Clickfunnels is the grand-daddy of funnel and page builders and was formed as a company in 2014.
Now, 9 years later, in 2023, is it worth being a Clickfunnels affiliate or not?
The Pros of Being A Clickfunnels Affiliate
- Clickfunnels is an established service and trusted brand.
- You can make decent commissions of up to 40% on their line of products.
- The Clickfunnels service is subscription-based so you get paid commissions every month (or year if they pay annually) so long as they remain a customer. So it’s a passive income stream.
- They have a range of products you can promote, from the Clickfunnels service itself to books, webinars and courses that are all designed to get people to ultimately subscribe to- Clickfunnels.
- All their products are high quality.
The Cons of Being A Clickfunnels Affiliate
- The Clickfunnels affiliate program is not available to people on the Clickfunnels 2.0 Basic Plan. There was a time when anyone who joined Clickfunnels could become an affiliate. That’s no longer the case. New affiliates have to at least subscribe to the Clickfunnels Pro plan to become an affiliate. On that plan, affiliates can only earn 20% commissions. That plan currently costs $197/mth. To earn 40% commissions, you have to be on the Funnel Hacker Plan ($297/mth). So becoming an affiliate is a very expensive proposition.
- If you became an affiliate during the Clickfunnels 1.0 days, like I did, you do not get access to all the affiliate promotions that are available to Clickfunnels 2.0 affiliates. This makes no sense to me from a business standpoint. All promotions are now designed to sell Clickfunnels 2.0 (Clickfunnels 1.0 is no longer for sale) yet Clickfunnels 1.0 affiliates can only use some of those promotions? Clickfunnels 1.0 affiliates work just as hard as Clickfunnels 2.0 affiliates. Talk about discrimination.
- Clickfunnels is very expensive. It always was for what it offered but with the release of Clickfunnels 2.0 in 2022, the prices of all the Plans rose significantly putting it out of the range of lone affiliate marketers and especially those who are starting their journeys in funnel building. So now, the typical customer is a business (small to large) and not affiliate marketers, so a reduced potential customer base. These are Clickfunnels’ current Plan prices:
- Clickfunnels doesn’t really measure up to the competition these days. Less expensive alternatives that provide more features are available and are likely to attract certain marketers and small businesses instead of Clickfunnels.
- High customer turnover. Getting people to join Clickfunnels is one thing but getting the to stick around long-term is quite another. Unless you’re referring businesses for the most part, you’ll find there’s a lot of dropoff in lone customers (typically affiliate marketers) .
- There are a huge number of Clickfunnels affiliates already – there were even before the launch of Clickfunnels 2.0 and before they stopped accepting affiliates who were on the Basic Plan. So there’s stiff competition out there from people who’ve had years to build up their Clickfunnels affiliate businesses.
- Clickfunnels does not grandfather existing customers into upgraded Plans. This is a huge disincentive for me personally. It’s usual that companies would give existing customers automatic access to new and upgraded tools and features. But not Clickfunnels. This suggests to me that they are more interested in squeezing as much money as possible out of customers rather than properly serving their customer base. That, to me, is a bad business ethos.
- They’re pricing themselves out of the market. Clickfunnels is the most expensive funnel builder service out there and there are better competing services.
- Clickfunnels’ performance is less than stellar. I can only speak from personal experience here, but I’ve been following 3 different courses that were all hosted on Clickfunnels (all had the join Clickfunnels logo on the bottom right of the screen). All were video courses and in all 3 cases it took multiple tens of seconds for a single video to load. If I were a paying customer, this level of performance would be completely unacceptable, let alone at the prices Clickfunnels charge.
A Worthwhile Alternative
There’s a much better all-in-one marketing platform that you can promote instead that has a free-to-join affiliate program and provides a lot more tools and features than Clickfunnels.
Where Clickfunnels only provides a 14-day trial period before a customer has to start paying, Systeme provides a free-forever plan that is perfect for those starting out in funnel building, landing page building, course building, blog building and community building.
Free account owners can build up to 3 sales funnels, create a single course (videos are hosted for free), one blog and community, collect up to 2,000 email subscribers and send out an unlimited number of emails.
There’s more information about this platform in this article
Their Unlimited Plan – a paid plan which literally has no limitations – is $97/mth compared to Clickfunnels Basic Plan, which has significant limitations at $147/mth. It’s a no-brainer that promoting the alternative platform is a better option.
These are Systeme‘s current Plan prices:
There’s less competition from affiliates, a better product to promote and anyone can become an affiliate and earn 50% commissions out-of-the-gate, whether they have an account or not. You effectively have to pay at least $197/mth to be a Clickfunnels affiliate.
Customer retention is better, both because of the additional features and tools on offer and because of the price. People get a far bigger bang for their buck than they do over at Clickfunnels.
And all customers get automatic upgrades to existing tools and access to new tools. Every customer is treated equally, unlike with Clickfunnels.
That’s my take anyway.
My Bonus As An Incentive
I’ve decided to offer the same exclusive bonus package for Systeme as I do for Clickfunnels because I do think Systeme offers far better value than Clickfunnels.
Not only that, but this bonus, for a short time, is available even if you just sign up for a FREE Systeme account.
While I used to use Clickfunnels, I’ve been building all my new funnels in Systeme.
I’ve always thought Clickfunnels was overpriced for what it offered and I’d hoped that they’d at least keep their prices the same when they released Clickfunnels 2.0.
But that wasn’t the case; instead, if you want access to their new drag-and-drop page/funnel builder in Version 2, you’ve got to pay more for that.
Systeme Resources:
- My Exclusive Bonus Package for Systeme
- Become a Systeme affiliate (it's free) – earn a recurring 60% commission
- Systeme Promo PLR Bundle - maximise your Systeme affiliate commissions with ready-to-use promotional content
- Master Resell Rights To 8 Systeme Courses - start with 🅵🆁🅴🅴 training that introduces you to this business model
- Need A Less Expensive Alternative To Clickfunnels? Systeme Might Be The Answer! - includes videos that give you an inside look at Systeme
- My experience building a complete sales funnel using Systeme (for free)
- Learn more about Systeme and how to use it – check the videos at the bottom of this page
- The New System To Launch An Online Business in 2023 - Get 🅵🆁🅴🅴 access to the first video of the course
- How to Make $100 Per Day with Your Email List – a $7 course on email marketing
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All the best,
Gary Nugent
Check out my Instagram posts and reels here:
Follow me (@garynugentmentoring) on Instagram
P.S.: Don't forget, if you want to create an internet income of your own, here's one of my recommended ways to do that:
Hi Gary,
This is an article that I can resonate with, as I tried ClickFunnels years ago and I thought it was ok. But after a while I started to dislike it more and more.
The owner of ClickFunnels is huge in the not only the affiliate marketing world but the marketing and personal development world.
From what I see in your article, the prices are increasing and the benefits are decreasing. This is not how a company or business should treat their current and future customers.
So, I will definitely not be investing in ClickFunnels and I am glad I came across your article.
Thank you for sharing and keep up the great work on your website.
All the best,
Tom
Thanks for your feedback, Tom. I’m old enough to remember when Russell Brunson (co-owner of Clickfunnels) was starting out with his potato gun plans! 🙂 I even bought a few of his early products targeted at affiliate marketers. It’s safe to say that he’s come a long way since then!
Having lost track of him for over a decade, I became aware of him again when I was introduced to Clickfunnels back in 2019. I liked what Clickfunnels did but the Basic Plan (then $97/mth) really wasn’t good value for money. But Clickfunnels was really the only decent funnel builder around at the time.
Now there are better competing funnel builders and all-in-one marketing platforms such as Groove (still about the same price as Clickfunnels but includes many more features), Systeme (my favourite) which offers a free-forever plan and an unlimited everything plan for $97/mth which is 33% less expensive than Clickfunnels 2.0’s Basic Plan ($147/mth). I also like LeadsLeap ($27/mth) which is another all-in-one platform that’s a little more primitive compared to Systeme (if you open a paid subscription within the 1st 24 hours, you can get LeadsLeap for $23/mth instead of $27/mth).
I’ve built 2 complete funnels on a free Systeme account which you can take a look at if you’re interested.
When I heard that Russell was releasing Clickfunnels 2.0, I expected to be grandfathered in as an existing customer. I thought that would have been the right way to treat existing customers. But it wasn’t to be.
If I wanted to use Clickfunnels 2.0. I was expected to fork out an additional $50/mth.
So I copied and backed up my funnels on Clickfunnels and cancelled my account (actually I just paused my account which costs $9.99/mth) and have been moving those funnels over to Systeme and Leadsleap. So, in my case, Russell’s stance on Clickfunnels 2.0 lost him a customer.
Why do I have both Systeme and Leadsleap accounts?
Because they do different things aside from building pages and funnels. I don’t really like how Systeme sets up lists in that they’re created around tags and I instead hook my Systeme funnels up to my Aweber account using Zapier. Aweber provides much more flexibility in what you can do with and how you manage lists than Systeme does.
Leadsleap contains features to market to other LeadsLeap users so that you can build your lists within LeadsLeap as well as from external visitors.
Most capture/optin pages are pretty simple – a headline with a benefit or two and a box to enter an email address. So you really don’t need a sophisticated, overpriced solution like Clickfunnels.
All the best,
Gary