ClickFunnels Vs ActiveCampaign: Which One To Choose?

Majority of businesses use marketing tools to boost their traffic, increase sales, and advertise.

Clickfunnels and ActiveCampaign are two such marketing tools. The main difference between the two lies in the functionality. Clickfunnels is somewhat an all-in-one funnel builder while on the other ActiveCampaign is one of best email marketing tool. Both these softwares can integrate with each other pretty well and can form a complete marketing tool that a business will ever need.

But, Some businesses may not need both of these tools to run. So, In this article, I’ll try my best to help you choose any one of these tools for your business.

Let’s get started!

ClickFunnels Vs ActiveCampaign

What is a Sales Funnel?

A sales funnel is simply a path that your visitors take to convert them into paying customers. There are a lot of strategies that professional internet marketers use to turn these visitors into customers.

An example can be found in your daily life. You may have seen people offering free E-books, courses, webinars, etc in exchange for your email address.

Once you give them your email address, you are part of the sales funnel. The next thing they do is nurturing, by sending emails.

These emails may promote products, their courses, etc and in the end, you may end up being their customer.

To implement this strategy, they build landing pages, email marketing campaigns, track and target each visitor, etc.

Earlier, Building these landing pages, email marketing campaigns was a hard task and people used to spend thousands of dollars.

But now, with marketing softwares like Clickfunnels, ActiveCampaign, Kartra etc, it has become cheaper and easier than ever.

What is ClickFunnels

Clickfunnels is a complete marketing automation system. It helps you build multiple sales funnel that can increase your sales, boost your traffic, and much more.

ClickFunnels was founded by Russell Brunson in 2015. It is regarded as one of the best funnel builders by some top internet marketers in the industry.

ClickFunnels is free to use for the first 14 days. This is of great use because you can test out the different features and need only buy if everything works out just fine.

Get the 14-day Free Trial now!

Related Article – Is Clickfunnels Legit?

Features Of ClickFunnels

Clickfunnels has a lot of features. But, you may be limited to some when you opt for the basic plan that they offer. We will discuss the pricing later in this article.

For now, Let’s dive into some features that Clickfunnels provides

1. Different Variety of Funnel Templates

Clickfunnels provides 22 different funnel templates. Selecting your funnel type is the first step when you start building a funnel.

If you don’t know what funnel templates are, just look at the below image.

Depending on your marketing strategy, select the template that you think fits the best. You might get confused between funnel templates, so I suggest you click each funnel type and then read the description or play the embedded video to understand them more clearly.

2. Drag and Drop Page Builder

Clickfunnels has a great page builder that you can use. It’s literally simple for even beginners. You can make the page look exactly like you want without any coding needed.

Users can even select a template from hundreds that they provide. These templates are designed for each purpose.

However, if you are a pro, you may start from scratch.

Clickfunnels also offer split testing which allows you to create 2 funnels and find the one which is the most profitable.

3. Email marketing tool

Clickfunnels has an integrated email marketing tool which does almost everything that you will ever want.

Automations, autoresponder, email broadcasts, follow-up funnels, etc, are all included.

Follow-up funnels allow you to send emails based on how your visitors interact with your website. Marketing can get really specific with follow-up funnels.But, there is a small problem. This feature only comes in the platinum membership which costs $297/month.

To be frank, paying for the platinum membership isn’t worth it if you are a beginner. So, it’s always better to use an alternate email marketing tool like ActiveCampaign or Getresponse and then just integrate it with Clickfunnels.

4. Membership Area

This is an awesome feature.

Clickfunnel allows you to make a membership area where you can provide exclusive content to your customers.

For example:- If you have a photography course and you intend to sell it. Clickfunnels has a membership area, where your content can be uploaded and will only be accessible if a customer purchases for the required fee.

This is how most online marketers sell their courses.

5. Affiliate Program

Clickfunnels has its own affiliate program which pays you for each customer you refer to.

For digital marketers, this might be one of the best affiliate programs that they can get. They offer a 40% commission for each sale.

Clickfunnels also has other products like One Funnel Away Challenge, Expert secrets book, DotCom Secrets and much more. These products have a different commission structure for each of them.

Related Article – Fastpages vs Clickfunnels: Which one Should You Choose?

6. Marketplace and Share Funnels

Share funnels is an exclusive feature of ClickFunnels which allows you to share your funnels with other fellow marketers or friends.

Share funnels also help you in promoting ClickFunnels as an affiliate. For instance, when you promote ClickFunnels, you could share your funnel with your audience. If your visitor is not a ClickFunnels member and wants your shared funnel, he/she could just click the link. This will allow them to create an account and after that, the funnel would be transferred to them. This way you can receive higher commissions.

Clickfunnels also provides a marketplace where the users of Clickfunnels can sell their sales funnel. Some funnels are really pricey, but there are free ones too.

7. Affiliate program for your product/funnel (ClickFunnels BackPack)

Once you make a funnel promoting a particular product, you can allow people to sign up as affiliates for that product.

This is a smart feature and will surely skyrocket your earnings. This is the best way to market your product because it doesn’t need any money upfront.

You only pay your affiliates when they make a sale for you. This way you won’t need to pay for ads and other paid traffic methods.

You also have the power to set the commission rates for your affiliates. it can be 5%, 10%, 20%, all the way up to 100%.

One disappointing thing to note is that this feature is only available for the Clickfunnels Platinum package. It would have been great if they provided them in the basic package too.

This is the only reason why I would slightly suggest someone to opt for the Clickfunnels Platinum.

ClickFunnels Pricing

Clickfunnels has two plans.

With Clickfunnels Platinum, you get some powerful features such as a complete email marketing tool, Clickfunnel Backpack (Affiliate program for your funnels) and other small features.

However, Clickfunnels allows integration with a lot of platforms. So, the Clickfunnels basic package will definitely be the choice of beginners.

Here is a side by side comparison between the two:-

What is ActiveCampaign?

ActiveCampaign is a complete email marketing tool which offers tons of features. Unlike Clickfunnels, they do not have landing page builder, funnel builders and some other features.

Since ActiveCampaign is a dedicated email marketing tool, it is more powerful and flexible than what ClickFunnels offers.

ActiveCampaign is free to use but has some limitations. It is, however, one of the most affordable and best email marketing tool.

The “Lite” plan which is the most basic plan, starts at $9/month

Features Of ActiveCampaign

As ActiveCampaign is an email marketing tool, most of the features are centric to the email side of things.

Some of the features that ActiveCampaign offers are:-

1. Automations

Automations is a series of emails or actions that are done automatically when certain conditions are met.

An example of an automation workflow is shown below.

Clickfunnels too have automations but not as deep and interactive as this one.

You can do all sorts of things with automations by adding conditional logic and branching out into different segments as shown in the figure above

You can combine these automations with site tracking and tagging which will open doors to endless possibilities to what you can achieve in marketing automation.

2. Email Templates

Like ClickFunnels, you have different email templates that you can choose from.

But there are only about 30 different templates and moreover, the designs are mediocre in quality.

You also have the option to start an email from scratch. The email editor is pretty good and will do the required things that you want.

But, if you are looking for a huge collection of templates and designs, you would be disappointed with what ActiveCampaign have.

3. Split Testing

ActiveCampaign allows you to do split tests in two different ways.

The first way is what we see in almost all email marketing tools. That is, Two different Email templates are prepared. The email list is then divided and then finally the emails are sent

ActiveCampaign allows you to set the parameters which determine which of the two split tests win.

The second way is something that you can do on an automation workflow. Here, the entire automation workflow is split into two. Then, you can determine how you want your contacts to be split and how the winner needs to be determined.

4. Form Builder

ActiveCampaign features a form builder like every other email marketing tool. However, you can only use the “inline form” on the Lite plan. You would need to upgrade to other higher plans to get other form types.

The form builder is very basic and has very limited designs.

5. Integrations

ActiveCampaign is a well-established marketing tool. Therefore, it offers more than 150 integrations including WordPress, ClickFunnels and Shopify.

You may find almost all integrations that you want. Clicking on each of the integration apps, you get more information on how that particular integration.

Anyway, if you are planning to integrate more apps with it, be sure to check out the complete list of integrations that they support.

6. Affiliate Program

ActiveCampaign also allows you to promote their software for a commission. They offer a 20% commission for each qualified sale.

However, when compared to ClickFunnels, you get lesser resources to promote and moreover, there are no other products to sell besides the software itself.

ActiveCampaign Pricing

ActiveCampaign has 4 plans:-

Lite – $9/month
Plus – $49/month
Professional – $129/month
Enterprise – $229/month

You may compare the different features from the figure below.

How To Integrate both ClickFunnels and ActiveCampaign

Literally speaking, ActiveCampaign cannot be compared with a funnel builder like Clickfunnels. However, These both can integrate very well with each other.

To integrate both Clickfunnels and ActiveCampaign, Do the following steps

From your ActiveCampaign Dashboard Click on “Settings”
Click on “Developer” on the next page.
Copy your API URL and API Key
Go to your ClickFunnels account settings and go to the Integration settings
Click on “Add New Integration”
Search for ActiveCampaign
Paste Your API URL and API Key and give it some name that you wish.
Click on Add integration

And that’s it! You have now integrated Your ClickFunnels account with ActiveCampaign

ClickFunnels vs ActiveCampaign: What I Recommend

As I said before, These 2 can’t merely be compared with each other. So, What I recommend is, to use them both together.

The basic package of Clickfunnels cost just $97/month. This, when integrated with the lite plan($9/month) of ActiveCampaign, will fulfil almost all needs of a typical digital marketer.

This will cost you just $106/month.

That’s really worth the money and you could really stop paying for other marketing tools that you possess.

However, if you are capable of buying the Platinum package of ClickFunnels, you won’t need to use ActiveCampaign.

But, If You Want to Choose One. Which Should it Be?

Choosing a single software entirely depends on what type of business you have. You may need to prioritize accordingly and choose the software that may help you the most.

Choose ActiveCampaign, If you are:-

A Blogger and just need to collect emails.
You do not need to build landing pages.
You do not want to use complex sales funnels.
You need long automation workflows to nurture your leads.

Choose Clickfunnels, If you want to:-

Build high converting sales funnel
Build Landing pages
To build membership portals
To build an affiliate program for your funnels.

So, that’s it! If you have any queries, feel free to comment down below. Also let me know which you think is the best marketing tool.

Peace!