What is ClickFunnels and how does it work?

This is a plain explainer, built from ClickFunnels' own pricing page and two of its help articles. It covers what ClickFunnels does and how a sale moves through it. For the plan-by-plan prices, see our breakdown of what ClickFunnels costs.

What is ClickFunnels used for?

ClickFunnels is used to build sales funnels and sell through them, with courses and email in the same account. The funnel is the core of it. Every plan lists unlimited funnels, though ClickFunnels' pricing help article flags that as temporary.

Around the funnels, each plan bundles a set of other tools. ClickFunnels' pricing help article lists these on Launch, its $97 a month plan:

• 3 courses
• 10K contacts and 50K emails a month
• 1 workspace and 2 team members
• 5 custom domains

The higher plans raise those numbers. Dominate, the top plan, lists 20 courses, 400K contacts, 1.2M emails a month, 20 workspaces and 20 team members. Scale and up add something ClickFunnels calls "Conversion Boosters", which its pricing pages don't explain. Optimize and Dominate add an Affiliate Center.

So one ClickFunnels plan covers the pages, the checkout, the course and the emails that follow up. If you only need one of those parts, the plan price is the same.

What is a funnel in ClickFunnels?

A funnel is a set of pages a buyer goes through in order, and in ClickFunnels each page in that set is a step. A simple one is a checkout page where the buyer pays, followed by a one-time offer page that shows them something extra.

Adding an upsell shows how the steps work. ClickFunnels' help article on one-time offers gives four steps:

1. Open the Funnels menu and open the funnel you want.
2. After the checkout page, click the + circle to add a new step.
3. Pick the "OTO (Upsell/Downsell) Page" category and choose a template.
4. In the Attached Products box, add the product that step sells.

Because every plan lists unlimited funnels, you can build a separate funnel for each product or each offer.

How do order bumps and one-click upsells work in ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels calls its one-click upsell a One-Time Offer, or OTO. ClickFunnels' help article on one-time offers says an OTO is "shown to customers immediately after they complete a purchase". It can be an upsell, for a higher-value or related product, or a downsell, a lower-priced option for buyers who said no to an earlier offer.

The buyer does not type their card again. The OTO page can take the order with a Button element or a Checkout element. With the button, the article says it "will process the order without requiring them to re-enter payment information". With the Checkout element, "Customers are not required to re-enter their payment details."

Bumps come in through the Checkout element. The same article says it "Supports bump products within an OTO page", while bump products are not supported with the Button element. So if you want a bump on an upsell page, build that page with the Checkout element.

Three things the article doesn't settle. It names no plan for any of this, only "An active ClickFunnels account" and a "Payments AI Configured Account". It does not say whether an accepted upsell is charged as a separate transaction. And the pricing pages list neither bumps nor upsells on any plan.

How do you get paid on ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels says it takes no cut. On the question of a cut of sales, ClickFunnels' pricing page answers "No. You'll keep every penny you make." Past that, its pricing pages say very little about the money side.

They don't name a payment processor. They don't list a card processing rate. They don't say how long a payout takes to reach your bank, or whose account the money sits in first. The one payment term that does show up is in the upsell help article, which lists a "Payments AI Configured Account" as a requirement for one-time offers. Neither page explains what Payments AI is.

So before you sign up, ask ClickFunnels three things: who processes the card, what that costs per sale, and whose account the money lands in. The last one decides who can hold your money, and for how long. Our guide to platforms that let you use your own Stripe account explains why that matters.

On Stakk, all three answers are on the page. The money goes to your own Stripe account, our 10% + $0.50 a sale includes card processing, and Stakk never holds the funds.

Who is ClickFunnels not for?

Sellers who only need a checkout, and sellers early on who don't sell every month. The cheapest plan is $97 a month, or $970 a year, whether you sell anything or not. If you sell one ebook and a template, most of what Launch bundles sits unused: the 3 courses, the 10K contacts, the 50K emails a month.

It is also not for someone who wants to know their full cost per sale before they start. ClickFunnels says it takes no cut, but its pricing pages list no processing rate, so the per-sale side is a question you have to ask.

And it is not the cheapest way to get a checkout with an upsell. ThriveCart's Standard plan, for one, is $47 a month with one bump offer and 1-click upsells and downsells, after a 30-day free trial. Our explainer on what ThriveCart is and how it works walks through it the same way this post does for ClickFunnels.

When would I send you somewhere else?

When you want the whole package ClickFunnels sells. It suits a seller who wants funnels, courses and email to their contacts in one account, a team with its own seats, more than one workspace, or an affiliate program on Optimize, and who sells enough each month that $97 is less than a per-sale cut would be. Stakk does none of that. It has no course hosting, no email marketing, no communities, no subscriptions or recurring billing, no prices above $999, and US dollars only. It stores no files: you paste a link to your file, and Stakk emails it to the buyer after they pay. If you need the rest, Stakk is the wrong choice, and ClickFunnels is the better fit. If cost is the only thing that matters, Systeme.io's free plan has no transaction fees, and Whop charges 2.7% + $0.30 on a domestic card with no monthly cost. Both cost less per sale than our 10% + $0.50.

What Stakk does is the checkout half: one-time digital products, with an order bump and a post-purchase upsell on every account and no monthly fee. The bump rides the same charge as the product, so it carries one fee rather than two. The upsell is one tap against the card the buyer just used, and it is a second charge with its own fee. The layout came out of funnels that ran for agency clients before Stakk existed.

Want the bump and the upsell without the funnel builder?

If the part of ClickFunnels you would actually use is the checkout, the bump and the one-click upsell, Stakk gives you both with no monthly fee and nothing behind a tier. It is 10% + $0.50 a sale with card processing included, and nothing in a month you don't sell. Fewer platforms put order bumps and upsells on a no-monthly-fee account than you might expect, and you can have a product live in about ten minutes.

Start selling on Stakk, free