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Plausible funnels are deceptively simple — you pick 3-8 goals, click Save, and it draws the chart. The real work is upstream: do the goals exist, are they ordered correctly, and is the funnel actually answering a question the team will act on?
Who this is forOwners with Plausible Business plan + 3-5 goals already defined who want to analyze drop-off across the user journey. Especially relevant if you came from GA4 Explorations funnels and want the same insight without the complexity.
What you'll need
Step 1
Write down the specific question you want the funnel to answer. If you cannot name a decision the answer would change, do not build the funnel.
Bad starting points: 'Let me build a funnel to see what's happening' / 'I want to track everything end-to-end.'
Good starting points: 'Where do trial signups drop off before paying?' / 'Do paid-search users complete checkout at the same rate as organic?' / 'What share of pricing-page visitors actually sign up?'
If you cannot articulate the decision in one sentence, do not build the funnel — clarify the question first.
Most product teams need 3-5 funnels max: (1) homepage → trial signup, (2) trial signup → paid conversion, (3) feature-usage → upgrade, (4) demo request → demo completed → contract signed, (5) checkout funnel for ecommerce.
More than 5 funnels per site = no one looks at any of them.
Step 2
Plausible funnels are built from goals. Every step in the funnel must be an already-defined goal. Add missing goals BEFORE clicking Funnels.
In Plausible, navigate to Site Settings → Goals. List the 3-8 goals you have defined.
Map your funnel steps to those goals. Example for trial-to-paid funnel: Step 1 = pageview /pricing, Step 2 = custom event "Trial Started", Step 3 = custom event "Payment Method Added", Step 4 = revenue event "Purchase".
If any step does not have a corresponding goal, ADD THE GOAL FIRST. Funnels cannot reference events that are not registered as goals.
Confirm each goal has at least 14 days of data flowing through it. A funnel built on a 2-day-old goal will look dramatically incomplete.
Pro tip: name your goals in the order they typically occur. "01 Trial Started", "02 Payment Method Added", "03 Purchase" — alphabetical sorting in the goal list helps you build funnels faster.
Step 3
Funnels → New Funnel. Add steps in order. Name it clearly. Save.
Plausible → Funnels (left sidebar) → + New funnel.
Funnel name: clear, decision-oriented. "Trial to Paid Conversion" not "Funnel 1." If you name funnels generically, you stop knowing what each one tracks.
Click Add step. Pick a goal from the dropdown. Repeat for each step in order.
Order matters — Plausible enforces step order: a user must complete Step 1 BEFORE Step 2 BEFORE Step 3 for it to count as a completion. Out-of-order events break the funnel.
Save. Plausible immediately renders the funnel chart with current data.
You can edit step order, add/remove steps, or rename later. The funnel re-calculates against historical data — no backfill delay.
Step 4
Plausible shows conversion rate from step to step AND overall. Look at the biggest drop-off — that's where to focus optimization.
Top of the chart: a horizontal bar for each step, with the count of users who completed it and the conversion rate from the previous step.
Example: 10,000 visit /pricing → 1,200 start trial (12% step rate) → 600 add payment method (50% step rate) → 200 purchase (33% step rate). Overall pricing-to-purchase: 2%.
The biggest leverage is the WORST step rate. In the example above, the 12% pricing → trial step is the bottleneck — improving it from 12% to 15% would lift overall conversion from 2.0% to 2.5%.
Don't optimize the best step. If 95% of users who add payment method complete the purchase, there is no headroom there.
For each funnel, ask weekly: "Which step has the worst rate? What experiment would improve it?" That is the conversation the funnel exists to enable.
Step 5
Plausible funnels respect dashboard filters. Apply a source/device/country filter and the funnel recalculates for just that segment.
Top of the Plausible dashboard: Filters dropdown.
Add a filter: Source = Google, Device = Mobile, Country = United States, etc.
The funnel below recalculates against just the filtered segment.
Use this to answer: 'Do mobile visitors convert worse than desktop?' / 'Does organic convert at the same rate as paid?' / 'Are EU visitors converting at the same rate as US visitors after our GDPR-required cookie changes?'
Save useful filter combinations as 'Segments' (Plausible Business feature) for one-click recall.
Step 6
Every important funnel deserves a counter-funnel — what happens to users who DROP OUT at each step. Build it.
For your most important funnel (e.g. trial-to-paid), also build a "Trial drop-off" funnel.
Step 1 = "Trial Started". Step 2 = NOT-completed Purchase within 14 days (this requires a custom event you fire from a backend job, or filtering by no Purchase goal).
Plausible alone doesn't perfectly model 'did not do X' steps — you may need to fire a custom 'Trial Expired Without Purchase' event from your backend cron job and use it as Step 2.
The counter-funnel reveals patterns: 'EU trial users drop off at the payment step at 2x the rate of US users' might surface a Stripe localization bug.
Document each counter-funnel in your team wiki with the decision it informs. Review monthly.
Step 7
Funnels go stale as the product evolves. Quarterly review: which funnels are still being looked at? Archive the rest.
Calendar reminder: every quarter, open Plausible → Funnels.
Review each funnel. Ask: "Which product decision did this funnel inform in the last 90 days?"
If the funnel did not inform a decision, archive it (delete or rename to "ARCHIVED — funnel name"). Reduces dashboard clutter.
If a funnel is missing a step the product has added (e.g. new 'Plan Selection' step now exists between 'Trial Started' and 'Payment Added'), update the funnel to match the current product flow.
Plausible has no built-in 'last viewed' metric for funnels — track this yourself by noting which funnel screenshots show up in your team's planning docs.
Common mistakes
Building funnels without a decision in mind
What goes wrong: You build 8 funnels because Plausible Business gave you the feature. None of them get looked at after week 1. They cluttered the sidebar for 6 months until someone finally deletes them.
How to avoid: Write the decision before clicking New Funnel. If you cannot name the decision, do not build the funnel.
Skipping the goal prerequisites step
What goes wrong: You build a funnel with 'Trial Started' as step 2, but you never registered 'Trial Started' as a goal in Site Settings → Goals. The funnel step shows 0 conversions forever. You blame the funnel feature.
How to avoid: Every funnel step must be a registered goal. Add all goals BEFORE building the funnel.
Reading too much into 2-week-old funnels
What goes wrong: You added a new goal yesterday. You build a funnel using it today. Step 3 shows 0 conversions. You panic — 'our conversion rate dropped to zero!' Actually nobody has had time to complete the journey yet.
How to avoid: Wait 14 days from the youngest goal before drawing conclusions. Annotate the funnel with the date the youngest step was added.
Conflating audiences in one funnel
What goes wrong: You build a 'pricing page to purchase' funnel that includes both B2B trial users AND DTC shopper users. They convert at radically different rates. The aggregate funnel rate (3%) is meaningless because no actual user follows that path.
How to avoid: Build separate funnels per audience or always view through a segment filter. Source = Google + Country = US is a different funnel from Source = Direct + Country = EU.
Forgetting that funnels need step ORDER
What goes wrong: You define a funnel where Step 1 = 'Demo Booked' and Step 2 = 'Pricing Page Viewed' — but realistically most users view pricing BEFORE booking a demo. The funnel shows 0 conversions because no one does the steps in your defined order.
How to avoid: Funnels enforce step order. Map the order to the actual user flow, not the logical business flow.
Not segmenting funnels by source
What goes wrong: Your aggregate funnel says 'pricing → purchase = 2%.' You assume that's the overall rate. Actually paid-Google = 4% and organic = 0.5%. The aggregate hides the truth that paid is working and organic is not.
How to avoid: After building any funnel, apply Source/Channel filters and view the funnel per segment. The segment-level numbers tell the real story.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to set up Plausible goals and custom events
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Funnel design is the highest-leverage analytics work and the easiest to get wrong. Most teams build 8 funnels and use 0. A vetted Plausible specialist on EverestX will sit with you for 2-3 hours, identify the 3-5 product decisions you actually need to make, and build only the funnels that answer those — typically $60-120 total at $14-16/hr.
See specialist rates
No. Funnels are a Business plan feature ($19/mo+). Growth plan ($9/mo) does not include them. You can still build a manual funnel by clicking each goal sequentially in the Goal Conversions panel, but the step-by-step drop-off math is not provided.
Up to 8 steps. Practically, 3-5 steps is the sweet spot. More steps = harder to read, longer journey times = less data per step. Keep funnels focused.
Not natively. Plausible funnels are forward-positive — each step is "user did X." For "did NOT do X" patterns (e.g. trial expired without purchase), fire a backend-driven custom event when the negative outcome happens (e.g. cron job marks "Trial Expired Without Purchase" on day 14 if no purchase recorded). Then use that event as a funnel step.
No. Plausible funnels are aggregate (counts per step) not user-level (individual journeys). If you need user-level path analysis, Plausible is not the right tool — see PostHog or Mixpanel.
First-touch by default — the source/medium of the FIRST pageview in the session that started the funnel. If a user enters via Google Ads, leaves, returns via Direct, and completes the purchase, Google Ads gets the credit. Plausible does not currently offer multi-touch attribution.
Yes — Plausible Business plan supports CSV export of any dashboard view including funnels. Look for the export icon in the top right of the funnel chart. For programmatic access, the Plausible Stats API also exposes funnel data.
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