ClickFunnels
A real subscription software business with roughly 150,000 paying customers and $101 million of institutional capital - graded here on its affiliate layer, where the commission is single-level and honest and the contract terms are the worst part of the file.
This is a software company, not an MLM - single level, no downline, nothing paid for recruiting - and the reason it is a B− rather than a B+ is a clause that automatically forfeits commissions you have already earned if you go 120 days without earning a new one.
Can you actually make money with ClickFunnels?
Yes. Joining costs nothing and staying eligible costs nothing: no purchase, no subscription, no starter kit, no qualification fee, no autoship, no minimum volume, by contract or in practice. You do not have to be a customer to be an affiliate. The program is a single level, with no second tier and no downline, and nothing whatever is paid for signing up another affiliate. You are paid for selling software to people who use software.
The rate is 30% recurring for the life of the customer. Thirty percent of a $97 plan is $29.10 a month, so four active referrals clear the $100 minimum payout inside a single cycle, and about three and a third cover your own subscription if you keep one. The Dream Car bonus pays $500 a month toward a car at 100 active members paying $97 or more, and $1,000 at 200 - counted in live subscriptions, so it falls when customers leave.
Now what it actually takes, because the contract is the weak part of this file. Commissions you have already earned forfeit automatically if you earn none for 120 days, against a $100 threshold that can strand a small balance below the withdrawal line. A second 120-day clock runs on registering with the payment provider, and missing it permanently waives the money. Attribution dies if a referred account cancels for any reason, and is lost if it downgrades below $97 a month.
There is also no affiliate income disclosure. No average, no median, no distribution, nothing about how many affiliates earn zero, and no published affiliate headcount. What the company publishes instead is $136,688,351 and more paid since inception, which is a numerator with nothing underneath it. The 40% rate is closed to anyone not opted in before 4 October 2022, so a new affiliate cannot reach it by performing well, whatever older reviews still say about it.
no purchase, no subscription, no starter kit, no qualification fee, no autoship and no minimum volume to become an affiliate; the software itself starts at $97 a month and is not required
- You will keep selling. The forfeiture clause is not a threshold you failed to reach, it is money already earned that disappears after 120 quiet days, so this rewards continuous work rather than one campaign you run and leave alone.
- You register with the payment provider the moment your first commission lands. The terms give you 120 days and then say you permanently waive all rights to it, which is the cheapest mistake on this page to avoid.
- You are selling to people who will keep the software. Attribution dies on cancellation and on any downgrade below $97 a month, so a customer who leaves and comes back later is no longer yours and pays you nothing.
- You can promote it without leaning on the Two Comma Club. Roughly 900 awards against roughly 150,000 paying customers is about 0.6%, and no disclosure exists anywhere that would let you describe a typical outcome honestly.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL - and the regulatory file is genuinely clean, which is a finding rather than an absence of one. No FTC complaint, administrative action, consent order, settlement, civil penalty or warning letter involving ClickFunnels, Etison LLC or either founder could be located at any stage. No state attorney general civil complaint, assurance of voluntary compliance, assurance of discontinuance or cease-and-desist could be located in any state. The company does not appear on the FTC’s Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities recipient list of 25 October 2021. The FTC Business Opportunity Rule, 16 CFR Part 437, is not triggered: the rule requires a required payment and a seller representation about outlets, accounts, customers or a buy-back, and the affiliate program has neither - joining is free and the company supplies no customers and offers no buy-back. The only litigation on file is a private civil class action filed in November 2017 under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which is an allegation whose outcome could not be located, and a 2024 patent infringement suit in which ClickFunnels is the plaintiff.
Confidence: Medium-High
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
A software company, not an MLM. ClickFunnels sells a subscription funnel-building product - landing pages, checkout, order bumps, upsells, email, course and membership hosting - to roughly 150,000 paying customers from Eagle, Idaho, through the legal entity Etison LLC. It has taken $101 million of institutional capital, employs about 450 people, and has been trading continuously since March 2014. Everything graded below concerns the affiliate program bolted to that software, and the affiliate program is a single-level, sales-only referral scheme. Read nothing here through a multi-level lens, because the structure is not one.
The compensation side is close to the best this site has graded. A new affiliate pays nothing, is not required to subscribe, and is paid 30% of the subscription price recurring for as long as the referred customer keeps paying. There is no second tier, no sub-affiliate commission, no downline and no payment of any kind for enrolling another affiliate. The headline bonus - $500 a month toward a car at 100 active members paying $97 a month or more, $1,000 at 200 - qualifies on active paying software subscribers, and if they stop paying the count falls. That is a retention-weighted sales incentive, and it is the structural opposite of a recruitment bonus. The advertising rules attached to it are stricter than the category norm: brand-term bidding banned, direct linking from paid ads banned, telemarketing and SMS banned outright, #ad required before the text rather than buried in it, platform branded-content tooling mandatory, a persistent watermark required on YouTube video, and income claims required to be “completely true and accurate and supported by evidence” with a named disclaimer.
Two things sit against that. The first is what a new affiliate is actually offered. The widely quoted 40% rate is closed - restricted to affiliates who were pre-selected and opted in before 4 October 2022, and unavailable to anyone joining today. Legacy support pages still describe a three-tier ladder reaching 40%, and third-party review sites still quote the higher number as though it were live. It is not. The controlling document is the current affiliate agreement and it puts a new affiliate at 30%. Alongside that, there is no affiliate income disclosure of any kind: no average, no median, no distribution, no proportion earning nothing. What the company publishes is a cumulative “$136,688,351+ paid” with no participant count, which tells a prospective affiliate precisely nothing about their own odds.
The second, and the reason for the grade, is the contract. Accumulated commissions that have already been earned forfeit automatically if no new commission is earned in any 120-day period. A separate 120-day clock runs from the first commission for registering with the payment provider, and missing it “permanently waives all rights” to that money. The payout threshold is $100, which is high enough that a small balance can sit unwithdrawable while the forfeiture clock runs against it. Attribution is stripped entirely if a referred account cancels for any reason, and lost if it downgrades below $97 a month. On the customer side, canceling a monthly subscription requires ten days’ written email notice, annual plans are refunded as account credit rather than cash, and both customers and affiliates are bound to arbitration in Ada County, Idaho with a class-action waiver.
The education layer around the tool deserves its own paragraph because it is where the money and the income messaging concentrate, and because the honest finding is more nuanced than the usual one. The most expensive coaching is first-party rather than a tolerated third-party racket: Inner Circle at $50,000 a year, a Category King tier at $150,000 and an Eight Figure tier at $250,000 are operated under the co-founder’s own brand. But every one of those is revenue-gated on the buyer already running a $1 million to $10 million business, with the top tier requiring eight figures. You cannot buy in as a beginner. The beginner-facing first-party offers are the $100 One Funnel Away Challenge - sold expressly with no money-back guarantee - and event tickets at $997 to $1,297. High, but not predatory. Beyond that sits a large independent “make money with ClickFunnels” course economy at $997 to $25,000 sold by unaffiliated operators; no revenue-share, hosting or endorsement relationship between the company and those sellers could be documented, and the accurate description is that ClickFunnels tolerates and indirectly benefits from it rather than endorsing it.
The Two Comma Club, with its denominator attached
Award counts from a third-party tally of ClickFunnels awards against the roughly 150,000 customer count in the same modeling source. The company presents the winner numbers prominently and the customer number separately; it never publishes them side by side, which is the whole point of showing them this way.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Affiliate registration No purchase, no subscription, no starter kit, no qualification fee, no autoship and no minimum volume. Existing subscribers are auto-enrolled; non-customers register directly. The company states in terms that you do not need to be a member to start. The free 100-Day Affiliate Bootcamp training is included at no cost. |
$0 one-time |
30% recurring |
| Launch plan The entry software tier and the threshold that matters twice over: the Dream Car bonus counts active members at $97 a month or above, and an affiliate loses the customer association entirely if a referred account downgrades below $97. 14-day free trial, 30-day money-back guarantee. |
$97/mo · $972/yr recurring |
30% = $29.10/mo |
| Scale plan The mid tier. Note that the company’s own blog and several affiliate-facing pages still quote the retired “Basic $147 / Pro $197 / Funnel Hacker $297” naming, which is stale - verify the current plan names before publishing them as an affiliate. |
$197/mo · $1,968/yr recurring |
30% = $59.10/mo |
| Optimize plan This is the source of the company’s “you can earn up to $89.10/mo for each trial signup” line on the affiliate page. It is a per-unit maximum on the second-highest monthly plan, not an earnings expectation, and it should never be read as one. |
$297/mo · $2,976/yr recurring |
30% = $89.10/mo |
| Dominate plan Annual billing only, no monthly option. Note the interaction with the terms: annual plan cancellations are refunded as account credit rather than cash, so a customer who leaves mid-term does not get money back. |
$5,997/yr annual only |
30% |
| One Funnel Away Challenge First-party, free for existing subscribers, and expressly sold with no money-back guarantee on the $100 - which is stated openly rather than buried, but is still the one consumer term in the first-party stack with no remedy attached. |
$100 (+$100 VIP) one-time |
— |
| Funnel Hacking LIVE 2026 First-party. 21–23 September 2026 at a Las Vegas resort, priced by seating section, with a VIP floor by application and hotel rooms quoted at $219 a night. The travel and accommodation are on top of the ticket. |
$997 / $1,097 / $1,297 annual event |
— |
| Inner Circle coaching tiers Operated under the co-founder’s own brand. Entry to the $50,000 tier is gated on being a Two Comma Club winner with twelve months in the advanced program and $1M–$10M of annual revenue; the $250,000 tier requires a minimum of eight figures a year. You cannot buy your way in as a beginner, and that gate is a genuine mitigating fact. |
$50,000 / $150,000 / $250,000 a year annual |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Co-founded the business in 2014, stepped down as chief executive in June 2021 and stayed with the company rather than exiting - which is a materially better pattern than the category norm and should be said first. His public promotional history is long and it is entirely public: an origin story that runs from selling potato-gun instructional DVDs at university through information products into the DotComSecrets, Expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets trilogy, all three sold through free-plus-shipping funnels that function as front-end lead generation for the software. In April 2024 he acquired an original Napoleon Hill collection, reported at $1.5 million, and built a venture around the material. No regulatory action, consent order, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against him could be located at any stage in any jurisdiction. Widely repeated claims that he acquired a well-known direct-response publishing brand could not be substantiated from any primary source and are not published here, and every net-worth figure in circulation originates on content farms.
The technical co-founder, listed on the company team page as Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer. A syndicated press release in 2026 describes him as “Co-Founder and Co-CEO,” which conflicts with the company’s own team page, and the title is treated here as unconfirmed. No regulatory or criminal action against him could be located.
Three sources give three answers about who runs the company. A 2021 report says the then chief revenue officer became chief executive when the co-founder stepped down. The company’s current team page lists no chief executive at all - the senior operating title shown is President - alongside a Chief Business Development Officer, a Chief Traffic Architect and a CFO. A 2026 syndicated release calls a co-founder Co-CEO. None of these can be reconciled from public sources, and for a company that has taken $100 million of institutional capital, the absence of a clearly identified chief executive on its own website is a real transparency gap rather than a trivial one. It is graded under ownership, not under legality, because nothing about it is unlawful.
A $100 million round led by a recognized consumer private-equity firm in 2022 took total funding to $101 million. That is meaningful third-party diligence of a kind almost nothing else graded on this site has been through. The equity percentage acquired, whether the round was primary or secondary, and the current cap table are all unpublished, and the company publishes no audited revenue, EBITDA, gross margin or churn. So the institutional capital counts in the company’s favor while the estimated 36% revenue decline in 2024 sits unexplained beside it.
Registered address
Eagle, Idaho, USA
Privately held through Etison LLC, an Idaho limited liability company, with a foreign registration in Washington. No audited accounts are published, so every revenue figure in circulation is a third-party model estimate: roughly $14.4 million in 2016, $66 million in 2017, $120 million in 2020, $205 million in 2022, $265.3 million in 2023 and $170 million of annual recurring revenue in 2024. That last movement is a decline of roughly $95 million, about 36%, on the modeller’s own numbers, and the company has not addressed it publicly. It is an estimate and it is labeled as one here. Funding is $101 million across two rounds: a $1 million venture round in 2019 and a $100 million investment led by a recognized consumer private-equity firm in 2022. The same source puts customers at roughly 150,000, average contract value at roughly $1,100 and headcount at 450 in 2026.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
WATCH
Etison LLC, an Idaho limited liability company registered in Eagle, Idaho, entity number 0000415330, with a foreign registration in Washington. Privately held; $101 million raised across two rounds, including $100 million led by a consumer private-equity firm in 2022. No audited accounts are published.
|
| What does it cost to become an affiliate? |
OK
Nothing. No purchase, no subscription, no starter kit, no qualification fee, no autoship and no minimum volume, by contract or by practical necessity. The company states you need not be a member to start, and its 100-Day Affiliate Bootcamp training is free.
|
| Is there a downline? |
OK
No. The affiliate agreement is single level with no second tier and no sub-affiliate commission, and nothing is paid for enrolling another affiliate. The Dream Car bonus qualifies on 100 active paying software subscribers at $97 a month or above - sales, held, not recruits.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
None. No average, no median, no distribution, no share earning nothing and no affiliate headcount. The only figure published is a cumulative “$136,688,351+ paid” since inception with no denominator. An adequate earnings disclaimer is present on the same page.
|
| Can you lose commissions you have already earned? |
RED
Yes. Accumulated earnings forfeit automatically if no new commission is earned in any 120-day period, and a separate 120-day deadline to register with the payment provider permanently waives the first commission if missed. The payout threshold is $100.
|
| Regulatory action against the company, ever? |
OK
None at any stage. No FTC complaint, action, consent order, settlement, civil penalty or warning letter; no state attorney general matter in any state; not on the FTC’s 25 October 2021 money-making-opportunity notice list. The Business Opportunity Rule is not triggered because there is no required payment.
|
| What is the real cost of the ecosystem around it? |
WATCH
Software is $97 to $297 a month or $5,997 a year. First-party education runs $100 for the challenge, sold with no money-back guarantee, and $997 to $1,297 for the annual event. The $50,000 to $250,000 coaching tiers are first-party but revenue-gated on already running a $1M+ business. A third-party $997–$25,000 course economy exists with no documented relationship to the company.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
OK
Merchant, clearly. Commission is paid on software subscriptions bought by people who use the software, the plan has no recruitment leg, and every retention rule points at keeping customers rather than adding affiliates. The deductions are contractual, not structural.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Become an affiliate | $0 no purchase, no subscription, no kit, no fee, no minimum volume - nothing at risk but time |
| Reach the $100 minimum payout | 4 active Launch referrals for one month 30% of $97 is $29.10, so four active accounts clear the threshold in a single cycle |
| Cover your own $97/mo subscription | 3.34 active Launch referrals $97 ÷ $29.10 - and they must stay active, because attribution dies on cancellation |
| Qualify for the $500/mo Dream Car bonus | 100 active members at $97/mo or above and hold them; the count is of live paying subscribers, not of sign-ups. 200 pays $1,000 |
Read this twice
The first line of this table is the reason the grade is a B− and not a D. There is no entry cost at all. No purchase, no subscription, no starter kit, no qualification fee, no autoship and no minimum monthly volume, by contract or by practical necessity - the company states in terms that you do not need to be a member to get started, and the 100-Day Affiliate Bootcamp training is free. A participant who tries this and fails has lost time. That is a categorically different exposure from anything that requires money on the way in, and it is why the FTC Business Opportunity Rule is not triggered here. The arithmetic that follows is therefore about how hard the money is to earn rather than how much you must risk to try. Four active Launch referrals held for a month clears the $100 payout threshold; each one is worth $29.10 a month for as long as that account keeps paying. But three published terms sit between earning and being paid. Commissions are held for 45 days from receipt of the customer payment to absorb refunds, chargebacks and the 14-day trial. The threshold is $100, at the high end for the category. And accumulated earnings forfeit automatically if no new commission is earned in any 120-day period - so an affiliate who refers two accounts, accrues $58 a month toward a $100 threshold, and then stops promoting for four months can lose the balance entirely. Two more clauses bite on the durability of what you build: attribution is removed if the referred account cancels for any reason, and lost if it downgrades below $97 a month. A returning customer earns their original referrer nothing. The Dream Car threshold of 100 active members is a serious sales target rather than a recruitment one, and holding 100 paying subscribers at $97 or more is harder than reaching them.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
The standard 30% recurring commission on a referred subscriber at the $97/month entry plan, against a cost of zero - there is no purchase requirement and no fee to become an affiliate. The 40% rate quoted on many third-party sites is closed to anyone not opted in before 4 October 2022. Two things the model does not deduct: attribution dies if the referred account cancels, and already-earned commissions are forfeited if you go 120 days without earning a new one. No affiliate income disclosure exists. Your own subscription cost of $0/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
ClickFunnels’ published 2026 prices against equivalent capability assembled from mainstream vendors. This comparison is for the customer rather than the affiliate - an affiliate is not required to subscribe to anything. Comparators are named only where they are ordinary open-market software; where the closest competitors are themselves income opportunities graded elsewhere, they are described rather than named.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Launch plan - $97/mo for pages, funnels and hosting | Webflow or Squarespace site with dedicated landing pages | ~$16-29/mo |
| Built-in email broadcasts and automation | Kit or ActiveCampaign at a small-list tier | ~$15-49/mo |
| Checkout, order bumps and one-click upsells | Stripe Checkout with a mainstream cart layer | 2.9% + 30¢ per sale, no monthly |
| Course and membership hosting | Teachable, Thinkific or Podia entry plan | ~$29-49/mo |
| Affiliate program module for your own products | A standalone affiliate-tracking app | ~$0-49/mo |
| CRM and contact management | HubSpot free tier or the CRM inside the email tool | $0 |
| One Funnel Away Challenge - $100, no refund | The founder’s three books bought outright and read | ~$50 once |
| Funnel Hacking LIVE ticket - $997 plus $219/night | No event; the recordings and the books cover the method | $0 |
| Dominate plan - $5,997/yr | The same assembled stack at any volume | ~$1,200-1,800/yr |
| Total as sold ~$2,069 in year one (Launch annual, the $100 challenge, one event ticket) |
Total, built yourself ~$770-1,650 of assembled tools in year one |
Price-to-value
Roughly a two-to-three-times premium at the entry tier, and considerably more at the top. That is a real gap but it is not an unreasonable one, and the honest case for paying it is integration: one login, one billing relationship, one support desk, and a template and training library that has genuinely shortened the learning curve for a great many operators. The comparison changes shape at the $5,997 annual tier, where the assembled stack does the same work for a quarter of the money and the premium is buying convenience rather than capability. The item worth removing first is not the software at all - it is the $997-plus event ticket and the $219-a-night room, which are the largest discretionary line in the year-one number and the one with the least measurable return.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Zero-spend affiliate
no subscription, no ads, promotes to an existing small audience
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 21% | $0 |
| 6 mo | 25% | $0 |
| 1 yr | 27% | $0 |
| 3 yr | 29% | $0 |
| 5 yr | 30% | $0 |
Subscriber-affiliate
pays $97/mo for Launch, uses the tool, promotes it part-time
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 12% | −$290 |
| 6 mo | 18% | −$500 |
| 1 yr | 24% | −$800 |
| 3 yr | 31% | −$1,600 |
| 5 yr | 34% | −$2,100 |
Content-and-paid-traffic affiliate
30+ hrs/wk, bridge pages and video, real ad and tool spend
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 8% | −$1,400 |
| 6 mo | 14% | −$2,300 |
| 1 yr | 21% | −$3,400 |
| 3 yr | 29% | −$4,900 |
| 5 yr | 32% | −$6,000 |
Methodology note. ANCHORED to ClickFunnels’ published terms: the $0 cost of affiliate registration, the 30% recurring rate available to a new affiliate, the $29.10, $59.10 and $89.10 monthly commissions implied by the $97, $197 and $297 plans, the $100 minimum payout threshold, the 45-day cooling-off period, the 45-day last-touch cookie, the automatic forfeiture of accumulated earnings after 120 days without a new commission, the loss of attribution on cancellation or downgrade below $97, and the software prices themselves. MODELED by us: everything else, and the modeling is heavier here than on most reports because the company publishes no affiliate income disclosure at all - no average, no median, no distribution, no proportion earning nothing, and no total affiliate population. The cohort definitions are ours; the company does not segment its affiliates. The share in cumulative profit, the medians, and the top and bottom decile figures are ours. Two features of these tables are not estimates but consequences of the published terms and should be read that way. In the zero-spend cohort the worst case is exactly $0 at every horizon, because there is nothing to lose - that is the single most favorable structural fact in this report. And the median in that cohort is $0 rather than a small positive number because of the interaction between the $100 threshold and the 120-day forfeiture clause: an affiliate who accrues less than $100 and then goes quiet for four months ends at zero by contract. One calibration that cuts in the company’s favor: the subscriber-affiliate cohort is charged the full $97 a month here, but most people in it would be paying for the software regardless of the affiliate program, so their true incremental position is closer to the zero-spend table.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151Already-earned commissions forfeit automatically after 120 days of inactivity
2A second 120-day forfeiture tied to payment-provider registration
3The 40% rate is closed and third parties still quote it
4No affiliate income disclosure exists at all
5The $100 payout threshold interacts badly with the forfeiture clause
6Attribution dies if the referred account cancels for any reason
7Attribution is also lost on downgrade below $97 a month
8The Two Comma Club is a systematised income-claim engine with no denominator
9Estimated revenue fell about 36% in a single year and has not been addressed
10The company’s own team page lists no chief executive
11Canceling a monthly subscription requires ten days’ written email notice
12Annual plans are refunded as account credit, not cash
13Binding arbitration in Ada County, Idaho with a class-action waiver
14The $100 One Funnel Away Challenge is expressly sold with no money-back guarantee
15A large third-party high-ticket coaching economy sits on top of the tool
Green flags
101It is a real software business, and that is the first fact rather than a concession
2It costs $0 to become an affiliate and a participant cannot lose money
3Single level. No downline. No sub-affiliate commission of any kind
4The Dream Car bonus qualifies on 100 active paying subscribers, not on recruits
5The FTC Business Opportunity Rule is not triggered, and cleanly so
6No regulatory finding at any stage against the company or either founder
7The affiliate advertising policy is stricter than the category norm
8An adequate earnings disclaimer is published on the affiliate page itself
9The most expensive first-party coaching is revenue-gated, not sold to beginners
10Very low complaint volume and a clean private ratings record
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Publishing an affiliate income disclosure with a median, a distribution and the proportion earning nothing - the single largest available improvement, and cheap to do, since the payment provider already holds the data.
- Removing the 120-day forfeiture of already-earned commissions and the second 120-day registration forfeiture, or at minimum dropping the payout threshold to $25 so small earners can withdraw before either clock bites.
- Reopening a performance path to 40% with published, objective qualification criteria; retiring the contradictory legacy tier pages; and presenting Two Comma Club winner counts with the customer denominator attached.
Downward
- Introduction of any second tier or sub-affiliate commission, or of a paid qualification to reach a higher commission rate - either would change the compensation analysis fundamentally and cost several grades.
- Any required purchase or subscription as a condition of affiliate participation, which would put the FTC Business Opportunity Rule squarely in play where it is currently not triggered at all.
- Any FTC enforcement action, state attorney general matter or consent order on earnings claims, finalisation of the proposed earnings-claims rule followed by action touching the award and testimonial layer, or evidence of the forfeiture clauses being applied at scale.
Grade is B−. A real software company with a single-level, sales-only affiliate program that costs nothing to join - held back by a contract that takes back commissions you have already earned.
Start with what this is, because the category association will mislead you otherwise. ClickFunnels sells subscription software to roughly 150,000 paying customers, employs about 450 people, has traded continuously since March 2014 and has taken $101 million of institutional capital including a $100 million round led by a recognized private-equity firm. Its affiliate program is a single level. There is no downline, no second tier, no sub-affiliate commission and nothing at all paid for enrolling another affiliate. It costs $0 to join, and no purchase or subscription is required by contract or by practical necessity - which is why the FTC Business Opportunity Rule is not triggered, two of its three elements failing outright. Even the headline bonus points the right way: the Dream Car pays $500 a month at 100 active members paying $97 or more, counting live paying software subscribers rather than sign-ups, so it rewards keeping customers rather than finding recruits. On compensation structure this is close to the best thing graded on this site.
The problems are in the contract and in the marketing, and they are specific. Accumulated commissions that have already been earned forfeit automatically if no new commission is earned in any 120-day period; a second 120-day clock runs on registering with the payment provider, and missing that one permanently waives the money. The payout threshold is $100 - twice what is common - so a small balance can sit unwithdrawable while a forfeiture clock runs against it. Attribution is stripped if a referred account cancels for any reason and lost if it downgrades below $97 a month, so the asset an affiliate builds is more fragile than the phrase “recurring for the life of the customer” suggests. Alongside that, the 40% rate that third parties still advertise has been closed since 4 October 2022 and cannot be earned, and there is no affiliate income disclosure of any kind - only a cumulative “$136,688,351+ paid” with no participant count beside it.
The marketing layer is where the regulatory risk actually sits, and it needs stating carefully because nothing has been alleged, let alone found. The Two Comma Club architecture - awards for driving $1 million, $10 million and more through a funnel - functions as a systematised income-claim engine, and roughly 900 winners against roughly 150,000 customers is about 0.6%, a ratio never shown beside the trophies. The FTC issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on deceptive earnings claims in March 2022 and a proposed rule in January 2025; that is proposed rulemaking, not law, and it is not in force. If it were finalised with civil-penalty teeth it would land directly on this layer. Set against that, the affiliate agreement itself requires substantiation and a named disclaimer, mandates #ad before the text, requires platform branded-content tooling and a persistent watermark on YouTube - genuinely above the category norm. And the file is clean: no FTC action, no state attorney general matter, no consent order, no assurance of voluntary compliance, and no appearance on the FTC’s October 2021 money-making-opportunity notice list.
Treat the 30% as the number and ignore every 40% you see quoted
The higher rate closed to new entrants on 4 October 2022 and cannot be earned by performance. Legacy support pages and third-party review sites still advertise a tier ladder reaching it. Model your economics on $29.10 a month per Launch account, $59.10 per Scale and $89.10 per Optimize, and treat anything above that as unavailable until the company publishes an objective, open qualification path.
Withdraw at $100 the moment you can, and never let the clock run
Two independent 120-day forfeiture provisions sit on your balance: one for earning no new commission, one for failing to register with the payment provider after your first. Register with the provider the day your first commission lands, and clear the balance at every opportunity. This is the single most actionable thing in the report, and it costs nothing to act on.
Sell the software to people who will actually use it, not to people who want an income
Attribution dies on cancellation and on downgrade below $97 a month, and the Dream Car threshold counts live subscribers. Every incentive in this program rewards retention. A customer who buys the tool because they have a product to sell stays; one who buys it because a video promised income churns, and takes your commission with them when they go.
If you want the tool and not the program, price the assembled stack first
A site builder, a mainstream email platform, Stripe checkout and a course host cover most of the same ground for a fraction of the top-tier annual price. The honest case for paying the premium is integration and the template and training library, which is real. The case gets much weaker at $5,997 a year, and the $997 event ticket plus a $219-a-night room is the easiest line to remove first.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- ClickFunnels Affiliate Agreement, last updated 15 September 2025 - Etison LLC named as contracting party; 30% General Affiliate / 40% Qualified Affiliate closed to anyone not pre-selected and opted in before 4 October 2022; $100 threshold; 120-day forfeiture; payment on the 1st and 15th; 45-day attribution lock; permanent waiver for failure to complete W-8/W-9
ClickFunnels Affiliate Agreement, retrieved 29 July 2026 - 30% standard recurring commission; the 40% “Qualified Affiliate” rate closed to anyone not pre-selected and opted in before 4 October 2022; no sub-affiliate or second-tier commission anywhere in the document; $100 payout threshold; payment on the 1st and 15th via Tipalti; automatic forfeiture of accumulated earnings after 120 days without a commission; auto-termination after 12 months of zero commissions; 30 days’ notice to terminate, immediate for a dispute rate above 2%; brand and competitor paid-search bans, direct-linking ban, telemarketing and SMS ban, #ad-before-text, branded-content tooling and YouTube watermark requirements, and the substantiation-plus-disclaimer rule on income claims
- ClickFunnels Affiliate Agreement (signup.clickfunnels.com mirror of the same document)
- ClickFunnels Affiliate Program page - “ClickFunnels Has Paid Affiliates $136,688,351+!!!”, 30% monthly recurring commission, “many have replaced their previous full-time income”, “up to $89.10/mo for each trial signup”, and the published earnings disclaimer
ClickFunnels affiliate program page, retrieved 29 July 2026 - “ClickFunnels Has Paid Affiliates $136,688,351+!!!” as a cumulative figure with no participant count; “30% Monthly Recurring Commission”; “many have replaced their previous full-time income”; “up to $89.10/mo for each trial signup”; and the published earnings disclaimer - ClickFunnels Dream Car announcement and affiliate program page - 100 or more active members at $97/mo or above pays $500/month toward a car, 200 or more pays $1,000/month; qualification counts active paying subscribers rather than recruited affiliates
- ClickFunnels Terms of Service, last updated 28 April 2025 - Etison LLC d/b/a ClickFunnels; mandatory binding arbitration and class-action waiver (§§ 11, 16–19); governing law and venue (§ 9); subscription and trial cancellation terms (§§ 27–28); commission program and independent affiliate program (§ 21)
ClickFunnels terms of service, app.clickfunnels.com/terms - Idaho governing law, binding AAA arbitration in Ada County, Idaho and class-action waiver; ten days’ written email notice to cancel a monthly subscription; annual plan cancellations refunded as account credit; the 20% “powered by ClickFunnels” badge commission; and the 120-day payment-provider registration deadline that “permanently waives all rights” to the first commission
Not established by this document: The Idaho Secretary of State record for Etison LLC (asserted entity number 0000415330) could not be retrieved: sosbiz.idaho.gov is a JavaScript search application with no stable per-entity URL, and OpenCorporates blocks automated fetching. Two independent third-party mirrors of the Washington Secretary of State foreign-LLC filing (UBI 604072329) confirm ETISON LLC as an Idaho-incorporated LLC at 3443 W Bavaria St, Eagle, ID 83616 with Russell Brunson and Todd Dickerson as governors, but neither is the Idaho registry itself, so no registry link is asserted here. Note also that the live affiliate page footer now gives a Canton, Georgia address (225 Reformation Pkwy, STE 204), not the Eagle, Idaho address in the report's legalName.
- ClickFunnels Sticky Cookie (support article) - 45-day affiliate cookie, last-click attribution, and removal of the cookie and the affiliation if the referred account is canceled for any reason
ClickFunnels support documentation - 45-day last-touch sticky cookie and the 45-day attribution lock; removal of cookie and affiliation if the referred account is canceled for any reason; forfeiture of association on downgrade below $97/mo; 45-day cooling-off period from receipt of customer payment; 181 Dream Car winners; 20% certified funnel builder rate; and the conflicting legacy “Classic” three-tier ladder page
Not established by this document: No company page could be located stating a 20% certified funnel builder commission rate; the only sourced 20% figure on ClickFunnels' own documentation is the badge-only affiliate tier and the ToS §21 “powered by ClickFunnels” badge commission. The forfeiture-of-association-on-downgrade-below-$97/mo rule was not found stated on any retrievable ClickFunnels support page.
- The ClickFunnels Affiliate 45 Day Cooling Off Period (support article) - 45 days from receipt of customer payment, Tipalti payouts on the 1st and 15th, $100 minimum
- Affiliate Tiers for the ClickFunnels Affiliate Program (ClickFunnels Classic support article) - the legacy three-tier ladder: Tier 1, Tier 2 at $1,000 in a rolling 30 days (30% on software), Tier 3 at 40 active accounts (40% on software)
- Where are my Affiliate Links? (ClickFunnels Classic support article) - “All ClickFunnels users will automatically be placed as a 20% BADGE ONLY affiliate”
- ClickFunnels Affiliate Program blog explainer - “181 Affiliates have also won the Dream Car of their choice”
- ClickFunnels Plans & Pricing - Launch $97/mo ($81/mo billed annually), Scale $197/mo ($164/mo), Optimize $297/mo ($248/mo), Dominate $5,997/yr annual only, free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee
ClickFunnels pricing page, verified 29 July 2026 - Launch $97/mo or $972/yr, Scale $197/mo or $1,968/yr, Optimize $297/mo or $2,976/yr, Dominate $5,997/yr annual only, all with a 14-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee; company blog pages still quoting the retired Basic/Pro/Funnel Hacker naming
- 16 CFR Part 437 - Business Opportunity Rule (current eCFR text, including § 437.1(c) three-element test and § 437.1(p) “required payment”)
FTC Business Opportunity Rule, 16 CFR Part 437 (eCFR, current) - the three-element test and the definition of “required payment”; FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities recipient list, 25 October 2021, searched for the company, the legal entity and both founders with no match; FTC advance notice of proposed rulemaking on Deceptive or Unfair Earnings Claims, 11 March 2022, and notice of proposed rulemaking, 13 January 2025 - proposed, not final, not in force
- List of October 2021 Recipients of the FTC's Notices of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities, updated 25 October 2021 (PDF)
- FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities - case list and notice documents
- Deceptive or Unfair Earnings Claims - FTC advance notice of proposed rulemaking, 87 FR 13951, published 11 March 2022
- Business Opportunity Rule - FTC notice of proposed rulemaking, 16 CFR Part 437, RIN 3084-AB04, 13 January 2025 (PDF)
- “FTC Proposes Rule Changes and New Rule to Deter Deceptive Earnings Claims by Multilevel Marketers and Money-Making Opportunity Sellers” - press release, 13 January 2025 (proposals only, not final)
- Clickfunnels - Better Business Bureau business profile, Eagle, Idaho (accreditation, rating, complaint record)
Better Business Bureau profile and complaints record, Eagle, Idaho - A+ rating, accredited since 18 December 2018, business start date 31 March 2014; 26 complaints closed in three years and 3 in the last twelve months against roughly 150,000 customers, 19 answered by the business and 7 resolved to the customer’s satisfaction, themed on product not as advertised, cancellation obstruction and billing. A private ratings body’s record, not a regulator’s
- Latka company profile for ClickFunnels - third-party model estimates: $170M ARR (2024), $265.3M (2023), $205M (2022), $120M (2020), $66M (2017), $14.4M (2016); 150K customers; 450 employees; $101M raised across two rounds
Third-party financial modeling, retrieved 29 July 2026 - estimated revenue of $14.4M (2016), $66M (2017), $120M (2020), $205M (2022), $265.3M (2023) and $170M ARR (2024); ~150,000 customers, ~$1,100 average contract value, 450 employees, $101M raised across a $1M round in 2019 and $100M in 2022; third-party awards tally of roughly 900 Two Comma Club and 46+ higher-tier winners; Funnel Hacking LIVE 2026 ticket tiers and the marketingsecrets.com coaching page listing the $50,000, $150,000 and $250,000 revenue-gated tiers
Not established by this document: The third-party awards tally of roughly 900 Two Comma Club and 46+ higher-tier winners was not traced to any single retrievable page and is not cited here.
- Growjo company profile for ClickFunnels - an independent third-party estimate ($107.7M revenue, 585 employees) that materially conflicts with Latka's
- Funnel Hacking LIVE 2026 (“Encore: The A.I. Era”), 21–23 September 2026, Fontainebleau Las Vegas - published ticket tiers: Level 3 $997, Level 2 $1,097, Level 1 $1,297, plus VIP seating packages
- Marketing Secrets coaching page - Inner Circle tiers gated at $1M/$10M/$25M of revenue generated through ClickFunnels, at $50,000+, $150,000 and $250,000 per year
What we could not get
- Audited revenue, EBITDA, gross margin and churn - every figure in circulation is a third-party model estimate rather than a disclosure, and no 2025 or 2026 revenue figure could be sourced from anything credible, which makes the estimated 36% decline from 2023 to 2024 impossible to confirm or refute
- Who the chief executive is. The company team page lists a President and no CEO; a 2021 report says the then chief revenue officer took the seat; a 2026 syndicated release calls a co-founder “Co-CEO.” The three cannot be reconciled from public sources
- The total number of registered affiliates, the number active in any period, any median or mean affiliate earnings, and the proportion earning nothing - no denominator exists for any published affiliate figure
- Whether the legacy three-tier affiliate ladder described on older support pages remains operative for any cohort. It conflicts with the current agreement, which is treated here as controlling and more recent
- The outcome of the 2017 private class action under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act in the Southern District of New York - no settlement, judgment or dismissal record could be located, so it remains an allegation with no disposition - and the current status of the 2024 patent infringement suit in which ClickFunnels is the plaintiff
- The current price of the advanced Two Comma Club program and of the certification program, where sources conflict between $997 and $10,000 and the documentation references retired product modules
- Any revenue-share, hosting or endorsement relationship between ClickFunnels and third-party sellers of $997–$25,000 coaching built on the platform. No evidence was found in either direction; the relationship is characterised as tolerated, not endorsed
- Enforcement in practice of the affiliate advertising and income-claim rules - no public record of any affiliate terminated for an income-claim breach could be located - and the affiliate agreement’s email, CAN-SPAM and domain-squatting clauses, which could not be extracted in full
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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ClickFunnels - frequently asked
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QCan ClickFunnels take back commissions you have already earned?
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Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - ClickFunnels’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from ClickFunnels than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
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