Page Builders

A standard WordPress Site

Almost invariably most people choose the most popular option  – WordPress.  Now in 2021, most people use the Gutenburg Editor, provided with WP, but just to be complete WordPress’s original editor is still available, look for the “Classic” editor. 

Some of the more prolific publishers for example Jon Dykstra, instructs his writers to use the Classic editor, as it is simply faster to write in, than the current editor Gutenburg.

When producing content daily, over a period, the time wasted for instance changing blocks: which needs much more swapping from keyboard to mouse, and manipulation when inserting images where you want them ( which is still not fixed…. c’mon WP ! ) is significant compared to Classic.  There is no doubt a small code weight disadvantage for Gutenburg too.

Personally, I find Elementor is so useful, I’ve made it my standard page builder. Unless I’m planning an all-text page, everything is done using Elementor.

WordPress is completely free, is open-source code and there are many free third-party plugins to make everyday tasks easier to complete. Things like forms, list optins, video and picture insertion, galleries, tables, graphs, the list of Plugins is huge and many are world-beating high quality. 

In addition, some plugins have an upgrade available to do even more functions. 

Open Systems & Closed Systems

In the list of page and funnel builders below are some Open and some are Closed systems. 

What are they and what are the advantages/disadvantages?

The system only works as long as you pay. Make sure you know how to deal with your pages if you decide to stop paying !!

My examples of closed systems are ClickFunnels, BuilderAll, and Kartra. WordPress though is the basic and an Open-system. In other words, you ADD ON other programs to WP, to perform other functions.  For example you might use MailChimp for Email marketing, or SemRush for Keyword research.

Some networks and online tutors might use ClickFunnels templates, like Colin Dijs for example, so following his examples may be difficult without a subscription to ClickFunnels. 

Affiliate Landing Pages

These are a ‘special case’ of funnel building

When promoting your own product/s  you may well have the need for upsells/ downsells/ offers etc. In practice with Affiliate promotions, this doesn’t happen as often, you are simply pre-selling or taking an opt-in ( email ) . The up and down sells would appear on the Vendors sales page.

I would suggest that for an affiliate, at least in the early stages at least, a simple page builder fulfills all these needs and there is just no necessity to go for an “All singing All Dancing” program like ClickFunnels or anything more than a drag n drop type page builder. I got my sites running using Elementor perfectly easily.

One addition (plugin) that is very helpful as your site expands and you have many links to consider is PrettyLInks.  This is a link builder WP plugin, you set up the link which redirects to your affiliate page, rather than setting up a link directly. In this way, should the affiliate offer end or change, it is very much less work to change the links all in one place than look through your entire site.

What are the best Page Builders?

The following sections are not meant to be full reviews  or full lists of features to compare, only an introduction to each of the page builders you will no doubt have heard about, seen advertised, and a few of their most prominent features

Builderall

Builderall is an example of a “one  source for everything” solution to website building.  A reasonable monthly fee enables access to not only the software, but the Builderall community. A sort of ‘forum’ with lots of help for beginners, more importantly if you build your own solution to a common requirement, you can go on to offer that to the community either free or as a paid solution. For example 

  • The best drag and drop Website Builder with hundreds of features
  • The Only Real and complete Graphic Funnel Builder
  • Vídeo hosting tool
  • Membership websites and e-learning system
  • Unlimited Email Marketing (yes, unlimited email marketing)
  • CRM and automation system
  • Chatbot and SiteBot
  • Booking Calendar
  • Super checkout system with dozens of payment gateway integrations
  • Run your own affiliate program (1 tier or multi-tier)
  • Ecommerce Checkout
  • Auction Checkout
  • Magazine builder
  • Mockup and image editor
  • Vídeo Wrapper
  • Browser Notifications
  • Blog Builder
  • Chat Builder
  • Google and Adsense Friendly Builder
  • Hundreds of Vídeo tutorials and a huge knowledge base
  • Chat and ticket support, and much more..

 

 

Order Your Builderall PackageHere

Marketer Plan

$69.90/month
  • 3 Domains
  • 5 Sub Domains
  • Disk Space 5Gb
  • Funnel Builder

Premium Plan

$79.90/month
  • Unlimited Domains
  • Unlimited SubDomains
  • Disk Space 10Gb
  • Funnel Builder

Note Funnel Club has an initial cost of $199.00 and is the only version to have the Funnel builder. Though $80 and month is a bit of a reach, for a new startup with no income yet, in the scheme of things it is not a large sum considering the individual cost of all the facilities in the Funnel Club. So if you’re going for BuilderAll, I recommend the top pack “Funnel Club” as the others just don’t have any point!

ClickFunnels

Brainchild of expert teacher and author Russell Brunson and current market leader by a mile is ClickFunnels. His  publications “DotCom Secrets” and “Expert Secrets” are essential reading for anyone considering a career in Selling. ClickFunnels is a means of quickly getting a design into a working webpage.

ClickFunnels contains: 

  • Page Builder
  • Email autoresponder
  • Hosting
  • Form builder for leads
  • payment processor/checkout

CF supports a huge number of templates and you can of course create your own templates to reuse over and over .  Ideal drag n drop type editor with endless widgets to use in all types of businesses.  

Downsides:  often found in reviews are bugs in the software, limited number of features, very poor autoresponder/email platform and not great looking page templates.  If you needed a funnel function which is not already designed, it would very likely never be designed, so you would have to find a work-around.  ClickFunnels is a Closed System: Your data is locked into their system, should you wish to migrate or stop your monthly subscription – all your work is lost. As has been said elsewhere, most CF users tend to use their own autoresponder rather than the CF bundled one, even though you get it  in with the monthly fee , as its features are so poor.

When compared to WordPress, ClickFunnels is likened to renting your web real-estate.  True CF makes pages easy to make, but once you’re used to the system and all the plugins, I think WP wins hands down. Add Elementor for your page builder and you have a ClickFunnels beater.

Training however is one of ClickFunnels ( and Russells ) MAJOR strengths, having gone through a lot of Russells works,  he is a true master at explaining the hows, whys and whos of the marketing puzzle.

If you build frequently changing landing pages as with a  lot of network offers, then I would consider Click funnels for the sheer speed of building them, literally 10 minutes is  all that you need for most landing pages.

Order Your ClickFunnels Package Here

Platinum Plan

$297/month
  • Unlimited Funnels
  • Unlimited Pages
  • 3 team members

2 Comma Club

$2,497/month
  • Unlimited Funnels
  • Unlimited Pages
  • 10 team members

Kartra

Kartra is truly an All-In-One platform for marketers. Plan and execute your funnels, webpages, shopping carts and email campaigns from one dashboard. 

Once you have started your online empire and you see a trickle of income coming in, Kartra is a big contender and well worth considering as you really don’t need anything else!

Kartra contains hundreds of pre-built beautifully crafted sales pages, options, forms and everything else a  marketer needs, all done by top professionals

Kartra also allows you to share your funnels and materials ie. other Kartra user’s materials, so if someone shares a funnel or form that you want to use, Kartra makes that easy to do.

You can host on Kartra, or on WP or on your own server, pages you build can be exported and uploaded as HTML, appearing on your own site. There are no limitations. You can insert Kartra pages into an existing site or create a whole blog with Kartra.

  • Email marketing campaign platform
  • Marketing automation platform (letting you build and automate your sales funnels)
  • Marketing page builders (landing pages, squeeze pages, sales pages, thank you pages, product launch pages, checkout pages, video sales letter pages, and more)
  • Membership portal builders
  • Shopping carts
  • Online form builders
  • Split testing and link tracking software
  • Calendar and appointment scheduling software
  • Helpdesk ticketing systems, including live chat
  • Video hosting (with advanced marketing features)
  • Affiliate management system
  • Campaign analytics platform
  • Custom programming to integrate your various marketing software platforms — Kartra seamlessly integrates all of the above already
  • Graphic designers — Kartra’s professional, stunning templates designed to convert — for pages, emails, forms, and more — take care of that for you

Order Your Kartra Package Here

Silver

$199/month
  • 3 Domains
  • Up to 12500 leads

Gold

$299/month
  • 10 Domains
  • Up to 50000 leads

The price for a Silver or Gold package might be a little prohibitive  for a beginner. So I have to recommend the Starter Package. There is FYI a fourth package – Platinum for just £499/month.

There are discounts for Kartra if paying annually and for the beginner using the Starter pack, you get a seriously professional platform with nothing left out, for less than the sum of all the services you would need.

Plus 24/7 help from Kartra helpline and the Kartra community help.

If you want to see what can be done, by a true pro – Marissa Romero ( YouTube Channel) is a Kartra customer, hosting all her sites and courses on the platform.

Elementor

Why have I included Elementor?

Well it’s a fantastic page builder and to be honest, do you really want a fully fledged funnel builder when just starting out? No probably not your pages will initially only have a first offer and perhaps an upsell, which is very simple to code by changing the links.

By using a tracking tool like BeMob or Ad Tracker Gold, you can add the necessary data collection and even AB testing to your pages

In fact, it serves you in that using a basic tool where you are doing the linking by hand, you’re actually making sure the basics are firmly established in your head. It’s fine learning a fancy tool like ClickFunnels, but Elementor has the templates, the buttons, and everything else that you need, plus it isn’t too difficult to integrate with many autoresponders.

All my landing pages are created with Elementor and work just fine and with zero cost.

Groove Funnels

Mike Filsaime’s GrooveFunnels have in a short time got going with a comparable funnel creator ( and more) to the established ClickFunnels. 

You may have seen their reviews and adverts “Free Forever”. Is it free, how would a company exist giving everything away?  Upsells and Limited versions of course.  So how good is the funnel builder Lite version? 

I have to say – I found a LOT of negative reviews online, some with quite serious problems with the drag n drop page builder. This is really NOT what you want to hear if it’s going to be the basis of your web pages. So my advice is to either look elsewhere or if you have time to spare, try out the free option before deciding.

For a beginner, it’s an ideal starting point, zero outlay gets you going. Their Groove Email is not free, so making this work with an autoresponder is going to be an extra cost.  However, like Clickfunnels, you can connect to most of the autoresponders on the market.

The same thing applies with many of the autoresponders, they have a zero cost starting tier up to so many emails or customers, before entering the paid tier.

No company can survive giving everything away forever, so I fully expect to see the free offer giving way to a similar pricing structure to all the others eventually. So beware! If you’re heavily invested in GrooveFunnels and then they slap a big monthly fee on it, it makes it all a bit uncertain, to say the least. 

Order Your Groove Funnels Package Here

Lead Pages

Leadpages have been around for a good while and is widely used. A mature platform is usually a much better option than a brand new one which turns out to be a waste of time. 

You can build pages very quickly.

One limitation which put me off is that you are limited to using templates, it is difficult to start a page from scratch. Further, different templates have different limitations on placement.

Apart from a few gripes about the page builder drag n drop editor being a bit dated – it limits placement of your elements to certain areas only, within each template.  Of all the editors tested very few – only Leadpages and Groove had any obvious software bugs or limitations like this.

It was also reported to be a lot more difficult to use within WordPress

Better editors exist! There were gripes about the pricing, but for what LP does well, I don’t think the price is too bad

Order Leadpages here...

Pro

$59/month
  • 3 Domains
  • Enhanced Customer Support
  • AB Split Testing

Further levels on Application