DropFunnels Review: An Affordable ClickFunnels Alternative?

Are you looking for a marketing platform that will help you grow your business?

It can be a lot of work to figure out all the different tools and software you need for your particular business.

You will need to research to find your favorites.  Then you have to make sure the ones you pick play nicely together.

It’s a seriously time-consuming process…and expensive too!

Enter DropFunnels.

It’s perfect for anyone who wants a powerful funnel and website builder without a premium price.

Want to create a membership site?

Or create a course?

DropFunnels can do that too.

And best of all, it’s fast.

Your pages load quicker which keeps your visitors happy, and your conversions high.

In this DropFunnels review I’m going to cover:

• What is DropFunnels?
• Who Is DropFunnels For?
• What are the best parts about DropFunnels?
• What I don’t like about DropFunnels
• A look inside DropFunnels
• DropFunnels Pricing
• Final Verdict
• DropFunnels Pros and Cons

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What Is DropFunnels?

DropFunnels is a WordPress-based sales funnel and website builder.

It was founded by Jordan Mederich in early 2020 and boasts a few unique(ish) selling points that try to differentiate it from the slew of other ClickFunnels alternatives out there.

What are they, exactly?

• Highly optimized pages for the best possible site speed
• An integrated blog to publish content on and leverage content marketing
• Gives you a SEO-focused framework to generate free organic traffic
• Unlimited everything (funnels, memberships, courses, etc.)
• All the tools you need under one roof (well… almost)

While these features aren’t exactly groundbreaking when looked at individually, the list as a whole certainly earns itself some attention — assuming it manages to deliver on all counts, of course.

Who Is DropFunnels For?

If you’re weighing up your options for a funnel-building platform, it’s hard to pin down the differences between the main players, let alone newer products like DropFunnels.

DropFunnels is best suited if you’re looking to merge site-building and funnel-building on a single domain, without all the technical headaches usually involved.

That means being able to build the core pages of a site, create dedicated pages as part of a sales funnel, host paywalled content, publish regular articles in a blog, and optimize everything for a search engine like Google.

Compare that to ClickFunnels, which is more focused on the sales funnel side of things, whereas all-in-one platforms like Kartra and BuilderAll go even broader with their selection of digital marketing tools.

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What Are Some Of My Favorite Things About DropFunnels?

Awesome thing #1: It’s built on WordPress

DropFunnels isn’t shy about the fact that it’s built on the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world.

In fact, they straight tell you about it on the sales page:

But unlike a typical WordPress installation, DropFunnels has WordPress ready to go from the moment you sign up, and it comes pre-configured with everything you need to start building your business.

In other words, you get most (explained below) of the benefits from running on WordPress infrastructure without all the headaches that usually come with it — like hosting and domain configuration, SSL certificate, theme setup, plugin configuration and more.

Even better, the DropFunnels backend mimics WordPress so those familiar with it won’t have a huge learning curve.

Awesome thing #2: Advanced cart features included

Shopping cart software isn’t cheap. In fact, running something like SamCart in your business would cost just as much as DropFunnels on the most basic package alone, and that’s just for taking payments.

As a DropFunnels user, you don’t have to worry about that because all the necessary cart features are baked right into the funnel builder.

You start by adding a checkout template, and customizing it using the page builder provided:

You can do a fair amount with the checkout design, including multi-step checkouts, custom form fields, and dedicated checkout widgets like order receipts and 1-click upsells.

All you need to do is integrate your checkout form with a product and potentially add an order bump. Finally, add your payment gateway via integration (Stripe or PayPal) and you’re ready to start selling.

The only thing missing from this right now is some sort of affiliate portal.

Awesome thing #3: Unlimited everything

One of my favorite things about DropFunnels is that you never have to worry about exceeding limits since all the features are uncapped on any plan.

You can create as many funnels, products, memberships, courses, pages, or blog posts as your heart desires, along with as many leads, customers, or members as you can handle.

There’s only one exception to this; traffic.

You are limited to 10,000 or 250,000 visitors per month depending on your plan, but hosting is a scalable expense so leaving this uncapped would be business suicide.

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What Are The Annoying Things About DropFunnels?

Annoying thing #1: You can’t install WordPress plugins

DropFunnels being built on WordPress is, in my opinion, one of its better selling points. But in doing so they had to restrict some of the features that typically come with self-hosted WordPress.

The most significant drawback I found was that it doesn’t allow you to add your own WordPress plugins.

As a veteran WordPress user myself, I can’t tell you how many times the WordPress plugin repository has saved me, whether it be a plugin to optimize images, add extra security, add a dynamic table of contents, or anything in between.

Without access to plugins, you lose the flexibility WordPress offers and become solely reliant on the features and plugins DropFunnels has enabled.

Annoying thing #2: Limited to one domain

DropFunnels only lets you use a single domain (on the Starter plan), which means you can’t run multiple sites from your DropFunnels account without facing some serious branding issues.

Why the arbitrary limitation, you ask?

Well, it actually comes back to the whole WordPress thing. According to DropFunnels, being built on the WordPress ecosystem limits them from offering multiple domains under one install.

If you want to install DropFunnels on multiple domains, you will need to upgrade to the Pro or Agency plans.

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A Look Inside DropFunnels

Funnel Builder

I couldn’t start a DropFunnels review without first talking about building funnels with it, could I?

Fortunately, if you’ve ever built a funnel you’ll be familiar with the steps here. Simply click ‘Funnels’ in the sidebar, create a new funnel, add your first step, and pick a template:

Note: This is where you can also import your ClickFunnels funnels if you happen to be changing platforms.

As for the templates? While you can choose from several different categories like regular sales pages, video sales letters, and checkout pages, the selection, and designs are very average at this stage.

There’s also no way to fully preview the templates aside from a little hover scroll animation that doesn’t even scroll all the way, which I found odd.

After adding your first step, you’ll see your ‘Funnel Flow’ with the ability to view, edit, clone, or delete the step you just created. You can also add further steps to your funnel:

Clicking this button brings up the same interface for template selection, which brings us to the issue of template consistency; there really isn’t any.

If you want your video sales page to have the same aesthetic as your thank you page or checkout page, you’ll probably have to make some adjustments to the designs on offer.

Speaking of adjustment, clicking the pencil icon next to any page brings up the page builder, and this happens to be the popular Beaver Builder (basically, it’s a third-party WordPress plugin).

As you would expect, it’s all drag and drop, and it uses a section and column layout system with various elements to fill out the page.

The range of elements is quite impressive. It has all the basics like text, headings, images, and buttons, along with more advanced stuff like content toggles, image hotspots, carousels, tables, and more.

You even have a fair amount of control over the styling of these elements, which isn’t all that surprising since Beaver Builder isn’t far behind the likes of Elementor and Divi.

Beyond the basics like sizes, alignments, and color changes, you can also apply CSS styles and animations to individual elements too.

The only thing I found a little jarring was inline editing.

DropFunnels (or Beaver Builder) does allow you to directly edit text on the page, but it also forces a little floating panel on you at the same time. Personally, I often found it more annoying than it was useful.

After a while of using it, I did come to realize that you can snap this panel to the side of the canvas for more breathing room. This felt much better.

Finally, the Tools menu (accessible from the top bar) reveals a few other handy features along with keyboard shortcuts for quicker access.

These include duplicating your layout, previewing your design, viewing revisions and draft history, adding page-level CSS and switching to Responsive mode for mobile and tablet displays.

Unfortunately, you can’t easily switch between the individual pages of your funnels, which was a feature I really enjoyed from GrooveFunnels.

However, linking these pages together as part of your funnel couldn’t be easier. When you add a form or button to a page, you can choose exactly what you want to happen.

For example, buttons default to the next step in the funnel:

With all your pages in place, the last step is to go through the funnel settings and make sure everything is configured correctly.

This includes adding the necessary tracking codes to your header and footer, adding payment options, crafting your order confirmation emails, and tweaking the global funnel settings.

The global settings are also where you’ll find your Share Funnel link, for those coming over from ClickFunnels:

Website & Blog Builder

ClickFunnels users will know that while funnel-building software is often capable of building out traditional websites, it’s not quite as intuitive as a dedicated website builder.

Being WordPress-based, DropFunnels aims to solve that problem by allowing a fully functional website and dynamic blog to be created through the same platform.

Like WordPress, you can add new pages through the ‘Pages’ menu:

Here, you can name your page, add content and tweak some basic page-level settings, but you don’t have any control over the design.

If you click the DropFunnels tab, however, it will fire up the familiar page builder so you can start designing your page. This has all the bells and whistles found in the funnel builder, so it’s very capable.

The problem was, the builder didn’t offer any direction on how to change the default header and footer:

I eventually found the option to change headers and footers across my site in the Global Design menu.

This process was more involved than I was expecting, and overall was a far cry from something like Elementor which allows direct editing of these global elements, not to mention a superior conditions interface.

As for blogging, the framework for creating posts is already set up as this is effectively a WordPress installation.

Simply head over to the ‘Posts’ menu item and start creating your post as you would in a typical WordPress environment.

You can fill out a title, adjust the permalink, apply categories and tags, and write your content in the main Text Editor. There’s also a meta box for SEO settings (which I believe is the Yoast SEO plugin).

If you want to customize the design of your content, you will need to use the DropFunnels tab to open the editor, similar to how you design the core pages of your website.

The difference here, however, is that you can only edit the content area and not the surrounding blog layout. As much as I tried, I couldn’t figure out a way to change the overall “theme” of the blog.

I did find some ‘Blog’ templates in the funnel builder, but I couldn’t understand the connection between a single funnel and the core blog of your website. None of it really made sense.

Besides, aren’t these blog templates all the same?

For me, the website and blog building aspect was one of the most confusing parts of DropFunnels and something that needs a serious rework.

Selling Digital Products with DropFunnels

There’s hardly a point to building funnels without any products to sell, so let’s talk about creating some products through DropFunnels.

Your first option is to simply add a product through the ‘Products’ menu.

Doing this allows you to set a name for your product, along with pricing, additional fees, quantities, product type and more.

To clarify, this isn’t product creation per se, it’s more just defining what your product and how it should be sold. In fact, you’ll need to attach your actual digital product in the form text, or a link.

This is done through the Product Delivery text editor:

With your product created, you can then assign the product through a checkout form as part of your website or funnel.

For example, clicking the form on a standard checkout template will give you a ‘Products’ tab that allows you to choose from any of your pre-defined products like the one I just created:

If you’re planning to sell a course or membership product, however, things work a little differently as this content can be directly hosted by DropFunnels.

From the ‘Memberships’ menu, start by creating a new membership (which can also act as a course) and giving it a name.

You’ll be asked if this membership is Basic or Advanced, though it doesn’t explain what that means. Having tested both out myself, the Advanced option allows you to add multiple courses.

In this case, since I’ve chosen to create a basic course, which means I’ll be adding modules and lessons to a single course or training program.

The interface is consistent with the funnel builder, so it’s easy to understand the hierarchy for courses, modules, and lessons. You can also drag to rearrange the order of your training modules.

After adding a lesson, you’ll be able to edit it in the same way you edit funnel or website pages. It will also use the exact same builder.

Unfortunately, there is no template selection because there’s only one lesson template at the time of this review. But you can customize this to a large extent and essentially make your own templates.

Once you’ve built out your course/membership, you’ll also want to adjust the global membership settings.

These include uploading a logo, attributing theme headers and footers, forcing lesson completion and selecting the matching product for your membership (you’ll need to create this manually).

You can also get a breakdown of all the current members for this product as well as the relevant URLs, like the ‘User Login’ and ‘Forgot Password’ pages.

Reporting & Analytics

DropFunnels has a basic level of reporting and analytical data built into the platform right out of the box.

As usual, your first option is to check the dashboard for a summary of your account, including traffic, revenue and leads over time.

The other option is to head into the individual tools to see more specific data.

For example, going into ‘Funnels’, selecting one of your funnels and choosing the ‘Stats’ tab will reveal metrics like visits, leads, sales and conversions for each step (or page) of the funnel.

This allows you to see exactly where your funnels are breaking down and make the necessary changes.

You also get similar information on your membership products, showing who the members are, when they joined, their email address, and even what lesson they’re currently on.

And let’s not forget about the sales report, offering a breakdown of gross revenue, earnings per click, total orders, average order value, and a complete record of every sale you’ve made.

There’s even a link tracker built into DropFunnels so you can track clicks and conversions on specific links, like you would with something like ClickMagick (though not as advanced).

Of course, you can also install a Google Analytics script into the header of your website or funnel pages, so you don’t need to rely on DropFunnels.

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DropFunnels Pricing

DropFunnels has 3 different pricing plans. But one thing I like in particular is that you get access to all of DropFunnels’ features in every plan.

So what’s the difference in plans then?

Mostly in the number of Sites & Custom domains you get and how many visitors per month you can have. You also get live chat and a free onboarding call on the Pro plan and above.

The Starter plan is $49 a month. And you get 1 site and up to 10,000 visitors per month.

The Pro plan is $149 a month. And you get up to 5 sites and up to 250,000 visitors.

Finally, there’s also the Agency plan which is $297 a month and lets you host up to 10 sites and up to 250,000 visitors.

With all plans, you get a Free 14-day trial to test out the software to make sure it works for you.

Final Verdict

In a lot of ways, DropFunnels is a breath of fresh air.

Starting at $49 a month, it’s very affordable. It’s also built on Wordpress, which is a proven platform. And the sales funnels that you can build with it are fast, which maximizes conversions.

You even get access to all the features on the lowest plan, which is very refreshing.

The only real downside DropFunnels is if you have a need to create funnels (or sites) on multiple domains. Then it gets a lot pricier.

But if that’s not the case, then take the DropFunnels 14-day free trial and give it a try. There’s a lot of things to like about it.

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DropFunnels Pros

• WordPress-based backend
• Funnel builder with drag and drop editor
• Website and blog builder (with SSL)
• Products, courses, and membership
• Cart with bumps and 1-click upsells
• Basic sales dashboard
• Popup builder included
• On-page SEO framework included
• Full leads/conversion reports (CRM)
• Link tracker built-in
• Competitive pricing
• No quantity limits (unlimited everything)
• 14-day free trial

DropFunnels Cons

• Can’t install WordPress plugins
• No native email or autoresponder features
• Website and blog builder is confusing
• Only one domain per account (currently)
• Not many templates to choose from
• Very little template design consistency