Clickfunnels vs. Shopify: Which One is Better?

Starting an online business is quite a tough job as you need to select a software to build your
website and a platform to sell your products online. In this digital era, you may find hundreds of
powerhouses to build your online store and sell your products and choosing the right one among
them is not so easy. You need to be more careful when you opt for an online business as even a
small mistake can ruin everything. So, it is always recommended to select a reliable powerhouse
that can sustain your business and help you sell your products to potential customers. To ease
your decision making, here we have compared two important powerhouses Clickfunnels vs.
Shopify.

When a person searches how to start an online store, Shopify vs. Clickfunnels may come to you
as an option because most of the time, these two are people’s top choice for starting an online
store. One of them will surely work best for your business too. If you further search on the
internet about e-commerce guides to run your business, you will get confused with all the
complex details. The thing is every tool has its own strengths and weakness. Considering that
different type of business requires different settings and stuff, there is no size that fits all. At the
end of the day, it will be your choice to choose a powerhouse that best suits your business needs.

Let’s start comparing Clickfunnels vs. Shopify by highlighting their features, pricing, pros, and
cons to help you make the right decision. Have a look:

Clickfunnels Overview:

Clickfunnels offers built-in sales funnels, which are scientifically proven to sell different
products, services, memberships, courses, eBooks, webinars, and anything that can be sold. This
software not only allows you to set up your whole online store, but it can also do an automated
email marketing campaign.

Shopify Overview:

If you want to create a completely independent online store for shopping, then you must consider
Shopify because it is the ultimate choice. It comes with plenty of themes on which you can build
your online store. Other systems are also available by which you can manage your inventory,
payments, and shipping rates.

Features Comparison: Clickfunnels vs. Shopify

With the general review of Clickfunnels vs Shopify overview, you might have concluded that
both these powerhouses are good, but they are for different business categories. Now we are
going to compare Shopify vs. Clickfunnels in terms of their features.

Features of Clickfunnels:

Clickfunnels is specially designed for beginners who are new in the field of online business. This
software best suits those people who are interested in establishing their online store and want
something powerful to manage their marketing campaign. Let’s have a look at its distinctive
features.

1- Pre-made sales funnels

Clickfunnels comes with pre-made sales funnels, which are a set of web pages that can lead any
potential customer towards the checkout page. With these funnels, you can sell anything that can
be a product, service, webinar, or e-book. There are readymade pages and templates for all type
of possible products so you can choose any one of them for your online store. Templates for
thank you pages or checkout pages are also available. You just have to choose the pages and
templates, and then add your content and images to make your funnels ready.

2- CRM system

CRM system in Clickfunnels allows you to see the detailed information about your customers.
Mostly this information involves the social profile of your customers, their email addresses, their
shopping history, demographics, etc. You can use this information to list your customers in
different groups and then target them during the email marketing campaign.

3- Website building tool

In Clickfunnels, there are ready-made templates for sales funnels but you can choose to make
your own funnels with its website building tool. Simply add images, text, videos, payment
integration, checkout carts, and other things to create a customized webpage for your sales
funnel.

4- Payment integration

Clickfunnels accepts payments from PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and some other payment
processing services. Add payment integrations as per your choice and get instant payment from
your customers.

5- In-built autoresponder

A smart autoresponder (namely Actionetics) is in-built in Clickfunnels to help you sells products.
This tool allows you to:

 View and track your customers’ activities

 Send target emails in accordance with funnel actions
 Plan actions on the basis of various triggers

6- Email managing tool

While doing marketing promotions, you can create your own marketing campaign emails via
Clickfunnels. You can make segments of email addresses and organize them through email
managing tool and send promotional emails during marketing campaigns.

7- Affiliate marketing system

Clickfunnels offers a cool way of marketing. With Clickfunnels, you can build your own affiliate
marketing program for any particular product or service. Once you have made it, share the link
with other individuals as well for marketing or selling purpose. If your product or service is sold
via that link, then you have to pay commission to that person. If your product or service has been
selling this way, then you can create a sales team of your own to boost your business.

8- Backpack tool
In Clickfunnels, the backpack tool helps manage the affiliates for product/service promotions,
their payments, commissions, and affiliate page settings.

Features of Shopify:

Shopify is different from Clickfunnels because it is made for expert entrepreneurs who can create
sales funnels and can turn their visitors into potential customers. These entrepreneurs just need a
powerful platform to build and run down their online store. The main features of Shopify are
listed below.

1- Online store builder

Shopify has a great collection of themes in which some are free to use while some are paid.
These themes can also be altered as per your choice. While making a customized online store,
you can choose to drag and drop your favorite features on the website. You can change colors,
texts, font styles, images, and almost every element to make your website one of a kind. If you
are a person who has knowledge of coding then you can do a little bit HTML and CSS coding
and if you are not that tech savvy, then it is all right as you can use the ready-made themes.
While creating your online store, you can choose the images you like and the product description
of your choice. You can manage the layout and other notification settings to make your store
better for users. The Shopify built websites are mobile responsive so your customers can also
browse your online store on their mobile phone.

2- Analytics dashboard

Just like any other marketing software, Shopify has your important data in graphs too. Any
business-related demographics, traffic flow, transaction record, average timing spent on the
store, and performances of products are all displayed on the analytics dashboard of Shopify.
Make sure you make genuine use of this analytical data and order your inventory accordingly.

3- Payment integration

Payments integration in Shopify is far better than Clickfunnels. It accepts payments from at least
100+ payment processing services including Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and American Express. It
can also manage taxes while shipping orders.
 4- Inventory management system

With this platform, you can keep track of your new, old, and current inventory. You can choose
to give code numbers to your inventory to manage it well. All the data regarding inventory or
stock will be available to you whenever you need. With Shopify inventory management system,
you can track the total number of sold and remaining items.

5- Blogging option

You can boost your store’s traffic through Shopify blogging tool. With this tool, you can create
content to educate customers about your product or service.

6- Mobile app

Shopify has a mobile app that is compatible with both Android and iPhone. You can use it on
your phone while you are away to track your inventory and sales.

7- Sales channels

If you choose to create your online store by using Shopify then you will be able to switch your
store with social media sites as well. Therefore, customers will be able to browse through your
online store while using their own social media account like Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, etc.

8- Customer management system

Customers are an important part of any business. Shopify will help you track your customer’s
shopping behavior like product purchases, time spent on the store, etc. You can provide
memberships to your customers to persuade recurrent purchase. Plus, you can also manage
customers’ refunds via Shopify customer management system.

9- App store

The app store in Shopify has plenty of extraordinary integrations and plugins. These can be used
to improve your website functionality. You can use these integrations and plugins to create opt-
in forms, landing pages, and accounting reports. Furthermore, you can also get an app to run
your email marketing campaign.
 10- Shipping and delivery

Shopify courier partners include DHL, UPS, and USPS which means they can offer their
customers low shipping rates. Also, Shopify has a partnership with Oberlo, so even if you don’t
have your own inventory, you can purchase, sell, and ship any products.

Pricing Comparison: Clickfunnels vs. Shopify

Clickfunnels Pricing:

You can get two subscription plans from Clickfunnels i.e. Basic plan and advanced plan. The
basic plan will cost you $97 per month whereas the advanced plan will cost $297 per month.
Here it is important to state that the basic plan has limited features including 100 pages, 20,000
visitors, 3 domains, 20 funnels, 1 SMTP integration, members area, email integrations, share
funnels, etc. The advanced plan is more suitable for big stores and includes unlimited funnels,
pages, visitors, domains, backpack tool, actionetics, affiliate marketing system, and much more.
Both these plans come with a free 14-day trial.

Shopify Pricing:

Shopify offers three subscription plans i.e. Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify. The
per month cost of basic Shopify plan is $29, the Shopify plan will cost you $79 per month, and
the monthly cost of advanced Shopify is $299. All these plans have unlimited file storage and
products, variety of themes, 24/7 support, multiple sales channels, 14-day free trial, discount
codes, blogging functionality, content management system, SEO functionality, 100+ payment
processing services, and staff accounts. The second and third plans also include gift cards, fraud
analysis, advanced cart recovery, and reporting feature.

Pros and Cons of Shopify vs. Clickfunnels

After comparing the distinctive features of Shopify vs Clickfunnels, here we have some pros and
cons of Shopify and Clickfunnels. Have a look:

Pros of Clickfunnels:
 1. Clickfunnels is easy and simple to use.
2. You can sell multiple complementary products in a single sales funnel by using the up-
sell feature.
3. Building your own sales funnels and selling products here take only hours.
4. You don’t require any marketing know-how for selling products on Clickfunnels as you
will get ready-made funnels that are tested for maximum conversions.
5. It comes with in-built CRM tool, automation tool, membership tool, and email marketing
tool to make things easier for you.
6. Sharing of sales funnels with other users or clients is also possible.

Cons of Clickfunnels:

1. You can’t display or sell similar or related products on a single funnel or page.
2. A mobile app is not available.
3. Not good for blogging and SEO purpose.
4. Its subscription is expensive.
5. Advanced reporting features are not offered.
6. This software is not suitable for selling hundreds of products.

Pros of Shopify:

1. It is ideal for blogging and SEO purpose and can increase your store’s traffic.
2. It has an app for mobile phones to manage the online store.
3. Selling hundreds of products online is quite easy due to Shopify inventory management
system.
4. Due to Shopify’s partnership with DHL, UPS, and USPS, you can offer very low
shipping rates to your customers.
5. A mobile app is available.

Cons of Shopify:
 1. It takes lots of time to build your store and create custom funnels, especially if you are a
beginner. Also, you might require technical marketing knowhow to manage things well.
2. Shopify only focuses on the sale of products, but it doesn’t help you market your online
store.
3. Advanced automation is not available to track customers’ shopping behavior.
4. No email marketing tool.

Final Verdict

By going through all the details, we can say that Shopify is ideal when you are a pro in
marketing and just need to organize products to sell in an online store. On the other hand,
Clickfunnels is the right choice when you are new to online business and want an in-built
marketing system to collect leads, create sales funnels, and convert sales.