There have been various platforms available for creating websites, landing pages, and sales funnels for quite some time now. When deciding between WordPress and ClickFunnels, two powerful platforms that assist in building websites aimed at increasing conversions, individuals often face a choice.
WordPress stands out as the most versatile content management system (CMS) in the market, offering the ability to customize and optimize sales funnels and landing pages for generating leads using themes and plugins. On the other hand, ClickFunnels, including its significant update ClickFunnels 2.0, has gained popularity as an all-in-one sales funnel builder, evolving into a comprehensive platform for website development. ClickFunnels encompasses a range of built-in tools for funnel marketing, such as a funnel builder, LMS for online courses, eCommerce capabilities, affiliate site builder, email marketing, and CRM. This complexity makes it challenging to compare with the modular nature of WordPress.
In this article, we will examine the differences between ClickFunnels and WordPress in terms of pricing, ease of use, customization options, eCommerce features, and more. Our aim is to help you select the ideal marketing funnel platform for your website.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: Pricing
The cost of a website is a significant factor to consider. According to WebFX, a professionally built small-business website typically ranges from $2,000 to $9,000, with annual costs ranging from $400 to $1,200. These figures can be justified when you consider the essential features included in a modern website. Ideally, one would prefer to minimize expenses associated with a website or funnel builder while still maintaining the necessary features and overall capability. So, how do these two web platforms compare in terms of pricing?
How Much Does WordPress Cost?
WordPress is a type of software that is open-sourced, which means the core technology is available for free. However, there are still expenses involved in using it. At the very least, you will need to budget around $20 per year for a domain name from a provider like Namecheap or Go Daddy, and your web hosting costs can range from $5 per month to $75 per month. It is recommended to choose a reliable hosting provider like Siteground. The price of web hosting can vary based on the provider and the type of hosting you opt for, such as shared hosting, VPS hosting, or dedicated hosting. These costs are essential for working with WordPress or any other website platform, whether it’s a SaaS (Software as a Service) or a self-hosted solution.
In addition to hosting and domain registration expenses, you also have the option to purchase premium themes and plugins. This allows you to enhance WordPress from a powerful content management system for blogging into a comprehensive funnel builder.
WordPress offers various options like WooCommerce + WPFunnels, FunnelKit, or CartFlows, allowing website owners to incorporate sales funnels seamlessly into their WordPress sites. Some of these options even provide free versions, making them suitable for beginners in this field. For example, CartFlows offers a starter plan priced at only $79 per year at the time of writing, which is significantly more affordable compared to ClickFunnels’ monthly price of $147.
By adding a premium WordPress theme, such as Divi, which costs under $300 as a one-time payment, along with plugins like Gravity Forms for $59 per year and WPRocket for $59 per year, and a mix of other free or low-cost plugins, you can build a WordPress sales funnel at a total cost of less than $250 per year, with an additional one-time payment of less than $300. This amount is equivalent to only four months on ClickFunnels’ Basic plan.
** Tip. It’s worth noting that ClickFunnels also allows the creation of membership sites, courses, and CRM/email marketing campaigns. However, WordPress can accomplish these tasks as well, with the right combination of free or premium tools. For recommendations on membership plugins, CRM plugins, and LMS plugins for WordPress sites, refer to our top recommendations.
How Much Does ClickFunnels Cost
ClickFunnels is a platform that offers three plans for businesses to choose from based on scaling needs.
The Basic plan of ClickFunnels, priced at $147 per month, includes the essential features of the platform. It provides users with one website, 20 funnels, one admin user, one domain, three courses, 1,000 students, and 10,000 contacts. Users on this plan enjoy unlimited workflows, pages, products, email sequences, and basic analytics. The Pro plan, available at $197 per month, encompasses everything offered in the Basic plan but with higher usage limits and additional features. It includes one website, 100 funnels, five admin users, usage on three domains, 15 courses, 10,000 students, and 25,000 contacts. Additional features in the Pro plan consist of the ability to create an affiliate program, API access, ShareFunnels, Liquid Theme Editor, and CF1 Maintenance Mode Plan.
Lastly, the Funnel Hacker plan, priced at $297 per month, includes all the features of the Pro plan but with even greater limits and advanced features. Users on this plan receive three websites, unlimited funnels, 15 admin users, usage across nine domains, advanced analytics, 200 courses, 20,000 students, and 200,000 contacts.
It’s worth noting that while ClickFunnels comes with a monthly cost, it provides an all-in-one solution for creating sales funnels, which can save both money and time compared to using multiple tools and platforms. This convenience and bundled features come at a higher price. The Basic plan would cost approximately $1,524 per year when opting for the annual payment option.
Fortunately, ClickFunnels offers a free 14-day trial, allowing users to try it out before committing to a subscription.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: Ease of Use
Ease of use is where things can get interesting. It all depends on your experience with funnel building which is pretty different from creating a typical website. If you’re new to this concept, then it may be difficult either way you go. We’ll explore this in a little more detail below.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: East of Use
Ease of use is where things can get interesting. It all depends on your experience with funnel building which is pretty different from creating a typical website. If you’re new to this concept, then it may be difficult either way you go. We’ll explore this in a little more detail below.
WordPress Ease of Use
WordPress is known for its user-friendly interface, making it easy for users to create basic websites or blogs. Even without much technical knowledge, individuals can effortlessly create and edit pages, posts, and media through WordPress’s simple interface. However, setting up WordPress involves a bit more complexity than beginners may initially anticipate. It requires finding the right hosting and domain registrar, as well as installing WordPress itself, along with themes and plugins. This process can be facilitated with some experience or proper guidance. Nevertheless, it is not overly challenging.
WordPress’s block editor and core settings are highly intuitive, and there are abundant online resources available to help users get acquainted with the platform. When it comes to building marketing funnels in WordPress, there is a greater emphasis on utilizing integrated tools. However, you still have the flexibility to create funnels using your preferred drag-and-drop editor or visual page builder. For instance, with tools like Cartflows, you can choose a page builder such as Divi to facilitate the process of building your funnels.
Using funnel builders on WordPress may require a bit more effort to learn, particularly for those who are not tech-savvy. This learning curve is similar to what you would experience when starting with ClickFunnels. To navigate WordPress, we suggest exploring options like WPFunnels, FunnelKit, or CartFlows. Constructing sales funnels that incorporate eCommerce features for products or courses is generally more complex than creating a standard business website. It is important to anticipate that building a funnel, whether in WordPress or a dedicated sales funnel builder, may involve a slightly more intricate process.
ClickFunnels East of Use
ClickFunnels boasts a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that is particularly suitable for beginners. The platform offers a diverse selection of templates and pre-designed funnels that can be personalized to suit your individual requirements. Additionally, ClickFunnels provides a visual editor, enabling you to create and modify your funnels in real time, all without the need for coding knowledge.
In addition, ClickFunnels incorporates all the necessary tools you are likely to require within its platform. This encompasses features such as eCommerce capabilities, funnel builders, and email marketing tools. This is advantageous compared to WordPress, as you won’t have to search for and configure individual plugins to perform these tasks, ensuring seamless integration. However, it’s important to note that this also means you are fully committed to the ClickFunnels ecosystem. If there are any missing features or functionalities within ClickFunnels, you will be limited to what the platform offers.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: Customization
Customization is a big part of many website-building platforms. It’s hard to know what your website will need in a couple of years, but you need to trust that your website technology will grow with you. Both WordPress and ClickFunnels offer a range of customization options, but as we’ll see, they look very different.
Customization in WordPress
WordPress is an extremely flexible platform that provides limitless opportunities for design and functionality. Unlike website builder platforms such as ClickFunnels, WordPress offers an extensive range of tools, resources, and support from a large community to assist you in building your desired website. With its repository of thousands of free themes and the availability of premium themes and page builders like Divi, you have practically infinite possibilities for customizing and extending the design of your website.
Apart from themes, WordPress offers a selection of over 50,000 free plugins that can enhance the functionality of your website. These plugins cover a wide range of features, such as forms, social media integration, eCommerce capabilities, email marketing tools, and many others. Additionally, you have the option to utilize both free and premium plugins to create customized functionality specific to your website’s needs.
Moreover, those with coding skills can take customization to the next level by extending and modifying existing themes with simple CSS tweaks or more advanced PHP coding. With WordPress, you can make your website your own and stand out from the crowd.
Customization in ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels offers limited customization options compared to WordPress. While it provides prebuilt funnels and templates for easy creation, your customization options are restricted to what has been developed by the ClickFunnels team. However, ClickFunnels does have an impressive range of built-in tools that cover funnel building, CRM, and eCommerce functionalities. So, it does provide some tools, but you are limited to the ones they have developed.
ClickFunnels does offer integrations with commonly used tools, such as popular SMS and email marketing services, as well as a few payment processors, which allow for greater customization and flexibility. However, due to its closed ecosystem, the number of available integrations is limited. When comparing the potential for third-party integrations between ClickFunnels and WordPress, it becomes apparent that ClickFunnels offers fewer options in terms of integration possibilities.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: Publishing Tools
When it comes to publishing tools, WordPress is the de facto platform for publishing and blogging. It offers a wide range of features and customization options that cater to bloggers and content creators.
WordPress CMS
The WordPress content management system (CMS) provides users with a versatile editor for creating and publishing content. This editor is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, offering a range of formatting options and the ability to easily incorporate images, videos, and other media into your content. One convenient feature of WordPress is the ability to schedule posts in advance, making it ideal for bloggers and businesses that strive to maintain a consistent publishing schedule.
WordPress also offers seamless integration with various third-party tools, including Google Analytics, SEO plugins, and social media sharing plugins. These integrations allow you to analyze the performance of your website, enhance your search engine optimization efforts, and expand your social media presence.
Furthermore, WordPress’s Block Editor is an advanced system that surpasses the capabilities of a traditional WYSIWYG editing environment. It enables the use of various content blocks to create visually appealing and engaging content that captivates your visitors.
ClickFunnels Publishing
ClickFunnels places its main emphasis on sales funnel creation, providing a narrower range of publishing tools compared to WordPress. With the introduction of ClickFunnels 2.0, a new Blog feature has been introduced to allow users to create and publish blogs. The Blog feature offers a straightforward editing interface that resembles the appearance of a modern 2015 WordPress editing interface. However, it should be noted that the WYSIWYG editing capabilities in ClickFunnels’ Blog feature are somewhat limited in comparison to WordPress.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: Security
WordPress and ClickFunnels both provide features and tools for website security. However, they do differ in how they approach security and how much control you have over these features.
WordPress Security
WordPress is a platform that requires self-hosting, which means you have the responsibility to ensure the security of your website. While WordPress itself is designed with security in mind, its customizable nature can expose vulnerabilities if a plugin or theme is compromised.
However, there are several security plugins available for WordPress that can bolster its security. These plugins offer features like malware scanning, firewalls, and login protection. WordPress regularly releases updates and patches to address known vulnerabilities and maintain the platform’s security. The best security plugins are frequently updated to promptly address any potential exploits.
It’s important to acknowledge that securing a self-hosted WordPress website requires more effort and attention compared to using a SaaS platform like ClickFunnels. You have to set up and maintain security measures such as SSL certificates and backup plugins to ensure the safety of your WordPress site.
ClickFunnels Security
ClickFunnels operates as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, which means that its team takes care of the security aspects of your website. It incorporates various security features, such as SSL encryption and two-factor authentication, to safeguard your website and data. By utilizing ClickFunnels as a SaaS platform, you can have peace of mind knowing that website security is handled by the platform’s dedicated team, eliminating the need for you to set up and maintain security measures.
However, it’s crucial to understand that even SaaS platforms can still be susceptible to attacks. Therefore, it is essential to select a reputable and dependable platform that prioritizes and maintains strong security protocols.
WordPress vs ClickFunnels: eCommerce
Regarding eCommerce, both WordPress and ClickFunnels offer their features and considerations.
WordPress eCommerce
WordPress has evolved into a powerful platform for creating online stores through its seamless integration with eCommerce plugins such as WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads. Setting up an online store and managing product listings with WooCommerce is a straightforward process. Upon installing the plugin, new menu options appear in your WordPress admin dashboard. You can effortlessly create and categorize products in a similar manner to creating a new post or page. WooCommerce provides built-in support for various payment gateways, including EFT, PayPal, and Stripe, allowing you to offer customers multiple payment options for their purchases.
Utilizing WordPress and WooCommerce provides the advantage of flexibility. You have complete autonomy over the design and functionality of crucial pages involved in the purchasing process, such as the shopping cart and checkout pages. With a plethora of plugins and themes available, you can customize your online store according to your precise requirements and preferences. A notable example is the Divi theme, which offers robust eCommerce Modules that enable you to construct a personalized and unique online store.
ClickFunnels eCommerce
ClickFunnels comes with eCommerce functionality, making it possible for you to set up and manage an online store without leaving the platform. However, customization options are limited compared to WordPress. While you can add products and collect orders, you can’t create a completely customized eCommerce experience.
One of the benefits of using ClickFunnels for eCommerce is the convenience it offers. The platform is designed to optimize your online store for conversions. ClickFunnels takes care of eCommerce setup and maintenance, allowing you to focus on managing your online store within the platform.
Conclusion: Is ClickFunnels Better than WordPress?
If you require extensive customization or prefer more affordable options compared to ClickFunnels, we suggest giving WordPress a try. While setting up WordPress for creating sales funnels may require more effort than using ClickFunnels, the work you put in can be seen as a valuable investment that saves you from the high costs associated with ClickFunnels. This is particularly beneficial for beginners who are still in the process of monetizing their business. Why spend extra money when you are still establishing your venture? However, it may still be worth taking advantage of ClickFunnels’ free trial to determine if it aligns better with your needs. We’re WordPress fans here at Raging Bull Digital and can help you design the website that your business idea requires. Contact us today.
