Shopify vs ClickFunnels: Which leading sales solution do you need to grow your online business? Both Shopify and ClickFunnels are designed to help online vendors launch, optimize, and grow a successful revenue-generating website.
Shopify and ClickFunnels e very different solutions, intended to serve unique purposes.
Shopify is a comprehensive commerce platform and website building tool, while ClickFunnels is an innovative platform for building intelligent sales funnels and automated workflows.
Through years of working in the software and ecommerce industries, I’ve had the opportunity to experiment extensively with both platforms.
In this article, I’m going to share by behind-the-scenes insights, along with data from the Ecommerce-Platforms team, to help you choose the best resource for your growing company.
Quick Verdict
When to Choose Shopify over ClickFunnels
- Shopify is an all-in-one ecommerce platform, ideal for companies in search of intuitive website building capabilities, customizable checkouts, and a comprehensive content management system.
- If you’re looking for a full website builder with state-of-the-art ecommerce functionality, Shopify is difficult to beat.
- It even makes it easy to launch marketing campaigns, so you can increase sales.
When to Choose ClickFunnels over Shopify
- If you’re looking for a way to create comprehensive and easy-to-use sales funnels, to help skyrocket your revenue, ClickFunnels is the best option.
- The platform is packed with conversion-optimized, mobile-responsive, and professionally designed funnels, suitable for a range of industries.
- Clickfunnels is ideal for accessing powerful marketing tools too, like A/B testing and email workflows.
In this article:
Shopify Pros and Cons
Pros 👍
- Excellent website builder with lots of themes
- Fantastic marketing tools already built in
- Huge range of add-ons and integrations
- Powerful payment processing solutions
- Easy to use backend environment
Cons 👎
- Limitations for sales funnel creation
- Transaction fees on every plan
ClickFunnels Pros and Cons
Pros 👍
- Excellent sales funnels with templates
- Wide range of tools for online selling
- Analytics and reports for optimization
- Product page and landing page creation
- Integrations with various other tools
Cons 👎
- Slight learning curve for beginners
- ClickFunnels pricing is expensive
Comparison Table
| Shopify | ClickFunnels | |
|---|---|---|
| Core features | Shopify’s core features include all of the tools companies need to build an online store and sell across multiple channels. There are marketing tools, blogging solutions, payment processing options, and more. | ClickFunnels’ core features focus on the development of sales funnels, landing pages, and sales pages. You can also build a website, access analytical tools, and integrate with a range of other services. |
| Pricing | Shopify pricing starts at $5 per month for the Starter plan. For full website building functionality, plans start at $39 per month. There are also transaction fees to consider. | ClickFunnel’s prices start at $147 per month after a 14-day free trial. There are discounts available for companies purchasing annual plans. |
| Web design and templates | Shopify offers a wide range of free and premium templates to choose from, as well as an intuitive website builder for site customization. | ClickFunnels has a fantastic website builder and drag-and-drop editor. Keep in mind that there are fewer templates and themes available. |
| Ecommerce | Ecommerce features on Shopify allow companies to sell on any channel, with access to payment processing tools, checkouts, and various solutions for order fulfillment. | With ClickFunnels, companies can sell courses, subscriptions, digital products, and physical items. The company is also working on developing a full ecommerce solution. |
| Sales funnels | The only way to build comprehensive sales funnels through Shopify is with an app or integration from the Shopify marketplace. Some tasks can be automated using Shopify Flow too. | ClickFunnels offers fantastic sales funnels, with a range of templates to choose from, and easy customization options. You can design funnels for virtually any kind of business or sales process. |
| Apps and Integrations | As well as offering connections to Google Analytics, marketplaces, and social media platforms, Shopify has a robust app market with dozens of add-ons and integrations. | Integrations exist for everything from website builders, to email and SMS tools, analytics platforms, and accounting tools like QuickBooks or Xero. |
| Customer support | Customer support is available through live chat or email, with a host of self-service resources offered through Shopify’s help center. | QuickBooks has a fantastic help center and a lot of self-service resources to choose from. You can also contact the team through email or live chat. |
Shopify vs ClickFunnels: The Overall Features
Quick Verdict: ClickFunnels and Shopify are neck-and-neck in terms of features. While Shopify offers more advanced tools for ecommerce and sales, ClickFunnels makes up for what it’s missing in those areas with advanced sales funnels.
At a glance, Shopify and ClickFunnels might seem like two very different platforms, but they do have a surprising number of overlapping features.
The exact functionality you’ll access on either service will vary depending on the plan you choose (more on that in a moment). Here are some of the key features you can expect from Shopify, and ClickFunnels.
Shopify Core Features
Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform. In other words, it gives vendors a comprehensive suite of tools that empower them to build, manage, and optimize both online and offline stores.
It’s one of the most trusted and popular ecommerce platforms in the world. In fact, Shopify stores account for over 10% of all US ecommerce sales.
Shopify is easy-to-use, feature-rich, and packed with all the tools businesses need to run virtually any kind of store, whether you’re selling courses, building a dropshipping brand, or creating unique items to sell to customers around the world.
Shopify’s core features include:
- A comprehensive website builder: Shopify offers an easy-to-use website builder with access to countless free and premium templates you can edit however you choose. You can even build your own themes with Liquid coding.
- Branding tools: Enhance your brand with custom domains and hosting services, and a host of free tools to help power your business, like the Shopify logo design tool.
- A huge app marketplace: Instantly add dozens of integrations and apps to your website for everything from sales and customer service, to accounting and marketing.
- Multichannel selling tools: Shopify offers its own POS solution for in-person selling, as well as options for selling across social media channels and marketplaces.
- International sales tools: With Shopify, companies can sell products and services internationally, experimenting with a variety of different currencies. There are even dedicated business funding options available to help you scale.
- Payment processing: Shopify Payments makes it easy to manage transactions in a range of different ways, whether you’re accepting mobile wallets, contactless payments in-person, credit or debit card payments, or payments from custom invoices.
- Customer engagement tools: Connect with and nurture customers through integrated tools like Shopify Inbox for chat, Shopify Email for email marketing, and social media integrations. You can also leverage in-depth customer insights.
- Analytics and reporting: Measure your performance with dozens of different pre-made reports, as well as custom dashboards. You can monitor everything from inventory, to tax and VAT information, and even customer preferences.
- Business management: Shopify offers a host of services to help you manage your business, from Shopify Flow for workflow automation, to the Shopify Shipping solution and Shopify Fulfillment Network for supply chains and logistics.
ClickFunnels Core Features
ClickFunnels is an innovative sales funnel creator, designed to help companies boost the sales of both digital and physical products.
It can help you attract and convert customers whether you’re selling online courses, eBooks, or physical products.
There’s no coding knowledge required to start developing advanced sales funnels, and ClickFunnels even has pre-built templates available to help with various ecommerce store goals, like attracting customers to a webinar, or getting them to sign up for a membership.
ClickFunnels’ core features include:
- Customizable sales funnel templates: Comprehensive templates to help you turn visitors to your online website into paying customers and loyal brand advocates.
- Website building tools: Create your own custom website with easy-to-use templates and themes. You can even design an SEO-optimized blog to position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, or design your own membership site.
- Ecommerce functionality: While ClickFunnels’ already supports payment processing, it’os also working on adding ecommerce store functionality to its platform. This will allow you to sell products and services to customers worldwide.
- Landing pages: Design comprehensive landing pages to collect unique leads for your website, using ClickFunnels’ convenient code-free editor.
- Automation: With powerful workflow building tools, you can save time on running your business, automating everything from marketing to sales follow-up messages.
- Marketing tools: Alongside offering you the option to build your own blog, ClickFunnels also has its own email marketing features, to boost your chances of conversions.
- Reports and analytics: Track the success of your store, monitor the performance of your funnels, and gain useful insights with pre-built and custom reports. You can even run comprehensive A/B tests on your funnels, websites, and email campaigns.
- Customer center: Learn more about your customers and create comprehensive personalized campaigns, with segmentation and consumer insights.
ClickFunnels is also working on adding new features to its platform at the time of writing. As well as the upcoming ecommerce store feature, users will soon be able to access dynamic countdown funnels, and a built-in customer relationship management tool.
Pricing Plans
Quick Verdict: Shopify is a lot cheaper than ClickFunnels overall.
If you want to get started with most of the core features, you can launch your business for as little as $39 per month, but you might need to pay some extra transaction fees.
When assessing the pricing plans of ClickFunnels and Shopify, it’s important to remember you’re looking at two very different services. Both tools offer a range of options to choose from, with discounts available if you choose an annual plan, rather than a “pay monthly” service.
ClickFunnels Pricing Plans
ClickFunnels offers a 14-day free plan and 3 premium plans:
- Basic: $147 per month: 1 website, 3 users, 1 domain, 20 funnels, 10,000 contacts, analytics, CF1 maintenance mode plan, Sharefunnels, and unlimited courses, workflows, pages, products, and email sequences.
- Pro: $197 per month: All the features of Basic, plus 5 users, 3 domains, 100 funnels, 25,000 contacts, and API access.
- Funnel Hacker: $207 per month: All the features of Pro, plus 3 websites, unlimited funnels, 200,000 contacts, 9 domains, and 15 users.
Shopify Pricing Plans
Users can access Shopify for free for 3 days. Thre’s also a “Starter” plan for $5 per month per user, which allows users to sell through social media and messenger apps. Plans for the full service include:
- Basic Shopify: $39 per month for full access to Shopify’s website builder, plugins, discount codes, SSL certificates, 1000 inventory locations and 2 staff accounts. Payment processing, blogging, and marketing tools are also included.
- Shopify: $105 per month for all the features of the Basic plan, plus professional reporting tools, shipping discounts, multi-channel global selling and 5 staff accounts.
- Advanced: $399 per month for all the features of the Shopify plan, plus advanced reporting, 15 staff accounts, gift cards, shipping discounts, and import tax tools.
- Shopify Plus: Starting at $2,000 per month for all the features in the Advanced plan, plus more customization features, headless commerce, API access, uptime guarantees, and advanced support.
All Shopify plans do include transaction fees for processing payments. If you don’t use Shopify Payments as your primary payment processor, there’s also an extra fee.
Website Design and Templates
Quick Verdict: Shopify offers more themes and templates to choose from for online websites.
Both tools will allow you to create a variety of different types of websites, and integrate any marketing strategies and tools you choose.
ClickFunnels
If you’re looking for website building solutions, both Shopify and ClickFunnels offer relatively easy-to-use tools. Both solutions don’t require you to have any coding knowledge to start experimenting with styles, templates, and themes. You can dive into the code with Shopify if you want to make some specific edits.
ClickFunnel’s website builder is user-friendly and robust, with plenty of templates available for different types of businesses. You can customize your site in minutes, changing fonts, colors, and graphics. Plus, there’s a built-in blog solution, so you can boost your online presence with content.
ClickFunnels even has tools available to help you build membership websites, or sites where you can sell online courses, so there are numerous ways to monetize your online presence. The drag-and-drop editor is extremely intuitive, and you can work with other team members in real-time.
Shopify
Shopify also offers an extremely straightforward website builder, with tons of options for customization. You can design an online store, a simple portfolio, or a blog website.
Plus, the app store makes it easy to leverage other design tools whenever you like.
In terms of templates and themes, Shopify has a lot more to choose from. You can opt for free or premium themes, depending on your budget, and even hire experts to help you design your web pages if you struggle with the page builder for any reason.
Ecommerce Features
Quick Verdict: Shopify is the clear winner for ecommerce functionality. It’s specifically designed to help companies design effective online stores, with support for multiple payment options, an internal inventory management system, and cart recovery tools.
ClickFunnels
While ClickFunnels isn’t a dedicated online store builder, it does offer a number of solutions to help companies earn online sales. The funnel builder helps companies to sell everything from digital courses and downloads to physical products.
At the time of writing, ClickFunnels is currently working on a dedicated “ecommerce” feature, to help organizations to take their sales pages to the next level. This ecommerce solution will likely feature the same convenient editor and conversion rate boosters as ClickFunnel’s website builder.
You’ll be able to sell digital products and physical products, accept payments through credit card or PayPal, experiment with upsells and even optimize your sites with split testing.
Shopify
Shopify still has an edge for ecommerce business owners. It’s one of the most popular ecommerce platforms for a reason. With Shopify, you can sell any kind of product you like, experimenting with subscriptions, one-off sales, and even in-person transactions.
Shopify has its own integrated payment processor, so you don’t have to worry about using external tools like PayPal and Stripe. There are convenient customizable checkout tools available, and companies can sell products in different currencies around the world.
Plus, Shopify has a ton of features to make running your ecommerce business easier, from integrations with marketing platforms, to tools for finding the best shipping rates, and even fulfillment services. You can even send abandoned cart emails straight from Shopify.
Sales Funnels
Quick Verdict: ClickFunnels is the top choice for building sales funnels. The user-friendly platform ensures companies can nurture customers through an entire buying journey, with autoresponder emails, abandoned cart strategies, and even upsells and cross-sells.
As a dedicated sales funnel building tool, ClickFunnels has everything you need to create compelling funnels that attract and convert your ideal customers. You can connect with leads all over the internet, on Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and more.
You’ll be able to create automated workflows designed to boost your conversions, with simple trigger-based actions you can create yourself.
You don’t have to be an expert to get started either. You can use ClickFunnels’ pre-existing templates for everything from capturing webinar leads, to cross-selling and upselling customers.
Shopify doesn’t have a dedicated sales funnel solution in the same way as ClickFunnels, there are a few ways you can achieve similar results.
For instance, you can use Shopify Flow to automate some of the steps you might take to convert customers in your pipeline.
It’s also worth noting that you can integrate Shopify with a range of sales funnel building solutions through the comprehensive Shopify app store.
Apps & Integrations
Quick Verdict: Shopify offers more integrations and add-ons overall thanks to it’s comprehensive app market. The platform also offers a range of native integrations you can access with just a couple of clicks, to social media platforms, marketplaces, and analytical tools.
Unifying your digital tools in an all-in-one environment is one of the best ways to boost the performance and efficiency of your business.
Both Shopify and ClickFunnels understand the value of offering integrations with external tools.
Shopify integrates with platforms like Google Analytics and Meta Pixel, supports connections for social media and marketplaces, and more. It also has a comprehensive app market, where you can find countless different tools, plugins, and add-ons for your store.
ClickFunnels integrates with a range of popular email marketing platforms such as ActiveCampaign, and MailChimp, as well as other website builders, SMS communication tools, and analytics solutions, so you can make the most out of every sales funnel.
Customer Support
Quick Verdict: It’s neck and neck for this category. Both Shopify and ClickFunnels offer fantastic self-help resources, as well as email and live chat support. They also both have a brilliant online community, where you can seek help from other users.
ClickFunnels
Looking for a little help with your sales funnels or online store? ClickFunnels offers a fantastic help center, brimming with blogs, guides, videos, and resources to ensure you can answer a range of questions in seconds.
If you need extra support, you can contact the team through either email or live chat. Keep in mind that live chat is only available Mondays to Fridays.
Shopify
Shopify takes a similar approach to customer service. It has a fantastic help center with tons of resources for beginners, as well as a YouTube channel, a blog, and FAQs.
Plus, you can contact the support team via chat or email if you have any questions. There’s also the option to hire a Shopify Expert if you need specialist guidance.
ClickFunnels vs Shopify: The Verdict
ClickFunnels and Shopify are both fantastic tools for startups and online sellers. They both allow users to build websites, create email marketing campaigns, and leverage a host of tools for sales optimization. But, hey have very different focus areas.
Shopify is a dedicated commerce solution, where entrepreneurs can access reliable payment gateways, a robust website builder, and a host of unique solutions for marketing. You can sell through multiple channels, and build virtually any kind of business you choose.
ClickFunnels, on the other hand, focuses on helping companies move customers through the buyer journey, with opt-in pages, landing pages, and sales funnels. The company is one of the top providers of sales funnel solutions on the market today, and its constantly adding new features to its roster.
FAQ
As of 2022, ClickFunnels no longer supports new Shopify integrations. You can integrate Shopify and ClickFunnels using a third-party application like Zapier in some cases. ClickFunnels can integrate with other website builders, such as WordPress.
Technically, you can build sales funnels in Shopify, but they’re not as advanced as the funnels you can create with ClickFunnels. You’ll need to use Shopify Flow to automate certain tasks, or you can consider using an app or add-on from the Shopify marketplace.
Shopify is one of the most valuable ecommerce store builders in the world today. If you’re looking for an omnichannel sales platform, Shopify is a great choice. It’s easy to use, feature-rich, and brimming with excellent tools to boost conversions.
Technically, all domains sold through ClickFunnels 2.0 are purchased through a third-party domain registrar (IONOS). There’s no domain registrar service available internally. It’s relatively easy to buy a domain and connect it to ClickFunnels.
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