WPFunnel vs FluentCRM: A Full Review
Discover which email marketing tool wins: FluentCRM vs WPFunnel + Mail Mint. See features, integrations, and pricing in our detailed comparison.
In this show, we delve into the features and functionalities of FluentCRM, WPFunnel, and Mail Mint —three powerful tools designed to streamline your email marketing and customer relationship management. We compare their capabilities, usability, and integrations to help you determine which solution best fits your business needs. This analysis is essential whether you’re a small business or a growing enterprise.
This Week’s Sponsors
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine show. This is episode 124. In this show, we’re gonna do a comparison of two great landing page email marketing optimization platforms. They’re both superb in my opinion. We’re going to be doing a comparison with WP Funnels Plus Mail Mint against one of our old favorites, Fluent CRM. I receive a lot of questions and confusion about what these platforms are and how they work. Hopefully, we’ll clear up some of the confusion, rather than making it worse. Well, my co-host will clear it up. I will probably make you more confused, my beloved audience. But no, I will even do my best. It’s a bit confusing, but we’ll hopefully put you on the right path. As I say, it should be a great show. First of all, I’d like to introduce my co-host. Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:25.990] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. It’s great to be here for another episode. My name is Kurt, Kurt von Ahnen. I own a company called Manananomas, which focuses mainly on membership and learning websites.
[00:01:36.710] – Jonathan Denwood
Right, so before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into this great show, I also want to point out that we’ve got some great special offers from the sponsors.
Additionally, we received a special offer on the course created by Kirk, which teaches you how to build a membership website or community website using WordPress from start to finish, utilizing the best WordPress technology. It’s a great course, you get it at 50%. It’s incredibly inexpensive, and it will save you a significant amount of time and frustration. Plus, we’ve got some other special offers. A list of the best WordPress technologies. To get all this, all you have to do is go over to wp tonic.com deals, wp hyphen tonic.com deals. What more could you ask for? I don’t know. There’s a great resource, so let’s get into it. So if somebody came to you and said, you know, it’s a confusing landscape out there with all the SaaS solutions, everybody is on everybody’s turf. They’re looking at WordPress and some native solutions because I don’t think you can have a modern membership or community website without a marketing organization, landing pages, and marketing automation.
[00:03:36.440] – Jonathan Denwood
I view it as a key component of the technology stack. And until a few years ago, Kirk, I think WordPress was lacking, but that’s no longer the case. And I think there are a couple of other players out there. But I see these as the two leaders and the two that I like. We offer these two technologies at WP Tonic, and I like both of them. So, if somebody were coming to you and saying they wanted to build a membership and community website. They were asking about marketing automation. How would you describe these two offerings? A quick intro.
[00:04:25.730] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, the quick intro is, you know, you could be a smart aleck and say toss a coin, but the honest answer is to do a real needs assessment and ask the client, or in this case, our listeners and viewers, what do you want out of these tools? Because they are different, and they do behave differently. I think that’s important. For instance, you know, can I build landing pages in a website and create a funnel around it using automations in Fluent CRM Pro? Absolutely, yeah, I can do that. But if I go to WP Funnels, I click a button that says ‘Start a Funnel,’ and it gives me a landing page, a conversion page for sales, and a thank-you page, all in one. So, it’s important to say, like, what is your use case? Now, you said in your intro that you felt like it was a requirement, a necessity to have marketing automation as part of a membership or learning website. And I agree with you, but it goes back to what the actual use case or the drive of the site?
[00:05:30.270] – Kurt von Ahnen
If it’s one of those intranet sites where mandatory training is required for a corporation, that doesn’t matter. They need to send some update emails and maybe a couple of messages. And a CRM is perfect for that. They don’t necessarily need landing pages and funnels, but if there’s someone that’s a course creator and they want to sell, you know, how to ride a horse, how to build a bicycle, how to work on a car, courses, then they’re going to want the automation that like WP Funnels brings to the table. But we have to, we have to drag that out of them. You need to find out what the real use case is to determine what tools they actually need. Drag it out, drag them out, drag it out.
[00:06:07.620] – Jonathan Denwood
As it relates to everything we’ll be discussing on this show, folks, you need to have a marketing plan. You’ve got to keep in mind not to get too focused or fixated on getting everything perfect about this course. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to solve a real problem. That’s what it’s got to do. And there’s got to be an audience that cares about that problem. It’s as simple as that. And then, the course, your first course, has to solve some of these problems and be one that happy users think they got good value from. And then you can market another course to these people. And if they’re talking about it on social media, more people will join your membership website. That’s what you’ve got to focus on. And marketing optimization is essential when you’re fixated, and you should be about marketing your first course. That’s why I think it’s important, folks. Now let’s get in a quick inch of my intro because a lot of people do mix up Fluent CRM and what WP Funnels is, but they’re two very different beasts. Yeah, but then you can add Mail Mint to the mixture.
[00:07:50.560] – Jonathan Denwood
But let’s start with what WP Funnels is. WP Funnels is a funnel builder. It enables you when you go to build landing pages to it works with all the leading page builders and it works with them really well. It works works with Cadence, WP Generate Press and the majority of Gutenberg based page builders. But it definitely works really well with Cadence. It works with Alamat really well. It works with Oxygen, which I wouldn’t recommend. It works, it won’t work with every page builder out there. It will work even with Divvy. It will work with Divi as well. So the four or five major page builders, it works. You select which page builder you’re using in the WP Funnels interface and off you go. Depending on what page builder you will get a list of pre designed landing pages that they’re quite nice, they’re expanding. You can fully edit them in your favorite page builder and then it gives you a canvas, a visual canvas where you can build your marketing optimization. You build your landing page, then you can copy it or build from the ground up your thank you page, your upsell. It’s really very slick.
[00:09:41.170] – Jonathan Denwood
What would you add to what I’ve just described, Kurt?
[00:09:45.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I’d like to just embellish on part of what you hinted at and that was the available pre made templates I know that we’ve reviewed other products before and I always seem to go back to this. But a lot of course creators and users and site managers just face facts. They want to focus on running the business, not necessarily being in this overly creative tech space. And so the volume and selection of templates in the products, both for WP Funnels and for mailmint is admirable. They give you a really great starting point to get started on your messaging and the way that you propose things to people. And that drag and drop editor on the canvas, Jonathan, that is really cool because you kind of draw lines and arrows to tag the things together in the order that you want. And if for some reason you want to swap something, it’s as easy as dragging it around on the screen or moving it, you know, changing its placement. Whereas in other funnel creators it’s more like a delete, delete, delete, recreate, recreate, duplicate, move around thing. It’s much easier in double WP Funnels.
[00:10:54.880] – Jonathan Denwood
In my opinion, it is the best interface of all the products out there. In my opinion. It’s a taste thing. In the second half we’re going to be talking about the competitors a bit more detail, but I think it’s Main Comp. It’s main competitor and there’s some others. But when we, when we talking about it with Mel Min, which we’ll get on in a minute, I want to cover it WP Funnel Mailman in the first half of the show and then we talk about how it competes with some of the competitors. WP Funnel will work with Learn CRM very. It’s built to work with it but. And they also provide their own solution. That sounds a bit odd but when they first developed this they didn’t have Mail Mint and Fluent CRM was and still is a fantastic. I. I’m going to explain how I see the combination of WP Funnel and Mel Mint comparing it in the second half with Fluent CRM. But its main competitor in a way, and there’s some others, is Cart Flows. In building funnels now it works really well with Woo Woo commas and but it also works quite well with sure Member and Car and sure Car.
[00:12:47.280] – Jonathan Denwood
It does have integration, I checked and it does and they’ve built a lot of native integrations folks. They’ve been on it. So I really like Cart Flows but I actually, I think this is a slicker system than Car Flows. What do you think?
[00:13:09.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
I like it better than Cart Flows. I think it’s more complete and more, more direct for the User, I feel. But I’m thinking of it in terms of working directly with Mail Mint as well. Yes, there’s, there’s two main things and I know that we’re going to talk about it in the show but I, I kind of put up like little barriers, you know, like sometimes I get these, you know, like these little K walls in my mind that I can’t get past on certain things. If I’m building a Lifter LMS website and I know that I want to do integrations and I want to use the actions and Lifter to generate messaging and stuff like that, well then it’s going to be a fluent CRM site for me. But if I want to incorporate SMS messaging or in tie into WhatsApp or something like that, well then it’s, I’m going to go more towards WP funnels and Mail Mint and that’s strictly because those, the problem, the obstacle with some of these tools is we see things as customers, we go oh well they both have automations but when you dive in deep on the automations you go oh this one, this one needs a third party automation tool to connect with blah blah, blah.
[00:14:17.510] – Kurt von Ahnen
And I’m always looking for the most direct connection possible. So that’s part of how I would pick those tools based on that use case scenario with the client.
[00:14:26.070] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And it really works well with Lifter lms, learndash and Tutor LMS they’ve got great integrations with all they’re the free leader learning management system which we recommend and if you don’t want to use you can use Lifter’s native system subscription system if you’re using learndash or Tutor it. Like I say it works really well with Woo but you it will also work with Shore Member and Shore Car if you don’t want to go and if you don’t want to go the native road with Lifter which really great but you want something so you can do upsells down sales but you don’t want to go the Woo route utilizing this with Shore Member which you’re going to have to do if you’re going down the Learn dash you’re going to need a membership and if you don’t want to use Woo, I just think your member is the easiest because it works with Shaw Car and you’ve got a very powerful system. Right?
[00:15:37.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And sure Cart does the recurring billing without the requirement for an additional add on.
[00:15:43.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly.
[00:15:44.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah.
[00:15:45.320] – Jonathan Denwood
So let’s go on to Mail Mint. So they built, they built WP Funnel and it integrated with some of the native WordPress email marketing optimization platforms. And they got a, they saw opportunity, they got a lot of feedback and they decided to build their own, which is marketing email marketing optimization. But it also, you can build newsletters and you can build newsletters with fluent CRM. But it’s a very similar situation in my opinion to ActiveCampaign. Because Active Campaign, you can build newsletters, but it’s not its greatest strength. And that’s what I would say about fluent CRM. You can build newsletters, but it’s not its greatest strength either. Now, when you look at Mail Mint, the setting up the marketing optimization using their canvas that exact is exactly the same as WP funnels. It’s extremely powerful. But they’ve also got a very nice, nice library of. Of templates, in my opinion, some of the best in the industry. And it’s a drag and drop editor, very easy to use. It’s a very polished system. What do you think, Kurt?
[00:17:28.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree with just about everything you said.
[00:17:31.320] – Jonathan Denwood
You keep saying that.
[00:17:32.760] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, yeah. It seems like the show where that’s going to happen a lot to me and because I’m a heavy fluent CRM user, Jonathan, it’s on multiple projects for me and it’s introducing a new one to you.
[00:17:48.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Well.
[00:17:51.570] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think the Mail mint looks nicer and the canvas builder for sequencing the messages. If I’m building an email sequence that’s a little more user intuitive, I think the thing that blows me away is and I probably need to do more research as a fluent CRM user, to be honest with you, you. But on all these fluent sites that I, that I use, you know, I see the, the three basic templates that come with it, right? So you have the plain email with the four or five different ways that it does it, right? So they’re just like picture at the top, picture at the bottom, picture in the middle kind of thing. You get those choices and then you have this window you can open up that’s more of a visual email builder. And it gives you basically a start from scratch, like a messaging template and then kind of like a, like a products template. You know, if I was going to say it any differently. So you only get those three. And so what I’ve done for me and for my clients is I’ve built templates with my client’s logo or my logo, an introductory message, finish out the footer, make it look nice, change the colors and then save it as a template.
[00:18:58.090] – Kurt von Ahnen
So then when I make an email from, I use that template. If My customers need a, to send out a message. They click and add their template. But I made all those and I don’t know if there’s, there’s got to be a resource for additional Fluent CRM templates somewhere because the library that comes with Mail Mint is pretty complete. You go in there and you’re just like, wow, I can pick from any one of these things and build whatever message I want. Even to things like announce your latest blog post. And it’s like, it’s just very intuitive. I go, oh, what’s my latest blog post? Click add a link, add a link, add a link, include signature and send. And it’s just that easy.
[00:19:37.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Is extremely polished. Like I say. But I’m not having to go because the way I rationalize it, Kurt, I see Fluent CRM as quasar enterprise level marketing optimization functionality. I see it as the equivalent or in some ways better than Active Campaign. I see it better than HubSpot in some areas. I really do see Fluent CRM if you got the right hosting and you sort out the Chrome side and we do a lot of this and we’re experienced in it with the right hosting setup, I hosting that, not totally stressed out and just using cache so you get fast front page loading. But it just cannot handle something like Fluent CRM with the right hosting, with the right setup, with the right Chrome setup, it can compete head to head with Active Campaign and some people would create because HubSpot has a lot of other features, a lot of those other features, like you can build a whole website in HubSpot. I don’t think it’s fantastic. I, I read and as a sales orientated CRM, it’s great. But the marketing optimization, I truly think Fluent CRM can go to headache to head to head with HubSpot on the marketing optimization and definitely with ActiveCampaign.
[00:21:34.870] – Jonathan Denwood
How would you respond to what I’ve just said? Just want to point out at 1/5 the cost.
[00:21:41.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes. Yeah. So, so you, you already hit where I was going to go. And that is, you know, let’s, let’s compare apples to apples, oranges to oranges. We got to look at the dollars we’re spending in my opinion, and it’s a humble opinion. I think Fluent is way better than those other options. And here’s my reasoning. We are talking to an audience that presumably have a, a membership or learning website or interested in that, that opportunity, that vertical. And so if I’m on HubSpot or if I’m on ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp I need third party integrations and all kinds of stuff to be able to do what I want it to do within my website. Whereas when I install Fluent CRM Pro, if I have lifter lms, it automatically sees it, connects to it initiates it does an automatic double opt in for everyone that signs up. I can click a button and sync my WordPress users to my CRM. And then to steal a phrase from the UK, Bob’s your uncle and boom, this whole thing works. And the automations are built right in. Someone signs up for a course, you send this message. Someone finishes a course, you send another message, Someone cancels a course, you send a different message.
[00:22:51.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
But it’s all there for you to use because it’s all in one place.
[00:22:57.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I see. Like what you said when we were talking about WP Funnel with Mailman. If you’re a non profit, if you’re association, if you’re in education and you’re not interested really in landing pages and that, and you’ve got a like a 10,000, 20, 30, 50, 100, 200,000 email list, fluent CRM every day, in my opinion.
[00:23:30.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Can you imagine the bill from like Active Campaign or Constant Contact for a hundred thousand email lists that you’re sending out three messages a month to all HubSpot? Well, yeah, HubSpot, yeah, the, the Free Forever plan.
[00:23:47.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that won’t do it. Yeah, it’s sizable folks. But with that Fluent because it’s rock solid, folks. With the right hosting, with the right chrome setup, it’s rock solid. We can, we’ve done it. I know people that are sending tens of thousands of email using it. They’ve moved from Active Campaign in, into utilizing Fluent CRM and they’ve been happy. So that’s how. But if you’re this individual to preneur in the 5 to 10,000 or you’re just starting out, this to me is a great alternative to Kit. Oh yeah, Convert Kit. I see it as a great alternative to what was formerly called ConvertKit because if you combine WP Funnel with Mailmint, you get literally almost everything that ConvertKit. And don’t get me wrong, as one of the SaaS platforms, it’s WordPress integration is one of the best ones of the sasses, but it cannot compare to the combination that we’re talking. So I really see it as a great setup for the creator that doesn’t, that doesn’t want to use something like ConvertKit that wants to take subscriptions and wants to keep the cost down. It’s a Great solution. What do you think of what I’ve just said?
[00:25:42.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
As I was listening to you and you and so correct me if I go off path. You were talking about large numbers of emails. We were talking and we were talking like Fluent CRM Pro is a great thing. And then we kind of switched to the WP Funnels smaller organization, having to market and having to build your business. And what I thought of as you were talking and thinking about ConvertKit, it reminded me that WP Funnels has like this really cool a B testing automation thing. And so let’s say I create that landing page. And we had already said if you want to create a landing page in WordPress and connect it to fluent CRM and you could, but the WP funnels is much more direct. It creates the landing page for you and then creates, you know, the funnel that goes through the purchase and the thank you, but it has literally a button to click and then you create an alternative version of the, of the landing page, change the heading, change picture, change something, whatever, something’s different. And then so you have an A version and a B version. And the problem with a B testing with other platforms is you have to like pick a list that A goes to, pick a list that B goes to and all that kind of thing.
[00:26:57.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
But what WP Funnels does is it automates it. You just say, here’s my two options and I want to do 50% to A and 50% to B or 75% to A and 25% to B. And then it automates that, that cycling of the pages and then gives you stats on both pages and then allows you to pick which one is the winner based on the results you want.
[00:27:20.300] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, but this is. How do you agree? Can you follow how my mind works? I really see the Fluent and as the kind of corporate power system where I really see WP Funnel with Mail Mint as a competitor to ConvertKit.
[00:27:38.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and that’s kind of like in my mind trying to mirror what you said, but in different words. The big list, the big established, you know, hate to say enterprise, but you know, if you’ve got 10, 15, 20,000 people on your mail list, you’re established. You know, you’re, you’re running something. If you’re doing something with four or five thousand people on your list and you’re still in a heavy startup growth situation, well then yeah, it makes sense, right? The, the landing pages and the funnels and, and that visual builder is going to be more advantageous to you. It’s going to Be more of what you’re looking for in that space.
[00:28:13.410] – Jonathan Denwood
Just to finish off before we go to our middle break, I was, I made some strong statements about fluency RM being better, but you, you were even stronger. I actually think WP Funnel with Mailman is a better setup than ConvertKit.
[00:28:33.370] – Kurt von Ahnen
I would agree with you. I don’t like ConvertKit. Here’s what I don’t like about ConvertKit. Every time some spammer sends me some kind of email and I open it up, I can tell instantly by looking at it that it’s ConvertKit email. And that to me shows me that there’s not enough variety in it if everyone’s grabbing the same template. You know what I mean? But I definitely see it’s almost like as we’re talking about WP Funnels and Mail Mint, it’s almost like that’s the awesome tool for creating your list through your growth process. And I almost see fluentcrm as being like the most awesome thing in the world to manage it once you’ve built it. I almost see them like a stair step to the other even though they both compete with each other.
[00:29:14.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So hopefully we cleared some of the confusion. I think we, with Kirk’s help, we’ve not confused you. I think we’ve given some great insights. We’re going to end the first half of the show. We’re going to go into the second half. In the second, folks. Got a couple of quick messages from other sponsors of the show that are really appreciated. It really allows us to do this show every week. So please support the sponsors by commenting, pushing their products. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Want to point out before we go into the second half of the show, we’ve got another great free resource for you and that’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. It’s totally free. Go over to Facebook, put in the Membership machine Show group into search. You can join. It’s a totally free service. You’ve got any questions about anything that we discuss in the show, you can put your questions there and you’ll get answer. So it’s a great resource. So let’s, let’s look at some of the competitors. So as we outlined, I think you know in a good way, with your help, I think there’s two areas here that’s landing pages, marketing optimization and email.
[00:30:51.580] – Jonathan Denwood
But everybody, they used to be quite separate is separate with Fluent CRM because they don’t do landing pages. They, they depend on what page and you can Use a, a modern page builder to build your landing pages. Yeah, you know, but you can use something like Melmin and because you got the same interface for building the automations and that and because it’s such a great builder, newsletter builder and they got. I would, I think it’s a clear winner myself. But there’s a lot of fertilization. So they start with, you know, as we discussed in the first house, this start with Learn CRM. Great email automation. Rock solid. A ton. Everybody in the WordPress space integrates in normally some way with Fluent CRM over there providing the automation or, or the other plugin is providing it or there’s some third party that offers integration. It’s become the clear leader in my opinion and that’s one of its greatest strength. But rock solid. Like I say, with the right hosting, with the right crane job, a rock solid way of sending email and automation with most of the leading page builders out there. What would you say about Fluent CRM?
[00:32:39.150] – Kurt von Ahnen
Fluent for me is just a really great way to manage the membership, to manage the information shared on it. So like onboarding packages, you know, if you have an integrated E learning platform and there’s going to be different things the students have to do in order to clear the user experience. You know, we’ll set up an onboarding automation or an upsell automation. Somebody buys a course and then we instantly send a message to say hey, you know, people that bought this course also looked at these three courses or those types of upsell opportunities. We also do some kind of like cart abandonment type things where oh, you know, you looked at this or you, or you unsubscribe from that. You know, we’d like to get you back, you know, we can do this, that and the other. I think that Fluent is really great at managing the existing audience and that when you hand build a lead magnet somewhere, it can help you also build that list and separate into segments and tags and things like that.
[00:33:45.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Onto a direct Competitor to both WP Funnels and Mint and FluentCRM is Funnel Kit. I don’t know if funnel kits on your radar. First of all, is it on your radar and do you want to do a quick intro or do you want me to do it?
[00:34:05.570] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kurt, I would have you do the directed intro to that. I had a customer use Funnel Kit before, but I am not well versed.
[00:34:14.530] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it is feature rich. Its interface I don’t think is as polished as WP Funnels, but it’s not. It’s very similar. But it also has the email but it also has SMS functionality as well integrated. I think like a lot of the. I know quite a bit about sms, I would imagine you only get that. I’m not sure if it provides it. Oh, that’s. I forgot something. I’ve jumped into this, folks, and I apologize because I needed to make something really clear at the beginning of this. First off, with Fluent CRM or with WP Funnels with Mail Mint, it won’t actually send out the email. You need a email engine. As I say, you need a service that will actually send out the email. These plugins are the interface. They build the newsletter, they build the logic of the organization, they give you a visual canvas for the automation and they enable you to build the newsletter or whatever you’re going to send out or the landing page. But they don’t actually send them out. You need what I call email sending engine and you’ve got to get a third party. At WP Tonic, we provide that with our partnership with SendGrid, which is seen as one of the premier email sending services.
[00:36:08.600] – Jonathan Denwood
And there’s about three to four of these services that I think are reasonably good. But I’ve stuck with SendGrid because they’ve been great partners and I’ve been with them for seven years. But you will need that email engine functionality. But even with that cost, it’s still 1/5. If you get any list of 3 to 5 or 5 over it, it will still be considerably cheaper. What do you think about what I’ve just said, Kurt?
[00:36:43.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
I tried someone else other than SendGrid, which is probably in the top three, you know, if you do a quick search and what I found over time, because I was with them for two or three years, I was getting into inboxes less and less and less and I was ending up in people’s spam boxes and I’ve had my URL for a long time, so I found it very concerning and then I swapped to Send Grid probably 18 months, two years ago. And my sending has been much more effective. So I’ve been really happy with it. I know that they say things about, you know, domain authority and all these things can, can play, but I think if your sending engine gets contaminated by a spammer or something like that, it can really do damage to your, to your send reports.
[00:37:31.050] – Jonathan Denwood
This is a whole subject that we could do a whole show on on its own. Sorry about that. No, but you’re right, but it’s just a very. And probably will, so I wanted to point that out. So let’s get back to well before.
[00:37:45.050] – Kurt von Ahnen
You go too far because the one example that I had in working with Funnel Kit was they had HubSpot and they had affiliate WP and they realized that Funnel Kit had a direct automation with affiliate WP and has a direct integration with HubSpot and they got a ton of templates so they were happy because of the templates. But when we tried the automation we just couldn’t get it to really work the way they wanted it to between funnel kit and HubSpot. And you know, it’s just another one of those check marks that gives me and HubSpot. We just don’t agree in so many cases. But that was my only experience with Funnel Kit and then I was kind of hooked up hoping you would override me and say oh no, no, I’ve used it 20 times and never had a problem because we don’t promote it.
[00:38:36.760] – Jonathan Denwood
But we can offer.
[00:38:38.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I like the templates and I like some of the automation offers that it has like the affiliate wp. But I did find it really lacking in trying to get things to work with HubSpot correctly.
[00:38:51.680] – Jonathan Denwood
You know, probably HubSpot so they do offer SMS but they’re not sending out. You’re going to need a third party system to do that. One of these engines, Send Grid does that because it’s owned by Trilio. So if you go with one of the upper plans with Send Grid you do get Omnisend, who’s one of the sponsors probably integrates with Funnel Kit I’d imagine. But they offered their own system so I’m not sure about that. Are probably incorrect because the Omnisend is a bit like Kit. They offer one of the better SAS WordPress plugins that because a lot of the SAS offer a WordPress plugin but they’re not very good. But Omnisend, who’s one of the must make clear is one of the sponsors of the show. It does offer and Kit offers a great plugin as well but you’re gonna have to does offer it this SMS but it’s not native. I know somebody that’s probably in the near future be coming into this market but we’ll be talking about that later on this year probably. So it’s got that and it does everything but I just don’t think it is as good as WP Funnel.
[00:40:27.400] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s my opinion. And it’s owned by a parent company that I call the Chocolate Factory and they’re okay but they’re not my favorite people in the WordPress space. So I definitely compare Comparing these, I would recommend WP Funnel but they do a lot. On to the next one before I get sued or get another letter or another email. It’s normally email. I don’t get many letters. I get a lot of email. It’s five themes. Now I’m sure you come across these and I’m sure you’ve had some conversations with clients about five themes. So Kirk, what would you say about fry themes?
[00:41:15.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Are you sure you’re not worried about lawsuits?
[00:41:19.220] – Jonathan Denwood
I so many email over the years said to me you love it because it doesn’t take much in the WordPress space to rub somebody up the wrong way. Does it not?
[00:41:29.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Okay, I’ll just be blunt. I. I’ve gotten to the stage in my agency growth where if somebody comes to me with a pre existing Thrive Seam site throw Thrive Thrives theme site, we don’t do it. We’re either doing a redo or we’re moving them down the road. I just don’t work with it anymore. Any, any product from Thrive I’m not into.
[00:41:52.990] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the thing with this folks is the. The initial founders of this company were quite. They built something that nothing else in the WordPress space was really doing and the people originally behind it that one of the founders was a really world class marketer and the technical founder was a good world class developer and they were doing something things that weren’t available because like I say a few years ago when it came to marketing automation email in the WordPress space it was very lacking folks. And this has totally changed. They sold their company to the Chocolate Factory. The people that own Funnel kit also own five suite but the main problem with it, they used to offer a suite of plugins and you could buy them separately and then use. You also could bundle them. Now they only offer the bundle. And the other major problem is that fifine uses their own page builder and it’s called our Architect. And when they first were building this out it was also one of the leaders in the drag and drop interface and people started trying it and it was just before Animator came out and it just, it just wasn’t.
[00:43:48.780] – Jonathan Denwood
It wasn’t terrible and some people love Architect but. But it slowly died a death and in the end they sold the company to the Chocolate Factory and Elementor now runs 2 to 3 million websites. So you make your own conclusions. What do you think about what I’ve just said? Good.
[00:44:11.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, you know you’re talking about that walled garden thing. You know I. What I’m saying is I’ll have a client and they do a quick search for, you know, online courses and then they’ll find some Thrive theme site that says, oh, include your, you know, course management. And then they install this theme to get the function that and then other things that should work in WordPress don’t work. All of a sudden you put in another, another plugin and it doesn’t work or you put in another plugin and it won’t format correctly on the page. Something goofy is going to work or the classic editor is on, you can’t turn it off. It’s like there’s just weird things that happen and then you find out, oh, that’s because they develop this functionality into the theme. Whereas in my mind over the years I’ve begun to very resolutely say anything that is appearance oriented theme, anything that is function oriented plugin and I’m able to keep my functions very separate from my design and a lot of my experiences in theme don’t take me down that division I have for myself. So that’s why I choose just not to play anymore.
[00:45:18.270] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And the price in in the spirit of the Chocolate Factory and unfortunately a lot of our plugins have adopted this sales technique because they’ve been under pressure from the Chocolate Factory. It’s like 299 for the first year and mo and you get eight plugins. Most of the plugins you probably won’t use and then the following year you’re going to be hit by 599. And also everything uses the architect and if you try and integrate it with other WordPress plugins that don’t come from the Chocolate Factory, in my experience, it’s not a great experience and I would stay away from it folks. But if you do any Google search or use whatever AI agent you’re using, this will come up and my recommendation is not think about it. Another one again from the Chocolate Factory is Opt in Monster. So I’m sure this has come on you, right? He’s laughing.
[00:46:33.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
It comes up on everybody’s WordPress admin page.
[00:46:38.440] – Jonathan Denwood
So what? How if somebody was having a consultation and they were talking about optimonster, what, what would be your response? Kurt?
[00:46:50.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
I let my clients make up their own decisions in that regard. I really do. I don’t, I don’t push too hardly on that. If they want to try it, they can try it. Sure. What I don’t like and I don’t and I think what the clients don’t appreciate either is, is the forceful way in which they’re always constantly trying to shove that down your throat. Almost every site that I work on, that little thing pops up in the admin dashboard. Somehow some way it shows up and.
[00:47:16.740] – Jonathan Denwood
All their, all their properties pop up.
[00:47:21.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
You know, there are a lot of other tools out there and a lot of other things to use and if someone’s got to sell something to me that forcefully, I probably want to think twice before using it.
[00:47:32.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s a, was one of the early marketing pop up automation, landing page builders. It’s what it was in. It was the one and the actual developer who’s still in business with the CEO of the Chocolate Factory. I think Thomas, he’s a great guy and a great developer. And in those early days where solutions were really lacking, it was a driver of offering something in the WordPress space that was dearly lacking in some ways like five theme. But for what you get compared to using a modern page builder, a lot of the pop up functionality you get with using something like Cadence or Alimator and then combining it with WP Funnel and Mail Mint, it’s a very overpriced system now. And I see it really being a legacy system a bit the same way as I see it fry themes because one of the factors of the Chocolate Factory is, is yes, they do maintain the plugin and the support isn’t terrible, but they don’t invest any more real money into their plugin library of various plugins in the WordPress space. How would you respond to what I’ve just said?
[00:49:12.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
We’re on point. It’s, it’s interesting to me because WordPress continues to develop and continues to evolve. And to your point, you know, if I wanted a pop up to come up on my website, why would I go to that, to that monster tool? Like I, it’s, it’s, to me, it’s like, yeah, Elementor has it, I got Elementor or Cadence Pro has it, I could use that. There’s a bunch of free pop up tools. There’s a bazillion ways to get what you want without having to subscribe to something extra if I’m making sense. So. But that’s with a lot of the tools. You know, you mentioned the Thrive channel saying that, you know, yeah, there was other. Yeah, absolutely. There’s other ways to do things. The Lifter LMS free core plugin far surpasses the LMS function of the Thrive Themes learning portal. Right. And so now you get back to, you know, the educated shopper is going to say, okay, I can use Astra or Cadence. The Free versions and I could throw in lifter lms and I don’t need to buy the theme, I don’t need to buy the function from the theme and I don’t need to worry about, you know, compatibility moving forward.
[00:50:25.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
We know that it’s going to work. So.
[00:50:28.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, well I think, I think you’re on just if you’re looking at five themes and this integration, don’t go there because I think I was the first to use this term a walled garden. And this is a word, this is a SAS, a WordPress platform mimicking assess too far. You can do it but you’ve got just to break have enough core functionality but don’t try and becoming because if you really want to go down this total integration, you’d be better off using Podia because Podiatry is the cheapest SaaS membership platform that I’ve. But the problem is they’re 39 offering, they want 5% so you really got to go with the 89 version which gives you more than what Kajabi would give you. Well, yeah, so if you’re going, you want to go that route, you might as well just go sassy in my opinion. Right. So when it comes to the page builders, there’s only four folks. This is my take on it. I think you’ve got to go Gutenberg really. But that’s either going to be Cadence WP or Generate Press. I think they’re the two clear leaders. If you don’t want Gutenberg Alimator but be be aware, especially on mobile, you’re going to need some pretty good hosting.
[00:52:09.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. I wouldn’t go with their hosting solution. I think that you’re ending up in a SASS situation again or break dance. Even though I don’t particularly have warm feelings for the owner, it’s a great non Gutenberg. It looks a pretty well functioned solution with a lot of templates. They’re the only four I would recommend at the present moment for the kind of business user, DIY, semi power, WordPress user type. Just to finish off what. How would you respond to what I’ve just said?
[00:52:57.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, we were talking about, you know, WP funnels and fluent CRM and then we ended up talking about page builders and I’m trying to use a bit.
[00:53:06.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Of overlap, isn’t it?
[00:53:07.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. So I’m thinking about these types of tools and similar ones. I’m considering what the email editor is like on both of those platforms. It’s very Gutenberg-esque. You know, I have a window, I click on it, I click the element, and I bring the element over. It’s. It’s just blocks, like building blocks. And so I think in terms of like elementor, and I think in terms of possibly bricks, and the reason why.
[00:53:34.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I didn’t bring bricks in because I see that it’s a Quasar professional agency tool.
[00:53:40.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s kind of a level up there. But when I think about those things, you know, if we’re talking about the subject, which is, you know, the CRMs and the funnel builders, and then thinking about a page builder to layer on top of that, I’m going to sound like I’m back speaking on myself however, if you’re an Elementor user, like all the tutorials, for example, for WP Funnel, which were all done using Elementor, as they love it. So, so that’d be one thing to consider. I know at WP Tonic, our team loves just Cadence, Cadence Pro, because.
[00:54:18.170] – Jonathan Denwood
Regarding Elementor, there are two criticisms: its interface is a query. I see that as a Quasar professional agency tool, the interface, but it was the one. It was the technology that first introduced drag-and-drop functionality and brought WordPress into the 21st century, in my opinion. But it’s a tool to me, it’s a Quasar professional tool animator. Another problem is mobile, as without the right hosting, it is truly a dog in performance terms. They’re doing things to try to rectify that, but the reality is that it truly ends as a dog—70% of people that visit your website are on some form of mobile device. So I see that as a problem. Kurt. Right, we’re going to finish off now. So Kirk, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:55:26.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kurt, you can stay up to date with what’s going on with me by visiting LinkedIn and searching for Kurt Von. I’m the only Kurt Von Onen on LinkedIn. That’s a good way to get in touch or make a connection, and if it’s business-related, manananomas.com is an excellent option.
[00:55:40.970] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got another great free resource for you folks on your journey in building your membership website or community website in 2025. And that’s the WP Tonic YouTube channel I’m with. There are over 1600 videos on that channel. It’s growing rapidly. There is a wealth of information from me and Ankirk on every aspect of building and maintaining a membership or community on WordPress, as well as extensive reviews of marketing tools and AI products. Go over to the WP Tonic YouTube channel, search for it, find it, and subscribe. You won’t be disappointed. We will be back next week with another great show. Hopefully, we’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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