ClickFunnels vs. Shopify: Which is finest? [2025]

Promoting on-line is not a one-size-fits-all sport, and Shopify and ClickFunnels are nice examples as to why. One is constructed to be your digital storefront powerhouse; the opposite is sort of a sales-obsessed nearer. 

Each are constructed for promoting on-line, however they’ve essentially totally different objectives. Shopify is constructed from the bottom up as a full-on eCommerce platform. ClickFunnels is about constructing a targeted path that turns a customer right into a purchaser, typically for a single product or provide.

I have been utilizing Shopify on and off for a number of years now, so I do know my manner round its dashboards and infinite app integrations. ClickFunnels is a bit newer for me, however I do have expertise with creating funnels and buyer journeys, so moving into it wasn’t too onerous. 

I frolicked testing, experimenting, and really constructing out pages and funnels to see how every one holds up in the true world. On this breakdown, I will share what I discovered after placing each platforms to the take a look at.

Desk of contents:

Shopify vs. ClickFunnels at a look

Shopify helps you to get began for lots cheaper

With regards to pricing, Shopify and ClickFunnels cater to very totally different wants. So it is not so simple as saying one is cheaper than the opposite. 

For those who do not wish to get into the weeds, here is the gist: you can begin with Shopify for $5/month, however you may have to shell out not less than $97/month for ClickFunnels. However you are getting much more for ClickFunnels within the course of.

And now, into the weeds.

Shopify’s most barebones possibility is the Starter plan at $5/month, which helps you to promote solely by social media, messaging apps, and a really light-weight on-line retailer with product pages, a contact web page, and checkout. Probably the most fundamental (and hottest) full-store plan begins at $39/month ($29/month billed yearly), making it a very good possibility for retailer homeowners who wish to construct a stable eCommerce basis. 

The mid-tier Develop plan at $105/month ($79/month billed yearly) and Superior plan at $399/month ($299/month billed yearly) provide extra muscle for scaling, like added employees accounts, superior stories, and instruments to handle stock throughout a number of places. These are nice for retailers seeking to develop with out leaping into enterprise territory. However should you want it, there’s Shopify Plus for very high-volume shops, beginning at $2,300/month on a 3-year time period.

ClickFunnels, then again, begins at $97/month ($81/month billed yearly) for its Launch plan, which incorporates one workspace, one funnel, and 10,000 contacts. That is a far cry from Shopify’s $5/month, however it additionally comes with far more options. That is usually the case general: you may pay much more with ClickFunnels, however you may additionally get much more.

From there, pricing rapidly runs up on ClickFunnels: the Scale plan at $197/month ($164/month billed yearly) consists of limitless funnels and extra beneficiant contact and e-mail allowances, whereas the Optimize plan at $297/month ($248/month billed yearly) is constructed for critical entrepreneurs juggling a number of campaigns and collaborators, with 10 workspaces and as much as 150,000 contacts. Then, on the high finish, the Dominate plan is available in at $5,997/12 months. However that price ticket displays what it is optimized for: high-volume gross sales funnels, lead era, bigger groups, and advertising and marketing automation.

ClickFunnels is constructed for single presents; Shopify is constructed for multi-product storefronts

ClickFunnels shines if you’re promoting a single product or a targeted group of presents, guiding prospects by a streamlined gross sales funnel towards a purchase order. Its design philosophy is about minimizing distractions so that you simply deliver site visitors right into a highly-optimized funnel that leads them straight to checkout. 

This works particularly nicely for digital merchandise, launches, or high-converting lead era campaigns.

For instance, to illustrate you have got an eBook to promote. With ClickFunnels’ Product Launch funnel template, you possibly can information your viewers to buy in simply 4 steps. 

• Begin with a easy opt-in web page that asks for his or her identify and e-mail. 

• From there, they go to a web page with explainer movies or written content material to construct curiosity. 

• Subsequent, they hit an order kind web page the place you summarize the provide and gather fee.

• Lastly, they land on a affirmation web page that thanks them and encourages a overview or future upsell. 

The entire journey is tightly targeted and optimized to transform, and you’ll see a map of how this complete funnel will work within the funnel builder (which appears like a typical department logic map).

In distinction, Shopify is constructed for conventional on-line shops with a number of merchandise. Clients are free to browse your product catalog, examine choices, and store at their very own tempo. You possibly can nonetheless create touchdown pages and focus your advertising and marketing on particular person merchandise, however it would not maintain your hand as a lot as ClickFunnels, so you may must do extra customizing.

Going again to our eBook instance, on Shopify, you’d probably record it as a digital product in your retailer. Clients would uncover it by your private home web page, a group, or a featured product part. They’d click on into the product web page, learn a quick description, skim some product pictures (or possibly a preview of the eBook), and resolve whether or not or to not purchase. If it would not resonate immediately, they may browse the remainder of your catalog, which is a extra open-ended, self-directed expertise.

Shopify is best for bodily merchandise; ClickFunnels excels with digital

You can promote digital merchandise with Shopify, however Shopify is constructed for bodily merchandise. It has a complete ecosystem for managing bodily stock and fulfilling orders. This consists of the native Shopify Transport app and integrations with main delivery carriers, barcode scanning, calculating delivery prices, low-stock alerts, plus the flexibility to generate and print delivery labels instantly out of your dashboard.

ClickFunnels is best fitted to digital merchandise, like programs, teaching applications, or eBooks. It even lets you create, host, and promote a course natively so you possibly can handle every thing with only one platform. 

Shopify additionally helps dropshipping. It isn’t inbuilt natively—you may want to put in third-party apps—however its dropshipping ecosystem is mature and numerous. It offers you entry to an enormous vary of suppliers, automation instruments, product customization choices, and achievement providers. You can too construct branded product catalogs and join a number of suppliers to your retailer simply.

ClickFunnels’ funnel-first construction, then again, is designed for conversion so you possibly can provide upsells, downsells, and urgency ways which might be ultimate when there’s nothing to ship. 

To be honest, ClickFunnels does permit you to promote bodily merchandise and integrates with some dropshipping platforms that may deal with sourcing, achievement, and delivery. It additionally presents a characteristic known as stock historical past, which helps you to observe modifications in product amount over time. It is a good contact for sellers who wish to create shortage or restrict availability. But it surely’s nonetheless considerably fundamental with no variant-level monitoring and no connection to a achievement or return course of. Shopify’s stock system, then again, is constructed for scale. It tracks each inventory motion, whether or not from orders, returns, employees modifications, or warehouse transfers, and offers you management over all of your SKUs and places.

So should you’re promoting bodily merchandise, Shopify offers you a a lot smoother and extra full expertise. You possibly can deal with every thing from order administration to delivery and returns with out cobbling collectively further instruments. ClickFunnels can promote bodily objects, however you may be chargeable for piecing collectively your complete achievement move or relying closely on third-party plugins to do what Shopify already does out of the field.

ClickFunnels is best for direct response advertising and marketing; Shopify is best for website positioning and natural site visitors

This primarily comes right down to the character and function of every platform. ClickFunnels is nicely optimized to information somebody from a focused advert or e-mail instantly right into a high-converting funnel. It is ultimate for entrepreneurs who have already got an viewers or paid site visitors technique in place and simply want a easy, targeted touchdown web page to transform leads into prospects.

For instance, should you’re working Instagram advertisements for an actual property course, your viewers clicks the advert and is taken straight right into a ClickFunnels web page, normally an opt-in or gross sales web page with no distractions or menus, however with a robust incentive to purchase. Or, should you’re emailing your present record a few new teaching provide, that hyperlink in your e-mail would take them by a tightly crafted funnel with upsells, bonuses, and a checkout web page, optimized to your viewers to take motion.

Shopify is best fitted to natural discovery and search-based buying. Whereas Shopify customers can nonetheless use paid advertisements and e-mail advertising and marketing (and plenty of achieve this as a essential promoting methodology), Shopify’s power lies in its website positioning capabilities, which permit potential prospects to search out your retailer and merchandise by serps. 

Shopify presents built-in website positioning options like customizable meta titles and descriptions, alt textual content for pictures, automated sitemap era, and quick web page load speeds, which all assist your retailer rank higher in Google.

Past the fundamentals, Shopify additionally helps 1000’s of website positioning apps and plugins by its app retailer, together with instruments for structured knowledge, key phrase monitoring, and weblog optimization. It additionally helps product schema markup, which helps serps show wealthy product info (like critiques, value, and availability) proper in search outcomes.

ClickFunnels’ website positioning capabilities are extra restricted. You possibly can set a web page title, meta description, and customized URL, however that is about it. There aren’t any built-in instruments for schema markup or superior web site construction administration, however should you’re principally creating funnels for direct site visitors, this is not a lot of a problem.

Shopify focuses on retailer customization; ClickFunnels focuses on funnel optimization

Shopify’s App Retailer is stacked with 1000’s of integrations (many with further subscription prices) that allow you to tweak virtually each side of your retailer, together with design, product pages, delivery, analytics, advertising and marketing, and buyer help.

For those who’re dropshipping, Shopify has you lined with apps like DSers for AliExpress, Printify, and Printful for print-on-demand merchandise, Zendrop for quicker achievement, and Spocket for US/EU suppliers. You possibly can automate stock syncing, order routing, pricing guidelines, delivery choices, and even branded packaging. 

Including these apps is so simple as discovering them within the App Retailer and clicking set up. You will additionally see some marked “Constructed for Shopify,” which suggests they have been vetted for ease of use, good scores, and a minimal quantity of installs. This does not routinely imply they’re inherently extra helpful than an app that does not have the label, however it’s simply Shopify’s manner of recommending them as prime quality.

For those who’re promoting your individual merchandise, Shopify makes it straightforward to scale with instruments for variant-specific images, loyalty and subscription applications, multi-location stock administration, and automatic delivery by its personal Transport app or providers like ShipStation, ParcelPanel, or Shopify Achievement Community.

You can too select from practically 900 themes overlaying virtually each business. Whereas most are paid ($100–$500), the free choices are clear, fashionable, and extremely customizable. Extra technical customers can go deeper with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Shopify’s templating language, Liquid, to do issues like present low-stock messages dynamically, personalize greetings for returning prospects, or swap product pictures primarily based on chosen variants. 

ClickFunnels takes a special strategy, being constructed to really feel like a gross sales funnel from the leap. It is good for getting a funnel stay quick with minimal design work. You can begin with certainly one of 14 funnel sorts for lead era, webinars, occasion signups, product upsells, and extra, then decide a pre-designed template. 

Customization is drag-and-drop, so you possibly can rapidly edit textual content, swap pictures, change colours, and drop in ready-made sections like testimonials, countdown timers, or pricing tables. If you wish to skip that, a generative AI characteristic known as Sensible Funnels will create a funnel for you primarily based on a brief immediate and produce a design theme, gross sales copy, and all of the pages you want. 

There’s additionally Napoleon, ClickFunnels’ built-in AI chatbot. You possibly can ask it, for instance, to generate some new copy for you with a witty tone, and it does a reasonably first rate job. I additionally requested it to jot down up a full paragraph promoting an actual property course, and it rapidly generated copy that was gimmicky however usable with enhancing. For those who ask it to generate a picture, issues get sort of glitchy, however general, should you want some quick copy, I believe it is a helpful AI software.

ClickFunnels has its personal app hub with native instruments and exterior apps for gross sales, advertising and marketing, scheduling, analytics, and way more. It isn’t a full-on app retailer like Shopify’s, however it offers you the necessities. You possibly can add apps like Survey Workflows, a built-in app to create customized surveys and insert them into the pages of your funnel. 

This could possibly be helpful if you wish to, for instance, get some suggestions after a purchase order. You’d simply add the survey to the final web page of the funnel (the order affirmation and thanks). That is additionally the place you’d add the native Analytics app to maintain observe of your efficiency metrics.

And though ClickFunnels is not loaded with 1000’s of third-party apps and plug-ins, below the aptly named Integrations web page, you possibly can nonetheless discover some very helpful native integrations with in style platforms like ActiveCampaign, Calendly, Mailchimp, and Airtable.

Shopify has built-in funds; ClickFunnels depends on third-party processors

Whereas each ClickFunnels and Shopify can course of funds with out a lot of a problem, they go about it in very alternative ways.

ClickFunnels would not have its personal built-in fee system. As an alternative, it depends on third-party processors like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.internet. That is not essentially a nasty factor since these are well-known, trusted providers, however it does imply you need to join and handle these integrations your self. 

It additionally solely permits one fee gateway per funnel, so if you wish to provide each Stripe and PayPal, for instance, you’d have to duplicate your funnel or use Funds.AI as a workaround. Funds.AI is a part of ClickFunnels’ app stack, and it helps you to route funds by varied gateways to deal with totally different fee conditions.

Shopify makes issues less complicated with Shopify Funds, its personal built-in fee processor. It is really powered by Stripe behind the scenes, however the huge distinction is that Shopify handles every thing for you, from checkout to payouts, all inside your Shopify dashboard. 

Because it’s inbuilt, you needn’t fiddle with third-party integrations to begin accepting bank cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or different main fee strategies. You simply flip it on, and also you’re good to go.

One other key profit right here is that should you use Shopify Funds as your essential processor, you sometimes keep away from further transaction charges that Shopify expenses when utilizing exterior fee suppliers.

Simply bear in mind that Shopify Funds is barely obtainable in sure international locations (primarily in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand). In case your nation is not on the record, Shopify offers you entry to over 100 third-party fee suppliers, like PayPal, Sq., and even region-specific gateways if that is what you favor.

Shopify offers deeper native insights; ClickFunnels wants exterior instruments

You are going to get helpful knowledge from each Shopify and ClickFunnels it doesn’t matter what, however the depth and focus of that knowledge are very totally different.

Shopify presents a strong, built-in analytics dashboard that offers you a lot perception into each nook of your enterprise that it could be a bit overwhelming (or very a lot welcome!). You possibly can observe gross sales over time, buyer habits, common order worth, conversion charges, classes by location or machine, and even gross sales by social media referrer, all while not having to hook up a third-party software. 

It additionally will get fairly granular with time intervals, permitting you to have a look at your knowledge by time intervals like Black Friday / Cyber Monday classes.

It additionally consists of real-time customer monitoring with its Dwell View, so you possibly can see the place your site visitors is coming from all over the world and what’s taking place in your web site at any given second. Past the dashboard, Shopify offers you entry to over 150 detailed stories, together with gross sales by product or channel, buyer retention evaluation, bounce charges, and search habits. 

For those who’re on the Plus plan, you possibly can create customized stories utilizing Shopify’s personal question language (ShopifyQL), which helps you to dive deeper into your retailer’s knowledge for particular tendencies and efficiency insights. For instance, you may construct a customized report that tracks your common order worth over time for patrons who got here from Instagram, or create a report displaying what number of items of every product variant had been bought by location throughout a particular promotional interval.

ClickFunnels is constructed round funnel efficiency. You may have your essential Funnel Analytics Dashboard, which supplies you an outline of precisely how customers transfer by your funnel, together with pageviews, upfront gross sales, recurring gross sales, and common cart worth. However you too can break down earnings per click on, subscription income, and particular person funnel step conversion charges, all inside a clear, step-by-step visible builder.

Apart from the principle dashboard, ClickFunnels additionally helps you to view metrics instantly within the funnel workflow, so when you’re enhancing or reviewing a funnel, you possibly can see aspect panel stats, particular person step efficiency, and knowledge like order quantity and opt-in charges. You possibly can filter by time vary, use UTM monitoring to guage campaigns, and even drill into particular order knowledge for deeper insights.

That mentioned, if you wish to observe issues like buyer lifetime worth, retention charges, product-level efficiency, or inventory-related insights, you may want to connect with instruments like Google Analytics, Fb Pixel, or Zapier-connected CRMs. 

Each apps combine with Zapier, connecting them to 1000’s of different instruments

Whether or not you select Shopify or ClickFunnels, each platforms provide deep integrations with Zapier, an AI-powered automation and orchestration platform that connects over 8,000 apps. Which means you are not restricted to the native integrations every platform presents. As an alternative, you possibly can create automated workflows that transfer knowledge throughout your tech stack, set off actions primarily based on buyer habits, and hold all of your instruments in sync—no handbook work or code required.

Zapier acts as an AI and automation layer throughout your enterprise operations, serving to you intelligently route info, apply conditional logic, and even summarize or extract insights from knowledge on the fly. For instance, when a buyer makes a purchase order by Shopify or opts right into a funnel in ClickFunnels, Zapier can routinely ship their particulars to your CRM, create a activity in your venture administration software, and draft a personalised follow-up e-mail—all orchestrated seamlessly within the background.

By leveraging Zapier’s AI capabilities, you possibly can scale quicker, scale back human error, and ship a extra linked expertise throughout each buyer touchpoint. Study extra about how one can automate Shopify and how one can automate ClickFunnels, or get began with certainly one of these pre-made workflows.

Shopify vs. ClickFunnels: Which do you have to select?

Here is my take:

• Select Shopify if you need a full-featured on-line retailer that may deal with every thing from product listings to achievement and long-term buyer administration. 

• Select ClickFunnels in case your essential purpose is to steer individuals by a high-converting gross sales funnel with minimal distractions. 

Some of us really use each. For those who go that route, you possibly can join them utilizing Zapier and do issues like routinely create contacts in ClickFunnels when you have got new prospects in Shopify, create new Shopify orders when ClickFunnels data new orders, or create new Shopify prospects primarily based on up to date ClickFunnels invoices. Listed here are a couple of templates to get you began.

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