Leadpages vs. ClickFunnels… the ultimate showdown.
Trying to sell something online?
These days, your online business can’t just rely on a "Subscribe For Updates" button and an email field to capture leads and boost conversions.
To capture leads and transform your prospects into paying customers, an optimized sales funnel is the silver bullet.
A properly optimized sales funnel will help you capture leads and increase the number of new customers who will make a purchase on your website via your shopping cart.
Both of these platforms getting reviewed here have generated hundreds of thousands of leads in my business. I've used both for years and I currently only use one.
Honestly, there is a time and place for each of these sales funnel software tools, so which one will best suit your company?
This review and comparison will help you to understand the main differences between ClickFunnels and Leadpages, to determine the one that’s right for you.
Let’s rumble.
The Ongoing Sales Funnel Software War
Building a sales funnel from the ground up is no walk in the park. It takes a lot of sweat, blood, time, and money!
Here are seven of these monster steps every sales funnel must accomplish.
Don’t worry. I’ve got some good news for you….
……You don’t have to create a complete sales funnel from scratch all alone.
Leadpages and Clickfunnels are obviously two big competitors in this space… so let’s just get a few things knocked out of the way right now, and cut through the noise.
Leadpages and ClickFunnels are both ‘favorite tools’ among companies from nearly every industry:
But unless you have a need for just a minimal membership funnel or something like that… Leadpages wins.
Why?
- Because Clickfunnels lost $10,000 of my money!
- LeadPages gives you more for the investment price
- Leadpages is faster to launch and begin split testing than ClickFunnels
- LeadPages customer support schools ClickFunnels no-customer service
If you need to build high-converting lead capture landing pages and sales funnels at almost half the price every month, Leadpages just straight up wins and is the one I now exclusively rely on to create million-dollar sales funnels.
Click here to see how fast you can launch a sales funnel with Leadpages!
Having used both extensively though, ClickFunnels is sometimes a better fit for some businesses.
Let’s get into the comparison details of this ongoing sales funnel software war.
What Exactly Is Clickfunnels?
Created in 2014 by Russel Brunson and his team, ClickFunnels is an amazing landing page software that’s intuitive and super easy to use. It’s equipped with a huge database of eye-catching and high-converting landing page templates that can be easily customized to add your own branding elements.
Everything is drag and drop, so you don’t need to be a tech-aficionado to use this software.
As the name indicates, ClickFunnels isn’t just about creating landing pages. You can use it to design and develop a customizable high-converting sales funnel for your company, with a lot of bells and whistles.
There are a lot of landing page templates and marketing sales funnel templates that you can use to construct and consolidate your entire sales funnel. This means, the landing pages you produce using this program aren’t a standalone thing. They are a part of your sales funnel!
Here’s the best part: ClickFunnels offers you all the tools and tactics that you need to capture leads and to promote, vend, AND deliver your product and/or services online, without employing expensive developers.
You can use ClickFunnels to create a variety of funnels, such as:
- Landing pages for promoting your products and/or services
- Squeeze pages to ask for opt-in email addresses from your prospective clients
- Sales pages for selling your products and/or services
- Events such as Webinars, Online Training, e-Courses, etc.
- Membership funnels
- Affiliate program funnels for promoting your affiliate products and/or services
- All other kinds of sales funnel, including order bumps, upsells, and downsells
Now let’s take a look at the key features of ClickFunnels that have impressed more than 100k business owners within such a short span of time.
Why Do I Need ClickFunnels?
Here are some really cool features that make ClickFunnels a perfect option when it comes to creating landing pages and building your entire sales funnel online.
1. It’s Easy To Use
As mentioned above, ClickFunnels has a simple, user-friendly drag and drop editor. You can choose to create a fresh landing page every time, or use any existing landing page template built within the platform.
2. Unified Platform
You’ll find all features equipped in a single all-in-one landing page software.
The dashboard is even pre-formulated, meaning you won’t have to set up anything.
3. Powerful Automation
ClickFunnels offers powerful marketing automation (Email as well as Facebook). You can easily set up email messages and sequences to connect with your clients.
ClickFunnel has a robust tool called Actionetics that you can use to create bespoke follow-up funnels, resonating with your prospective customers, and increasing your lead capture and conversion rate.
The Actionetics email editor is pretty simple to work with. You can also use it to deliver broadcast messages to your subscribers.
4. Smart Shopping Cart With 1-Click Upsells
ClickFunnels is equipped with a smart shopping cart that lets your customers add any upsell to their order with just a single click. No need to go through the entire checkout process again.
5. No Installation + Auto-Updated Plugins
Unlike many other landing page software options, ClickFunnels doesn’t need installation. You can create all pages in your sales funnel straight from your membership area.
ClickFunnels ensures the security of your sales funnels by auto-updating your plugins so that you don’t risk your safety by installing plugins that can be easily compromised.
6. No Tie Down
You aren’t tied into long-term contracts with ClickFunnels. Use it for as long as you want, and cancel your subscription whenever needed.
7. Free Updates
You also receive tons of free updates in their landing page builder, and templates built within their platform.
8. Virtually Infinite Scalability
Hosted on the world’s biggest public cloud cluster, ClickFunnels lets you revel in virtually infinite scalability in real-time.
9. External Integrations
ClickFunnels supports integration with a number of external tools such as email marketing tools (like email autoresponder), your CRM, analytics tools (like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel), webinar software (like Zoom and GoToWebinar), and shopping carts.
10. Video Training
ClickFunnels’ training suite called Funnel Flix has a huge database of videos to help you create landing pages and sales funnels that skyrocket your company's conversion rate.
11. Straightforward Checkout Process
Reduce cart abandonment by using ClickFunnels to create a simple, non-confusing checkout process. You can opt for the traditional order form or the exclusive two-step form.
12. Affiliate Program
ClickFunnels’ affiliate program is one of the best programs out there, with plenty of training and assistance. People have been generating payment after payment successfully by becoming ClickFunnels affiliates.
You can explore all these features and much more via their free trial, right here.
What Is ClickFunnels Worth?
ClickFunnel reviews can never be complete without discussing the pricing, right?
In fact, it’s a deciding factor in our ClickFunnels vs. Leadpages comparison.
So, how much does ClickFunnels cost?
It offers two pricing plans, covering different features.
The first plan… which is called the ‘basic’ plan, costs around $97 per month. It allows you to have a maximum of 20 funnels… but also a total of 100 pages, 1 admin, 20,000 visitors every month, 3 payment gateways, and 3 customized domains.
You can though, in fact, actually have more visitors per month under certain conditions, so that limit is not a problem.
The other pricing plan is the ClickFunnels Platinum Plan (formerly the Full Etison Suite) costing around $297 per month. It covers everything stated above (but unlimited) and a lot more features. You’re allowed to have up to 3 users (admins), 9 custom domains, and 9 payment gateways.
Other perks include extra courses via Funnel Flix Platinum, priority chat support and VIP access to Funnel Hacker Forum, and Weekly Peer Review Hackathons.
ClickFunnels is about to launch another pricing plan called ClickFunnels Collective. They haven’t revealed much info yet so you’ll have to just wait for a month or two and watch. Till then, keep your fingers crossed.
Some Final Thoughts On Clickfunnels, And How It Stacks Up In Price When Compared To Leadpages
When you really get down to it, Leadpages wins for:
- Value
- Quickly deploying & testing opt-in and sales page copy
- Selling small .pdfs, one-off videos, coaching, services, etc.
If you are trying to sell something like a multi-module course, though, with multiple lessons in each… Clickfunnels actually wins.
Why?
Because the member's area in CF is more dynamic.
And that's what you pay for with the extra cost of Clickfunnels.
So if you don't need that, you can save some money and get all the tools you need with Leadpages.
Speaking of that, let’s dive in and discuss it a bit more…
What is Leadpages?
Leadpages is another popular landing page software that you can use to connect with your customers, capture leads, and close sales.
From creating high-performing company websites, to killer landing pages, to pop-ups and opt-in forms, you can create almost every aspect of your sales funnel using this program.
Leadpages also has a simple drag and drop landing page builder. The interface is pretty straightforward to navigate, and it will take less time to load and produce some high-converting landing pages – with zero coding skills needed.
Why Do I Need Leadpages?
The reason to use Leadpages is simple….
….They’re perfect at what they do. Period.
Take a look at some of Leadpages features and you’ll know why I’m saying this.
1. Social Media Ad Builder
Leadpages allows you to easily build, run, and administer social media ads (such as Facebook and Instagram). These ads are pre-populated with your landing page content to save you time and effort. But you can adapt every ad as per your company requirements.
2. Free Sub-Accounts
With Leadpages, you can have up to 5 free sub-accounts and you can easily share access with your group and/or customers. All these sub-accounts can be linked to your main account for consolidated monitoring.
3. 99.9% Uptime
If you look at their company website, you’ll see that Leadpages guarantees 99.9% uptime. So, you can enjoy a reliable and speedy performance.
4. Data Backup
For a business, data is key. Leadpages helps you keep your work safe within its landing page builder by automatically saving every time a change is made. You can also retrieve your customer data backup as a .CSV file.
5. Website Preview And SEO
Leadpages lets you preview your website as it appears on different devices so that you can easily optimize your content across different screen sizes. Plus, all your landing pages are absolutely mobile responsive.
Equipped with an auto-generated sitemap and in-built SEO settings, all Leadpages sites allow you to easily generate meta descriptions and image alt text.
6. Automated Lead Magnet Delivery
Leadpages supports built-in lead magnet delivery for new subscribers via a robust email marketing feature. This includes automatic delivery of emails and digital files as well as opt-in lead magnets.
7. Copy And Modify
With Leadpages, you can save a lot of time and effort in creating the different landing pages of your sales funnel.
Just create one landing page and copy it to create as many new landing pages as you want.
You can customize each landing page later.
8. Easy Online Transactions And Payment
Leadpages Checkouts are supported by Stripe, which makes selling and delivering digital products a stress free experience.
9. Widgets
Leadpages offers plenty of widgets to increase the functionality of all your landing pages. You can use different countdown timers, videos, text, images, Calendly, OpenTable etc.
10. Leadmeter
Leadpages has a great optimization tool called Leadmeter that offers data-oriented, real-time conversion recommendations for building high-converting landing pages and funnels.
11. Strong Analytics
You can improve your marketing decision-making by leveraging Leadpages’ built-in analytics to see if your funnel is working or not.
It’s also possible to include 3rd-party analytics code such as Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel into all your landing pages.
12. Unlimited A/B Split Testing
Leadpages allows you to carry out unrestricted A/B split testing on any landing page for performance optimization.
13. Personalized Branding And Integrations
Leadpages allows you to white-label all of your landing pages for customized branding. From logo design to custom colors, you can change everything on your landing page.
With Leadpages, you can have 40+ external integrations with email marketing tools, marketing automation tools, email autoresponder, and more.
Some popular integrations include Hubspot, Marketo, Salesforce/Pardot, MailChimp, AWeber, ConstantContact, Zapier app, and more.
14. Customer Training And Support
Unlike ClickFunnels, Leadpages has a much better customer support system. They are quick to respond and much friendlier.
When starting out, you can avail a quick 1-on-1 start call with a Leadpages professional for a smoother transition.
15. Free Domain+Hosting And Gdpr Compliance
Every Leadpages account comprises free hosting on a Leadpages domain that’s protected with SSL encryption and hosted on an HTTPS address. So hosting and a domain are already taken care of!
Leadpages supports General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, meaning all your data collected is handled securely and follows GDPR requirements.
You can take a look at Leadpages and explore some of its features here.
How Much Is Leadpages?
Leadpages has three pricing plans: Standard, Pro, and Advanced.
The Standard Package costs around $37 per month and is best suited for new companies and startups. This plan allows you to have one website, unlimited landing pages, pop-ups, alert bars, more than forty integrations, Facebook and Instagram ad builder, email autoresponder, and free hosting.
For growing companies, the Pro Plan is ideal. It costs $79 per month and includes all of these features with three websites, Online Sales and Payments, Unrestrained A/B Split Testing, ten Opt-in Text Campaigns, and more.
The third plan, called the Advanced Plan, is suitable for marketing agencies. It costs around $321 per month and includes up to fifty websites, all of the above features, as well as Advanced Integrations, five Pro Sub-Accounts, fifty Extra Opt-in Text Campaigns, and one-on-one Quick Start Call.
Leadpages has lately introduced a new pricing plan called START, priced at $19 per month. You can use this plan if you need just one website for your business with unlimited landing pages.
Want to get a 39% discount? Select any of these plans to be billed each year and receive your concession along with a free domain.
How awesome!
Leadpages Vs Clickfunnels: What Should You Use?
So far, I’ve discussed Leadpages and ClickFunnels as individual products. You explored both programs and learned about all of their key features. You also had a look at their pricing plans.
Now comes the main part of the review: The ultimate comparison!
Let’s dive straight into our side-by-side comparison!
Leadpages vs ClickFunnels: Which tool helps you sell better?
The way ClickFunnels and Leadpages are branded can have a great impact on how you sell your products or services to your clients, or to your client’s customers.
For better or for worse… whatever tool you choose, it can affect your visitors’ perception of your brand.
First, let’s talk about Leadpages.
When it comes to the effect of the tool on your brand, Leadpages takes the cake.
Why?
Because its pages are simpler and more “off-the-cuff” in presentation. Plus, Leadpages has a superior content upgrade feature. Your users can automatically opt in to access any free downloadable digital product.
Practically speaking, if you’re selling something to a customer who can instantly identify where your website template is from (for example, ClickFunnels), he/she might associate it with particular thoughts related to that product’s brand (such as tons of affiliate marketers, “Purchase Now!” squeeze pages, or others who fancy exaggerated sales strategies).
If you’re finding it too difficult to wrap your head around, let’s consider an example.
Think about the last time a business sold you a product. Was your buying decision affected by their website design in any way?
Obviously, it was!
Your Leadpages templates can be more identifiable, even without including custom design features. Although Leadpages has a good standing in the market, you may not wish to be associated with its brand. So this is a problem hounding both ClickFunnels and Leadpages.
But here’s what sets Leadpages apart: It has more value-focused content with great emphasis on upgrades. Plus, Leadpages templates are less hectic to work with.
And, what about ClickFunnels?
Unlike Leadpages, ClickFunnels’ templates have a lot happening. Everywhere you look, you’ll find that words are either underlined, bolded, or italicized.
This is why the majority of marketing experts can easily identify when they visit a ClickFunnels page.
Here’s another key difference….
….ClickFunnels tries to brand itself as “entertaining” via their different campaigns and demo videos. You perceive that sense of entertainment in the way they introduce their product to vendors and businesses with a bout of wit.
Whereas, Leadpages is more direct and straightforward.
And, not to forget that ClickFunnels is quite notorious as far as its affiliate marketers and fake reviews are considered.
So, if you’re looking for a genuine solution that’s to the point and easy to work with, Leadpages should be your choice.
Leadpages vs ClickFunnels: Which tool has better customer support?
Leadpages has little flimflam around their software, what benefits it offers, or why one should use it to develop their business.
It focuses more on customer support (for instance, their training program and meticulous email support representatives).
On the other hand, ClickFunnels fancies advertising its sales message heavily on the front, while there’s less support on the backend.
You’ll find a lot of complaints about ClickFunnels support out there. And, remember, for a system as complex as ClickFunnels, you’ll need tons of support at nearly every stage of the project, especially if you are a newbie.
But if you’ve been swayed by ClickFunnels’ publicity, you’re not alone.
ClickFunnels’ support team is not supportive AT ALL. Their program has bugs... and with no timely support, you can lose thousands of dollars in debugging and redirecting your paid traffic.
Another marketing specialist, Ian Fernando who has been using ClickFunnels for more than a decade now, shares how ClickFunnels’ Facebook group community steps in every time he needs assistance while their support staff is mostly unavailable.
So, as far as customer support is concerned, Leadpages is a clear winner.
Leadpages Vs Clickfunnels: Which Tool Has The Best Features?
Leadpages and ClickFunnels both offer A/B split testing. You can develop individual landing pages, link these pages together in a funnel stream, build a custom domain, and integrate with several other external tools, CRM, and other apps.
However, Leadpages lacks the ‘add-to-cart’ feel to it. There’s no 1-click upsell like ClickFunnels has.
Leadpages intends to roll out this feature soon... but till then, let’s just keep our fingers crossed.
Presently, Leadpages has 2-step checkouts. Some other features include automated webinars, an easy to use landing page builder, LeadDigits that you can use to send a short code to subscribe to an emailing list, and LeadLinks so that your users click on a link to subscribe to your emailing list straightaway.
As far as ClickFunnels is concerned, one of the most remarkable features is its membership feature for logging in.
And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
You’ll find plenty of front-line features such as checkout integrations, 1-click upsells and downsells, Actionetics, social media sharing options, Backpack that handles your affiliate payment and hiring, and so much more.
Undoubtedly, ClickFunnels has more features than Leadpages. So if you’re looking for a solution that offers a plethora of features and cost is not an issue, then ClickFunnels takes the lead here.
Leadpages Vs Clickfunnels: Which Tool Is Easier To Use?
Both ClickFunnels and Leadpages provide an easy way for their users to create sales funnels for their companies. Both offer drag and drop functionality, allowing users to build pages without any coding or technical skills.
Also, both tools offer easy integration with various email marketing services. They also offer other apps, and come with hosting in their packages. Plus, you can build 100% mobile responsive websites using ClickFunnels and Leadpages.
But, hands down, ClickFunnels outshines Leadpages in its capacity to build full sales funnels. And, its smart shopping cart… it is a total game changing feature. It can also work easily with payment software to make life much simpler for entrepreneurs and marketing specialists. You can use ClickFunnels, for example, for building kickass lead magnet campaigns.
You can also cleverly sequence emails, track per-page conversions, and adjust the order of the pages within the funnel in minutes using ClickFunnels.
But with so many features comes the added complexity.
ClickFunnels templates are hard to customize as compared to Leadpages, because there’s a lot going on. The interface is super confusing and you’ll have a longer learning curve in mastering the tool.
So, if you're looking for an easy to use software, I would suggest using Leadpages.
Leadpages Vs Clickfunnels: Which Tool Is Easier On The Pocket?
Undoubtedly, ClickFunnels is more expensive than Leadpages. For all the extra features it offers, you’ll know where that cost goes, right?
Currently, it only offers two pricing plans. The entry level plan costing around $97 per month hardly allows you to build 20 funnels. Plus, it restricts you to 20,000 visitors per month and 3 custom domains.
So, the biggest drawback of ClickFunnels is perhaps the cost, but you’ll have to determine if the accessibility of having an all-in-one platform overshadows the price tag.
On the other hand, Leadpages is far more affordable with almost similar functionality. It offers everything you need to build high-converting landing pages and funnels at almost half the price every month.
Leadpages Standard Package costing around $37 per month includes all features that you may possibly need for running a small business. You can build an unlimited number of landing pages, pop-ups, alert bars etc.
So, if you’re looking for a software that’s easy on the pocket and can perhaps make do with a limited set of features, Leadpages would be your perfect partner. You can use it to save a lot of bucks, month after month.
Just keep in mind that Leadpages doesn’t offer any free trial vs. ClickFunnels. But it does offer a 30-day money back guarantee.
So, if you aren’t happy with Leadpages, you can cancel your subscription within the initial 30 days, receiving a full refund.
Bottom line of our ClickFunnels vs Leadpages comparison is this….
…..Leadpages wins for the value it offers in exchange for its price. You can use it to quickly deploy and test your opt-in and sales page copy. From selling small digital products such as PDFs and one-off videos, to ongoing coaching and other services, Leadpages is hands down a better choice because of its simplicity.
And, its customer support is outstanding, which is a huge consideration when choosing any new product.
But but but….
….If you have a multi-module course, including multiple lessons and assignments in each, then ClickFunnels takes the lead. Its members area is far more dynamic vs Leadpages. And precisely, that's what you pay for with the extra cost!
So if you don't need these features, you can save some money and get all the tools you need with Leadpages.
Wrap Up
Leadpages and ClickFunnels are both powerful landing page building software options. Inundated with features, both tools are widely used for building sales funnels due to their drag and drop functionality.
In this ClickFunnels vs Leadpages review, you got an in-depth comparison of both of these tools in terms of ease of use, cost, customer support, and functionality.
While Leadpages dominates ClickFunnels as far as the cost, simplicity, and customer support are concerned, the latter wins when it comes to creating more sophisticated funnels that involve multiple landing pages.
ClickFunnels is ideal for companies who offer a lot of different types of products. They can develop individual sales funnels for each product. Plus, they can integrate different types of media into their sales funnels to train their customers. On top of it, its affiliate program is more comprehensive, giving you a chance to make more sales.
All in all, I prefer Leadpages to ClickFunnels because:
- The branding of Leadpages can possibly enhance the value perception and even the conversion rate of your landing pages as well as sales funnels. Unlike ClickFunnels, it’s a brand that enjoys a more progressive, upfront reputation in the market.
- Leadpages may offer fewer features as compared to ClickFunnels, but you may not use all those additional features anyway. ClickFunnels’ features are often quite complex, whereas Leadpages offers easy to optimize landing page templates and features.
- Leadpages customer support is far better than ClickFunnels. They are quick to respond and quicker at solving problems. Whereas, reps at ClickFunnels are outright lazy. And, the fact that ClickFunnels has a more perplexing interface, you’ll need more support as compared to Leadpages.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, both of these companies have a lot to offer.
Clickfunnels costs more, but the money can be worth it if you are doing things that are just more complex.
In most cases, though, Leadpages is just really tough to beat, and I see them as the preferable option.
Have you tried either of these options for yourself? If so, drop a line and let me know!
I would be very interested to hear what you have to say!
Also feel free to drop your questions. Let’s keep the conversation going!
Until next time, peace!
