In this post we will cover everything you need to know about ClickFunnels Funnel University
I’ve got some good news: ClickFunnels does its job!
ClickFunnels is intended to save you time and energy-to do what otherwise requires a lot of technological proficiency and/or an array of third party applications. In this respect, ClickFunnels succeeds.
Makes You Money
One of the best things about ClickFunnels is its focus on making money for the user. They make it very easy to make your account, put up your content, and start taking payments. Plus, it’s pretty easy to pick everything up-it’ll probably take you a couple hours to figure out most of what you need, max.
Drag and Drop Builder
Quite a few features are very useful here. I like how easy it is to duplicate pages, and the fact I can save templates to be used again later. Their page builder is a pretty important feature, and they’ve pulled it off well. Once you get used to it, it’s an easy to use drag and drop builder.
A/B testing
Built in A/B testing is great too. All you have to do is duplicate a page, make your changes, and choose the amounts of your traffic you want to see version A or B.
Great selection of Integrations
I think ClickFunnels handles API integrations pretty well. Email autoresponders and payment processors aren’t too much of a sweat-they work reliably and are easy to manage.
WordPress Plugin
You’ll also find a handy WordPress plugin that lets you add ClickFunnels pages to your WordPress website. It saves a lot of time and is much less of a hassle than working between ClickFunnels and WordPress without a plugin. The Clickfunnels WordPress plugin is also rated a solid 4.4 stars in the WordPress plugin repository, with over 20,000 active installations.
I’ve got some bad news: even though ClickFunnels is overall strong, it has quite a few areas that need work.
Overpriced?
A small drawback is the price. There are only two pricing options, at either $97 a month or $297 a month. In the grand scheme of things, this is not a huge drawback, just another investment in your business, and like I’ve said, you get a good package for it.
Lackluster Customer Service
Beyond that, customer support is iffy at best. In my experience, they’ve been fine with basic questions, but if you ask them more difficult things, especially about more advanced features, they won’t be very helpful.
Cult-like user base and software too reliant on Founder
This is not an objective criticism of their product but I take a slight issue with their marketing that I think is worth mentioning in this ClickFunnels Funnel University.
If you get sucked into one of their funnels, it’s hard to escape the hype surrounding it. They have a great marketing for sure. However, from a user experience perspective, it can get obtrusive. Once you sign up for the software, you can try to look at the objective features of the software and integrate it into your own workflow, or you’ll be lost and forced to learn Russell Brunson’s marketing methods.
This means you’ll find yourself buying online courses, books, attending seminars, and getting sucked into the ClickFunnels “Cult-ure”. Their Facebook Group has over 100k members and most posts consists of people bragging about how much money they made and flashing their sports cars. Though these numbers are real, the users give an impression that they’re more focused on making quick money rather than building great products and services. ClickFunnels has helped people do great things, but it’s also helped proliferate quick rich schemes, online courses, saturation of coaches and experts, and other spammy internet marketer stuff.
We all know the founder is a marketing wizard, but so much of the product is tied to his brand and his philosophy. As much as I appreciate the landing page builder, everything around it seems like an extension of Brunson’s platform.
Sometimes it’s hard to not get the feeling that ClickFunnels spends more resources on self-promotion than necessary, especially when some aspects of their product (i.e., customer service) can still use some work.
Too Templated
This one isn’t on ClickFunnels but more on the community. While you have the ability to customize extensively within ClickFunnels, many people use similar designs. Considering the popularity of ClickFunnels, this has led to a large amount of ClickFunnel-y looks floating around. Diversity is important.
Software Outages and Bugs
Every now and then, ClickFunnels will go down or experience some errors. Though this really doesn’t happen often, there’s little you can do but wait. If you’re investing a lot in advertising or driving traffic to your funnels and a ClickFunnels’ glitch brings your pages down for even a few hours, you can potentially lose a lot of money.
It’s also hard to know when your pages are working or not, unless you constantly check or wait until you hear from angry customers. Barring uptime, I also deal with some glitches when I clone pages using the HTML publishing option.
User experience changes… a lot
The dashboard changes often, the flow of creating new pages and funnels changes, a button will move around, pricing options change, etc-and it seems ClickFunnels is still figuring things out.
I like consistency in my software, especially if it’s a business solution ClickFunnels Zapier Integration.
Too Simple
Finally, a criticism I’ve heard but don’t quite agree with personally: it’s too simple, and too expensive for its simplicity. These criticisms tend to refer to do-it-yourself approaches which can be cheaper upfront and yield more control over managing certain details. However, for less experienced users who are mainly seeking efficiency and an easy to use bundle of tools, I wouldn’t emphasize this too strongly.