Shopify vs ClickFunnels

While getting a jump on your new year’s resolution to start an online business, you’ve come to a fork in the road. Shopify vs ClickFunnels – which is going to be the more profitable asset for selling products online. 

For many online entrepreneurs, Shopify will provide the most customizable multitool for their industry and inventory, but ClickFunnels will be a gamechanger for others. 

Never fear, Astrogrowth is here to break down whether Shopify or ClickFunnels is the smart choice for your business.

Shopify Introduction

Billed as “The all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow a business,” Shopify will help you build a full-stack online store with multiple products. No strangers to running online stores themselves, Shopify founders started out selling snowboards before building into the ecommerce industry lynchpin that they are today.

With Shopify, entrepreneurs will get access to ecommerce website themes, inventory management systems, diverse payment integration methods, and exclusive shipping rates from DHL, UPS, and USPS. Save the code, ride an online store all the way to the bank.

Pros of Shopify:

1. Modular, Online Store Builder
   1. If you’re still mastering CSS and HTML, Shopify doesn’t want that to stop you from being able to build your ecommerce store. With any theme from their hearty collection, you can use their drag-and-drop site builder to customize every element of your store for a truly memorable customer experience. With integrated blog functionalities and responsive design, your brand can position itself as the expert thought leader you are for customers on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
2. Cross-Platform Functionalities for Maximum Visibility
   1. Don’t miss out on Pinterest customers by focusing your efforts on Instagram and Facebook. Shopify is the ecommerce solution for a social media era by empowering business owners to set up stores inside social media networks like Amazon, Ebay, Facebook, and Pinterest so that customers can browse and purchase your products right inside their favorite internet bubble. Ease gets leads.
3. The Shopify App Store
   1. If you build it, they will come. Haters will say, if only it were that easy, but Shopify defies defeatism by providing plug-ins and integrations that you can use to customize your site’s functionality. Landing pages, opt-in forms, and email marketing, oh my! Even with the best products, the success of your store requires a robust marketing plan, and Shopify makes sure that you can choose the exact tools that you need to make that happen.
4. Cut Out Catch-Up time with the Shopify App
   1. Available on Android and iPhone, Shopify’s app allows for you to keep tabs on your business from anywhere in the world. Never again will delayed flights or standstill, bumper-to-bumper traffic cut into your scheduled business review time. From your smartphone, you can track sales and orders, manage inventory, and even emaill/call your customers from anywhere with cell service.

Cons of Shopify:

1. Too Many Choices: The Recipe for Analysis Paralysis
   1. When you can customize your entire website with different functionalities, integrations, and plug-ins, it can be daunting to figure out just what the minimum viable product could be for both your online store and your marketing strategy.
2. When Did Marketing Become Rocket Science?
   1. Without experience in creating optimized listings, Google and Facebook display network advertising, building compelling landing pages, lead generation, automating email campaigns, and more, entrepreneurs still wet behind the ears may be tempted to throw up their hands and pray the business will establish itself.

ClickFunnels Introduction

Founders and friends, Russell and Todd were fed up with the amount of time lost on building out sales funnels that could have been better spent encouraging prospects to become customers and customers to become brand loyalists. Together, Russell’s charisma and Todd’s expertise proved that, “When two or more great minds come together there’s nothing that cannot be achieved.”

ClickFunnels is the no-assembly-required, comprehensive enterprise solution for digital entrepreneurs looking to sell their product without getting a DIY-MBA in digital marketing. Sales funnel solutions are pre-built and industry vetted for selling products, memberships, courses, ebooks, webinars, and services as well as establishing email lists, executing automated email campaigns, building sales, opt-in, thank you, and checkout pages. ClickFunnels: Just add branding.

Pros of ClickFunnels:

1. Take Charge of Your Sales Funnel
   1. Don’t fret, my pet, ClickFunnels knows that your brand is as unique as you are. If you like the template structure, then simply customize your branding, checkout carts, payment integration, opt-in forms, and anything else you’re leveraging in your sales funnel. 
   2. If you’re ready, then go ahead and use ClickFunnels Site Building Tools to create your online income engine from scratch. You’  
2. Rally the Troops with Affiliate Marketing
   1. What’s better than a sale? A referral sale. ClickFunnels empowers you to earn as many referrals sales as possible by creating your own affiliate structure. If your business plan depends on an army of motivated salespeople that you only have to pay when they make you money, then you’ll need this integrated functionality from Day One.
3. Strike gold in familiar territory: An Email Inbox
   1. Thanks to ClickFunnels fully integrated CRM, you can take all of the buyer information you’ve accumulated to create relevant, engaging email campaigns for the different segments of your customer base. There may be new kids on the block these days, but email marketing is still the best investment for your business, with an average annual ROI of 3800%.
4. Let Automation Strengthen Business
   1.  Never again will your customers go unacknowledged when you use ClickFunnels email management tools to create automated campaigns to follow-up with all new clients, as soon as they opt-in. Not just for new customers, these automated campaigns are key in keeping your brand top of mind with customers, position your brand as an expert thought leader by sharing useful product/industry knowledge, and encouraging repeat customers.

Cons of ClickFunnels:

1. One-Stop-Shop Pricing
   1. Between the website building, CRM, email management, and more, ClickFunnels provides clients with a suite of tools that would otherwise be segmented between multiple services. That is reflected in the higher subscription cost with the basic membership level coming it at $97/month, as opposed to Shopify’s $29/month.
2. Funnel Functionality Favors Artisans to Retailers
   1. Think about it, have you ever scrolled through a full landing page – complete with brand features, testimonials, and discount offers – to get to an Etsy Shop? ClickFunnels positions itself for clients to have tripwire offers and nurture campaigns to upsell high-ticket offers, which may not be to the benefit of online retailers.

Features Face To Face

Shopify Stand Out Features

As an online business owner, you have to be where the people are. Integrating your digital store into your clientele’s favorite platform is key to guaranteeing that you aren’t leaving money on the table just because your prospects aren’t bubble hopping to the platforms that you manually integrated your store into.

If your clients are interested enough in one of your brand’s products to click on your ads, then there’s a good chance that they’ll be interested in a few of the related products that you have to offer. Give yourself the best add-on purchase potential by using the platform that gets the right eyes on several of your products for the cost of one click.

While working as your business’ brand scientist, you should always be testing the features, products, and advertising that your customers respond best to. With the Shopify App Store, you’ll find your business able to grow with your customer base by tailoring your platform to the functionalities they want and you need. Shopify’s App store even comes with a dedicated development team to efficiently solve any technical difficulties you might run into.

ClickFunnels Stand Out

For first-time business owners without a strong digital marketing background, ClickFunnels’ ready-made sales solutions are the great equalizer in the eCommerce industry. While you can build your own websites using their non-coder-friendly website builder, ClickFunnels’ gives business owners the option to customize existing templates to the needs of their entire sales funnel. Websites, Landing Pages, Opt-in forms, Thank You Pages, Email Campaigns, and more a wave your branding wand away from being ready to go live.

Not just for “noobs,” ClickFunnels’ streamlining of the sales funnel set-up process can save solopreneurs and time-crunched teams weeks and significant dollars. You can feel free to learn more about brand-relevant marketing strategies as you attract and adapt to customers but when time is money, having your funnel live as soon as possible can make all the difference in your quarterly reporting.

Online entrepreneurs that have one or two, specialized products, services, webinars, etc that they are ready to dedicate their marketing budgets to will appreciate the ClickFunnels’ positioning of their sales funnel. As they say, the riches are in the niches. 

Verdict

So when it comes down to it in the Shopify VS ClickFunnels ultimate faceoff, the solution best for you, depends on you. 

For first-time business owners without an extensive marketing background or preferred tools for web hosting, email management, CRM, analytics, and automation, ClickFunnels is a comprehensive solution that takes your brand from zero to hero in record time.

For experienced entrepreneurs and studied marketers, Shopify’s ability to integrate your online retail shop into all the right platforms is paramount. By giving you access to the themes, plug-ins, developer support, and customization tools that you need to deliver on your brand values at every level of your customer’s experience, Shopify emboldens their clients to efficiently adapt to changing demands in your market with tools you can trust.