ClickFunnels vs Memberful

ClickFunnels is a sales funnel builder for entrepreneurs who sell info products, coaching, services and physical goods online. It was launched in 2014 by Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson under their company Etison and popularized step-by-step funnels of opt-in page, sales page, order form and upsells. The company reports more than 100,000 users and over a million funnels created.

The current platform, rebuilt as ClickFunnels 2.0, bundles landing pages, funnels, websites and blogs with checkout, one-click upsells and order bumps, an online store, courses and membership areas, community groups, email broadcasts and sequences, automations, a sales CRM with pipelines and appointments, a Message Hub inbox and an affiliate center. Plans are priced by workspace, team members, contacts, email volume and courses, starting with Launch and going up to the annual-only Dominate plan.

ClickFunnels fits solo founders, coaches and small marketing teams who want one system to sell and deliver an offer without stitching together five tools. It is expensive if you only need landing pages, and its page editor and templates have a distinct direct-response style that not every brand wants. Leadpages and Unbounce are cheaper and cleaner for landing pages alone, while Kajabi is stronger if courses and memberships are the core business.

There is a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Annual billing cuts Launch from $97 to $81 a month, but watch the contact and email limits: crossing 10,000 contacts on Launch forces a jump to the $197 Scale plan.

Memberful is membership software that adds paid subscriptions and gated content to a website you already own. It was acquired by Patreon in 2018, and it serves independent publishers, podcasters, educators and creators who want to keep their own brand and domain rather than send fans to a third-party profile page.

Memberful handles sign-up, checkout and billing through the creator's own Stripe account, with plans, free trials, coupons, gift subscriptions and group memberships for teams. A WordPress plugin restricts posts, pages and categories to members; other sites integrate via embeddable links and an API. Private podcast feeds deliver premium episodes to apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, Discord integration assigns roles to members, and newsletter integrations sync members to email tools. You can build for free until you go live; the Standard plan then costs $49 a month plus a 4.9% transaction fee, Enterprise is custom, and Stripe's processing fees apply on top.

Memberful fits creators with an existing website, especially on WordPress, who want reliable billing without building a membership system. It does not provide hosting, a website builder or rich community features. MemberPress is a WordPress plugin with more control and no transaction fee, Ghost bundles site, newsletter and memberships with zero fees, Patreon offers discovery and an app audience, and Memberstack targets Webflow sites.