ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: How They Compare And Work Together [July 2025]

At first glance, ClickFunnels and ConvertKit look remarkably similar.Both platforms promise to help you build an online business, capture leads, and nurture customers through automated workflows. They both offer landing page builders, email marketing capabilities, and subscriber management tools. It’s no wonder entrepreneurs often find themselves torn between the two.

However, while this overlap in feature set fuels the regular apples-to-apples ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit comparisons online, it’s essential to know that these tools are not direct competitors—they are fundamentally built for different business models, and in some cases, solidly complement each other.

That’s why we will begin this ClickFunnels vs. ConvertKit comparison with a quick summary, followed by an examination of how both tools complement each other, much like a blend of apples and oranges, before exploring in-depth how their features overlap in an apples-to-apples showdown.

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Comparison Summary

What is ClickFunnels?
“Sales-funnel builder for entrepreneurs” 🚀 📈

ClickFunnels is a web-based application designed to simplify the process of building an online business. It was founded by Russell Brunson in 2014 and provides a variety of ready-to-use tools for collaborating with team members, creating funnels, capturing leads, selling products, and automating follow-ups.

At its core is a product page for creating, updating, and selling items.

If you’re trying to sell digital products like courses, ebooks, software, etc., physical items that can be shipped to customers, or want to dropship goods via tools like Zendrop, ClickFunnels offers an easy way to manage the entire process.

It features an integrated Store app that allows you to build a product from scratch, set it up for sales, manage payment activities, create discount offers, and provide timely updates on order confirmations.

You’ll also find a sales funnel builder to create workflows that guide customers from initial interest to desired action.

ClickFunnels is deeply invested in helping users take customers through a clear and intentional sales path. That’s why the first point of contact after sign-up is a funnel builder that offers multiple funnel types for guiding visitors toward a specific outcome.

You can use the funnel builder to automate simple tasks, such as sending an email sequence to your contacts, or more complex activities, like moving a lead down a pipeline based on specific actions. Either way, it removes all forms of friction that can hinder visitors from taking action.

Then there’s the long list of internal apps you can integrate into your workflow to improve efficiency.

ClickFunnel prioritizes the need to help entrepreneurs create sustainable online businesses without having to spend a fortune on design and development. That’s why it provides multiple internal apps that enable users to add custom features to the platform.

Whether you want to manage affiliate programs, create discounts, or design new products, ClickFunnels apps can simplify the processes and enhance workspace functionality. Some of the few we couldn’t help but notice include:

• Courses – to turn your expertise into a free or paid course with multiple modules.
• Community – to create an interactive space where your audience can connect, share content, and engage in meaningful discussions.
• Framework – to bundle various components of your ClickFunnels workspace, such as funnels, themes, courses, workflows, and more, as a complete business solution for others.

What is ConvertKit?
“Email-first operating system for creators” ✉️🛠️

ConvertKit (now known as Kit) is an email marketing platform founded in 2013 by Nathan Barry. It’s designed to help online creators build trust with subscribers and monetize their audience and is especially useful for building an email list, managing subscribers, creating automated email campaigns, and networking with other creators.

At its core is an ESP for managing subscribers and maintaining a high-quality, deliverable list.

ConvertKit is a subscriber-centric email marketing platform that allows you to organize your email list using tags and segments. This guarantees that no matter how many times a subscriber opts into one of your forms or landing pages, they will only appear once on your list.

Within its subscriber hub, you will find an analytics tool that allows you to monitor the open rates, click rates, and reply rates of users on your list, as well as a list cleaning tool to automatically re-engage or remove inactive subscribers from your email campaigns.

It’s also a powerful tool for creating email sequences, automating follow-up, and nurturing subscribers.

Automating email marketing activities on ConvertKit is a breeze. It provides easy-to-use tools to create and send broadcast messages to a subset of your audience, as well as the templates required to design automated sequences for drip campaigns.

It also offers simple automation rules and visual automation templates you can use to design unique email workflows. For example, you can use the visual template to create a multi-step funnel populated with a series of automated sequences that nurture subscribers from point of contact to point of action, and beyond.

And finally, you can use it to build a Creator profile that allows you to network with other creators and reach new subscribers.

Having a one-stop hub where people can browse your latest content, sign up for your newsletter, and purchase your digital products makes it easy to grow your audience and monetize your work. And that’s what ConvertKit’s Creator profile offers.

It serves as a mini website offering the design tools, templates, and configurations needed to create a personal brand, customize digital products, and determine how subscribers perceive your work. It’s also a gateway to making the Creator network platform work for you.

ClickFunnels + ConvertKit: How They Complement Each Other

ClickFunnels converts cold traffic into leads, while ConvertKit nurtures those leads and builds loyalty.

Let’s say you want to sell custom coffee mugs online; you can use ClickFunnels to create a smooth lead-capturing and buying journey. It offers the tools to build an e-commerce store that allows users to place orders, design product pages that promote your mugs, and incentivize an opt-in that effortlessly collects visitors’ emails.

However, most of your customers won’t be ready to buy at first sight and might eventually forget that your coffee mugs exist when they are ready to make a purchase. And that’s where ConvertKit comes in.

Integrating ConvertKit with ClickFunnels can help you automate workflows that put your mugs top of mind. ConvertKit makes it easy to add a series of personalized email sequences to a ClickFunnels workflow, allowing you to share brewing tips, offer exclusive discounts, discuss new product launches, and gently nurture your audience until they are ready to take action.

And you might wonder, why not just use ClickFunnels’ automation app to add email sequences to your workflow? Well, ConvertKit is more optimized for setting up email sequences or running such personalized email marketing campaigns. (More info below)

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Design Solutions

ClickFunnels gives you complete design control to build sophisticated sales funnels, while ConvertKit is more effective for building simple lead capture pages.

ClickFunnels provides all the advanced design and customization tools businesses need to create smart funnels, standalone landing pages, blogs, and lots more.

ClickFunnels offers users three distinct design options to create well-structured funnels and web pages. There’s the smart funnel builder optimized to help you set up whole funnels in minutes—from the copy to graphics and everything in between, the algorithm does the heavy lifting for you. All you have to do is fill in basic information about your industry, desired features, and design style.

But keep in mind that the smart builder is quite limited in flexibility and doesn’t offer as many design options as ClickFunnels’ battle-tested templates, which are optimized to drive action. (Would require a bit of technical chops from you, though)

However, where you will get the most leverage for everything design and customization on ClickFunnels is in the global page editor.

Whether you’re designing a high-converting sales funnels, remodeling sales pages, creating a standalone landing page, redesigning a site template, or building a blog, course, or store page from scratch, the Page Editor gives you the flexibility to design and structure pages without any coding knowledge. (Or with Custom CSS/HTML, if you will)

Its drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) nature makes it easy to add different elements beyond the existing template design. You can use it to add stacks, CTA scroll stoppers, FAQs, pop-ups, and lots more to your page.

Finally, in addition to ClickFunnels’ primary customization and design options, there are engagement-boosting features available to enhance website performance. These include:

• A Split test tool to test conversions for two variations of a page in your funnel;
• Survey workflows – to create and add dynamic surveys to your funnel pages.
• A Short links tool to create concise, memorable links that redirect to specific pages;
• And a Conversion booster feature to show real-time user activity, like sign-ups and purchases, that can build trust and encourage action within your pages.

ConvertKit has all the basic design tools online creators need to build landing pages and opt-in forms.

Unlike ClickFunnels, ConvertKit’s design and customization options are built for creating simple landing pages and forms to gather subscribers rather than sophisticated sales funnels. So there’s no robust drag-and-drop page builder with customizable stacks or an AI builder to set you up in minutes.

What you will get are easy-to-customize landing page templates and a simple page editor with elements such as images, icons, a color palette, headings, numbered lists, and more. Then there’s the advanced setting to set up double opt-in and embed scripts.

For creators looking to create simple opt-in forms to embed on existing web pages, ConvertKit allows you to choose between an Inline, Modal, Slide-in, and Sticky bar option, giving you full control over how your forms are displayed within the content of your page.

And in terms of analytics, unlike ClickFunnels, which consolidates all its performance reports in a centralized analytics app, ConvertKit provides a hard-to-miss sign-up graph at the top of its landing pages and forms hub, ensuring you always have a clear overview of landing pages that are performing well.

Finally, ConvertKit’s in-app design and customization options are pretty basic for non-tech-savvy users. But like ClickFunnels, ConvertKit allows you to use custom CSS and HTML to create your templates, so with the proper technical knowledge, you can overcome most of its design limitations.

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Managing Subscribers

ClickFunnels supports CRM-like tracking and categorization of contacts, whereas ConvertKit is big on simple tagging and segmentation.

ClickFunnels offers multiple internal apps that can be put together to form a dedicated CRM solution.

ClickFunnels, as we hinted above, is ideal for building sales funnels—pipelines that move potential customers from one stage of the sales process to the next—so you can expect as many subscriber management features as you would get from a dedicated CRM.

Subscriber management on ClickFunnels begins on its Contacts page. This is where you will find the leads you exported through a CSV, those captured through your lead magnets, as well as the ones you manually input.

From the Contact page, you can assign tags to organize your leads, check each lead’s status (subscribed or unsubscribed), get an at-a-glance overview of their lifetime value (LTV), see the dates they were added, modify your columns to spotlight other preferred information, and filter contacts by various attributes.

You can also take bulk actions to manually enroll multiple contacts into a course or delete more than one contact from your list. However, for an in-depth overview of how a lead within your funnel is performing, including their activity status, enrolled courses, set appointments, and more, you will need to click on the lead’s profile.

Clicking on a lead’s profile also grants access to the Opportunities app, which allows you to organize contacts into pipelines and stages, just as you would in a full-fledged CRM. Another upside to the Opportunities app is that it shows you where a specified contact is in their sales journey, allowing you to follow up effectively.

One final app we couldn’t help but notice within ClickFunnel’s CRM solution is the Message hub. This app brings together all your customer conversations in one place, combining messages from text, email, and social media so your sales rep can manage and respond to customers quickly.

On the downside, ClickFunnel’s contact hub doesn’t offer any list-cleaning tool to monitor and maintain the integrity of your list. So to ensure you don’t end up building funnels for subscribers who have gone stale due to job turnover, abandoned addresses, and domain changes, integrate with mailfloss.

ConvertKit offers a simple subscriber-centric page designed to manage and nurture an email list.

ConvertKit, on the other hand, prioritizes the need to help users nurture and convert captured leads through targeted email sequences. So while you can use it to create landing pages and opt-in forms to capture leads, it’s more hands-on for organizing an email list.

It offers a dedicated Subscriber profile page that allows you to categorize contacts using tags & segments, so you don’t need to create multiple lists. This also guarantees that no matter how many times someone opts into your forms or landing pages, they will only appear once on your subscriber page.

From the Subscriber page, you can identify bounced, blocked, unconfirmed, and cancelled subscribers. You can also take bulk actions, such as adding multiple subscribers to a tag or sequence, and managing subscriber preferences by assigning multiple topics of interest to tags, allowing subscribers to choose the type of emails they’d like to receive.

However, if you want a deep dive into an email history, automation, forms, or purchases made by a particular subscriber, you have to click their profile. Clicking on any of your subscribers’ profiles also grants access to the features you need to create custom fields and store other information, e.g., their last name, phone number, favorite color, and so on. But note that you can’t natively blacklist/whitelist subscribers on ConvertKit.

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Creating & Sending Emails

ClickFunnels’ email toolkit is effective for running simple marketing campaigns; however, you will get greater flexibility with ConvertKit if you prioritize an email-first strategy.

ClickFunnels provides all the basic features needed to send broadcast messages, but requires complex automations to create and send email sequences.

While ClickFunnels is not a dedicated email marketing tool, it has all the basic features you need to send emails. However, you’d first have to connect an existing domain and add a custom email to your ClickFunnels account before you can fully access the integrated email app.

Its integrated Email app welcomes you with an email editor and multiple templates you can use to design broadcast messages.

The editor enables you to add rows to your preferred templates, rearrange blocks, customize fonts, change background colors, embed countdown timers in your emails, add videos, and create lists. It also provides a Merge tag element you can use to personalize your emails with each recipient’s name, phone number, or greetings.

But keep in mind that while you can easily send one-time emails through the emails app, sending an automated sequence would require that you use the workflow toolkit within the automation app. And the process is quite tedious, demanding that you add each email within your sequence as a defined step in a multi-step automation workflow.

Finally, while ClickFunnels provides a built-in email-sending system that works for many users, connecting your own SMTP service or a third-party autoresponder tool can enhance its flexibility in situations where you want greater control over your emails’ routing, tracking, and reputations.

ConvertKit provides all the basic tools needed to send a broadcast and effortlessly design an automated sequence, plus the advanced features to A/B test email layouts and reuse content snippets.

ConvertKit is designed to help users create and manage email campaigns, so unlike ClickFunnels, it provides multiple hubs for creating broadcast emails and email sequences. To design and send a Broadcast on ConvertKit, simply choose from the plethora of in-app templates available.

Each template gives you access to its Email editor, which you can use to add, reorder, and delete sections; style and remove content. Add polls and get feedback from your audience, link to your social profiles, add a list of link buttons, recommend other creators, add a collection of images and lots more.

You can also set up an A/B test for email layouts and subject lines and customize your templates with liquid codes to automatically add subscribers’ first names, email addresses, and personalized greetings to your emails. ConvertKit’s liquid code personalization, at its core, is comparable to the merge tags feature on ClickFunnels.

However, ConvertKit takes things up a notch with the conditional subscriber tags feature, which allows you to show different content to subscribers based on the tags associated with their email addresses.

And when it comes to creating automated sequences for marketing campaigns, ConvertKit provides a dedicated hub with fresh templates to hasten the process, as well as a centralized design hub that makes it easy to string a series of emails together in a specified order.

You can also automatically append UTM parameters to all of your broadcast and sequence links, or effortlessly reuse sections or snippets of your content across multiple emails.

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Automating Workflows

ClickFunnels lets you automate complex business workflows across your sales ecosystem, while ConvertKit is more focused on email-centric automations.

ClickFunnels is designed to help you build workflows around complex business processes and manage each subscriber’s journey.

Workflow automation on ClickFunnels happens on its automation app. It allows you to set triggers that execute specific events whenever a user takes a specific action.

For example, let’s say you want to automatically send follow-up emails to a contact who clicked on a specific sales email. Select the “Send email step – click” option from the event types available on ClickFunnels.

With this trigger in play, you can then add the “Send Email” step in the next stage of your automated workflow. But keep in mind that while the “Send email” step is designed for sending automated email sequences, it can’t hold a string of emails. So if your follow-up email sequence contains seven emails, you would have to create seven distinct steps, which lengthens the process.

Aside from follow-up emails, ClickFunnels allows you to set triggers for actions like community ban, survey completed, subscription churn, appointments, calendar events, pageview, and lots more. The platform also offers numerous advanced workflow automation features to organize complex business processes.

You can create workflows that automatically move contacts across pipeline stages; split test web pages in between workflows to know which performs best, or design a conditional split path to send customers down a preferred sales or onboarding funnel if they match specific filters.

Finally, if you’re not looking to automate complex, multi-step processes and need something simple, like an “if this happens, then that” (trigger/effect) automation, ClickFunnel offers Quick actions.

You can use Quick Actions to automate tasks across your ClickFunnels workspace and easily respond to users’ behavior within your landing pages, pipelines, courses, communities (including modules and lessons), products, and appointments.

ConvertKit is focused on helping creators set up email marketing workflows to nurture and grow their subscriber base.

Similar to ClickFunnel’s Quick Action feature is ConvertKit’s Automation Rules. It provides a “if this happens, then that” (trigger/action) automation based on a subscriber’s behavior. For example, if a user subscribes to an email sequence, you can set rules to automatically add a custom field to that user’s contact.

But unlike ClickFunnel’s Quick Action feature, which allows you to automatically set triggers with effects across your communities, membership site, and all other parts of your workspace, ConvertKit’s automation rules are designed to take actions only within your email setup when certain events occur.

For complex, multi-step workflow automation, ConvertKit provides visual automation templates and a dedicated hub that enables you to create email workflows to support your newsletter efforts, course selling activities, unsubscribe surveys, and more.

Unlike ClickFunnels, ConvertKit’s automation builder can help you create email workflows that automatically schedule entire email sequences, eliminating the lengthy process of adding each email as a separate step. This is especially useful for creators who require quick, intuitive setups when running multiple drip campaigns.

Finally, a single ConvertKit workflow can have multiple entry points (e.g. tags, product purchase, costom fields, etc.,) as well as numerous conditions (eg. advanced filters, email opens, etc) that must be met before a subscriber would be moved down a custom path.

But keep in mind that, unlike ClickFunnels, ConvertKit’s visual automation tools are also designed to only automate activities around your email marketing efforts, not entire business processes.

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Selling Products

ClickFunnels equips you with the e-commerce tools needed to run a full-scale online store, while ConvertKit gives you lightweight solutions to sell digital products.

ClickFunnels has the complete set of tools you need to build & manage an e-commerce store, selling both digital & physical products.

ClickFunnel’s integrated Store app supports a drag-and-drop setup that allows you to showcase your products, create irresistible offers, and ensure a smooth shopping journey. You can easily create and manage physical or digital products from the Store app or add existing ones from Zendrop.

Aside from the sales funnel pages, which you can use to guide buyers from the awareness to action stage, ClickFunnels offers;

• Discount feature for creating coupon codes,
• Upsell feature to enhance post-purchase conversion rate,
• System emails to ensure timely updates on order confirmations,
• An affiliate center you can use to boost sales, expand your audience, or build a network of promoters.

In terms of analytics, ClickFunnels’ Store page provides a 30-day overview of your visitors, orders, total sales, and average order value. However, if you want a high-level overview of what’s happening in your business and drill down using custom reports, you’ll gain more leverage with ClickFunnels’ dedicated Analytics app.

And when it comes to creating and managing transactions or storing payment data, ClickFunnels offers a Payment AI app you can integrate with Stripe, PayPal, or Coinbase.

ConvertKit provides a commerce platform for selling digital products and a creator network that promotes paid recommendations.

Unlike ClickFunnels, ConvertKit isn’t designed for typical e-commerce activities. While it provides a Commerce tool that helps you market your work, collect payments, and deliver your products, it’s built for digital products, not physical ones.

So you can only sell content like ebooks, albums, presents, coaching sessions, and newsletter subscriptions. To get started, you’ll need to add your product details to the Commerce catalog and choose a product type.

After that, you’ll be prompted with a product price page where you can create a discount offer, set up a tipping system—if you want your audience to make donations and support your work—and create payment plans that allow users to pay installments or to pay what they have.

Next up, you’ll need to integrate your account with Stripe, design a landing page for your product, add the product to your Creator profile or embed it in an automated sequence, and send it to your list. But keep in mind that you can also sell your product via Paid recommendations on the Creator Network.

ConvertKit’s Creator network offers a straightforward way to connect and collaborate with other creators who share similar audiences and want to grow together. In terms of analytics, ConvertKit offers a Payout hub within the Commerce platform, which you can explore for sales activities.

ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit: Pros & Cons

Final Verdict: ClickFunnels vs ConvertKit

ClickFunnels is ideal for business owners who want to build complete sales ecosystems, while ConvertKit suits creators who prioritize email-first marketing strategies.

If you’ve read through this comparison, then it’s no news that ClickFunnels and ConvertKit are fundamentally built for different types of online businesses:

ClickFunnels delivers a comprehensive sales ecosystem ideal for entrepreneurs seeking to automate complex business processes. Everything is designed to guide prospects through sophisticated sales funnels—from landing pages to payment processing to customer follow-up. Meanwhile, ConvertKit is the go-to platform for creators who want to focus on building authentic relationships with their audience through email marketing, at a more accessible price point and with simpler setup requirements.

Use ClickFunnels if:

• You’re building a complex online business that requires complex automation workflows
• You need a complete sales and marketing platform with advanced funnel capabilities
• You want to sell both digital and physical products

Click here to get started with ClickFunnels!

Use ConvertKit if:

• Your primary focus is building and nurturing an email list of subscribers
• You’re a creator selling digital products like courses, ebooks, or newsletters
• You want simple, easy-to-use tools for creating email sequences and broadcasts

Click here to get started with ConvertKit!