ClickFunnels vs Shopify? As a business owner, you have probably encountered this debate. Many new and experienced business owners and entrepreneurs struggle to choose between these two big platforms. If you are reading this article, chances are you are one of them. I can assure you that this article is what you will need to decide on the best platform you want to use according to your business needs.
ClickFunnels is a powerful platform in the business world. Businesses use this to create an effective sales funnel and streamline their online business. Doesn’t matter if you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or marketer, ClickFunnels is packed with several tools. Those tools will help you boost your sales process and drive conversions. And I don’t use the term ‘drive conversions’ lightly here as this platform is specially designed to boost customer engagement at every stage of the sales and marketing funnel.
Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform designed to help businesses create, manage, and grow their Shopify store. It doesn’t matter if you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, or established retailer, this online store builder offers extensive tools to support your online business. Furthermore, suppose you want your customers to easily browse through your collection of products and find exactly what they are looking for. In that case, Shopify as a dedicated ecommerce platform, is the best.
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Feature Comparisons: ClickFunnels vs Shopify
Even though Shopify and ClickFunnels are similar business platforms, they work quite differently. Their only goal, being a business platform, is to manage and grow online sales. This involves effective customer engagement. It also includes ensuring that the customers have a good time using the platform. These platforms also help businesses grow by providing the necessary features and integrations. This helps to make them visible online.
Before discussing their features, let’s understand how they work and how the features they provide help them. As the name suggests, ClickFunnels focuses on using funnels to manage the different business areas. It allows you to create customized sales pages for different products. Unlike ClickFunnels, Shopify lets users build and manage an online store. And convert visitors to customers through their optimization features. It is just like physical stores but in an online platform.
Revenue Funnel
Although you are familiar with the term funnel revenue funnel might be a confusing term. A revenue funnel is a series of steps that help guide potential customers. It is usually implemented through buying and increasing sales opportunities. This marketing strategy works as follows:
- Gaining the attention of possible customers
- Increasing their interest.
- Making them desire a product
- And finally, an action to purchase the item(AIDA). Shopify and Clickfunnel implement this same feature differently as they cater to different online stores. Here is a walkthrough of how both of these platforms implement this feature.
| ClickFunnels | Shopify |
| ClickFunnels provides a drag-and-drop sales funnel builder to design funnels. | Shopify provides built-in features for inventory management. |
| Funnel setup is quick and easy due to pre-built funnel templates, so you don’t have to create sales funnels from scratch. | A pro of Shopify is its customizable product pages and collections as an ecommerce store. |
| When a customer upsells or downsells, these one-click upsell, or down-sell funnels help present the next step/alternative to the customers, keeping them engaged. | We can use funnel strategies in Shopify to upsell and cross-sell. Upsell means suggesting expensive products of the same category. Similarly, cross-sell means suggesting complementary products for the main product. |
| ClickFunnels provides advanced follow-up funnels. These funnels arehighly customizable. Automated emails or SMS are available to keep potential customers for continuous engagement. Shopify provides basic and necessary follow-up features. That includes automated emails in cart abandonment cases. | Shopify provides basic and necessary follow-up features like automated emails in cart abandonment cases. |
Customer Relation Management System (CRM)
Customer Relation Management System is a pretty self-explanatory term. And yes, it means managing customer interactions by catering to their needs, which is the main goal of CRM. ClickFunnels and Shopify work differently to achieve this goal.
| ClickFunnel | Shopify |
| ClickFunnel offers basic built-in CRM. That includes tracking customer interactions, managing customer relationships, and segmenting leads. | Shopify has integrated customer management systems like HubSpot and Salesforce. This contributes to more advanced features. And when we talk about advanced features, those refer to detailed analytics. They also include automated follow-ups and managing a larger customer database. |
| ClickFunnels offers lead management. This helps read the patterns and interactions of customers and follow up with them. | Shopify also offers features that track customer profiles. This helps analyze customer behavior, purchase history, and engagement. |
Features for Analytical Purpose
Any business platform would want to improve and grow as a business. A key factor in knowing how the business is doing is analyzing how healthy the business is. “Whats the interaction patterns of the customers?, Is it growing or is it declining? How is it growing and why is it declining?” are the other questions you may ask as an entrepreneur looking to improve your business. That’s when analytical features come in handy. Shopify and ClickFunnel both have these features, which are described below.
| ClickFunnels | Shopify |
| ClickFunnels allows A/B testing for funnel optimization. | Shopify’s dashboard has built-in analytics. This allows you to track your sales and view your store’s performance. |
| ClickFunnel focuses on funnel-specific analysis using Google Analytics and third-party analyzing tools. This includes sales, page views, and customer engagement. | This e-commerce platform also provides Google Analytics. This helps in generating detailed analyses of customer insights, product demands, sales, and traffic reports. |
Integration Features
ClickFunnels and Shopify implement integration features quite differently. Although we can use ClickFunnels to build connections with third-party tools, Shopify integrates with third-party apps much better. This is due to the app store feature being available on Shopify.
| ClickFunnels | Shopify |
| Clickfunnels integrates third-party tools such as social media and email marketing platforms. | Shopify also integrates with a range of third-party apps. You can download these apps from the app store for necessary customizations. |
| API integration is also allowed in click funnels. This helps by making it easier for you to integrate custom tools. | Like Clickfunnels, we can use Shopify for custom integration on API and webhooks. |
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
As Shopify is a dedicated ecommerce platform and ClickFunnel is not, Shopify shines in terms of the features provided for SEO. This added benefit of Shopify helps to enhance store functionality and provide necessary optimizations. Whereas ClickFunnels lacks advanced SEO features, we can still take advantage of the basic tools it provides for SEO optimization.
| ClickFunnels | Shopify |
| ClickFunnels has basic SEO tools for optimizing landing pages and sales funnels. You can add meta titles, descriptions, and URL slugs. | Shopify offers thousands of customization tools and SEO plugins. These can be downloaded from their app store. These tools also support product schema markup. This can improve the visibility of products in search engine results. |
| A con of ClickFunnels is that it lacks advanced SEO features like extensive plugins, structure management, and product schema markup. | Since Shopify is a dedicated e-commerce platform, it offers advanced SEO plugins. That includes automated SEO, keyword research tools, and site audits, are available. . |
Payment Features
ClickFunnel is more focused on generating revenue through funnel optimization and lead generation. Due to that, payment features are less flexible in ClickFunnel than those of Shopify. On the other hand, ClickFunnels is designed to track user interaction through payment features. This helps in better sales funnel optimization.
| ClickFunnels | Shopify |
| ClickFunnels does not have as many payment options as Shopify. And it is limited to only the two popular options, Stripe and Paypal. | Shopify allows a wide range of payment app integration. That means you can choose your payment options with Shopify Payments. |
| ClickFunnel allows integration with third-party payment gateways. This helps in analyzing upsells and downsells within the funnel. This is very useful to maximize revenue and understand customer needs. | Shopify has its own payment gateway, which means customers do not have to pay transaction fees. |
| ClickFunnels payment options focus on optimizing sales and maximizing revenue. | Shopify’s payment features focus on customer experience and convenience. |
Plans for Pricing
There are 3 types of pricing tiers for both ClickFunnel and Shopify. They start with a basic, medium, and advanced plan. Both of the platforms offer stable pricing plans. However, users can test both platforms’ free trials before choosing a plan. During the free trial, you can use the product for free to test the features and see if it fits your requirements. ClickFunnels provides a 14-day free trial, whereas Shopify provides a 3-day free trial. Below is a side-by-side comparison of pricing tiers on both platforms:
| Shopify | ClickFunnel |
| Basic plan: $127/month | Basic plan: $29/month |
| Medium plan: $157/month | Medium plan:$79/month |
| Upgraded plan: $208/month | Upgraded plan: $299/month |
Which is More Convenient – ClickFunnels or Shopify
To compare Clickfunnels vs Shopify in terms of convenience, we need to know the requirements and features they provide. Both of them are similar as part of a business platform, but they share vast differences. Knowing which is the right platform for your business in terms of convenience depends on your specific needs and goals. ClickFunnels is convenient for entrepreneurs who run business of custom products. And Shopify is for those who need an online store to sell their products. And those who own a wide range of products that customers can browse before buying.
So, if you are an entrepreneur targeting customers to buy a specific product, ClickFunnel is convenient. Let us understand through an example. Suppose you are a teacher, and your product is a course you want to sell. In this case, you will target a specific group wanting to take the course. Now, why is clickfunnel best for this entrepreneur? Using Clickfunnel, the teacher can make various funnels. Those funnels include sales funnels, lead generation funnels, membership funnels, and many more. These funnels serve various purposes that help maximize customer engagement and revenue.
Likewise, Shopify is used by entrepreneurs with mass products of different categories. We are going to take a look at an example to understand this better. Let’s say you are a shoe shop owner in real life. Then, you have different brands of shoes that accommodate different genders, ages, and colors. You may also have complementary products like socks to go with them. This means you are serving a vast amount of customers. Now, think about that in an online platform. And yes, in that case, you need a dedicated e-commerce platform. Shopify is the best option for helping build and manage online stores like these.
Conclusion
Therefore, ClickFunnels and Shopify are both excellent platforms to start an online business. When comparing Shopify vs ClickFunnels, knowing which is the best fit for your business according to your needs is important. ClickFunnel is a business platform that is best for small businesses with custom products. But suppose it’s to cater to and reach a wide variety of customers where the products are in various categories. Customers can browse endless options to get the desired one. In that case, Shopify is a great choice.
The key difference between Shopify and ClickFunnel is their approach to sales and customer engagement. Furthermore, I would choose Shopify if we compare Shopify and ClickFunnel based on other features they provide. Shopify is a comprehensive platform that offers numerous features. Some of them are extensive tools, pricing plans, advanced plugins, and features like payment and third-party integrations. These features are necessary to create a successful online store.
FAQs
Is ClickFunnels the same as Shopify?
No, ClickFunnel is not the same as Shopify. Although both of them share some similarities, they are designed to cater to two different online stores. In ClickFunnels, users create funnels and landing pages. This helps guide potential customers from visitors to customers. Whereas Shopify offers various marketing tools. That helps design and build an online store to sell various digital products online.
What are the disadvantages of ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnel is very expensive. More than that, ClickFunnel has limited payment options. There are limited SEO plugins which can hinder the optimization process. And one of the main cons of ClickFunnels is its slow processing time.
What makes ClickFunnels different?
ClickFunnels is known for its powerful sales funnel capabilities. It uses different funnels for different purposes. These funnels start with a sales pitch to engage possible customers. Then, they go through various steps to establish a relationship and encourage the customers to buy that product.
Does ClickFunnels replace a website?
No ClickFunnels does not replace a website. It is designed to manage sales funnels and guide those visitors to become actual customers rather than replace a website. A website contains additional information and blogs that Clickfunnel may not be able to provide.
Who is a competitor to Shopify?
The biggest competitor of Shopify is BigCommerce. As ecommerce platforms, both of them are focused on generating vast amounts of traffic to online sites. They do this by converting visitors into buyers. Other Shopify’s main competitors are WooCommerce, Wid, SquareSpace, and Eqwid.