ClickFunnels is an all-in-one landing page-centric website that can handle everything to do with your landing page, which include web hosting (you don’t need WordPress for ClickFunnels as it works as a stand alone), landing page creation, shopping cart, and email marketing. It also comes with a ton of funnel templates to help you easily launch your funnel-centric website.

ActiveCampaign only covers the email marketing aspect, and it would give you much more robust email marketing automation capabilities than ClickFunnels alone in my honest opinion. However, if you are going to use ClickFunnels, since you are paying for it you might as well use their email service.

I’m curious as to why you chose WordPress to run your membership site with instead of Circle?

SendInBlue is a great platform for sure! I think the key is to find the best one for you that you feel comfortable with. But if you ever feel constrained by your current solution, that is the time to start looking around. Hopefully the article gave you some ideas to help you perform and email marketing software functionality audit!

Thanks Nirmal! When researching email marketing software I was very impressed with SendInBlue as well, and it was between them and MailerLite for my “overflow” account. If you’re happy with your choice there is no need to change!

Thanks for the list of tools. I have been using SendInBlue for the last couple of years and I am loving it. It is user friendly and the packages are so flexible for a beginner. I haven’t thought of switching to any other email marketing service so far. I am planning to go ahead with it for a few more years.

Regards,
Nirmal Kumar.

Hey Roisin, thanks for the comment! I am actually publishing a podcast episode on email marketing advice from a tactical perspective in a few days so make sure you check out https://nealschaffer.com/podcast .

As for your question, this is the way I see it: If you want to have everything in one place – web / email + marketing automation, then ClickFunnels will serve you well. If you want to have your landing pages and email + marketing automation in one place, then ClickFunnels will serve you well. However, if you have your own WordPress site and/or you want to have more control over your marketing automation, I would choose ActiveCampaign, but that isn’t to say you might not be more successful with ClickFunnels. I just don’t like to over-rely on one solution.

I am also building a membership site, and my advice for you there would NOT to build it on WordPress or ClickFunnels but instead use one of the big three that I am looking into investing in as well: Teachable, Thinkific, and Podia.

Hope the advice makes sense. Excited to hear who you might choose!

Thanks David! I find a lot of companies use old technology and there is so much innovation going on in the space. Actually I tell my clients that COVID-19 is a perfect time to work on your backend so that when things are normal you will be ready to go. Good luck and I’ll be curious to hear what you chose!

This list is extremely helpful for me. I’m able to now share your summaries up the flagpole so when we normalize the economy, I can hopefully improve my outreach campaigns.

Thanks Neal!