In order to grow your business the right way, you want to be sure your online marketing is on point! Now if done correctly, sales funnels can be an excellent way to generate more leads, more clientele and most importantly more revenue.
In this review we’re going to compare two fantastic sales funnel building softwares: Thrive Themes vs. ClickFunnels
Thrive Themes vs. ClickFunnelsPublished on: Feb 12, 2019Last Updated: April 11, 2020
Summary:We compare two sales funnel building softwares to ultimately see which makes the most sense for your business needs.
- What is ClickFunnels?
- What is Thrive Themes Membership?
- Thrive Themes: The Ultimate Suite of WordPress Tools & Plugins
- ClickFunnels: The Ultimate Sales Funnel Building System
- ClickFunnels Pricing
- Thrive Membership Pricing
- How Do They Compare?
- Whats My Final Opinion?
What is ClickFunnels?
ClickFunnels is a dedicated sales funnel builder (Read my Full ClickFunnels Review). A sales funnel is a series of web pages (such as landing pages, sales pages, opt-in forms, checkout pages etc.) that guides your visitors through a sales process with the goal of them becoming paying customers. ClickFunnels provides pre-built funnel templates that can be used for selling anything your business offers and also includes the tools to measure the performance of your funnels. Also the newly upgraded version called ClickFunnels Platinum comes with a CRM system and an email autoresponder tool (Follow-Up Funnels).
What is Thrive Themes Membership?
Thrive Themes Membership is a massive collection of tools and plugins designed to be used with WordPress (Read my full Thrive Themes Review). These tools can be used to build sales funnels (and many types of websites) and also measure their performance as well. It also has an array of pre-built sales funnels and includes a website builder that you can use to create complete sales funnels. Some of the plugins include a quiz creator, testimonials and countdown timers that can be added to your sales funnel or website.
Based on the above description, here’s a brief summary of ClickFunnels and Thrive Themes:
- ClickFunnels is an all-in-one solution for building sales funnels to sell your products and services.
- Thrive Themes is a website building tool you can use to create all types of websites, including sales funnels.
Now that we have a better understanding of these tools, let’s jump into the specifics and see what features these tools have.
Thrive Themes: The Ultimate Suite of WordPress Tools & Plugins
The focal point of Thrive Themes is its varied suite of WordPress tools that can be used to build sales funnels.
Here is the full list of tools and plugins Thrive offers:
1. Thrive Themes:
Thrive Themes is an accumulation of WordPress Themes you can use to start building your website and sales pages.
2. Thrive Theme Builder:
Thrive Theme Builder allows you to visually create and customize your header, footer, blog post templates, sidebar, page layout, category pages, search pages, 404s, and MORE.
3. Thrive Leads:
This is a powerful tool for creating opt-in forms on your website. This includes a variety of form types, such as slider forms, pop-up forms, sticky forms, in-line forms, and much more that can be added to your website.
4. Thrive Architect:
This is Thrive’s website builder tool. What makes it so awesome is its drag and drop ability. You can use it to build homepages, landing pages, sales pages, blog post (like this one) and pretty much any page you want. Plus you can use it to add buttons, images, videos and many other elements to your web pages.
5. Landing Pages:
Thrive gives you dozens of templates for building your sales funnel. There are pre-built pages for everything from squeeze pages, opt-in pages to webinar pages and of course sales pages. Whatever you need to build your sales funnel, you’ll find it here for your business.
6. Headline Optimizer:
Headlines affect your clickthrough rate. The headline optimizer allows you to create multiple headlines for a post and then A/B test them. The optimizer then picks the most clicked headline and makes it the default for that post.
7. Clever Widgets:
If your website has a a lot of content, you can show the most relevant posts on the sidebar based on the content being read vs the same post every time.
8. Thrive Ultimatum:
Thrive Ultimatum will allow you to add a countdown timer to any offers you present on your website or sales page. Once the timer runs out, the offer will automatically end.
9. Thrive Ovation:
This awesome feature allows you to collect testimonials from your followers and customers through either a submission form or social media platforms. Then using their custom designed templates, you can display these testimonials on your sales pages, which help to increase your conversion rates.
10. Thrive Quiz Builder:
The quiz builder is a fantastic tool you can use to build quizzes into your web pages. You can add A/B split testing, tie them to your offers and use the answers to segment your users and collect valuable data as well.
11. Thrive Comments:
This plugin gives your visitors the ability to comment on your posts and create more engagement, which is a plus for organic rankings.
12. Thrive Optimize:
With this tool you can do A/B split testing on your sales funnel pages with different variations and pick the one with the post clicks to set as your default. Similar to the Headline Optimizer.
ClickFunnels: The Ultimate Sales Funnel Building System
The focal point of ClickFunnels is that it offers the quickest and simplest way for marketers and entrepreneurs to build effective sales funnels.
Let’s have a look at ClickFunnels features in more detail:
1. ClickFunnels: A Speedy Sales Funnel Builder
The main feature of ClickFunnels is building sales funnels..duh!
What this essentially means is you get done-for-you funnels ready to use for selling products, collecting emails and even hosting webinars you can create in just a few clicks.
As an example, say you want to get leads for your new coaching program.
For that to work..your funnel needs 3 pages:
Step by Step:
1.
The Sales Page w/ Opt-in Form
2.
The Checkout Page
3.
The Thank You Page
In Thrive you would have to create these pages separately using the free templates. But they already come included in the proper order with ClickFunnels.
All you would need to do is edit it to your specific product and thats it.
2. Backpack: Set-Up Your Own Affiliate Program
With ClickFunnels you can have other people resell your products as affiliates.
How you ask?
With the backpack feature, ClickFunnels allows you to run affiliate programs and offer people commission in exchange for selling your products.
This is a fantastic way to get your own personal sales team for free and get them to sale your products for you!
3. Follow-Up Funnels: Email Marketing Autoresponder
ClickFunnels is not just a tool, but an entire system for creating sales funnels.
If you subscribe to the ClickFunnels Platinum (Formally Etison Suite), you’ll unlock the built in email autoresponder known as Follow-Up Funnels (Formally Actionetics).
In this tool you can manage your leads, divide them into custom segments, and send them targeted emails and SMS. You can completely set your follow-up campaign to work on auto-pilot.
Which Tool Is Better At Creating Sales Funnels?
In all fairness, both of these tools come with their own advantages and disadvantages.
So lets get down to the most important matter..Price:
ClickFunnels Pricing:
ClickFunnels basic plan costs $97 per month. If you want all of its features including Backpack and Follow-Up Funnels (Formally Actionetics), then you would need to get the advance membership called ClickFunnels Platinum which costs $297 per month.
|
Options |
ClickFunnels |
ClickFunnels Platinum |
|---|---|---|
|
Pricing |
$97/month |
$297/month |
|
# Of Funnels |
20 |
Unlimited |
|
# Of Pages |
100 |
Unlimited |
|
# Of Visitors |
20,000 |
Unlimited |
|
Custom Domains |
3 |
9 |
|
Billing Integrations |
1 type per |
3 type per |
Thrive Membership Pricing:
It costs $19 per month (paid annually) to get a Thrive Membership. In this membership you receive all the tools and plugins they have. The only limit is that you can use them in up to 25 websites. If you’re an agency and need to work on more than 25 websites, you’ll have to upgrade to the agency membership which costs $49 per month (paid annually).
As you can see, Thrive Themes is the significantly cheaper option.
If you do a comparison of Thrive Membership with ClickFunnels basic plan, you can see ClickFunnels is 5 times more expensive than Thrive, and then you can take it up another step and see that ClickFunnels Platinum is 10 times more expensive.
But let’s not beat up ClickFunnels too hard…here’s what you’re getting:
1. Free Hosting: Hosting is taken care of on ClickFunnels, so you don’t have to pay. However, with ClickFunnels, you only own your webpages as long as you are a paying customer. If you decide to leave, then your funnels are gone. With Thrive Themes, you own your pages even if you’re no longer a member.
2. Built-In Payment Integration: With ClickFunnels you can setup payments for your customers without having to use a 3rd Party platform. With Thrive Themes you can add payment integrations only using a 3rd Party platform (Thrive Cart).
3. CRM System: ClickFunnels lets you store leads and segment them into lists based on the actions they take. Thrive Themes lets you collect leads via opt-in but has no option for you to store leads. You would have to integrate Thrive with a 3rd party platform to get this functionality.
4. Email Autoresponder: In Clickfunnels, you can send automated emails to your leads after they opt-in to your funnel. In Thrive Themes, you cannot and need to connect to a 3rd party email autoresponder (ActiveCampaign).
5. One-Click Upsells or Downsells: If customer decide to buy (or don’t buy) your product, you can also promote other products after the checkout page in Clickfunnels. You can’t do this with Thrive Theme and need a 3rd party tool to do this.
How Do They Compare?
As you can see, with Thrive Themes you only get the tools to build a proper sales funnel. But unlike ClickFunnels, you will have to use 3rd party solutions for things like hosting, payment systems and autoresponders (see my tools here).
Now there are plenty of tools you can actually use for free to cover your 3rd party solutions, but for tools like CRM systems, hosting and email autoresponders, you’ll have to incur additional monthly costs adding up to a significant amount unless you can find discounts (see my tools here).
However, it is true the Thrive Themes offers many unique tools to create a business website focused on conversions, and quite honestly you will go further in business with that.
Whats My Final Opinion?
Thrive Themes is hands-down the cheapest way to build your sales funnel and my overall choice between the two. Plus you get the full functionality of a website builder as well. You will have to take into account the 3rd party integrations that would be needed to make it fully functional. Such as your web hosting, email autoresponder and payment system. But while that may seem like a lot, it could very well still be cheaper than ClickFunnels. Also it makes more sense for my business goals.
Now if a fast functioning and reliable sales funnel builder is all you need (not a website builder) and are not concerned with the price factor then ClickFunnels is the way to go. See what you get with the ClickFunnels Free Trial.
Try it out before you commit to one over the other.
ClickFunnels has everything you need to create your funnel, manage your leads and the tools to automate your entire marketing process under one roof, that’s what it was designed for after all.
Comment & Further Reading
Share this post and let’s stay in touch! Leave me a comment below and let me know what you thought of the post. Also if you have Thrive Themes or ClickFunnels..comment below on which one you prefer?
Mike Garvey JrFounder of BrandTheBoss.com
Work From Home
Want to learn how to start an online business and work from home like I do?
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