slow your roll… Building an online empire takes a lot of scaling and growing. If you don’t have the right tools to do it, you’ll end up wasting money, time, and energy going down the wrong path.
That’s why I created this guide for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re building your first funnel or already have a few favorites but looking to try something else.
This guide will give you all the info you need about these marketing tools to be able to make the final pick and purchasing the right tool.
On The Surface, Both Clickfunnels And Convertkit May Look Alike As They Both Offer The Ability To:
ConClusion
But...there are certain critical elements in both the tools you must know about as they could make or break a deal!
What are they? Well, You’ll just have to read along our extensive guide to find out.
ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: The Fundamentals Of Funnel Marketing
Both Clickfunnels and Convertkit are software tools that aim to make the marketing process more straightforward. They have enterprise application integration as well. In a way, both aim to create smooth, highly converting membership funnels that lead to sales. Therefore, before understanding the intricacies of which comes out as the winner in the battle of Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit, it's best to take a quick refresher on what Funnel Marketing is all about.
Let's put it in the simplest possible terms: a sales funnel refers to the series of steps that a visitor takes before converting to a paying customer. Depending on how you sell products online, a sales funnel can comprise multiple steps or stages. However, they typically have a three-stage or four stage structure.
The funnel's top is the widest, which is natural since you aim to generate maximum traffic. This stage uses sales pages and landing pages, casting a wide net and roping in everyone who visits.
Not everyone will be interested enough to continue the journey after the initial stage (no matter how groundbreaking your product or service is). The sales funnel becomes narrower at this stage, as visitors who are not interested begin to drop off.
The lower end of the sales funnel is the narrowest and represents those close to converting. Once they exit the funnel through the other end, they either complete sales or have taken the desired action.
In short, the sales funnel is a logical structure that describes a visitor's journey throughout your sales process. Using the appropriate nudges and prompts, a sales funnel guides visitors from the landing page to the sales page and then makes the sale.
But the sales page is not where the process ends, however. After the visitors emerge as converted from the initial funnel's sales pages, they need to pass through the secondary funnel. This funnel is also known as the follow-up funnel and helps to turn the converted leads into long term customers for your business.
Clickfunnels Vs. Convertkit Overview
From the above brief refresher, you undoubtedly understand that sales funnels play a vital role in converting online visitors to paying customers. And email lists are an indispensable part of that journey. The trouble is, managing thousands of emails and using them effectively can get mind-boggling.
That's precisely where marketing tools such as Clickfunnels and Convertkit come into play.
Just go back a few years, and you'll remember that building sales funnels involved using various tools. These ranged from payment processing software and landing page builders to email marketing tools and shopping cart creation tools.
Today, the entire process has been simplified and integrated into marketing tools such as Clickfunnels and Convertkit. These tools provide an all-in-one solution for creating sales funnels. They take care of aspects such as email marketing, sales pages, and even landing page templates.
With that in mind, now let's take a look at how the Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit battle shapes up and for what primary purpose each tool can be used.
What Is Convertkit?
One thing is for sure; you don't need us to tell you that the email marketing software ecosystem is pretty crowded already. Even then, Convertkit has emerged as a notable email marketing software that's primarily aimed towards bloggers and online content creators.
It was created by Nathan Barry, who is a web designer with the heart of a marketer. Since Nathan himself is a creator, he understands the needs of any online business. That's why the tool was built to help creators the world over manage their email lists.
Using this tool, a business can connect with its potential customers and email subscribers on a profoundly personal level. Your business can use it for conversion optimization, capturing leads, or even segmenting audiences based on varied parameters.
Especially for artists looking for an online platform to showcase their skills, Convertkit can prove a valuable marketing tool. This tool allows your business to grow manifold by reaching out to the customer directly in their inbox.
What Is Clickfunnels?
Now that we've seen an overview of what Convertkit is, we need to understand what Clickfunnels is and how it works vs. Convertkit. Put simply, Clickfunnels is a funnel builder and complete digital marketing solution that makes lead capture easy. And the best part is that Clickfunnels allows you to do this without any knowledge of coding.
Using Clickfunnels, you can easily send out your market message across the world and reap the benefits of global audience exposure. Clickfunnels also allows you to build anything from sales and landing pages to membership sites, funnels, and much, much more.
Clickfunnels (parent company Etison LLC) was created about six years back in 2014 by Todd Dickerson and Russell Brunson to help online entrepreneurs thrive with sales funnels. Whether you're looking to generate leads, capture more traffic, or make sales, Clickfunnels can help you get there.
Clickfunnels Vs. Convertkit: Feature Comparison
From the above discussion, it's clear that both Clickfunnels and Convertkit are stellar software tools for marketing an online business. However, to settle the Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit debate, we need to look at their core features.
Convertkit Core Features
Convertkit Core Features
Using Convertkit, you can perform tag-based email segmentation, which allows you to manage your email subscribers through automation better. This feature allows you to use different tags for different email subscriber groups and run highly targeted and focused campaigns based on their behavior.
Another significant aspect of this feature is that you can even merge multiple tags. Simultaneously, the Convertkit WordPress plugin lets you track WordPress websites' visitors and segment them based on website interaction.
Automating Email Marketing
Whenever we speak of email marketing, automation features always take center stage. Naturally, Convertkit features also incorporate email marketing options. Using the Convertkit automation manager, you get access to a simple yet effective rule builder system. Both tools have excellent customer reviews, API integration, newbie friendly, economical price, proper guideline, incentive, ease of usability, easy troubleshooting, mobile app and web application, excellent customer service and many other features.
This is a fast and useful workflow builder that's entirely visual and doesn't require any technical know-how. Using it, email automation can be set up in a matter of minutes, and significant results can be obtained.
A/B Split Testing Facilities
A/B Testing, also known as Split Testing, is an integral part of any digital marketing campaign. Especially for email marketing, A/B testing plays a vital role in evaluating different aspects of emails.
Sadly, this is one of the aspects where Convertkit lags behind other popular email marketing suites. Its A/B testing capability only allows you to test various subject lines when sending a single email burst. Due to this limitation, if A/B testing plays a significant role in your email campaign, it's best to stay away from Convertkit.
Building Email Forms
Convertkit provides you with options to build landing pages and forms based on several styles. Form styles can be chosen from Full, Minimal, and Naked, and are displayed as either Slide-in, Inline or Modal. And despite customization options being pretty limited and basic, you can build fully functional landing pages for conversion purposes.
Variety Of Email Templates
Convertkit provides you with about five email templates, which are rather basic in design and aesthetics. However, it does provide you with the option of creating your custom templates, but you need a bit of CSS and HTML knowledge for this.
Third-Party Integrations
Convertkit lags a bit behind other popular email tools when it comes to the number of third-party integrations. However, it lets you connect to Zapier, through which you can connect to potentially hundreds of other integrations.
Analytics Facilities
The tracking and reporting facilities that Convertkit provides are suitable enough to analyze all your email marketing numbers. Using these, you can get a fair idea of how your email campaigns are performing. Simultaneously, the dashboard also displays essential information such as entry points for subscribers and email list growth rates.
Customer Support
This is one of the areas where Convertkit shines, and we must say that we're impressed. The official Convertkit website has a live chat feature, which lets you solve most issues. In case you decide to reach out to the company using email, expect a response within two hours or less.
We particularly like the personalized welcome video that they send members on successful signup. Convertkit has its own Slack channel and dedicated Facebook groups that provide ready support as regards the online community.
Suffice to say that Convertkit takes its customer support pretty seriously. With so many social media channels dedicated to the software, you're sure to find help when you need it.
We're already well into our Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit comparison and have already taken a detailed look at the features of Convertkit. Now, in the next section, we'll undertake a detailed Clickfunnels review
Clickfunnels Core Features
Complete Digital Marketing Solution
With Convertkit, you only get access to the core email marketing features, focusing on landing page development. However, an online business can't run with just that; you'd need a fully functional website, an integrated shopping cart, and a complete digital marketing toolset.
Thankfully, that's precisely what Clickfunnels provides you with! Using Clickfunnels, you can get all of the above features under a single umbrella platform. This eliminates the need to get separate landing page builder software, split testing utilities, and a sales funnel builder.
Entirely Drag-And-Drop Interface
Creating sales funnels is a complex operation, but Clickfunnels makes the task as easy as pie! Using the simple and intuitive drag-and-drop interface that Clickfunnels provides, even users with zero coding knowledge can instantly build high-converting sales funnels. What's more, you can even edit these funnels as per your business needs.
Unique Funnel Sharing Feature
This is one of the features where Clickfunnels clearly wins over Convertkit in the Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit debate. Through Clickfunnels, you can share pre-built sales funnels with anyone you need to. Just generate a funnel sharing link from within the software, and let the other user import it to their Clickfunnels account. It's as easy as that.
A/B Split Testing Facilities
When it comes to A/B testing, Clickfunnels has a distinct advantage over Convertkit. Clickfunnels lets you compare and test entire sales funnels and understand which one performs better for your business. This enables you to make better marketing decisions and further your business goals. So, when it comes to the A/B testing aspect of the Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit debate, Clickfunnels is the clear winner.
Third-Party Integrations
We've already seen that Convertkit doesn't offer much in terms of third-party integrations. But you'll be pleased to know that Clickfunnels comes out way ahead of Convertkit when it comes to third-party integrations.
Through Clickfunnels, you can connect with many third-party add-ons such as payment gateways, email marketing integrations, SMTP, and Webinar tools. What's more, with Clickfunnels, you can even connect with hosting services such as G-suite and Zoho.
The FunnelFlix Program
FunnelFlix is intended to be the Netflix aimed towards entrepreneurs and online marketers looking to grow their business. It's a relatively new addition to Clickfunnels and was introduced in 2019.
FunnelFlix consists of several high-quality online courses spanning a wide range of topics such as online marketing, sales funnels, copy development, and personal growth. The courses were created by Russell Brunson and some leading business experts to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses.
Multiple Ancillary Products
Apart from the primary tool, Clickfunnels boasts many ancillary tools such as software, marketing products, and books. These tools have been created by the founder of Clickfunnels himself, along with multiple other resources such as One Funnel Away, Traffic Secrets, and Funnel Scripts.
Strong Customer Support
This is yet another aspect where Clickfunnels trumps other comparable software tools. The level of customer support that this software provides is pretty impressive. What's more, they also have a Facebook group, which is free for all, even if you're not using Clickfunnels.
Clickfunnels Affiliates
Clickfunnels also lets you earn as an independent Clickfunnels affiliate. An affiliate (not an employee) can receive referral payments from Clickfunnels or its parent company to promote and sell their products. So, apart from creating converting funnels, Clickfunnels also lets you earn from a side business.
Clickfunnels Vs. Convertkit Pricing
We're ultimately at the final point of comparison for the Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit debate, and that's regarding the amount you'll need to shell out per month for using each. Both tools have flexible pricing plans and a free trial that allows you to use the software before paying a dime.
First, let's look at Convertkit, which has three plans: the Free, Creator, and Creator Pro. The Free plan doesn't cost you anything, but the limit is that you can only manage up to 1000 subscribers and don't get access to some advanced features such as Automated funnels and Integrations.
The Creator and Creator Pro plans start at $29 per month and $59 per month and go up according to the number of subscribers. What's more, the creator plan also comes with a 14-day free trial that lets you check out the tool.
Now, it's time to explore Clickfunnels, which also offers a free 14 day trial period. After the free trial, the basic plan will cost you $97 per month, whereas you'll have to shell out $297 per month for the Platinum plan. When you use Clickfunnels, you can create unlimited funnels and compare them.
Clickfunnels vs. Convertkit - FAQ
A sales funnel is essential for a business because it allows the business to track and measure its progress in acquiring new customers. Additionally, a sales funnel can be used to up-sell or cross-sell products and services to existing customers.
For example, using a Clickfunnels system, businesses can hack their way to success by taking advantage of Clickfunnels offers, which can be customized to fit the business's needs. Convertkit is another email service provider that can be used to create funnels, but it does generally not offer the same customization options as Clickfunnels.
The quick answer is that Clickfunnels comes with a built-in shopping cart software solution called Actionetics, while Convertkit does not have a built-in shopping cart solution. However, both platforms can integrate with 3rd party shopping cart software solutions.
Regarding marketing funnels, Clickfunnels is an all-in-one solution that includes everything you need to create, build, and optimize your funnels. The same can be said of Convertkit.
Both Clickfunnels and Convertkit offer the ability to create landing pages, although Clickfunnels offers a broader variety of landing page templates and more customization options.
When choosing an affiliate program for sales funnel builders, there are a few different things to consider. Some of the best programs offer all the features you need to build simple landing pages and checkout pages, while others might be more focused on providing unlimited contacts or constant contact options.
Ultimately, it depends on what your specific needs are as to which program will be the best fit for you.
If you're looking to build a sales funnel, there are a few third-party tools you might want to consider. Clickfunnels and Convertkit are both popular options that can help you collect leads and gain access to valuable resources. However, choosing the right tool for your specific needs is essential. Consider your budget, feature requirements, and target audience when making your decision.
The Verdict: Which Is Best For You?
We now come to the most crucial question of all: which one is best for you? Here, the answer depends on your lead generation requirements. If you're looking for easy-to-use email automation and management software, ConvertKit will suit you just fine.
On the other hand, in case you're in search of a complete marketing automation tool that also lets you build high converting sales funnels, then Clickfunnels is your best bet. What's more, you can also link your Convertkit account with Clickfunnels and reap the benefits of email automation and unlimited funnels.
At the end of the day, it all depends on what you need out of your marketing software. And of course, how much you can afford to spend on the same. So, what are you waiting for! You're just one click away from your dreams.
With that, we'll be logging off for now. Till next time!
Last Updated on August 15, 2023 by Hanson Cheng
Very informative article. Thanks for such an interesting and insightful read on such an important yet less discussed topic.
thanks!!