Here’s our story of why we chose ClickFunnels over LeadPages.
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In mid-2012 John had an idea: to create a daily podcast interviewing today’s most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs – 7 days a week.
He had zero online presence and zero knowledge of how to start a podcast.
What he did have was determination, drive and FOCUS.
As he worked towards knocking over his ONE big domino, which was launching EOFire, there were a lot of other things suddenly popping up on his to-do list.
He was learning the steps to launch a daily podcast, and at the same time he was having to figure out how to create an entire platform to help support it.
Creating a platform to support a podcast
If you’re reading this post, then you already know the importance of a platform; regardless of whether you’re creating a blog, a podcast, a video channel, a product, a service – anything – a platform is required.
The building blocks were many, but John was determined to put the pieces together, knowing that one step at a time would result in him accomplishing his goal of not only having a daily podcast, but also a platform to support it.
Pieces of a platform built with LeadPages
Things like building a website and creating an email opt in form were foreign, and without CSS or design knowledge, many of our very first site pages were bare bones – to say the least…
It wasn’t for about a year and a half – in 2014 – that we found out about a platform called LeadPages, a landing page builder. (That link is our affiliate link.)
Well that sounded nice: no CSS or design knowledge necessary?
We’re in!
The whole idea behind LeadPages is that you pay a monthly fee, and in exchange you have access to opt in and landing page templates built by professionals that you can plug your information into.
Here are some examples of the templates we found when we first joined LeadPages:
We were huge fans of LeadPages, and we even became affiliates of the software.
Any time anyone would ask “how’d you create this page?”, nine times out of 10 our answer would be: with LeadPages.
They even featured us on their blog as a case study, which proves our love for the platform and how it helped us grow our business.
As LeadPages continued to expand by increasing their client-base and growing their team, they started adding to the many features and benefits available.
A couple of years into us using the software they launched LeadBoxes, a code builder that would allow you to insert a light box pop up within a page or post, like this:
This was incredible because it allowed for email opt in’s and conversions on your own website without your potential subscriber ever having to leave the page.
Next came LeadDigits, a text message opt in option where you could have people subscribe to your lists simply by texting in a code word.
This was especially huge for the podcasting world because how are a large majority of listeners tuning in to your show?… On their mobile device!
There were of course other services out there offering a text message service, but LeadPages was really starting to corner the market when it came to a platform that offered a lot of different options all in one place.
Like when they created a Webinar page template we felt was made JUST FOR US and that we used to present over 100 webinars:
In the three plus years we used LeadPages we uncovered a treasure chest filled with opt in templates, landing pages, thank you pages, 404 pages, webinar pages and more.
During that time we created over 100 pages on EOFire.com using LeadPages.
Then, in mid-2015, we were introduced to ClickFunnels.
A platform reimagined with ClickFunnels
Our first experience with ClickFunnels was reading Russell Brunson’s book DotComSecrets, where he gives away multiple step-by-step guides for creating the most commonly-used funnels in online business.
Together with the resource library he created for the book, the free value and the know/like/trust built was enough to make us want to check out ClickFunnels.
Once we did, we realized that ClickFunnels offered so much more than we ever could have imagined.
While LeadPages was getting the job done, we were ready to start customizing the look and feel of our funnels so that our opt in and landing pages didn’t look like every other opt in and landing page you see on the Internet.
(As you can imagine, with the popularity of LeadPages sometimes it seemed like it didn’t matter what Webinar you opted in to or what Thank You page you hit: they all looked the same.)
Plus, we were looking for a higher level of organization and tracking tools, which exist on some level in LeadPages, but not at the level we were looking for.
After experiencing the backend of ClickFunnels thanks to their 2 week free trial and seeing the layout and funnel organization capabilities – in addition to the tracking and page customization options – we were sold.
Funnel Organization
You can see below that the funnel organization in ClickFunnels is super clean. In LeadPages, the only option is giving your pages a “category”.
Without the option to view all of your funnels at once, or organize the pages within a funnel (for example, having the opt in page, thank you page, and sub pages sit in different categories within a funnel), LeadPages made it really difficult to stay organized.
Page Customization
ClickFunnels offers you tons of templates and recommendations for how to set up your pages, but it also lets you choose exactly how you want your page laid out and designed – without any knowledge of CSS or design.
This allowed us to really start differentiating our landing pages and free course funnels.
Funnel Stats
Stats and split tests all originate from the same page in ClickFunnels, making it super simple to compare stats and pages without having to go to a different view or leave your funnel dashboard. Whereas with LeadPages, seeing stats and comparing split tests required multiple pages and clicks.
Why we chose ClickFunnels over LeadPages
What ClickFunnels offers us that LeadPages doesn’t is a higher level of organization and flexibility with the same ease-of-use. In addition, ClickFunnels has an affiliate platform, which is something we’ve been thinking about switching over for months now (we currently use Infusionsoft).
Don’t get us wrong: we love LeadPages and for many entrepreneurs and online business owners, LeadPages might be the way to go.
The purpose of this comparison is to help you understand the reasons why we chose ClickFunnels so that if you happen to be deciding which one is best for you, you can learn from our experiences over the past four years using both platforms.
If you want a deep dive on exactly what ClickFunnels has to offer, check out this Webinar we hosted with Russell where he walks through exactly how ClickFunnels can help you grow your business!
