Are you trying to sell stuff online?
Then I’m confident you will agree that converting your visitors into sales is hard.
And getting yourself profitable? That’s even tougher.
There is a simple secret to raising the value of every customer you market to:
Sales funnels. Clickfunnels Alternativen
By creating a well-designed sales funnel, it is possible to dramatically boost your sales and provide more value for your customers.
In this post, I’m going to present you to ClickFunnels, the software I am using to build sales funnels for my business.
You don’t need any technical know-how to utilize this, and it will really change the way you run your business.
Plus:
If you’re ready to throw yourself into the ClickFunnels world, it’s one of the best affiliate programs on the market. I will be speaking about that too later on.
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels was created back in 2014 by Russell Brunson and his team. Since that time, Russell has turned ClickFunnels into a $100 million a year company and they just crossed over 65,000 active members as of August 2018.
In its core, ClickFunnels is a software for constructing sales funnels. With a bunch of added bells and whistles.
You can use it to construct:
– Landing pages
– Squeeze pages
– Webinars
– Membership websites
– Every type of sales funnel you can think of, complete with order bumps, upsells and downsells
Additionally, with the highest end Etison Suite package you’ll even have the ability to start your own affiliate program (Backpack) and replace your email service with (Actionetics MD).
Essentially, you’re getting everything you need to market and promote your products online, without needing to employ expensive programmers.
And people are utilizing ClickFunnels with great success.
If you check out their 2 Comma Club website, you can see that almost 300 entrepreneurs have already created 1 million dollar funnels utilizing ClickFunnels.
That’s amazing.Clickfunnels Alternativen
What are the best features of ClickFunnels?
Best Feature #1: Funnel template blueprints
If you’ve never created a sales funnel before then ClickFunnels has you covered.
Russell has identified 22 distinct types of funnels that he has employed successfully in his own business.
The funnel forms fall into 3 main categories: Lead Capture Funnels, Sales Page Funnels, and Event Funnels. But there are some other special funnels like Membership funnels you can create too.
They include simple funnels such as the Squeeze Page Funnel which gathers a visitor’s email address and then sends them into a Thank you page when registering.
Or to more complex sales funnels like the 2-Step TripWire Funnel which sells a low ticket front-end product (your tripwire) and then upsells them to your more expensive products with Order Form bumps, and One Click upsells or Downsells.
Moreover, every funnel type has its own group of free templates and paid templates. So even in the event that you don’t have any design skills, your funnel pages will have a consistent, professional design.
Here’s a high-level overview of how to create your first sales funnel:
- Choose a funnel type.
- Select a template.
- Customize each page to fit your business.
- Add your products and ensure all your email and payment integrations are set up.
- Set a domain name for your new funnel.
- Save your funnel.
Your sales funnel is now live and you can start sending traffic to it. Clickfunnels Alternativen
Best Feature #2: Good Visual Drag and Drop Editor
While ClickFunnels provides you a great starting point with its funnel and page templates, the ClickFunnels editor is where you can actually make each page in your funnel your own.
Pages in ClickFunnels are laid out with sections that can have any number of rows and columns. After that you can use your mouse to drag elements around and place them where you need them.
While not as adaptable as Instapage’s landing page editor, it is still quite nice and it can be used to achieve just about any design you want.
What I like is that the editor is very intuitive to use.
Selecting elements on the page and moving them where you want is quite seamless.
Text elements can be edited inline, and modifying any element’s properties can be accomplished through the fly-out sidebar.
And unlike other editors out there, everything is organized in a logical way. You’re not spending a great deal of time hunting for what you would like to do.
The main thing is that no programming is required. So you don’t need to spend time learning HTML or CSS or any technical things like that.
Best Feature #3: Nice Selection of Page Elements
Elements (or widgets) are vital for providing you the flexibility to design the specific pages you want and ClickFunnels gives you a wide array of them to use.
Fundamental elements comprise of Headline, Photo, Text, Button, Input types and Video widgets. These are the basic building blocks for any landing page that you build in the software.
ClickFunnels also includes several advanced elements such as:
– SMS Signup
– Surveys
– Pricing Tables
– Progress Bars
– Facebook Comments
– FAQ Blocks
– Countdown Timers
– Custom HTML
Additionally, there are specialized elements like Membership elements for your membership pages and order and shipping form elements for your order pages.
Each element can be easily customized from the editor sidebar. With majority of elements, you can change common properties such as background colors, margins, fonts, and alignment.
Then there are element specific properties like the image URL for the Image element or the Button text of your button.
Best Feature #4: The ClickFunnels Affiliate program is awesome
There is little doubt in my mind that ClickFunnels has the best, legitimate affiliate marketing program which you can be a part of.
The basics:
The ClickFunnels affiliate program pays out 40% recurring commissions for each referral you make and you can win cool prizes like $500 towards your very own dream car once you hit 100 active referrals.
On top of that, they offer 5%, 2-tier commissions for referring people to the ClickFunnels affiliate program.
You also get 40% commissions by promoting any product in the ClickFunnel’s ecosystem such as DotCom Secrets, Expert Secrets or even the Software Secrets books.
And thanks to the ClickFunnel’s sticky cookie, you’ll also earn commissions on any upsells that your referrals purchase as they go through their specific funnels too.
That’s not all:
ClickFunnels also has another excellent feature for affiliates known as share funnels.
Inside the Settings tab of any of your funnels, you can grab your Share Funnel URL.
Whenever someone visits this URL, they will have the ability to bring this funnel directly into their account if they are an existing ClickFunnels member. If they aren’t a member yet, they can sign up for the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial and then get your funnel added to their accounts.
What’s really amazing is that this share URL also functions as your affiliate link, and you’ll get a recurring commission if this new user ends up staying.
What I don’t like about ClickFunnels?
Bad Part #1: Why is adding a funnel so slow?
After picking your funnel type and template, it needs to get added to your account.
For some reason, this process appears to take approximately 8-10 seconds every time.
While I really don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes, it does not make sense to me why this would take so long. It is somewhat annoying, although only a minor annoyance.
Bad Part #2: Limits on funnels you can create and visitors
ClickFunnels limits you to 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors on their lowest plan. I’m not a fan of software products that limit you in this manner.
If you’re just building sales funnels for yourself, these limitations are most likely okay.
However you can get more annoyed at such limitations if you are doing client work, building funnels for multiple customers or promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate with share funnels.
You will need to upgrade to the Etison Suite plan if you would like to build infinite funnels.
Bad Part #3: Fairly High learning curve
The range of what ClickFunnels could do is fairely huge, and it can certainly be intimidating to some.
That is why ClickFunnels put so much work into the onboarding process to help ease you into the software. The ClickFunnels interface is fairely well made for the most part and when you’ve assembled a couple funnels yourself, the whole procedure does get easier over time.
ClickFunnels Pricing
Over time, ClickFunnels has evolved their pricing plans. In the beginning, they had 3 different pricing tiers, but they have now been consolidated into 2 separate plans.
How much is ClickFunnels now?
Currently, the lowest priced ClickFunnels plan is $97 a month. On this plan, you get access to all the funnel creation tools, but you are limited to creating 20 funnels, 100 pages, and 20,000 visitors. You also don’t get access to Actionetics, their built-in email service provider and Backpack, which lets you create your own affiliate program.
To get access to that, you’ll need to go with the Etison Suite plan. It includes everything, plus you get unlimited funnels, pages, and visitors. However, this will run you $297 a month.
As far as I can tell, there aren’t any ClickFunnels coupon codes out there. But, you can buy Funnel Hacks for $997 which provides you 6 months of Etison Suite for free plus some extra bonuses. This brings down the cost to $166.16 a month.
ClickFunnels does make it easy for you to demo their service with their free, 14-day free trial. It is not constrained in any way which lets you give the software a complete test before you fully commit.
If $97 or $297 a month seems like too big a commitment for your current budget, there’s also a semi-secret, unadvertised Share Funnel plan that you can also get access to for just $19 a month. You can only produce 3 funnels and 10 pages with this plan, but it’s a great way to try out ClickFunnels on a budget.
Everything else you should know about ClickFunnels
How is their support?
ClickFunnels support is quite good in my experience, even though they can be a little slow in responding. They use Intercom, which means you may directly ask questions in the live chat box. Support requests are usually answered in a couple of hours and I found the team to pretty helpful to all my queries.
Do I need my own domain? Clickfunnels Alternativen
You don’t necessarily need your own domain name to launch a funnel, although I would advise it. If you do not have one then your funnel URL will look something like http://username.clickfunnels.com.
One nice bonus that I didn’t know about is that ClickFunnels will buy you your first domain name for free and even install SSL on it for you. You can discover how to do this from the very first game in the onboarding training.
Do they have an active community?
ClickFunnels has an enormous community. There is the official group on FB with over 100k members and the ClickFunnels Avengers FB group (for affiliates) that has over 30k members.
Both groups are extremely active and it’s an excellent place to get feedback on your own sales funnels and answer any questions you may have.
There are also other FB groups run by ClickFunnels affiliates that are also quite active. The main one I suggest joining is Automation Nation. It is run by Spencer Mecham who is ClickFunnel’s top affiliate.
What integrations do they offer?
Even though ClickFunnels has its own email service provider via Actionetics, it also integrates directly with all the best email marketing software on the market.
For payment gateways, ClickFunnels integrates with Stripe, Paypal, Clickbank, Infusionsoft, Authorize.net, and a few others. The one constraint with using Paypal though is that it does not support One Click Upsells or One Time Offers. That is the reason why I would highly suggest going with Stripe if you can.
What is the Funnel Hacks system?
If you’re looking to get the $297/mo. Etison Suite plan, then it’s definitely well worth it to sign up with Funnel Hacks instead to save some additional money. For $997, you’ll get six months of the Etison Suite plan which is $1,782 in value.
You’ll also get a bunch of additional bonuses and training that include:
– 6 Week Funnel Hacks Master Class ($2,997 value)
– Instant Traffic Hacks ($1,997 value)
– Inception Secrets ($1,997 value)
– SOAP & Seinfeld Email Sequences ($997 value)
Is ClickFunnels a scam?
I think ClickFunnels has some negative buzz around it due to all the affiliates who are trying to market it.
But no, ClickFunnels is not a scam. It’s definitely the real deal.
It’s a great software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to build 6 and 7 figure businesses.
It’s a fantastic software with an amazing affiliate opportunity. So many people are using ClickFunnels to construct 6 and 7 figure companies.
When folks ask, “How do I create a sales funnel”, ClickFunnels is the #1 answer hands down. There’s no other application that can do every thing that ClickFunnels does at the moment.
What else is ClickFunnels used for?
Besides creating standard sales funnels, there are plenty of ways marketers are using ClickFunnels at the moment in their business.
It is great for creating opt-in funnels that will help you generate more prospects and build your email list.
You can produce webinar funnels that will help you grow your brand and promote your services and products.
And you can use it to build membership sites where you’re able to gate your premium content so that it is available only to subscribers.
How can you make ClickFunnels work for you? Clickfunnels Alternativen
First of all, you need to have a product or service to sell. If you don’t have something to market, then do not even bother looking into ClickFunnels until you do. Unless you just want to market it as an affiliate.
Next, you have to be ready to invest money and time into creating your value ladder and constructing your entire sales funnel.
That means at least creating a lead magnet or low-cost tripwire product to get clients or customers into your funnel. And coming up with proper upsells, order bumps and other OTOs that complement or improve your principal product offering.
If you’re unclear how to start, I would take a look at Russell’s very own multi-million dollar sales funnels to give you inspiration. Read his book DotComSecrets where he explains precisely the why and how of building sales funnels and how to tell stories to marketing your services and products.
And as you go through his own sales funnels yourself you can observe the way he goes from low-cost tripwire (DotComSecrets) into promoting his flagship product (ClickFunnels).
By creating his very own community of raving fans he can then upsell his various different products and events like Funnel Scripts, Funnel Hackers Live, and much more.
Once you’ve gone through his funnels, then you can take the components that apply to your own company and create a plan for your sales funnel. Once you have that in place, you’ll be ready to start making money with ClickFunnels.
ClickFunnels versus the competition
There are a couple of ClickFunnels alternatives out there which share some of the same capabilities as ClickFunnels. Two that I use myself are LeadPages and SamCart.
ClickFunnels vs LeadPages
Today, LeadPages is one of the market leaders in the landing page builder space and it is a really popular tool in its own right.
It also recently introduced the ability to sell products directly on their pages with its new Checkout widget
Each product comes with a large selection of nice looking templates. Both have drag and drop editors that make it effortless for you to create the designs you desire. And both integrate with all the popular email service providers.
Leadpages is more limited in scope compared to ClickFunnels. You use it to create landing pages that will help you collect prospects. This isn’t a bad thing since LeadPages really shines for creating landing pages quickly.
At this time, one of the best strategies for developing your email list is using content upgrades. By producing targeted lead magnets into your most popular articles you can acquire opt-in conversion rates that far exceed your standard pop-up.
LeadPages is the very best service for implementing this strategy with its LeadBoxes, 2 step opt-ins, and automatic lead magnet delivery which is why they are the most popular popup you will see today.
Therefore, if you’re primarily concentrated on lead generation, I’d definitely suggest trying out LeadPages.
However, if you are selling a product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better choice. While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, once you master the tool, you can really explode your sales once you start creating sales funnels for each of your products.
But, if you’re selling a product or service, then ClickFunnels is the better alternative . While it comes with a higher learning curve than Leadpages, as soon as you master the instrument, it’s possible to definitely explode your sales as soon as you begin generating sales funnels for all your products.
ClickFunnels vs SamCart
SamCart is a product that lets users build amazing, high converting checkout pages. Which gives it a lot in common with ClickFunnels.
SamCart is targeted towards getting setup and selling quickly. It supports both Stripe and Paypal and it comes with 17 distinct checkout page templates which you can customize.
Concerning flexibility, there’s absolutely no comparison between ClickFunnel’s drag and drop editor and SamCart’s.
ClickFunnels is infinitely more powerful in that you can design any checkout page you can dream about. SamCart only allows for some basic customizations to its own pre-made templates.
SamCart does permit you to add order bumps, upsells and downsells like ClickFunnels does. You can also easily create coupons for your products which is another terrific way to raise conversions.
But where Samcart is missing, is the ability to capture leads and create complete sales funnels. Both products come in at the same $97 per month price point, and I find ClickFunnels to be quite a bit more flexible and powerful than Samcart.
ClickFunnels Pros
– Best software for creating marketing and sales funnels
– Editor balances ease of use with flexibility
– Integrates with all major email and payment providers
– Beautiful looking templates for every type of funnel
– Great on-boarding procedure for learning the software
– Software has been better after every update
– Easily share any funnels you create and automatically earn affiliate commissions
– 2-tier affiliate program
– Free domain name with SSL installed
– 14-day free trial
ClickFunnels Cons
– Limitations on the number of funnels, pages, and visitors with the standard plan
– Plently of things to understand, a steep learning curve
– Split testing is pretty basic
Final Thoughts Clickfunnels Alternativen
Which application you go with depends on your needs and the quantity of work you’re willing to invest in your business.
Although many of you are selling standalone products, are you ready to put in the effort necessary to make a high converting sales funnel?
Otherwise, ClickFunnels could be overkill for you. You can collect leads or sell your front end product more cheaply with alternative services.
However, if raising the average lifetime value of your clients is important to you, then I really suggest giving ClickFunnels a try.
Not only to access the software but also because the training that you receive will probably be both inspirational and enlightening.
Make the most of the ClickFunnels 14-day free trial, and see whether you can use it to increase your business now.
