If you’re looking to make money online, the first step is choosing a platform to build your business on. Two names that often come up are Shopify and ClickFunnels. So which is the best to build your business? We’ll breakdown Clickfunnels vs Shopify below.
💡 Our take: We think the decision of which software to use comes down to the product you are selling. The TLDR is that Shopify will be best for physical products and ClickFunnels will be better for digital products (courses, info products etc.) Now there are nuances which we’ll discuss below, but that’s our high level advice.
Shopify is best for:
ClickFunnels is best for:
Shopify is an eCommerce platform that will gives you everything you need to launch an eCommerce business. What do you get with Shopify? A front end (website) storefront that you can design and customize using pre-built Shopify themes and their drag-and-drop theme editor. You also get a way to process payments as well as a backend in order to manage and fulfill orders. Shopify also has a huge ecosystem of over 8,000 apps which extend the functionality of Shopify. With these apps you can send emails and texts to your customers, manage taxes, and much much more. Shopify is our recommended eCommerce platform for selling physical products (read our guide on best eCommerce platforms for more info). You will still have to source and fulfill your products, but Shopify takes care of everything else.
While you can sell digital products on Shopify, it’s not really optimized for that, and we would recommend another platform if you are primarily selling digital goods. If you plan to sell physical goods, then Shopify is our recommended platform. Physical goods could be either goods you source and brand yourself or drop shipping other’s products.
ClickFunnels is similar to Shopify in that it combines a lot of products into one offering. What do you get with ClickFunnels? A front end website to show your products. A cart and payment processing gateway so customers can checkout. An area to add courses and other payment gated content. A CRM (a place to store customer data). And an email marketing platform.
As its name implies, ClickFunnels is based on the idea of a funnel. What is a funnel? It’s a series of steps a customer takes during the purchase journey. A typical, simple funnel might look something like: customer sees an ad on Instagram, customer clicks the ad and goes to a landing page, customer reads landing page and adds the product to cart, customer goes to cart and checks out, customer receives the product, customer receives email follow ups about additional products. ClickFunnels is designed to help you build and optimize every step of that funnel. It’s similar to Shopify in a lot of ways, but the key difference is around the types of products that work best with ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels works best for digital products (courses, info products etc.) That doesn’t mean you can’t sell physical products with ClickFunnels, but we don’t think it’s best suited for that. If you do want to sell physical products on ClickFunnels, then we think it works best with a single SKU (item) or very limited SKUs. When you think about the funnel, it’s designed for a very specific purpose - to get a customer to buy a single thing. This is great because it eliminates distractions and can squeeze a customer down the funnel. What this type of funnel isn’t great for is larger catalogs of items where a customer is likely to browse before making a final purchase decision. You can see in ClickFunnels marketing that most of their largest customers are selling info products (e.g., Shark Tank’s Daymond John selling a course here or the (in)famous Tai Lopez selling courses here).
E-commerce platform - Shopify is a software-as-a-service e-commerce platform that allows merchants to set up online stores and sell their products.
Storefront builder - Shopify provides a customizable storefront builder that lets merchants create stylish online stores using drag-and-drop tools and pre-made templates called themes.
Product management - Merchants can use Shopify to add and manage products, including digital and physical inventory. Shopify handles inventory management and tracking.
Payment processing - Shopify offers built-in payment processing and supports many different payment gateways. It also handles security and PCI compliance.
Shipping and fulfillment - Shopify integrates with major shipping carriers to calculate real-time shipping rates. It also provides options like Shopify Fulfillment Network for warehousing and shipping logistics.
Point of sale - Shopify POS allows merchants to sell in retail stores and accept payments with an iPad app. It syncs inventory and order data with the online store.
Analytics - Detailed reports on store performance, traffic, sales, and more help merchants make data-driven decisions about their businesses.
App store - Shopify offers a large app store with thousands of third-party apps and integrations to extend store functionality.
Landing page builder - ClickFunnels provides an intuitive drag-and-drop editor to create high-converting landing pages quickly without any coding required.
Pre-built sales funnels - It offers a variety of pre-made sales funnel templates and workflows for different goals like lead generation, product launch, webinars, etc.
Page editor - The page editor allows customizing page design and layouts by adding/removing elements like text, images, videos, shapes, buttons, etc.
Integration with email and payment processors - ClickFunnels can integrate with email marketing services like AWeber, MailChimp and payment processors like Stripe and PayPal for collecting payments.
Membership sites - It lets users create membership sites with gated content and customized membership access levels.
Affiliate management - This feature helps create affiliate programs and track affiliate commissions easily.
A/B testing - Users can A/B test landing pages and sales funnels to optimize conversion rates.
Analytics - ClickFunnels provides analytics on visitors, conversions, sales, page views, etc. to assess funnel performance.
Native shopping cart - It has an in-built shopping cart to create simple checkout pages and collect payments.
Autoresponders - Automated email sequencers help nurture leads and drive sales.
When it comes to pricing, Shopify will be significantly cheaper for its two most basic plans. This is great for those starting out and wanting to prove out if their idea has legs. Only when comparing the most advanced plans is where ClickFunnels will become cheaper. For both platforms you will have credit card processing fees (typically around 3%) on top of the monthly platform fees. For both platforms, you will likely end up spending more on third-party apps as your business grows.
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