So you’re looking to build a landing page, membership site, a sales page and/or an entire marketing funnel? Where to begin right? There is no shortage of choice on the marketplace these days but like with anything you find on the internet, you always want to know which one to go with and will that choice be beneficial for your business?

Well, we are narrowing the choice today with two sites that we feel are big contenders when it comes to building these kind of site mechanisms. Specifically we are talking about Clickfunnels and OptimizePress.

While each have their own lists of pros and cons it really will come down to what exactly you are looking to achieve with your project.

Let’s take a look at each individually before we check out the direct differences and similarities of each up against one another.

OptimizePress 2.0
When you are looking to build a site or pages to aid your site’s traffic and lead generation, you are most probably looking for something that you can customise to your exact needs and taste. OptimizePress 2.0 is exactly that. In terms of being able to customise sites to your branding, look and feel as well as functionality, OptimizePress certainly comes with enough punch to do just that.

The Upside

You can either choose to host it on your WordPress site – as a theme or plugin – and you are instantly given access to a site builder that serves the ‘What you see is what you get’ (WYSIWYG) purpose with all elements fully customisable to meet your needs and wants. You have the ability to access the WordPress kingdom in this way to by being able to access WordPress plugins that hold OptimizePress compatibility. There are literally thousands of plugins that can be used to further improve your site’s functionality or aesthetic appeal. You also get access to some pretty neat basic templates in case you need some help getting started too which are free.

You are looking at over 40 element options when it comes to building the type of page you want. If you are the more serious among us then the newly added OptimizePress PlusPack will be something you might be interested in. A paid add-on feature, the pack includes 50+ templates, plugins and other website enhancing features that you wouldn’t ordinarily be getting.

This coupled with the fact that OptimizePress costs $97 and it’s yours for life ($37/year for updates after the first 12 months, but it’s not required) makes it a pretty reasonable choice when it comes to building landing pages, secure member pages, authority blog pages, webinar registration pages, free training/course pages and product launch funnels.

Unlike other page builder sites, OptimizePress also offers unlimited pages. This means you are not restricted to the amount of pages you can build on each site you licence with OptimizePress.

There is also a Marketplace that offers users access to decently priced ($9-$12) templates that will take a lot of work out of the process if you are looking for an even more fuss free process in setting up your pages.

The drag and drop editor feature is also extremely helpful when it comes to bringing pages and sites to life because it helps you visualise what you are doing when you are doing it. If you are not a coder extraordinaire then you can literally be building your own pages and sites exactly how you want them without a single piece of code needed. What’s more – OptimizePress ensures sites are mobile and tablet optimised making for even more user-friendly usage of your sites.

For sites that require payment or other integration this is also not something to worry about as the the platform offers a choice of API level integration. The membership portal can also be used with a good choice of membership site plugins like Wishlist Member, Digital Access Pass and the like.

One should also note that Optimizepress comes with it’s own membership plugin called Optimizemember.

The downside

While there are many favourable features to working with OptimizePress, there are some things that may not be ideal for users.

For some, it is considered to be a bit lacking in the side of analytics support. So while you can integrate things like google analytics to the site, it is not as easy as it looks and it not being built in obviously only further aggravates this.

Unlike other page builder sites, there is no way to set up split testing or at least no feature that allows this. Instead your split tests will have to be something you control yourself and use external analytics to monitor which, for some, can be a headache.

While this is not a problem directly caused by OptimizePress, it is worth remembering. Pages can be extremely slow to load at times and this comes down to the hosting that people have chosen to use. Always bear this in mind.

Although internet speeds are pretty decent these days, it may be worth keeping in mind that plugin and theme files can be large (between 30 and 50mb) – this should not be an issue if you have high speed internet but can slow you down if your internet speed is not reliable or as fast as you would like it to be.

Its user friendliness and learning how to do stuff on the site can be pretty tricky depending on your skill level. This may not go for everyone but it may be advisable that newbies watch a lot of tutorials and how-to’s before diving into building a fully-fledged site or launch funnel. This is not to say it cannot be done, but we suggest doing a lot of groundwork before you attempt it if this is your first time.

Now let’s talk about Clickfunnels, the new kid on the block. Yes, Clickfunnels has been around for almost 4 years now, while Optimizepress for a good 7 years.

Clickfunnels is another handy page builder site available on the market and it all really depends on your project needs and expectations as to which one you will ultimately go with. As opposed to OptmizePress, Clickfunnels is geared towards building different types of marketing funnels.

The upside

If you are looking to build a fully-fledged marketing funnel, then Clickfunnels has your back. They offer a range of different types each geared towards the specific outcome you are looking to achieve. The user friendliness of setting this up is also fairly simple by the way (we will go into this aspect a bit later on in more detail).

Basically, whether you are looking to set up a simple 2-step lead capture funnel whose purpose is to capture visitor info and email and then send them to a thank you page once done, or a more sophisticated funnel that requires user registration, a webinar, perhaps an upsell and downsell then it is all possible within this program capability.

To give you an idea, here are the types of funnels you are able to create:

Optin/Lead Capture Funnels – For capturing email addresses of your visitors and grow your mailing lists;

Sales Page Funnels – Used for selling products and services, with the ability to add any upsells/downsells to the sales process;

Webinar Funnels – Pretty neat for when you need people to register for webinars;

Membership Sites – Particularly handy for when you are looking to generate a recurring income by creating a full blown membership site for members.

Once you have decided what your funnel is going to be setup to do there are a large number of templates on the site to help you get started. These can be customised as much or little as you want whether you are looking to just use a wireframe for reference or follow the template and only adapt your colours and style, the choice is yours. The live editor makes this quite easy to achieve and the interface itself of point and click is fairly uncomplicated to navigate around.

If you are not up for using a template, you can also easily create your own pages from scratch too. The choice is really yours. There is a large degree of flexibility when it comes to placing elements on screen and it is also easy to preview your work as it would appear live.

What may also help a great deal depending on your level of experience in page building software is the help videos they offer. The videos are short, to the point and helpful and the resources for when you need help guides are in no short supply either. The chat support system is particularly helpful too and you can deal with any issues you are having via IM chat.

When it comes to the build, there are a lot of element widgets available to you and these are easily found by typing in the search bar above the elements. Again, when you are unsure, you can always get some help.

Coming back to the ease of use. When editing or creating pages, the interactive and reactive system is fairly easy to get used to with a bit of practice. Changing things like backgrounds, page widths, padding, text sizes and colours, to name a few, appear in the menu as and when you click on the different elements on the page. As far as live editors go, it is really quite easy to use. You have the option too of setting up custom domains for your funnels and is usually not so difficult to set up. Although, we do recommend having someone of technical mind if you are not familiar with Cloudflare use.

Payment and other integrations are supported well with a built-in stripe payment integration available. And if you have not setup any external mail systems like Mailchimp or active campaign, there is an internal set of functionality that can help you set up autoresponders and follow up mails. These can also be set up with your mail service provider for more customised approach to follow up mails.

Probably one of the other more interesting features of clickfunnels is the tracking abilities built in. You are able to monitor and check visitor rates, conversion figures and of course evaluate any split testing you have set up for your pages. This is definitely handy to have right in front of you each time you go into Clickfunnels and can help you optimise your funnels to work just the way they need to while removing the guesswork.

The downside

One of the first big disadvantages that comes to mind when looking to sign up with Clickfunnels is its pricing structure. Compared to something like OptimizePress it seems the more expensive option. A basic plan is $97 per month. This is not a dealbreaker though if you counteract the pricing with your product sales or any affiliate association. It can be worked around to make sure that your outlay on such a resource is countered by sales so that you are not seeing it so much as a big expense but rather a justifiable resource.

Another disadvantage seems to be the amount of pages you are limited to creating. There is a limit on the number of funnels, pages and visitors with the standard plan that can possibly become an issue for you in the future depending on your usage.

While the site may be easy to use, there is a lot of stuff to learn and some pretty in-depth stuff. The good side of this though is that it is regularly updated and there are weekly webinar sessions and learning guides so if you are prepared to learn, then this will not be a problem for you.

Split testing, while a built in feature – is fairly basic and a lot of people generally opt for external forms of analytics to make use of also. More so if things like Facebook ads are being directed to the funnels.

It should be used as a starting guide, you could say, but not the only method of testing should this be something you are serious about doing.

To Conclude

Both options stated above have their pros and cons and whichever one you choose to go with will have everything to do with your business and what you are looking to achieve. If you are resourceful about the way you build pages and structure your pages, then you can definitely make something like OptimizePress go further for you. And if you are looking to have some more in-depth, detailed funnels built then Clickfunnels is your preferred choice. It all comes down to what you need from the page builder.

It also comes down to your level of tech-savvy ability also. Like with anything, it is never usually a good idea to jump into something that you are not completely confident you can master as this will only result in time lost and of course money lost.
While Clickfunnels offers a 14-day free trial, OptmizePress does not but does offer a 30-day money back guarantee if you find it is not for you. We’d say give it a try and see what fit is best for you and of course, your business!