Are you searching for the perfect funnel builder?
Picking the best platform for online sales funnels is not a simple choice in 2020. The past couple of years have seen a rise in products related to this niche. Many of them have only minuscule differences from one another, and finding the one that suits your business the best is essential.
According to Five Funnel, grabbing people's attention to online content is a lot harder than you might think. You have less than 40 seconds to make a pitch through an online article before an Internet user moves to the next piece of content. Attention spans are shorter than they've ever been, and marketing content has adapted accordingly.
All products need a perfectly optimized funnel if you want your sales to be on par with the competing brands'. Funnel builders such as ClickFunnels make this process more straightforward than doing it manually. This platform is exceptional, but so is its price. That brings us to the following question — are there any ClickFunnels alternatives that could be a better fit for you? We will explore the following platforms while searching for an answer:
Convertri
Unbounce
Kajabi
Shopify
Kartra
Builderall
LeadPages
We will start this series of comparisons with one of the closest competitors of ClickFunnels: Convertri.
Image source: dealsncoupon4u
Due to their similarity, the two platforms are in a struggle for the attention of an almost identical target audience. Neither software suite is a bad choice for your funnel building needs. The decision of which you’ll use boils down to your personal preferences, though ClickFunnels is somewhat more expensive.
The main points of platforms such as these are lead conversion and lead generation, which are the metrics by which their quality is measured. Convertri offers a similar level of success to ClickFunnels in this regard, with a few caveats.
Distinctions | ClickFunnels | Convertri |
Level of popularity | A long-standing platform, large user base | A lower number of users, a newer platform |
Costliness | Costlier regardless of tier | More affordable |
Zapier capabilities | Yes | No |
Convertri is committed to the sales funnel marketing model as much as ClickFunnels. We cannot help but notice a degree of inspiration that the former draws from the latter. This is no surprise, considering how newer Convertri is compared to ClickFunnels.
Convertri is less of a household name, and it can't boast the same level of brand recognition. There’s a flip side to that coin, however. The fact that Convertri is the new kid on the block means it had the opportunity to innovate on the models offered by older platforms akin to ClickFunnels. That’s how Convertri has achieved its two main selling points:
Free gridless editing
Fastest pages
Most funnel builders rely on a visual interface that makes page editing easy, and Convertri is no different. The editor interface on this platform is striking because of its immense versatility — genuine free-form page construction without grid constraints.
Convertri has also put a lot of work into the technical optimization of its pages. Its platform can claim the mantle of the fastest loading times proudly — a huge success when compared to ClickFunnels in particular.
The process of designing an online sales funnel means the creation of an assortment of different pages. Your landing page is perhaps the most important among these, as it's the place where a website visitor decides whether they will dedicate more than a couple of seconds to your sales website.
That’s why platforms in the vein of ClickFunnels put a lot of stock into their landing page templates and design options. Unbounce is a platform that solely focuses on building landing pages, unlike ClickFunnels' more extensive range of options.
ClickFunnels — software suite for digital marketing, relying on the sales funnel model that entails constructing landing pages
Unbounce — exclusive landing page focus
Your marketing strategy will dictate how complex your sales funnel has to be. Some product funnels don't require more than two or three pages — that's where a landing page shines. It becomes the pinnacle of your sales pitch and the place that decides your lead conversion rates. This sort of setup doesn't ask for a sophisticated funnel builder — you won't need much more than a platform that helps you with building landing pages quickly. That makes Unbounce a worthy competitor to ClickFunnels for a specific audience.
ClickFunnels is a more robust digital marketing tool, and there's no doubt in that regard. Unbounce doesn't offer nearly the same depth of features for the overall management of your online sales strategy. This is no surprise when you take their development histories into account.
Unbounce was one of the first landing page builders. It was developed almost a decade ago, boasting a drag and drop page editor that was quite revolutionary at the time.
ClickFunnels would come along a few years later and build on the foundation that Unbounce set up. The former’s page editor was quite similar but improved, and their content platform was light years ahead of anything Unbounce was doing. ClickFunnels presented an evolution of the Unbounce model, just like Convertri expanded on ClickFunnels.
One of the main features of Unbounce is its data tracking segment on the page management dashboard. You can track all kinds of visitor data and marketing metrics in real-time easily. This gives you the ability to make quick changes if anything points toward a faulty landing page or insufficient lead conversion results. The platform is also capable of integrating with Google Analytics for additional data analysis.
Kajabi is a similar platform for funnel building and digital marketing management. Similarly to ClickFunnels, it is designed for the construction and management of the entire customer-vendor interaction through the funnel marketing model.
Where the two platforms differ is their target audience. ClickFunnels has options for selling both physical content and digital products such as software or ebooks. Kajabi is explicitly focused on the marketing of the latter. That's why it has unique options for ebook formatting and webinar construction.
Kajabi is also an excellent choice for creating sales funnels for SaaS products. It takes the specifics of software product features into account, making Kajabi a better option for such digital items.
ClickFunnels attempts to make a subscriber out of anyone who wants to market any service or product online. Kajabi's target audience is online entrepreneurs, almost exclusively. People seeking to create an additional revenue stream out of their expertise would likely have better luck with Kajabi than ClickFunnels.
Kajabi has a couple of features that no other ClickFunnels alternative does — their course building interface being chief among them. If you want to sell an online course that’s based on your professional experience and knowledge, Kajabi has a dedicated editor for that. You won’t need WordPress or any other plugins and third-party software.
Image source: kajabinext
Shopify is the world's leading platform for building online webshops. Any business starting on its path towards profitability from web commerce has probably heard of this software.
Image source: shopify
The crucial aspect differentiating Shopify from ClickFunnels is the fact that it doesn't focus on online marketing. You might stumble upon Shopify when searching for utilities to help with online sales just as you would come across ClickFunnels. While the former focuses on the technical aspects of being an online vendor with a web store, the latter is there to design a marketing campaign that drives lead conversion.
Shopify is most often used for:
Online shop construction
Product inventory management as an online vendor
Payment processing
Shipping rate deals
ClickFunnels lets you build an entire online sales funnel without ever using any HTML and CSS code. Shopify aims to achieve a similar level of design simplification with online web stores.
These two platforms can be used in conjunction with one another, as ClickFunnels has support for Shopify integration. Brands that already have enough reach and don’t need a dedicated sales pitch can use Shopify exclusively to provide their customers with online shopping options.
Shopify offers the following features:
Android and iOS app
Affordable shipping deals
Integration with major payment options
Dedicated app store
Numerous sales channels
CRM software
Metrics tracking
Construction of web stores
These are all features that you need to create an online store from scratch and manage its day-to-day operations.
Kartra is one of those niche competitors that are explicitly designed to topple the reigning king but end up just being a more affordable knock-off. A cursory glance is enough to notice that Kartra deliberately lists features that are identical to those of ClickFunnels.
Their copy makes us even more aware of this with their “ClickFunnels killer” claims. We must point out that Kartra can be a proper alternative to ClickFunnels, as long as you have a couple of issues in mind.
Kartra claims to be less expensive than ClickFunnels, and this is true — but only during the inception of your sales website. ClickFunnels may be costlier upfront, but it has a flat membership structure. There are two subscriptions you can decide between with ClickFunnels, and these prices are the same regardless of how much your website grows.
The pricing plan of Kartra grows progressively costlier as your website metrics increase. That means that you’ll be paying more for Kartra is you have higher visitor counts, click-through rates, overall traffic, etc.
Kartra also doesn’t offer the same number of options when it comes to third-party integrations. The platform attempts to be the only piece of software you need for digital marketing, and it’s safe to say it falls short.
ClickFunnels — a platform for designing online sales funnels
Kartra — a similar platform with a progressive subscription plan and fewer options for third-party integration
The intent driving Kartra's developers is quite apparent. They wanted to make a product that will do everything that ClickFunnels does, but better. It seems they would have been better off focusing on distinct features and platform stability. The execution of their functions is far from perfect, with myriad bugs and interface inconsistencies.
Builderall is another product that casts a wide net into the seas of digital marketing. The creators of this software suite aimed to enable the swift creation of sales funnels. They wanted to do more than just that as well, by offering a distinct range of features that have nothing to do with funnel creation.
Much like Kartra, Builder attempts to be a do-it-all digital marketing solution. It's safe to say that it does a much better job than the platform mentioned above. Builderall manages to achieve an agreeable level of quality in all its features while also offering more than mere funnel design.
ClickFunnels | Builderall |
Used to create a sales pitch for a specific product via online sales funnels | Used to work on the long-term online presence of a brand |
Digital marketing can be quite tricky if you don’t have the expertise to deal with its many intricacies. Most companies have in-house marketing teams whose only job is that, or they outsource the work to external agencies. Small businesses and startups don’t have that financial luxury, and that’s who Builderall aims at primarily.
ClickFunnels offers a page builder that you can use to construct every part of a funnel for a specific product. It is not suited for creating a website that you can use for brand promotion in general. ClickFunnels’ focus is on the lifecycle of individual products.
Builderall has two separate visual editors for sales funnels and brand websites in general. This is a standout feature for businesses that want a single solution for all of their online needs. The platform also has a great affiliate program, though this is a field in which almost no-one can compete with ClickFunnels.
The latter has one of the most popular and lucrative affiliate programs on the entire Internet. Their marketers have been paid out tens of millions of dollars, and the platform keeps improving their conditions. We must note that Builderall's affiliate marketing scheme does come in as a close second, though. It is a good choice for those dissatisfied with the ClickFunnels affiliate program for any reason.
The final ClickFunnels alternative we will analyze is another excellent landing page builder — LeadPages.
This is a practical tool that has one feature, but of excellent quality. The platform is used to construct landing pages solely, but its page builder is exceptionally reliable and stable. Marketers often turn to this platform when they don't need any comprehensive features apart from a quick and professional-looking landing page.
LeadPages wants to give its users one simple yet powerful ability: to create a landing page from nothing without ever learning anything about web programming. There are no HTML or JavaScript prerequisites for using LeadPages, but it can still produce enticing landing pages optimized for high conversion rates.
The platform also gives you access to a lot of landing page templates. You can just apply your graphics and copy to the pre-built pages, or customize any aspect and website element as much as you want. ClickFunnels is no slouch in this arena either, as it boasts a colossal content marketplace with all kinds of themes and templates.
LeadPages' primary deficiency is also its main advantage — it's utterly simplistic. There are no email marketing options, membership sites, affiliate marketing programs. It’s only you and a blank canvas that will become your landing page. Businesses and online marketers often don’t need anything more, and that’s LeadPages’ bread and butter.
How useful is LeadPages compared to ClickFunnels? Considering the differences we’ve outlined above, a comparison to Unbounce would probably be fairer.
Unbounce is the older software suite among the pair, and that shows. LeadPages is more focused on giving you pre-built templates and page options, while Unbounce can’t do much more than offer you an easy-to-use landing page editor.
There are plenty of entrepreneurs and businesses who only want a single page detailing their product offerings. LeadPages is the best choice in that case. It's much more affordable than ClickFunnels and offers more advanced options compared to Unbounce.
Using LeadPages has its downsides as well. Once you need any other digital marketing features, you will need additional software. Even basic email marketing options are scarce with LeadPages, meaning you will find yourself limited by its landing page focus quickly.
Conclusion
There is a wide variety of digital marketing software suites on the market. Some of them offer the same range of features as ClickFunnels, while others are more focused on specific parts of funnels. ClickFunnels has a wide range of digital marketing options already, and the platforms that try to do even more usually leave you longing for third-party software with a better focus.