ClickFunnels vs. systeme.io: Which is the Best Tool for Your Business?

Thinking of building a sales funnel for your business?

An effective sales funnel can scale your business and help you define your unique selling proposition.

You may have heard of ClickFunnels and systeme.io.

Although ClickFunnels is mainly known for their sales funnels, both these platforms offer powerful all-in-one features needed to launch an online business.

With that being said, which of these 2 is the ideal marketing platform for your online business?

Keep reading to find out!

1. ClickFunnels — Who are they?

ClickFunnels logo

ClickFunnels is an online marketing tool launched in 2014 by Russell Brunson, Dylan Jones, and Todd Dickerson.

It was designed to support the digital marketing needs of business owners with little to no coding experience.

According to their website, ClickFunnels is for ambitious dads who want to leave their 9-5, stay-at-home moms, and college grads interested in making money online building successful digital campaigns.

2. Systeme.io —

systeme.io logo

We created systeme.io to help small business owners and entrepreneurs launch, scale, and grow their online businesses.

With our simple and affordable all-in-one marketing tool, you can build websites, design a blog space, and much more without needing any previous experience.

Plus, all the features on our platform are also fully integrated.

3. Comparing the main features

3.1. Sales funnels

With an optimized sales funnel, it’s easier for you to guide prospects and transform them into future customers.

In other words, each step of the sales funnel is vital in bringing potential customers closer to the bottom of the funnel, to finally make a purchase.

Now, let’s take an in-depth look at ClickFunnels and systeme.io’s sales funnel builders.

3.1.1. ClickFunnels’ sales funnel builder

One of ClickFunnels’ sales funnel templates

To create sales funnels with ClickFunnels, you have 3 options to choose from based on your goals.

These options are:

To generate leads
To generate sales
To run an event

Once you choose an option, the funnel-building process is relatively easy as no technical experience is required.

In addition, ClickFunnels boasts pre-built funnel templates and a drag-and-drop web page editor that enables you to customize your pages to match your needs and preferences.

You can create a myriad of pages on ClickFunnels, including squeeze pages, sales pages, order pages, and event pages using the available templates.

3.1.2. Systeme.io’s sales funnel builder

Source: Ciroapp.com

Similar to ClickFunnels, building sales funnels with systeme.io’s software is easy due to our drag-and-drop editor, and you don’t need to use a single line of code.

All it takes is just a few clicks, and voila, you have your first sales funnel — it’s that easy.

Currently, there are 4 fully-customizable options to choose from in systeme.io based on your business goals:

Build an audience (grow your email list)
Sell (promote a product or service)
Custom (build a custom funnel from scratch)
Run an evergreen webinar

You can even build a deadline funnel with systeme.io, and it’s included in the Free plan!

With a deadline funnel (a time-limited offer), prospects are more inclined to take you up on your offer, increasing conversions.

Like ClickFunnels, you can also create responsive landing pages or opt-in pages, sales pages, webinar pages, and more.

When you set out to build sales funnels in systeme.io, you can automate your steps by adding automation rules.

These rules help streamline the sales automation process for the pages you create.

For example, when a user subscribes to a form to access a free toolkit, based on this trigger, they’ll automatically receive an email that contains the free resource.

Both systeme.io and ClickFunnels come out on top with their sales funnel builders mainly because of the easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor and their free high converting templates.

3.2. Affiliate programs

According to CustomerThink, 48.36% of affiliate marketers make around $20,000/year.

Also, with affiliate traffic, small business owners won’t have to rely on an advertising platform like Google Ads to bring in traffic — traffic that may not convert at the rate you want.

Both ClickFunnels and systeme.io have an affiliate scheme. Let’s look at what each has to offer.

3.2.1. ClickFunnels’ Backpack affiliate program

Clickfunnels’ Backpack affiliate program

ClickFunnels’ affiliate program has a built-in tool called Backpack that enables you to:

Build an affiliate program
Manage your affiliates
Set up your commission plan

ClickFunnels’ affiliate scheme is set up in a way that prospects can purchase through an affiliate link on any device, and the sale will still be traced back to the affiliate.

Backpack boasts other features like adding affiliate types to your program to categorize your affiliates — regular affiliates, launch affiliates, and super-affiliates.

In Backpack, your affiliates will also have access to promotional materials like articles, email copy, and testimonials to help them promote your products.

Lastly, affiliate page design templates are available, and there’s also an affiliate dashboard where you can analyze your stats.

There’s one significant drawback to ClickFunnels’ affiliate program — you can only use the program if you’re a Platinum subscriber.

3.2.2. Systeme.io’s affiliate program

systeme.io’s affiliate marketplace

Systeme.io’s affiliate program is pretty straightforward — unlike ClickFunnels’ Backpack, you can set up an affiliate program for free on our Free plan.

Since all the tools on systeme.io are fully integrated, setting up an affiliate program takes little to no effort, much like building your sales funnels.

With our affiliate program, you can:

Track your affiliates
Manage affiliate commissions and payouts
Publish your offers on our marketplace for thousands to see
Go over your affiliate dashboard and statistics

Before your affiliates start promoting your products, they’ll need affiliate links.

Here are the 2 ways to share your links:

On the systeme.io marketplace, when you publish your offer(s)
When you send the links directly to your affiliates via email

Your affiliates will be able to keep track of their online sales through their affiliate dashboards.

Additionally, they need to be subscribed to your email list to receive affiliate IDs automatically.

Besides setting up your affiliate program with systeme.io, you can also become our affiliate.

The good news is, that you don’t have to be a subscriber to promote our offers.

So far, we’ve paid out over $2,000,000 in commissions to our affiliates.

Regarding an affiliate program, systeme.io has more to offer than ClickFunnels.

Firstly, you can create an affiliate program with our Free plan, and secondly, you can publish and promote your products for free on systeme.io’s marketplace.

3.3. Email marketing

According to a survey carried out by Statista in 2020, brands earned more than $36 for every dollar spent on email marketing.

A high ROI means this marketing approach is cost-effective for your business online.

Other benefits of email marketing include:

Building brand awareness
Building trust with prospects
Easy to establish using tools

Let’s now look at what ClickFunnels’ and systeme.io’s email marketing features offer.

3.3.1. ClickFunnels’ email marketing automation

ClickFunnels’ email marketing tool is known as Follow-Up Funnels (previously Actionetics).

This tool allows you to automate your email marketing so that emails are sent out at a specific time and to a particular audience segment.

You can import your existing contacts to their email marketing platform.

In addition, you can set up actions based on triggers that will subscribe new leads to your email list.

Follow-Up Funnels take email automation a step further by allowing you to add tags to your contacts in your list based on their actions in your funnel.

This tagging system is essential as it enables you to segment your audience, learn your customers' interests, study their actions, and be privy to their buying history.

For that reason, you’ll be able to send them personalized messaging and continue to build and nurture a relationship with them.

Here’s a summary of the Follow-Up Funnels features on the ClickFunnels platform:

Proven email templates to create opt-in pages
Add tags into your funnels
Create custom groups or lists
Set up email autoresponders
Access to email statistics such as open rates, click-through rates, and more

To have full access to the above-listed features, you need to be subscribed to the ClickFunnels Platinum plan at $297/month.

3.3.2. Systeme.io’s email marketing

With our built-in email marketing tool, there’s no need to use third-party software like Mailchimp or ConvertKit to run your online marketing campaigns.

Similar to ClickFunnels, you can import your contacts into the systeme.io platform.

Apart from the unlimited emails you can send with systeme.io (even on the Free plan), your email marketing campaigns will also be fully integrated into your sales funnels.

Other benefits include:

Managing your contact list with ease
Automating your email sequences and responses thus removing the need for manual tasks
Customer segmentation to send emails tailored to their needs
Statistics about your email marketing efforts to track your campaign’s performance

Systeme.io’s Free plan comes with space for up to 2,000 contacts, and our plans scale up to the Unlimited plan, which allows you to have unlimited contacts.

With ClickFunnels, you’ll have to part with $297 to access their email marketing tool, but with systeme.io, you can get started for free.

Even though both systeme.io and ClickFunnels have a built-in email marketing tool, you’ll save more with systeme.io and kick-start your marketing with your first email campaign.

3.4. Systeme.io’s other features

systeme.io’s features

Since systeme.io is an all-in-one tool, it boasts other features apart from sales funnels, email marketing, landing pages, and an affiliate program such as:

Blogging software
Evergreen webinars — Automated webinars to generate new leads through registration
Online courses — Assign drip content from your courses and manage your students
Website builder — Build the website of your dreams with our drag and drop web page editor and take your pick from our website templates
24/7 email support — Average response time of under 2 hours
Stripe and Paypal integration with all pricing plans
Mobile responsive emails, pages, and templates

Having a blog is an excellent way to establish brand authority, keep you top of mind and automatically push leads further down in the funnel — especially for small businesses.

With systeme.io, you can create one blog with our Free plan and publish unlimited blog posts.

And the best part? You don’t need to integrate third-party blogging software like WordPress.

3.5. ClickFunnels’ other features

Although ClickFunnels is a funnel builder at heart, they also offer other features, including:

Landing page builder — Publish landing pages with targeted pop-ups to increase conversions
1-click upsells — ClickFunnels allows you to add upsells to your landing page(s), cart page, and checkout page
Membership sites — ClickFunnels offers you prebuilt membership funnel templates to help you create your site and share helpful content with members
A/B testing — ClickFunnels has a built-in A/B testing software you can use to test your headlines, CTA copy, and more

4. ClickFunnels vs. systeme.io — Which platform is worth the money?

Now that you know what features these platforms have let’s look at which one gives you the best value for your money.

4.1. ClickFunnels’ pricing

ClickFunnels’ pricing plans

ClickFunnels offers 3 pricing plans:

Standard plan — $97/month
Platinum plan — $297/month
Two Comma Club X plan — $2,497/month (only for existing subscribers with more than $1 million in sales using ClickFunnels’ funnels)

ClickFunnels’ Standard plan at $97 has certain limitations.

You’d expect to have access to more features for your online business than they currently offer for this amount.

Their Standard plan has the following features:

20 shareable funnels
3 domains
100 pages
3 payment gateways
Chat support
1 team member
FunnelHacker community
FunnelFlix

4.1.2. Does ClickFunnels have a free version?

No. ClickFunnels does not have a free version.

They only have a 14-day free trial, and you have to enter your credit card details to access their marketing platform.

You can cancel the subscription before the trial period ends at no cost.

4.2. Systeme.io’s pricing

systeme.io’s pricing plans

Startups and small businesses must minimize their expenses, and systeme.io’s pricing reflects this — no credit card details are needed to get started.

Systeme.io’s billing period is either monthly or annual, and with annual billing, you’ll automatically save 30%.

Our 3 paid plans are as follows:

Startup — $27/month
Webinar — $47/month
Unlimited — $97/month

Earlier, we mentioned how systeme.io provides a lot more features for $97 when compared to ClickFunnels’ Standard plan at $97.

To put this into perspective, with syteme.io’s Unlimited plan, you’ll get:

Unlimited funnels
Unlimited blogs
Unlimited courses
Unlimited email campaigns
Unlimited automation rules
Unlimited A/B tests
Unlimited 1-click upsells

And so much more!

To create unlimited funnels in ClickFunnels, you need a Platinum subscription at $297/month, whereas, with systeme.io, you can do the same and save $200/month.

Which platform is worth the money?

Systeme.io takes this one.

5. Frequently asked questions

Now that you've noted the features and pricing of ClickFunnels and systeme.io, you may still have a few lingering questions.

The good news is, we've got answers!

Here are some of the more commonly asked questions about ClickFunnels.

5.1. How can you make money with ClickFunnels?

One way of making money with ClickFunnels is to sign up to promote them as an affiliate.

You don’t have to be a member to sign up for their affiliate program.

Alternatively, you can become a subscriber first before you become an affiliate. This means you’ll have to part with $97/month.

Becoming a ClickFunnels affiliate may come with some challenges, as shown in these reviews.

As earlier mentioned, you can join systeme.io’s affiliate program without paying a cent.

5.2. What is the One Funnel Away challenge?

The One Funnel Away Challenge is a training program that lasts for 30 days.

Russell Brunson, the co-Founder of ClickFunnels, created this program in 2019.

The training is done virtually and teaches users how to create sales funnels. It costs $100.

5.3. Does Clickfunnels work with WordPress?

Yes. You can use ClickFunnels with WordPress.

You’ll need to add the ClickFunnels plugin to your WordPress site, but this may become costly.

On the other hand, you can sign up to systeme.io’s fully integrated platform where you don’t need any third-party integrations to run your online business smoothly.

6. Conclusion

Businesses with targeted marketing campaigns need a powerful tool to market and sell their products or services online.

We’re confident that you’re no longer asking yourself whether ClickFunnels or systeme.io is the best platform for your business.

The answer is clear.

Systeme.io is the most suitable software to entrust your business as it’s affordable, easy to use, fully integrated, mobile responsive, and takes sales automation to a whole new level.