GrooveFunnels Review: The Ultimate All-in-one Platform?

In the quest to build unique and engaging landing pages, it often helps to have additional marketing features. GrooveFunnels, otherwise known as Groove.cm (the CM standing for “customers matter”), seems to offer that solution. 

In fact, hovering over the “featured apps” on their home page reveals an impressive-looking array of applications.

In an effort to be the all-in-one solution, GrooveFunnels offers pretty much anything you might need to sell your online products. But trying to be everything can sometimes result in you being nothing. 

So, to find out whether GrooveFunnels is worth the extreme hype behind its marketing, we need to take a closer look. Below, you’ll find out whether GrooveFunnels is worth your time and money.

What is GrooveFunnels?

GrooveFunnels advertises itself as one of the only “free” marketing platforms. The company (Groove Digital) was founded by Mike Filsaime, a well-known entrepreneur in the marketing and funnel creation space. GrooveFunnel’s main claim to fame is making nearly $2 million in a single day with a significant marketing push.

Despite having some early success, Groove (short for GrooveFunnels) is relatively new. It was in early access in 2020, and its founding wasn’t too far behind. The only thing that gave it this early success was Mike Filsaime’s deep understanding of marketing and funnels. 

If you are starting to smell ClickFunnels, I don’t blame you. After all, Mike Filsaime’s marketing approach is incredibly similar to Russel Brunson’s. After all, this “hype beast” approach to marketing seems to work for them, creating raving fans that foam at the mouth for another product. 

Provided the product works, it’s ultimately up to the consumer to leverage these tools effectively. So, is the product worth the extra hype? Find out the answer to that question below.

Who is GrooveFunnels best for?

GrooveFunnels Pros & Cons

GrooveFunnels Pricing 

Being from the Mike Filsaime school of marketing means some high-pressure sales tactics. To start, you can’t view any pricing without creating an account. Thankfully, creating an account is free.

However, with this freedom comes the reminder of all the things you are missing out on by not paying. 

So, if you don’t like FOMO (fear of missing out) marketing, you might not like GrooveFunnel’s advertising style. You’ll also find that they massively discount the product, which is another popular marketing strategy. 

Marketing practices aside, the payment plans you get include the following options:

• Lite (the free plan)
• Creator (or Creator Plus)
• Pro (or Pro Plus)
• The Lifetime Premium Plan 

In upgrading to these plans, there is no free trial. Below, we break down what you get with these plans. 

The Lite Plan 

The Lite Plan is the 100% free plan you get from using GrooveFunnels. As you might imagine, you have some notable limitations with the plan. Here’s a breakdown of what you get:

• 500 contacts
• 2,500 email sends per month
• One custom domain
• 25 pages (that they host for you)
• Support for payment gateways 
• 25 import pages (for bringing in external funnels 
• Unlimited products and eCommerce stores 
• One membership site 
• Five videos 
• One blog
• Requires a 10% store free for eCommerce 

The lite plan also limits how you can import leads and make designs. Numerous tools are locked behind the free version, including the template library, pro email builder, and the ability to import or export data. 

Paying extra also gives you access to more affiliate commissions. We won’t be reviewing their affiliate program in this article. 

GrooveFunnels provides you bonus access to many of these pro builders and tools for the first thirty days. This includes an email and website template library, an email builder, and the ability to upload more videos and integrate third-party email providers. For the complete list, scroll up a bit and view the “Lite Plan” graphic above. 

The Creator (or Creator+) Plan

The next level plan is known as the Creator Plan. The Creator Plan costs an average of $149 per month ($1,788 per year). However, new subscribers pay $42 per month ($497 per year). 

The pricing strategy of ending your costs in “7” is all over the place. 

You’ll also find a total lack of clarity on what plan you are paying for. How do you get the plus plan? Does it switch over at some point? The total uncertainty of the thing can potentially create a bad customer experience. 

To clarify: the creator plus plan and creator plan are the same. Instead, this goes back to the issue of making included product features feel like bonuses to make an offer more enticing. So, you get everything under plus, no extra payment is necessary.

For the actual breakdown of features, here’s the list:

• 10 thousand contacts
• 100 thousand emails per month
• Able to import leads (which is mentioned twice on their pricing page)
• Unlimited payment gateways, blogs, and domains
• Three membership sites
• 50 videos (to place across your sites)
• Can export data and share site URLs 
• Your store fee is waived 

The Pro (or Pro+) Plan 

The Pro Plan costs $299 per month ($3,588 per year) but has a special offer of $297, paid four times a year ($1,188 annually). Below is a breakdown of features you get for paying for the Pro Plan:

• 50 thousand contacts
• Unlimited emails, domains, gateways, membership sites, videos, and blogs. 
• More affiliate commission

The Premium (and Premium+) Plan

The premium plan costs $299 per month ($3,588 annually) on average. However, the annual cost is identical to the Pro Plan if you pay for their special offer ($297 every three months). 

The only thing you get for this is tier-two commission, meaning you get paid when Groove members renew their subscriptions. This plan is worthless for those who don’t want to be a Groove affiliate. 

The Lifetime Premium Plan

Easily the most value-backed payment plan is the lifetime plan. Rather than pay for a year of access, you pay for permanent access. So, for a one-time payment of $2,497, you can keep GrooveFunnels forever. 

The main bonus you get is unlimited contacts, integrations, subdomains, and eCommerce stores. But of course, as is fashion with these “hype beast” products, you also have a one-hour timer to decide whether or not to apply for this one-time deal. 

At the time of me writing this review, I’ve taken up 45 minutes. 

Of course, “Lifetime” doesn’t indicate your lifetime. If the company ceases to exist, the company’s lifetime is over, meaning so is your special deal. Granted, GrooveFunnels seems pretty successful, so this is unlikely. 

There’s also a chance that this timer is superficial, meaning you’ll get later offers of lifetime deals. This is a fairly common practice for marketers, so don’t be surprised if your one-time deal looks a bit less “one-timey.” 

If you decline all of the offers, GrooveFunnels will remind you how much you are missing out on. You’ll need to scroll to the bottom, look at the Lite Plan’s limitations again, and when you decide to click (purposely) a small “no thank you” button, you’ll get one last pop-up. 

 It’s important to note when I wrote the “pros and cons” section of this article, I put “somewhat” next to annoying. After the third FOMO marketing attempt, I will remove “somewhat.” GrooveFunnels has incredibly annoying marketing practices. 

The lifetime deal magically gets extended when you inevitably skip the fourth prompt. In their words: “we goofed.”

So, take your time to be sure this tool is a good fit for you. Don’t get brought in by pushy marketing attempts. 

GrooveFunnels feature review 

 Despite some sour beginnings, GrooveFunnels has a clean and pleasant dashboard for navigating between different tools. 

The Dashboard contains various graphs depicting the success of campaigns across various tools. The tools we will be looking at today include the following:

• GroovePages
• GrooveSell
• GrooveAffiliate
• GrooveMail
• GrooveMember
• GrooveVideo
• GrooveKart
• GrooveBlog
• GrooveWebinar
• The Mobile App

By hovering over the Groove logo in the upper-left corner, you can find links to all of these services. The most critical service, their funnel-building software, is under GroovePages. 

On all of these pages, you’ll see a graduation cap in the bottom-left corner. This is a link to all of their tutorials, which is their knowledge hub for learning how to use this software. You’ll want to use this step-by-step training to understand the deeper uses of the product. 

Using GroovePages Pro – Funnel Builder Review

When choosing the free subscription, Groove provides you with the pro version of its page builder for 30 days. After which, you’ll need to stick with GroovePages Lite, limiting your page building options. 

The GrovePages dashboard starts pretty simply. Click the “new site” button in the upper-right corner to get started. From there, you’ll be given a variety of website templates to choose from. 

This is no different from any other sales funnel builder. The templates are professional and easy to look at, but there are not too many of them. 

From the image below, the builder itself is beautiful. You can see how it has the potential to create high-converting sales funnels. 

The funnel-building platform is incredibly similar to what you get from ClickFunnels. What makes this builder unique is the ability to view your website from five types of devices. This includes tablet (with multiple orientations), desktop, and mobile views. 

The top of the navigation bar also lets you undo and redo, preview your page, insert custom HTML, save your project, and publish it. The upper-right-hand corner enables you to access your account and switch to other GrooveFunnels apps. 

Adding new page elements

Most of the things you can add are grouped as different types of page elements. Clicking the top icon on the left-hand navigation bar will give you these options to add:

• Buttons
• Countdown timers
• Devices
• Forms
• Layout edits
• Lists
• Media (images or videos)
• Tabs
• Text
• Other

GrooveFunnels provides more customization options than Instapage. However, the grid-based format makes your site feel static, which makes it less fun to edit for those who like details in their website design. 

The alternative way to add an element is by clicking on plus icons that appear as you move your mouse around the page. This will bring up complete page blocks, which include combinations of elements based on what you need. For example, you can choose to create popups, direct response requests, or CTAs. 

This means that online businesses will need to take a bit of time to customize their pages. However, there are ways to make your page unique, as it includes over 500 different options. 

Editing your website

By clicking on any text, image, or button, you’ll get the option to edit that page section. In the example above, you see what happens after clicking on the page’s navigation bar. This allows you to change text, background, border, shadow, and animation (when different parts of the menu open). 

For editing the style, you’ll also see different options hovering nearby the element you select. For example, you can move the element by using the arrow option on the right. You can also switch between different elements or blocks by clicking the up arrow on the right side of this popup. 

These editing options only apply to the design of your page elements. You can edit what the button does by clicking the cog found hovering above the element. 

In editing a regular button, you can choose the type of link it goes to. For example, you might lead them to a thank you page because they’ve provided you with an email. 

The third option on the left-hand navigation bar lets you detail the type of website you want to build. You can add new web pages that change depending on whether you are making a full website, a simple popup, a sales funnel, or a page for your hosted webinar.

Clicking the plus icon in the upper-right corner will help you add more pages depending on the site you want to build. Note that if you preview when building a complete website, your navigation links won’t work, but they will be automatically added to the list. 

Building popups using the website builder 

The left-hand website tab lets you build popups without ever leaving the editor. Much like building anything else, you start with some templates. The popup builder uses the same system as the website builder, albeit more straightforward because you are only editing one block. 

The only drawback here is you can’t use this editor to create alert bars, which appear at the top or bottom of the page. These are far less annoying and can help improve your bounce rates so website visitors will be less likely to leave. 

Creating webinars with Groove (GrooveWebinars)

Under the same page builder is access to GrooveWebinar, which is software for getting registration for and hosting webinars. When adding a webinar page, it adds a series of pages related to the complete webinar creation and hosting process for you. 

Doing this lets you see the complete page lineup for webinars. For those new to making a website, this can be pretty overwhelming. The tutorials available are often insufficient for newcomers. When browsing the tutorials, some tools have almost no guidance (Webinar building tools included). 

Groove – using the funnel builder 

Grove’s big selling point is the lifetime sales funnel builder. You can find this under the same section, much like the page, webinar, and popup-building tools. Like the other building tools, it starts by letting you select from your favorite funnel templates.

Because of this tendency to have multiple links go to the same page, Groove could do with a bit of space saving and put all of this under “pages.” The company has a big thing about being redundant, which is likely another marketing strategy.

The funnel builder makes it easy to build funnels, as it’s built on the same simple page technology. This makes it easy to produce service, webinar, or product funnels. Among similar digital marketing tools, Groove does pretty well. 

The settings tab

The last tab on this combined page-building software is page and site settings. These include your standard fair for page editing, like SEO details, general page information, custom CSS, tracking code inserts, and page redirection.

If you want others to see it, you can provide them with a link under the “share site” button. The “export site” button allows you to get the base HTML for bringing this site to third-party building software. 

 So, is the Groove page-building platform great?

The page-building platform makes for a great and simple tool. The only problem is that it uses a grid-based system, which isn’t appealing if you want control over the design of your website. 

The other problem is the lack of tutorials directly on the platform. Instead, the best way to learn is to go to Groove’s YouTube page. Check out their playlists to find the tutorials. You might find some of these YouTube tutorials on the site, but it’s fairly inconsistent. 

Another thing Groove doesn’t make obvious is that everything you build here is under the same domain. So, when you add funnels, website pages, and webinar links, they will be under the same domain. However, all of them will go to different locations of your domain (www.something.com/webinars vs something.com/shop). If you want a unique URL, you’ll need to go back and click the “new site” button. 

GrooveSell – creating and selling products with Groove

For those who operate with digital products, Groove offers ways to manage your products. There are various links on top that include both your sales and general affiliate data (GrooveAffiliate).

We will start by looking at their product creation:

Creating new product funnels with Groove

By clicking on “new funnel,” you’ll be brought to a page where you can add a new funnel. From there, it will ask you some general details about your funnel. Despite what the system might tell you, this is where you store your digital products (webinars, services, etc.) 

Once you create the product, you can begin to edit its details. These details are the actual meat of your product, allowing you to determine what happens as a result of someone making a purchase or filling in details. These details include eleven pages of edits:

1. Info – This includes the name and description of the product as well as how you want to sell it (frontend product, upsell, order bump). 
2. Pricing – This allows you to set up payment options (including monthly payments, one-time payments, and free products).
3. Payment gateways – This determines how you plan on taking a payment (PayPal, credit card, GrooveSell payments)
4. Contents – These reference the pages they need in a few given situations (support information, sales page, refund period, support page) 
5. Checkout – Allows you to provide details of the checkout page, including how it looks, the forms you request, and whether your site gets an express checkout. This is part of their shopping cart software.
6. Bumps – A page that allows you to add an upsell.
7. Funnel – The post-transaction URL for thank you pages. 
8. Fulfillment – What the customer is paying for. This might include a webinar or an eBook, a membership, or other digital files.
9. Affiliates – This lets you determine whether or not you want to use the Groove Affiliate Management Platform for this product (pay others to promote it for you)
10. Proof – This lets you set up a proof widget on your product (a small popup in the corner that shows other customers buying your product).
11. Finish – Click this to get your tracking link and the code for your proof widget. 

The process above is also incredibly similar when building coupons. You can create coupon codes with different discount types. This includes both an amount and a percentage discount. You need to attach these coupon voucher codes to your product funnels.

The code you receive is something you can embed on your website. To do this, you’ll need to find “code embed” under “all elements.” After this, copy and paste the code into the block, allowing it to populate automatically. 

When customers go through the checkout process, they will follow the steps established during product funnel creation. This segments your site and product building, creating a higher learning curve when visualizing a complete transaction. 

Many people like funnel-building platforms because of how easy they are to use. Because Groove is new to the game, it needs some major refinement before it’s totally easy to use. Building products is a bit of a nightmare if you don’t follow YouTube tutorials. 

Thankfully, tracking your sales and customers is pretty simple once you figure it out. Just check out the “customers” tab under GrooveSell. It can also be easy to set up automatic fulfillment, which is built into the product creation system. 

Hiring affiliate marketers to promote your product on GrooveAffiliate

Groove has affiliate management software that lets you recruit and manage affiliates who sell the product on your behalf. The Groove Marketplace is where potential affiliates can find your product, marketing it on your behalf. 

You can set your commission rates, going from $0 to a percentage of the sale. It’s incredibly easy to market your product through the affiliate marketing marketplace. These affiliates are fellow Groove members, also managing their websites through the platform. 

The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t support third-party affiliates. So, if you want to hire someone outside and pay them through Groove, you might have a problem. 

Also, if you don’t want to market your product on the marketplace, Groove doesn’t give you that option. Instead, it puts your product on a list of other products for promotion, whether you want it there or not. This is why you see so many $0 offers when you click on the marketplace.

Email marketing automation tools – GrooveMail

Another major part of the digital marketing toolbox you get with Groove is the inclusion of email marketing and automated software. GrooveMail lets you create an email marketing campaign with automation. This allows it compete with major marketing providers like HubSpot or Sendinblue.

Here are the features that come with this tool:

• Broadcasts – lets you send a bulk email to an entire email list or SMS list (you can also reach the same area by clicking “new broadcast”).
• Sequence – lets you create a sequence of emails and SMS texts based on different segments of your contact list. You can also add and remove people from lists with this menu. 
• Lists – This lets you sort your contact list by tags, categories, and segments. (the “segments” link leads to the same place)
• Automations – This Lets you create single-step if-then statements, which are useful for automation. 
• Forms – This lets you create forms that collect contact information you can sort into those lists. 

To create powerful email campaigns, you’ll spend most of your time in the sequences menu. Here, you can see a list of steps visualized for you, making it easy to create fully automated email systems. 

You can also use this tool for the fulfillment, generating cart abandonment emails, and moving people to different subscription chains. This automated email marketing service tool is handy and straightforward, making it a breath of fresh air compared to product creation. 

This system can also help you automate the sending of postcards, which can be incredible for your direct marketing campaigns. 

The form creation tool is relatively simple. This is where you can get some use out of those website-building features. But, much like creating products, you’ll need to copy and paste the embed code to use these.

Using the membership site software – GrooveMember

Groove also has a tool for those who make membership content. This puts it in competition with other membership site builders. You’ll also find tools for creating online courses here (which makes sense).

Here’s a breakdown of the tabs you get:

• Membership – This gives you a link to create your first membership and manage your current memberships (you can also reach this page by clicking “new membership.”
• Courses – This lets you create and manage courses.
• Portals – This lets you build a landing page for signing people up to your membership sites. 
• Files – This lets you upload digital assets (videos, pdfs, etc.) for your students to use. 
• Instructors – This lets you add instructors to the site (these don’t operate as user accounts, it just provides a face to a name).
• Analytics – Let you track data (still not available).

 When creating a membership program to teach students, Groove has an excellent way to sign people up with basic memberships. It’s also reasonably simple to make these courses, similar to Kajabi.  

Much like the other ways of building things on Groove, things are very segmented. Once you create a membership and connect it to a product, you can create instructors to add to your course. Finally, this leads to a portal, which leads students to your membership content. 

Courses are broken up into modules, and these are broken down further into individual lessons. The interface for these online courses is similar to Udemy. 

For providing valuable videos to your viewers, these tools are great. Higher pricing levels also allow you to upload unlimited video files (with GrooveFunnels Platinum), which is ideal if you want to build an entire course network. 

GrooveVideo is where you will upload these, as that’s your video storage manager and categorization software. You can hire third-party video encoding services through this dashboard. 

GrooveBlog – building a blog using Groove 

Groove’s blog creation tool shows shades of being similar to WordPress. The simple interface here is a real benefit, allowing for editing of titles, metadata, and uploading images. 

They break the format a bit here, as you won’t find a dedicated dashboard for tracking. The dashboard also doesn’t have the same top-facing bar for navigation. Instead, all you get is the left-hand bar. Similar navigation tools are available with other tools on this list.

The blogging system is an improvement over what they offer through most other funnel builders. The one sacrifice from focusing on simplicity is weaker customization options. There’s also only one blog theme. 

GrooveKart – building an eCommerce store with Groove

If your goal is to open an online store that offers eCommerce products (physical and digital), Groove does that too. They call this one GrooveKart, which isn’t a 70s version of Mario Kart.

Why add an eCommerce platform alongside your digital service, course building, and webinar platform? Because why not.

GrooveKart has a system similar to building an eCommerce store on Shopify. The difference is that Shopify does do it better. After all, they are a bigger company with more resources and brand recognition.

The page building stays the same, but the creation of products, listings, and discounts are entirely new. The process of creating a product is simple and easy to use. They also have a new eCommerce dashboard, keeping things from getting too crowded on the regular dashboard. 

The question turns into this: if Groove can create this engaging product experience, why couldn’t they do it with the funnel builders? Overall, this tells us that Groove has some notable consistency issues.

Groove Integrations 

Groove has two different integration screens and numerous integrations between them.

First, the upper-right-hand corner of the regular dashboard has your integrations with the standard platform. This means integrations with webinar platforms (GoToWebinar) and email marketing platforms (GetResponse, Mailchimp). They have a fair bit of integrations, but there are fewer integrations than most. 

GrooveKart has its own integrations screen that includes work with Zapier, Facebook Products, Google Analytics, and various platforms that do everything from help with shipment to gamifying your store with a prize wheel. There are fewer than other eCommerce platforms. 

What do users say about Groove?

Being a relatively new platform, Groove doesn’t have a lot of exposure. Because of that, fewer than 100 reviews exist between the three major platforms: Trustpilot, G2, and Capterra. Among those, reviews are typically on the positive side. 

However, many of these positive reviews also come with affiliate links. So, take that with a grain of salt. 

Most positive reviews talk about how much they love the team and the platform. The “everything in one place” approach is appreciated. Groove is one of the few who walk the walk when it comes to all-in-one marketing platforms. The only thing they are missing is ad creation and management. 

Those critical of the platform will tell you that the platform still needs a lot of work. Features are somewhat buggy, and the overall experience is less easy to use than competing options.

The good news is that you can make a free account and not include a payment card. So, there is no risk in taking advantage of the 30-day trial access to their pro features.  So, try it out before you draw any conclusions.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

Is GrooveFunnels worth the money?

The answer to this question depends on how long you plan to use it. Most people would like to say they plan on using it forever (justifying the lifetime price). However, the lifetime value depends on how Groove improves its software. 

There’s a lot to be loved with Groove. It has a bit of everything. As long as they listen to their community on improvements, it’s a platform that could easily destroy builders like ClickFunnels and DropFunnels. Their website-building software is there. 

The only concern is evidenced by the deeper review, as there are some things that don’t receive the same level of care. Product building and integrated features are two such examples, as Groove feels a bit disjointed at times. 

It’s like Groove is still in that teenage phase of funnel-building software. It’s still discovering itself, meaning it will have to get over young adulthood before we can truly judge it. For now, it’s a risk to get into because it is unproven.  

But if you can tolerate the work-in-progress structure, you might find a jewel. You’ll just have to get over the crazy marketing jargon to get to the good stuff.