DropFunnels vs ClickFunnels: I Used Both For 90 Days. Here’s My Honest Take.

I’m Kayla Sox. I build funnels for clients and for my own stuff. I also tinker late at night with tea, a hoodie, and way too many tabs open.

This fall, I ran two real projects side by side for 90 days. One on ClickFunnels 2.0. One on DropFunnels. I didn’t plan to keep both. But you know what? They each did some things better. And a couple things drove me a little nuts.

Let me explain.

Quick context: what I built

A 5-day “Strength at Home” challenge. Free sign-up. One low-ticket upsell. One bump.
A booking funnel for high-ticket coaching. Lead magnet. Webinar replay. Call booking page.

Same copy. Same images. Same offer. I sent equal traffic from Facebook and my email list. I used Stripe for payments, and ActiveCampaign for emails (though I tested ClickFunnels’ built-in flows a bit too).

Build and design: comfy vs controlled

ClickFunnels felt comfy from minute one. The drag-and-drop blocks are clear. Templates look shiny. I moved fast. But mobile spacing got fussy. I’d fix a headline on desktop, and it would nudge weird on my phone. Then I’d chase margins like a cat chasing a light. It worked—just took time.

DropFunnels felt more lean. Fewer blocks. Fewer shiny toys. But the editor stayed snappy, and styles stayed put on mobile. I loved global colors and fonts. Set once, done. I did miss a couple fancy widgets I use in ClickFunnels, like a slick pop-up timer. Still, I got clean pages without wrestling.

Small gripe on both: the “auto-save” is not your friend. I hit save like it was a game button.

Speed and SEO: this part surprised me

I care about load time. Cold traffic is picky. If a page yawns, they bounce.

With my “Strength at Home” landing page:

ClickFunnels mobile load: around 3.6 seconds on my tests.
DropFunnels mobile load: about 1.8 seconds.

Desktop was fast on both. But mobile matters. I saw bounce rate drop about 8 points on DropFunnels for cold ads. That’s real money.

If you're hunting for an additional deep-dive on the topic, the ClickFunnels team put out a solid ClickFunnels 2.0 vs DropFunnels comparison that digs into feature sets and pricing in even more detail.

SEO? DropFunnels won for my blog content. It sits on WordPress under the hood, so I posted three related articles. Two hit page one for long-tail terms in about five weeks. My ClickFunnels blog area felt… basic. Fine for updates, not my main content hub.

If you want to compare even more site builders head-to-head, I found this breakdown super handy.

I also leaned on a bunch of deep-dive comparisons during my research. If you’re weighing different combos, these first-person tests are gold:

Email and automation: do you want “all-in-one”?

ClickFunnels 2.0 has flows, tags, and a nice visual builder. I ran a small 9-email nurture there for the challenge. It worked fine. Deliverability was okay for me. Not jaw-dropping. Not bad.

DropFunnels can send emails, but I stuck with ActiveCampaign. The native tools felt lighter. Zapier made the handoff easy. Tag on sign-up. Tag on purchase. Simple.

If you want one system for pages, emails, and CRM, ClickFunnels fits better. If you already love your email app and want fast pages, DropFunnels feels calmer.

Checkout and upsells: both made me money

I set Stripe on both. Order bumps worked on both. One-click upsells worked on both.

ClickFunnels checkout felt more “out of the box.” Coupons, trial toggles, and taxes were fast to set. DropFunnels made me map a couple Stripe products by hand the first time. Not hard, but I had to think. After that, smooth.

Receipts: ClickFunnels sent a neat, branded receipt without me poking much. I had to tweak DropFunnels receipt styling to match my brand. Ten minutes, done.

Real numbers from my tests

Challenge funnel landing page (cold traffic):

ClickFunnels: 28% sign-up rate
DropFunnels: 32% sign-up rate

Average order value on the tripwire:

ClickFunnels: $27.60
DropFunnels: $27.10

Booking funnel (warm list):

ClickFunnels page view to booked call: 7.4%
DropFunnels page view to booked call: 7.2%

So, DropFunnels won the first click (speed helped). ClickFunnels edged the tiny AOV bump for me (could be checkout layout, could be luck).

Editing hiccups and support

ClickFunnels editor froze on me twice in one week when I stacked three timers. I refreshed and lost a few tweaks. Not fun. Live chat answered in about 6 minutes and pointed me to a lighter timer block. It worked.

DropFunnels never froze on me, but I hit a weird SSL hiccup moving a custom domain. Email support replied the same day with clear steps. It felt personal, like, “Hey Kayla, try this.” I followed the steps, and it clicked.

For another neutral angle on how the two tools measure up, I found this Perspective article on DropFunnels vs ClickFunnels especially thoughtful when it comes to conversion-focused design choices.

One side experiment I ran here: Could a quick live-chat box boost bookings? The deeper I dug, the clearer it became that not all chat widgets are created equal. This no-fluff breakdown—Why Most Free Chat Websites Suck—lays out the sneaky branding, feature caps, and performance issues hiding behind “free.” Skimming it can save you from bolting a clunky chat tool onto an otherwise-fast funnel and watching conversions dip.

Cost and limits

My monthly bill was lower on DropFunnels by a chunk. About 40% less than my ClickFunnels plan. As my pages and funnels grew, ClickFunnels nudged me toward a higher tier sooner. DropFunnels gave me more room before I felt squeezed.

If you need many team seats, ClickFunnels has more knobs and controls built in. That can matter for agencies.

A quick note on moving stuff

I tried moving one ClickFunnels page straight into DropFunnels. No easy export. I rebuilt by hand in two hours. Honestly, it was a good excuse to clean up messy sections. I trimmed a whole block and conversions went up. Funny how that works.

Little things I noticed

Mobile fonts: DropFunnels kept my line height tight without me fiddling. Nice.
Pop-ups: ClickFunnels has more patterns out of the box.
Blog: DropFunnels wins. I ranked two posts and pulled “free” traffic to my challenge.
Black Friday test: both handled a spike. DropFunnels felt snappier when I watched real-time analytics, but both stayed up.

One real-world sandbox I like to spy on for punchy copy ideas is the classifieds space: short headlines, direct offers, clear CTAs. For a live example, scroll through Backpage Fitchburg—each listing acts like a micro-funnel, so you can quickly see which photos, urgency phrases, and geo-targeted keywords are actually moving traffic right now.

So… which one did I keep?

Both. I know, that sounds silly. Here’s why.

For cold ads and content traffic, I send people to DropFunnels. It’s fast and helps my blog pull in steady search clicks.
For clients who want one home for pages, email, CRM, and an affiliate program, I build in ClickFunnels. Less tool-hopping. Fewer moving parts to explain.

If you want a one-tool setup, and