There are numerous software solutions that are extremely powerful for building and optimizing high-converting sales funnels.
The only issue… is the price tag.
Paid sales funnel software can be extremely expensive: some solutions can cost thousands of dollars yearly. Suffice to say that many marketers simply can’t justify investing that much for a marketing tool.
After all, some marketers only want to whip up quick sales funnels occasionally and don’t want to pay hefty monthly fees to do so. On the other hand, some beginner digital marketers might want to gain some hands-on experience with free tools before graduating to paid sales funnel solutions. Others might only need a simple solution that doesn’t have all the fancy bells and whistles of premium sales funnel software.
Fortunately, there are a few solutions that allow you to build out highly effective multi-step funnels completely for free.
Here you can discover the 6 best free funnel builders.
But first, let’s break down what a sales funnel actually is shall we?
What defines a sales funnel builder?
A sales funnel builder is software that helps convert prospects into paying customers. These tools allow you to build out a sequence of web pages that guide prospects through the buying process for your product(s) or service.
A basic sales funnel you can create with these tools goes as follows:
While the sales funnel example above can be perfectly effective, sales funnel builders are capable of creating much more complex sales funnels as well. In addition to selling products and accepting payments, sales funnel builders also allow you to capture email addresses, upsell additional products, and more.
While using sales funnel builders, you can refer to numerous sales funnel examples with different variations for inspiration.
In order to allow you to build out a wide variety of different types of sales funnels, any reputable sales funnel builder offers the following core features:
Landing pages: Landing pages can be used to showcase your products or services. Often sales funnel builders provide landing page templates and allow you to edit these templates with a drag-and-drop editor.
Opt-in forms: Opt-in forms allow you to capture email addresses from prospects so that you can promote your offer with email marketing.
Order forms: Order forms facilitate sales transactions. In other words, order pages allow your customers to purchase your product or service.
Conditional logic: Conditional logic means that your sales funnel can direct prospects to different pages depending on their behavior. For instance, let’s say that you have a fairly complex sales funnel that sells a product, as well as two complementary, upsell offers. When a prospect clicks to purchase your product, they will be automatically directed to another page that promotes the first upsell offer.
From here, if the prospect chooses to add the first upsell offer to their cart, they will get automatically directed to another page that promotes the second upsell offer. Alternatively, if they decline the first upsell offer they will get directed to the checkout page where they can complete their purchase.
Analytics and testing: Sales funnel builders tend to give you reporting on important metrics such as number of visitors, leads captured, conversions, etc. Additionally, sales funnel builders allow you to A/B split test pages in order to optimize conversions.
Some sales funnel builders also have autoresponders for emailing prospects automatically after you capture them. At the very minimum, sales funnel builders at least have integrations with popular email marketing tools.
Shortcomings of building sales funnels for free
The features listed previously (landing pages, opt-in forms, order pages, conditional logic, analytics/testing) define sales funnel builders. However, unlike paid tools like Clickfunnels, unfortunately, there are no free tools or free versions of tools that include all of these features. For instance, most free software that you can use to build sales funnels don’t have order form features.
This isn’t to say that it isn’t possible to build sales funnels for free. You certainly can, but depending on the type of sales funnel you want to make, you may need to use two or more free tools to create your sales funnel. For instance, if you are using a free funnel builder tool that doesn’t have an order form feature, you would need to use a free order form tool such as Jotform in conjunction with your free sales funnel software.
Best free sales funnel software
With the following free funnel builders, you can quickly and easily design sales funnel for your business without paying a dime.
1. GetResponse
GetResponse is a powerful email marketing software. While the email marketing features alone are strong, the platform has developed other complementary features as well such as a landing page builder, a form builder, a payment processor, and other tools to create robust sales funnels.
In the spirit of transparency, GetReponse doesn’t offer all the features needed to build sales funnels with the free version. However, when you sign up with the free version, you get premium features for the first 30 days, which is more than enough time to start generating sales.
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Free features for building funnels
Landing pages: Given that GetResponse’s landing page builder is relatively new, it’s surprising how many amazing templates the platform provides.
Opt-in forms: Opt-in forms are key for building sales funnels, and fortunately this is a feature that GetResponse offers on its free version. You can place forms on your landing page to capture email addresses before directing them to your sales page.
How to build a sales funnel with GetResponse
As mentioned, with GetReponse’s free version, you get paid features in the first 30 days.
That said, upon signing up for GetReponses free version, you can leverage GetResponse’s sales funnel feature.
With this feature, you can choose a sales funnel template, which is essentially a landing page and a sales page connected to each other. The landing page allows you to capture the email addresses of visitors and then direct them to the sales page where they can purchase the product or service you’re selling.
Pros and cons of using GetResponse for sales funnels
- Huge variety of well-design landing pages
- Large selection of payment forms
- Integrations with popular payment processors to facilitate sales
- Powerful email marketing features for driving email traffic into your sales funnel
Cons
- Autoresponder doesn’t come with free plan
- Payment forms and sales funnel features only available for the first 30 days with the free plan
2. Wix
Wix is one of the most powerful website builders. Designed for small businesses and entrepreneurs, this website builder is intuitive and very easy to get started with. The platform has a few paid plans but given how feature-rich the free version is, many users have no need to upgrade.
Although Wix doesn’t market itself as a funnel builder, the platform has all the features needed to build out basic sales funnels.
Free features for building funnels
Web pages: It’s staggering how many website templates Wix offers. You can choose from hundreds of professionally designed themes.
Opt-in forms: You can choose from a variety of opt-in form styles for capturing email addresses. Additionally, you can add as many other fields as you want such as name or phone number.
Autoresponder: With Wix’s free plan you can set up two free email automations for delivering lead magnets to your subscribers.
How to build a sales funnel with Wix
With Wix, the process of building out a sales funnel is relatively straightforward. Basically, you would build out a mini website and design each page of your website as a piece of your sales funnel. Once you have created each page of your sales funnel, you would interlink the CTA buttons of each page to direct visitors through your sales funnel.
Most Wix templates have prebuilt site menu options for about pages, features, etc. It’s important to delete those items so that your site’s visitors don’t end up exploring other pages of your website instead of clicking-through your funnel’s pages as they should. Generally, the fewer distractions the better.
For an in-depth tutorial on how to create a Wix sales funnel see this post here!
Wix’s page editor
Pros and cons of using Wix for sales funnels
Pros
- Massive variety of website templates
- Extremely flexible drag-and-drop builder allows for great webpage customizability
- Automatic site backup is convenient for saving your work
Cons
- No free email marketing feature for nurturing leads
- Free version has Wix ads that can be distracting for visitors
- Load speed is known to be on the slow side which can hurt conversion rates
3. ConvertFlow
ConvertFlow is a platform designed for converting website visitors into leads. Widely used by agencies, Saas, and ecommerce companies alike, ConvertFlow gives businesses all the tools needed for boosting website conversions. Fortunately, ConvertFlow integrates with numerous popular email marketing platforms so that users can seamlessly follow up with your collected leads.
Additionally, unlike Wix, ConvertFlow markets its self as a sales funnel builder among other things.
Free features for building sales funnels
Landing pages: Choose from dozens of lead generation landing pages intended for a variety of purposes. For instance, there are landing pages designed for webinar registration, gated content opt-in, and ebook lead magnet promotion. All of which can be perfect for sales funnels.
Opt-in forms: Add and customize opt-in forms wherever you see fit on your landing pages to capture leads.
Advanced analytics: Not only can you see how many leads you captured in your sales funnel but you can also gain insights into how many pages each visitor clicked through in your funnel as well.
How to build a sales funnel with ConvertFlow
To build a sales funnel with ConvertFlow, start off by creating a lead capture landing page. This landing page will be the first page of your funnel.
Once you select a landing page you will get taken to an editor where you can customize your page however you see fit with the drag-and-drop builder. One of the coolest things about ConvertFlow’s editor is that you can add subsequent landing pages to your funnel without leaving the editor. In other words, you can build out all of your sales funnels landing pages in the same editor view. Naturally, this makes it incredibly easy to visualize every stage of your funnel at once.
Additionally, the CTA buttons of each landing page will automatically direct visitors to the next landing page in your lineup.
ConvertFlow’s landing page editor
Pros and cons of using ConvertFlow for sales funnels
- Good quality professionally designed lead gen landing pages
- Easily create variant landing pages for split testing
- Integrates with numerous email marketing platforms and CRM systems
Cons
- Drag-and-drop landing page builder can be a bit clunky
- Only 500 visitor limit before you need to upgrade to paid version
4. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is undoubtedly one of the most well-known email marketing platforms. For over two decades, Mailchimp has been an affordable email marketing solution for small businesses.
However, while Mailchimp is most well known for its email marketing capabilities, the company offers other features from paid ads management to marketing CRM. Not only are many of Mailchimp’s features available with its free plan, but these features are also perfect for building sales funnels.
Free features for building sales funnels
Landing pages: Mailchimp is an email marketing tool with landing page pages. The platform only comes with a handful of landing page templates, however, the drag-and-drop landing page builder makes the templates very customizable.
Opt-in forms: Many landing page templates have built-in opt-in forms that you can customize as you see fit.
Order forms: Unlike the other solutions listed in this post, Mailchimp allows you to add checkout forms to landing pages. These forms can integrate with Stripe and Square payment processors which are also completely free to use.
Autoresponder: Mailchimp allows you to set up a free autoresponder to deliver lead magnets. With some creativity, you can even use Mailchimp to create lead magnets as well.
Additionally, you can use Mailchimp to create email campaigns to nurture the leads you collect from your sales funnel.
How to build out a sales funnel with Mailchimp
To build out a sales funnel with Mailchimp, you will need to build out a series of landing pages. Create a landing page for every step of your sales funnel. Once they are complete, you will need to have each landing page’s CTA direct to the next landing page in your sequence.
Presumably, you will want to have an order page at the end of your sales funnel. To build out the order page, create a landing page and add the payment block to the landing page. This payment block prompts visitors to enter their credit card information in an order form to complete their purchase.
Mailchimp’s landing page editor
For an in-depth tutorial on how to build Mailchimp sales funnels see this post here!
Pros and cons of using Mailchimp for sales funnels
- Excellent landing page templates for both squeeze pages and sales pages
- Extremely generous free features make it easy to build sales funnels cost-effectively without limitations
Cons
- For some, the tool can be overwhelming at first given its numerous features
- Relatively limited selection of landing page templates
5. involve.me
involve.me isn’t nearly as well known as the other software featured in this post. However, this hidden gem is a treasure trove of amazing free features.
involv.me helps marketers create interactive content to engage their target audience. A few ways marketers use involv.me include creating lead generation quizzes, surveys, and calculators. Given how feature-rich and flexible this platform is, it’s perfect for building out multi-step sales funnels for free.
Free features for building sales funnels
Funnel templates: One thing that makes involve.me truly unique is the large selection of prebuilt funnels to choose from. These funnel templates are comprised of multiple sequential webpages and many are perfect for generating leads and sales.
Conditional logic: Conditional logic means that visitors can be shown different pages in your funnel depending on how they interact with previous pages. This can be great for building out quiz funnels where you would want to tailor quiz results based on responses in the quiz.
Advanced analytics: See valuable statistics such as the number of visitors that completed your funnel vs the number of partial completions.
How to build out a sales funnel with involve.me
You can build out a sales funnel with involve.me by choosing one of the templates or by building out a sales funnel from scratch using a blank canvas.
Once you have settled on a template, you will be taken to the editor where you can customize each page of the funnel in the same view. Simply click the page or “step” that you want to edit.
involve.me’s landing page editor
Additionally, you can reorder the steps of your funnel simply by clicking and dragging steps into whatever order you see fit. Similar to ConvertFlow, involv.me makes it incredibly easy to organize every step of your funnel given that you can edit every page under one editor.
Pros and cons of using involve.me for sales funnels
- Wide selection of funnel templates make building professional looking sales funnels easy and efficient
- Large variety of content blocks (images, video, forms etc.) for building pages
- Extremely flexible editor allows for extensive customizability
Cons
- Only 100 email submissions per month with free version
6. MailerLite
Compared to email marketing solutions like Mailchimp that have been around since the early 2000s, MailerLite is the new kid on the block. Regardless, MailerLite is arguably the most modern and clean email marketing tools you will find. The platform’s simple user interface makes it incredibly easy to create powerful email campaigns.
MailerLite is well known for its generous free features. Not only can you send 12,000 emails per month without paying a dime, but you can also take advantage of the platform’s free features to build sales funnels as well.
Free features for building sales funnels
Landing pages: MailerLite has a few dozen landing page templates; many of which are great for lead generation. The free plan allows you to create 5 landing pages, which is more than enough for a simple sales funnel.
Opt-in forms: While many of the landing page templates have built-in opt-in forms, you can add and customize opt-in forms as you see fit.
Autoresponder: MailerLite allows you to set up a free autoresponder to deliver lead magnets. Additionally, unlike Mailchimp, you can create entire automated drip campaigns with MailerLite for free as well.
How to build out a sales funnel with MailerLite
Like with Mailchimp, to build a sales funnel with MailerLite you would need to build out a landing page for every step of your sales funnel. Once your landing pages are complete you would direct each landing page’s CTA to the next landing page in your sequence.
One aspect that makes MailerLite’s landing page builder unique is its content blocks. Like most landing page builders, MailerLite has generic content blocks such as text and images, however, MailerLite also has special content blocks such as countdown timers, tables, surveys, quizzes, maps, and more. These options truly make the platform versatile.
MailerLite’s landing page editor
Pros and cons of using MailerLite for sales funnels
- Minimalistic user interface makes the platform extremely easy to use for beginners
- Free email automation and drip campaigns allow for effective follow up with collected leads
Cons
- Drag-and-drop builder isn’t super flexible
Final words
No matter what free solution you choose to create your sales funnel, keep in mind that you might not get amazing results the first time you send traffic through your funnel. To achieve a good conversion rate and drive tons of sales, it’s important to continually test new approaches out.
For instance, perhaps you may want to change up the copy or images in your sales funnels. Perhaps you may want to experiment with different types of sales funnels. Maybe you want to experiment with new traffic sources.
No matter what aspects of your marketing approach to change it’s important to always keep track of your results and measure how changes impact your sales funnel’s performance.
