NOTE: you can see the updated part 2 of this review in this post here.
InfusionSoft is an integrated e-mail marketing, CRM (customer relationship management), and e-commerce platform.
It’s one of the most popular platforms for selling information products or services online, with many of the world’s top online gurus using it to run their businesses.
However, it has a bit of a reputation that often causes people to hesitate before they sign up for it.
After using it daily for two different businesses over the last two and a half years, I’ve spent a lot of time with Infusionsoft and would like to share my perspective on it for those considering it in this review.
I hope to clear up some fog around Infusionsoft in your mind and help you make an informed decision about using it.
It’s common to hear that Infusionsoft is complicated, hard to use, and frustrating to learn. Many people give up on it and move to another system before they ever launch their business.
The bottom line is this: my opinion of Infusionsoft is positive overall. It’s a very powerful system and it’s worth getting through the hard part of the learning curve, and then coming to a state of acceptance with the not-so-good bits.
I definitely recommend using it, but there are some things to be aware of before diving in.
Here’s a snapshot of the good and not-so-good aspects of Infusionsoft from my perspective.
Good things:
It’s very powerful.
By “powerful” I mean that it can do many, many things. That translates into being able to grow your business quickly.
Everything is all in one place. CRM system, email marketing, ecommerce, affiliate system…it’s all rolled into one platform.
Having all that functionality in one platform means there’s no need to cobble together multiple different software platforms to get everything you need to run an online business that sells information products or services.
It integrates with other software to create paid membership sites.
Infusionsoft integrates with Customer Hub, WordPress, and Kajabi to allow you to create protected, paid access only membership areas of your website. (Infusionsoft recently acquired Customer Hub, so the integration between the two platforms will get even better moving forward.)
Kajabi also makes it easy to use Infusionsoft for the email marketing and ecommerce aspects of creating a membership site. (I think Kajabi has more beneficial features than Customer Hub, but that’s another story.)
Very flexible email list segmentation.
It’s easy to create email lists in Infusionsoft. Everything is based on tags, so if you want a new list, you just create a new tag and when people sign up for your new list, or buy a product, they can get tagged with the new list tag.
Tight integration of email marketing and ecommerce actions.
The opportunities to grow your business with the tight integration of ecommerce purchases and email marketing in Infusionsoft are many. Every purchase, whether a product or subscription, can generate a series of automated actions to be taken on the person’s record who made the purchase.
Tags can be added, auto responder emails sent, follow up sequences with other actions can be started, and many other things. It’s pretty amazing what you can do with the automated actions of Infusionsoft.
Fantastic phone support.
They’re not available 24/7 but when they are available, the Infusionsoft support team is great. If you ever get stuck with anything, they are just a phone call away, and the wait times are almost always very short (under a minute, if there’s a wait at all.)
Everyone I have ever spoken with at Infusionsoft has been friendly, knowledgeable, and very helpful.
Not so good things:
Infusionsoft can seem expensive if you’re starting out.
If you’d like to do email marketing and ecommerce in addition to affiliate tracking and other basic features, you’ll need the Plus package, which is currently $299/mo.
Given all that Infusionsoft does though, that’s not a lot of money for the foundation of the technology that will allow you to run your business.
I’m also not a big fan of the required training package fee, which tends to be around $2,000.
I completely understand why they require it for new subscribers (Infusionsoft is hard to learn and their personalized training and having a one-on-one coaching makes learning easier), but for those of who are familiar with Infusionsoft, it’s an unnecessary expense and a service that won’t be used, which means we have to negotiate around paying it.
Sometimes though, you can get a discount off of the monthly rate as well as the training package. It depends on what offers they have going on and which salesman you speak with.
Poor sales reports.
Getting accurate sales data from Infusionsoft can be a bit of a headache. Once you figure out which report to use, and what numbers to pay attention to in that report (and which ones to ignore), you can create your own spreadsheets and graphs to show accurate sales numbers.
It is, however, very time consuming to create your own sales reports. I’m always left wishing there were better reports with visual representations of sales data.
Can’t process recurring payments with Paypal.
If you’re planning on selling automaticly recurring subscriptions, you currently won’t be able to allow people to pay for subscriptions with Paypal, because Infusionsoft can’t run payments through Paypal that automatically recur.
It can process one-time payments for products or services using Paypal, but because it can’t do recurring payments via Paypal, you will unfortunately be losing out on some sales.
There are many people around the world, particularly in countries outside of the U.S., who will only pay for things online via Paypal, and if they want to sign up for any of your automatically recurring subscriptions (or product with a payment plan that automatically recurs for a set number of months), they won’t be able to unless you provide a time consuming, manual workaround where you give them a special one-time payment link that they can use to pay with Paypal.
Then you have to manually track and run their payments through every month, sending them the link each time so they can pay with Paypal.
User interface and usability issues.
InfusionSoft can indeed be hard to learn, and a big reason, in my opinion, is it’s user interface. They are working on improving it with new releases of the software, but in my opinion, it still needs a good bit of work to get it to a place where it’s super easy to use.
Styling the cart checkout pages and web forms takes manual css work.
If you want your web sign up forms or shopping cart pages to look similar to your website, with things like colors and fonts matching the colors and fonts on your site, you’re going to have a good bit of custom css work to do.
The web form customization tool could be better.
The process of customizing the look and feel of the web forms and shopping cart pages would be much easier to do if there were a customization interface similar to that of Mailchimp’s web form editor, which is amazingly easy and fast to use when you’re customizing web forms in Mailchimp.
Email creation, templating, and editing is a bit clunky in some ways.
There is a selection of free, pre-designed email templates, but they are only available for people on PC’s via a download of a desktop email editing app.
If you’re on Mac you won’t have this option, which means there isn’t any pre-designed email templates that look really good out of the box in Infusionsoft if you’re using a Mac.
Mailchimp, iContact, and Aweber all beat Infusionsoft in this aspect.
So, if you’re on a Mac and are looking for an easy way to get a really great looking, sexy email template without having to do any custom email template work with their drag and drop email builder (or touching any code), you won’t be happy with this part of Infusionsoft.
Also, the email creation and editing workflow feels a bit awkward to me. They have 3 different types of email editors that allow you to edit in different ways (drag and drop, Classic builder, and the Code Builder).
Switching between the editors can make the email creation/editing process feel fragmented at times.
When you use the code builder, which gives you a raw view of the html of the email, after you save an email it will often alter the email template in undesired ways, such as adding in empty paragraphs where they shouldn’t be.
These kinds of things are a bit aggravating, and for a platform as robust as Infusionsoft is, and which relies heavily on its email marketing features, I would think that they would have made this part of the process much easier by now.
Now, with all that said, despite the not-so-good things I’ve mentioned, I still think that using Infusionsoft is worth getting past the challenging learning curve and learning to live with it’s not-so-good aspects.
The benefits far out-weigh the downsides.
Once you get it up and running and learn how to use it, Infusionsoft has a ton of features that allow you to build a business and revenue stream quickly.
How about you? Have you used Infusionsoft? If so, what’s your opinion of it?
Infusionsoft is a great marketing solution and I could make the most of it when I was able to integrate it with my CRM and email marketing tools (Hubspot and Mailchimp).
I did so by implementing a third party solution called Podbox. It provides a seamless, painless and multi-directional sync in real time.
I really advise to take a look at it
https://www.podbox.com/#!/Infusionsoft/HubSpot
Cheers,
Steve
Hi! Thanks for writing that up. I am currently struggling with figuring out how to make accurate sales reports in infusionsoft. Could you give me some tips?
Thanks so much!
Anna
Hi Anna,
I struggle with Infusionsoft’s reports as well. They are endlessly frustrating and inaccurate…and ugly.
What I end up doing is pulling information from them that I want to see and building my own Google Spreadsheet that I share with my team. It’s still just a spreadsheet, but then I can add nice looking graphs and bar charts with the tools right inside Google Spreadsheets.
It’s much more time-consuming, but until IS gets its act together, I’ll keep making my own reports manually.
Cheers,
Forest
Great article. Infusionsoft clearly understands their shortcomings. Look for some good improvements in 2015. Especially with the email editor. Honestly, it is by far the most powerful sales and marketing system for small business owners. As a sales consultant, I pride myself on staying up on what’s out there. I’ve looked at Ontraport (email marketing on steriods but not a sales management tool), Hubspot (CMS focus. Very expensive), GreenRope (decent CRM but automation is lacking), Hatchbuck (Infusionsoft 8 years ago). If you are just interested in email marketing, stay with mail chimp or constant contact. If you need a powerful CRM, Sales Pipeline Management, E-commerce, Etc) then Infusionsoft is right for you. There are all kinds of little companies sprouting up in this space promising to be better than Infusionsoft. Don’t believe it. Infusionsoft has been at this game for over 10 years. They are the marketing leader for small business sales and marketing automation and management. Don’t believe all the silly pitches about Infusionsoft being confusing. The other issue is the Ecosystem. No one has a better Ecosystem than Infusionsoft. Don’t believe me, come out to Infusionscon this spring in Phoenix, Arizona. You will be amazed how many small business owner’s businesses have been saved because this software because it truly helps you to get organized, save time, and grow sales.
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What about database? Is it fresh and how effective?
One more question, Will we be able to upload our own database and send mails and will that be copied to their server?
Beware the recommendations for OAP now ontraport . . . if you have technical questions, the staff are not ready for them outside of business hours. They regularly staff support chat with folks who don’t know tech basics, like “redirect.” How can you work for a tech company that utilizes redirects and not know what a redirect is? Recommend against ontraport.
I used IS way way way back in it’s early days and it was a headache, so I wanted to avoid them. Ontraport’s subpar staff killed it for me. I wanted to love them but they couldn’t support when needed. If you need help on a Friday night after your staff have gone home and you finally get to do your work – hey SMBs! – don’t expect ontraport to have anyone useful available for you.
Good article, but does Infusionsoft include an alternative to Mailchimp for sending out and formatting emails?
Yup, you can compose and send out html emails with Infusionsoft. That’s a large part of what it does. The emails won’t be as pretty as Mailchimp emails, and the email builder in Infusionsoft is waaaay behind Mailchimp’s in many ways, but you can definitely send out formatted emails with infusionsoft.
Is Infusionsoft good for medium sized businesses? Also, does it help you target people or just manage existing data?
Hi Simon,
yup, it can be great for medium sized businesses, and yes, it helps you target people on your list with a lot of flexibility.
Cheers 🙂
Forest
Hi Forest thanks for sharing informative blog. I have read your all reviews about infusionsoft. It was quite interesting.
Nice review, and great comment attractor. I am “using” Ontraport (just signed up) but fellow marketers have reported awful experiences with 3.0 bugs and low customer support availability / competence. I am new to internet marketing and I have been confused by the whole patchwork of stuff that needs integration. My pattern is to sign up, get disappointed (or never survive a learning curve) and then switch to something else. I know its hard to switch so I am trying to choose properly but in the meantime I am not building a list or campaigns due to one toe in the pool. I need to make sure I have the bandwidth to do the kick start and also concerned one commenter said the kickstart was kind of a worthless sham, but it sounded like he was only 3 weeks into it and had big list moving tasks on his plate. I have no list, just need to get campaigns. I like the list segmentation features, because I have lots of niches that can use my expertise in slightly different ways, I’m more likely to customize content to different types of professionals with slightly different content campaigns.
Has infusion soft improved their usability since you first wrote your article, that substantially changes any of that?
Hi Mike,
thanks much for stopping by for a read. Ugh, so sorry to hear about the bad experiences from your friends with Ontraport 3.0. That’s the first I’ve ever heard of someone saying something negative about Ontraport’s support, so I’ll store that for future reference in my mind.
The training sessions you get with Infusionsoft can be good, or not so good. It seems to depend on who you get assigned to as a trainer. I’ve heard of some folks going through that training and getting a lot out of it, but have also heard of people feeling that it’s a waste of time and money.
The user interface and usability have definitely improved since I wrote this first article. There’s a part two of this article that you should read with an update on my opinion of Infusionsoft. You can catch that one here: http://techhusband.com/should-you-use-infusionsoft-get-the-updated-tech-husband-review/
Hope this helps a bit!
And good luck with the path ahead for you. It may take a few months, but you’ll get the hang of all the tech parts of your business soon enough.
Cheers,
Forest
My experience with infusionsolft has been a nightmare. The product was not what the salesman said it was. I found it difficult (EXTEMELY) to cancel and I have an open billing dispute about an overcharge that is not being handled in a professional manner. Thumbs down…big time.
Hi!
I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for
this site? I’m getting fed up of WordPress because I’ve had issues with hackers and I’m looking at alternatives for
another platform. I would be awesome if you could point me
in the direction of a good platform.
Hey Edward,
I’m using WordPress for this site, and it’s what I recommend for anyone looking to build a site for their business.
If you’re having trouble with repeated hacking, the best things to do to prevent that are this (at least the first, low hanging fruit types of things):
1. always keep your plugins and core wordpress version up to date.
The biggest security holes in WordPress sites come from out of date plugins or core wordpress code.
2. Change your admin user name to something other than “admin.”
3. Create a super strong password. Something over 18 characters long with symbols, numbers, lower case and upper case. Create a password for your WP admin that you’d never be able to remember, and use 1 Password to remember it for you.
4. Move your site to a host that puts a lot of attention on security issues that can only be done on the side of a webhost in their server environment. The top ones that do this that come to mind are WordPress Engine, Synthesis, and Pressable.
Those few things will go a LONG way in securing your site from 90% of the kiddy hackers and their automated hacking bots.
Hope this helps a bit!
p.s. If you’re really done with wordpress and want a turn key, simple site/platform, check out Squarespace. You’ll be really limited in terms of what you can do around building a platform for your business, but it’s a solid platform that will create beautiful looking brochure sites.
Another great, balanced review Forest.
We’ve been using Infusionsoft for almost 4 years now. We love it (it’s the most powerful software tool I have ever seen for small business), though I do describe it as a great big gorilla. It’s powerful, but a BIG challenge to tame (i.e. configure for your own needs).
After totally under-utlising Infusionsoft in the first two years we had it, by trying to do the setup and configuration of the many dozens of tools and templates within it in-house, we are getting far greater traction with it now that we have a certified Infusionsoft consultant on a monthly retainer with specific implementation tasks to complete each month.
This consultant costs us 3 times what we pay each month for Infusionsoft, and my advice to anyone considering Infusionsoft is to budget in at least double of what you’ll pay for Infusionsoft itself, for proper implementation assistance via a certified consultant. Budget for that for at least a year. Sounds expensive, but under-utilisation is a greater cost.
Hi Forest,
I’ve just read everything on this blog. Quite interesting. I am currently looking to restart from scratch. (We have an outdated access database to run our business, can you imagine!)
I have been looking into different options:
1. a limited tailor-made MySQL database
2. a SugarCRM/Chimpmail/e-commerce portal/MS Outlook/QuickBooks combination.
3. Infusionsoft (although you wrote that the CRM part is not too impressive ?)
Option 1 is not good, because it is too limited and once you get started with a system as a small organisation, you tend to stick to what you have.
Option 2 looks very good, but the combination of all those programmes and apps looks a bit frightening. Will those parts connect seamlessly or could the pieces of such a jigsaw puzzle fall apart? I know this is the age of the cloud, but I’m not a tech guy, I’m an entrepreneur with an existing business. So the last thing I want is to take a big risks with a system that might just not work.
If one single holistic tool, such as Infusionsoft, could do all that is needed (CRM/e-commerce/marketing/invoicing), it would still be a good investment, although it does not come cheaply.
So that is basically my question to you, Forest: the pros and cons of Infusionsoft vs such a SugarCRM/Chimpmail/e-commerce portal/MS Outlook/QuickBooks combination.
Looking forward to your valued opinion
Edgard
Hi Edgard 🙂
The answer to your question would take a couple hours to type or about an hour to speak, and the answer would depend on many variables related to what you need exactly for your business.
If you’re interested in diving in to this, I’d be glad to see if a consulting session with me would help you out. You can learn more about my consulting here, and fill out a short questionnaire that will allow me to see if what you need is something I can help with: http://techhusband.com/consulting/
All the best,
~Forest
Hi Forest,
Thanks for this Infusionsoft overview! I started to use IS a few months ago after our webmaster left and after feeling rather overwhelmed I can now say that I really love it. Their customer support is phenomenal indeed. I just started exploring Kajabi this week and I’m close to explore how well it integrates with Infusionsoft. We do use CustumerHub also but I’m looking forward to Kajabi’s potential and ease of use since my technical skills are very basic. So far Kajabi looks like a nice tool to design good looking landing pages in a faster way than through using Infusionsoft.
I really appreciate you sharing your insights with us all. It saves lots of time researching!
Katleen
Hi Katleen!
So glad that this review of Infusionsoft helped you a bit.
Hope things go well with your trial of Kajabi!
All the best,
Forest
Thanks Forest, you’d be welcome.
I ought to clarify something I said above about SubscriptionBoss also working for non-WordPress sites.
SubscriptionBoss is a WordPress plugin so it does require WordPress to work. However the WP site does not have to be connected in any way to the current sales site where your payment transactions originate.
All we do for non WP users, is create an empty intermediate WP site that no-one ever sees, so there is no styling required. We place the SB plugin on that. The intermediate WP site acts as a gateway and can process payments that come in from the your main sales site even if that site is on Drupal or any other platform.
Some WP users even set it up this way in order to separate the payment processing from the main site. But that is just a preference.
Infusionsoft will surely be bringing out a solution for Paypal subscriptions pretty soon. It has been on their wishlist for so long we think it can’t be very far away.
However we’re adding Stripe and Braintree to SubscriptionBoss. SB already include payment plans and the next major version will have trial periods to allow for multiple rates *and* a multiple currency facility. This last feature will mean that you won’t need to have several IS apps in order to offer several currencies.
Thanks for the clarification, Liz!
I’ve been asking Infusionsoft about adding recurring payments via paypal for the last 4 years and they haven’t added it yet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes them a few more years.
They are very slow to fix or add certain features. Sigh.
Glad to know about SB though 🙂
Cheers!
Forest
We’ve been providing the solution to subscriptions (recurring payments) via PayPal for Infusionsoft for the last few years. Ours is a WordPress solution but even so, we have a number of clients who don’t use WordPress who also use our solution. It’s flexible enough to do that.
Subscription Boss
Hi Liz! I’ve seen your plugin before, probably a couple years ago, and made note of it in a big spreadsheet I have where I keep track of interesting apps. Thanks for the reminder! We’ll likely be signing up for a subscription before our next launch, because it drives me nuts that we can’t accept recurring payments with paypal through our IS cart and order forms.
Cheers!
Forest
Wow. This is a very active article!
I just have to say that my experience with InfusionSoft has been a total nightmare. I won’t go into detail, but I wanted to warn anyone with a taste for professional “DESIGN” to watch out for InfusionSoft. Because it’s not the all-in-one system that you think it is, if you care about “DESIGN”.
And, as a design company – we care a lot about it. The main issue we have (and the reason we’re so frustrated) is that we didn’t plan on having to design, develop and code and entirely new website and online store just to be able to use InfusionSoft and make it look acceptable to us. In fact, if I would have known how bad their web forms, templates, landing pages, email templates, auto responders, etc looked at the beginning – I would have never signed up.
Unfortunately, we’re stuck with it until we get some ROI back. Which could be a long time if I factor in all the additional work we had to do just to get this thing half-way off the ground…
Oh, and the “Kickstarter” additional fee they charge you when you sign up ($1200 to $2000) is a joke! (my opinion) You don’t even get to talk to InfusionSoft reps – it’s some 3rd party company called SuccessEngine and all they do is dance around marketing plans with you. I’m 3 weeks in and we’ve yet to get anyone that could help us migrate our data! They should have let me keep my $1200 bucks as I’m doing all the work myself anyways.
At least – this is my experience, maybe yours will be different. I pray so.
In the end, if I had it to do all over again, I would not choose to work with this company at all.
We’ve used HubSpot, SalesForce.com and some others. Great experiences and I recommend them all the time. InfusionSoft – not so much. In fact, it’s the opposite.
Just one guys opinion 🙂
Hey Jonathan,
great input here. Thanks much for taking a moment to share your experience with Infusionsoft. I can totally understand and sympathize with everything you said, and I agree with it all.
I keep hoping that Infusionsoft will hire someone with decision making power who actually has a good sense of design, because, as you’ve noted, that area is severely lacking in Infusionsoft’s web forms and email templates and cart pages. Sigh.
For us, the pros still outweigh the cons, especially considering that migrating to another platform would be a nightmare for us…it would take a month of solid work.
The bit you mentioned about not getting to actually work directly with IS trainers as part of the required kickstarter fee is news to me. They used to pair new account holders with Infusionsoft employees…trainers that would help you get set up. That seems rather lame that they are outsourcing that now, and that you’re not getting the help you actually need.
If you want a recommendation for someone who can actually help you with migrating and getting everything set up in your account, contact Sarit Neundorf: http://www.integrateandautomate.com/
I refer a lot of folks to Sarit. He’s a certified Infusionsoft consultant and he knows his stuff.
Hope that helps you get to the point of seeing some ROI for your infusionsoft investment.
If you can come to live with the cons of using IS, it can be a powerful platform to use. But it’s not always the best fit for every business. And if someone comes out with an all-in-one app that competes with Infusionsoft and nails all of it’s shortcomings, we’ll likely migrate away from it. So far, I haven’t found anything better that satisfies everything we’d need (e.g., Ontraport, Nanacast, Premium WebCart…some come close, but none of them are nailing everything in the way we want and need. Ohhhh…if I only had a spare $10 million to create a true all-in-one app product and company…)
All the best, and good luck with everything in your biz!
~Forest
Thanks. I will take you up on that referral and reach out to them. No matter what – I know that if we put the effort into getting things to work in Infusionsoft that it will serve it’s purpose. Really rocky start…
You know, I think some SaaS companies are spending so much time on process + so much time on “automation” that they’re forgetting that we are real people on the other end of all those ‘processes’ 🙂
Thanks for the helps!
You’re welcome, Jonathan! Glad to be of some help to you on your journey.
Hope it all turns out well for you with IS!
Cheers,
Forest
Excellent article. I’m dealing with many of these issues as
well..
Hi there! This is kind of off topic but I need some advice from an
established blog. Is it very hard to set up your own blog?
I’m not very techincal but I can figure things out
pretty fast. I’m thinking about setting up my own but I’m not sure where to begin.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions? Thanks
Hey Brian,
sorry for the delay in responding to you. Your comment got lost in my email inbox for a while there.
So, are you referring to building a website for your blog, or building a functioning blog in terms of publishing content that draws traffic and leads to some other part of your business/marketing funnel?
It sounds like you’re talking about building your own blog website, yes? If so, I definitely recommend building your own blog site using the self-hosted version of WordPress (as opposed to the free, hosted version of WordPress.)
WordPress isn’t too hard to learn how to use. I have a video training course with over 4 hours of step-by-step instructions on how to build a blog site with wordpress if you’re interested. You can learn more about that here: http://techhusband.com/wordpress-training-camp/
Let me know if you have any further questions about that.
All the best,
~Forest
Hi Forest, I worked with InfusionSoft about a year ago and am just getting back into it for a new client. Since then I’ve gotten a new computer (Windows 8.1) and InfusionSoft has updated some things, like the Campaign builder. The preferred browser is Firefox but they are NOT playing nice together. Firefox just hangs and hangs and hangs on “transferring data from…” I have the most current version of Firefox and have updated Java, cleared the cache and put InfusionSoft in the list of exceptions to make sure java runs on it, but no. My anti-virus is Avast and it doesn’t look like it’s holding things up. Their 2nd preferred browser is IE 9. Windows 8 defaults to IE 11 and trying the developer tool with F12 then Cntrl + 8 and changing 2 fields to IE 9 doesn’t work. And Chrome won’t work with the Campaign builder at all. I can’t get any work done for my client until this is resolved. It won’t let me see the campaign builder or web forms. Any idea what’s going on? I tried FF in safe mode with all plugins disabled and it worked temporarily but still hung up when switching pages so I don’t think the fix was related. Other websites seem to come up fine. It seems to be something with InfusionSoft and Win 8 possibly.
Hi Merri,
I’m not sure what could be causing the issues you’re seeing. Sorry about that. The best thing to do that will get you the fastest resolution to that problem is to call infusionsoft support on the phone, or use their live chat support option.
Their support is most often really good.
Sorry I couldn’t be of any more help around this one.
Cheers,
Forest
Hi Forest, thanks for the detailed objective review in plan language. I came across it after reading another one of your reviews on DAP. Great stuff.
A quick question, for those online solopreneurs out there that can’t afford the large investment with Infusionsoft, is there another tool with similar features that is more affordable. I’ve been looking but have drawn a blank so far. Interested to know if anyone can recommend one.
Hi Geoff,
glad you’ve been enjoying a few posts here 🙂
You can get similar features to Infusionsoft with a collection of separate apps for a lot less, but by going that route, you’ll have a lot less flexibility in terms of automation and integration between the different parts of your system.
That may not be a problem when your business is small, but as soon as it starts to grow, you’ll most likely find yourself wanting more flexibility and integration so that you don’t have to do so many things manually.
Which combination of separate, less expensive apps you might choose depends on a large number of variables, but yes, there are other options.
Since you read my post on DAP, I’m guessing you’re looking to build and sell an online program of some sort.
WordPress (marketing site and membership pages), DAP (membership permissions, content control for your program content, affiliate sale tracking, and ecommerce processing via Paypal or your own payment gateway), Aweber (email marketing), and Optimize Press (squeeze pages, launch funnel pages, sales pages) is a great, less expensive combination that will get you many of the same kinds of features you’d get with Infusionsoft…plus some that you can’t get with just infusionsoft by itself.
Hope this helps a bit!
Cheers,
Forest
Hey Forest, thanks for the quick and detailed response. I figured it might be something that would require using a nos of different tools. Do you think there is a market for very simple easy to use solution for the part time solopreneur that cover the essentials without having to go through the hassle of integrating different tools? Interested to hear your thoughts given your vast experience in this area. Cheers Geoff
Hi Geoff,
you’re welcome for the response. Glad it helped a bit 🙂
So, are you referring to an all in one app that does a lot of similar things to Infusionsoft, or the combination of apps I listed in my response to you, for a lot less than Infusionsoft (or Ontraport for that matter)?
If that’s what you’re asking, the answer is yes. The challenge though is that you’re basically talking about building an all in one app that would be a very complicated (and expensive/time consuming) app to build, and you’d have to offer it for much less than the big all in one apps, if you’re going to market it as an alternative that does most of what the bigger apps do, but for much less of a financial commitment.
Ruzuku ( https://ruzuku.com ) comes close to hitting this mid-market with it’s feature set and price, but it’s still missing many features that would be present in the list of all those separate apps I mentioned previously.
But the answer to your question is yes, and I’ve often fallen to sleep at night designing just such an app in my mind…a true, simple, all-in-one app: WordPress as the front end marketing site, then everything else integrated with WP via this app/plugin: email marketing, affiliate sale tracking, membership site functionality, ecommerce/cart, integrated discussion forum, coaching/consulting scheduling and payment, live event registration, and product launch funnel pages.
Fun to think about, but it would be a tremendous amount of work to pull it off.
Are you guys at Selz thinking of heading in this direction?
Cheerio 🙂
Forest
Hey Forest, our goal is to build a integrated platform for solo entrepreneurs rather than them creating their own Frankenstein out of various different apps cobbled together. As you say, the key thing is getting the critical features. I don’t think we want to boil down the ocean! Interested to hear your thoughts and talk to more about this offline if you’d like to drop me an email.Cheers 🙂 Geoff
Do not use Infusionsoft. They’re customer support is terrible, you’re on hold for a long time and they don’t always have answers. When they don’t have the answers they act like you’re the idiot. They have their email god who monitors your account and is too eager to shut you down. They opted out 65% of our list with no explanation. When we pressed them their Email God – Chad said we had hit spam traps and now we can only send to double optins. We gave up on these guys. Take my advice – stay away from them.
Hi Forest,
I have a daily deal site today and use Constant Contact for daily email blasts. It costs me about $700/Month as my DB is around 150K subscribers. However, I need more than email blasts and would like to do some sales tracking, more targeted marketing and CRM as well and improve my customer base segmentation for better targeting. I am considering IS, not sure if it’s the right tool? Appreciate your feedback.
Hi Sam,
I have a feeling that Infusionsoft would be a great option to consider for you, and I’d also recommend checking out Ontraport/Office AutoPilot, which is one of Infusionsoft’s main competitors. They have a very similar feature set. I speak a bit more about Infusionsoft and OAP in this updated post on Infusionsoft here.
Hope that helps a bit!
Cheers,
Forest
Aloha Forest,
Thank you for this article and for being ‘in the middle’ and not one sided with these tools. I’ve been researching this for quite a while trying to find the best fit for our business needs. I’m wondering if I can pass what I’m looking to have by you (for fee if you like) and get your counsel how to best string together the systems we need?
Please advise.
Thank you,
Will
Hey Will,
I’d be glad to meet with you to review your business needs and do some consulting with you around the technology side of things.
You can learn more about my consulting services on this page, and if you’re interested in scheduling a session, just fill out the questionnaire that’s on this page at the bottom: http://techhusband.com/tech-consulting/
All the best, and thanks for stopping by for a read 🙂
~Forest
I was thinking about joining Infusion-soft but after seen their prices, I rather start with someone else, and move to this software later in my business’ lifetime, when I can afford it.
Forest,
I have enjoyed reading your blog and the comments. Thank you for clarity and candor.
I have been using Sage Act as a Manufacturer’s Rep for several years. I am about to add a part time office assistant and want a program that will support two locations. The investment in Infusionsoft, for me, is considerable. Although, I am intrigued by the benefit I might gain with having the hands-on training with IS. ($2000)
I have added Swiftpage E-marketing to Act to replace MailChimp (not very intuitive but it works okay).
In your opinion, which of the two systems is my better choice?
Hey Tracy,
glad to hear you’ve enjoyed reading some posts on my site. Thanks much for stopping by and spending some time here.
I’m not familiar with Sage Act or Swiftpage, so I can’t offer a recommendation on which is better between that combination and Infusionsoft. Sorry about that!
From taking a quick look at both Act and Swiftpage though, I get what they do, but in order to be able to answer your question around what’s a better choice, I’d need to know a lot more information about what you need for your business. If you’re interested, I’d be glad to review some more information in the form of your answers to a questionnaire that you’d fill out as a first step towards doing a private tech consulting session with me. If that sounds interesting, you can find that questionnaire and info about my consulting services on this page: http://techhusband.com/tech-consulting/
Hope this helps a bit.
All the best,
~Forest
Thanks for de-mystifying this maze for us Forest 🙂
I wonder if it is possible to put together some kind of mind-map (yup I’m the visual kind) that summarises all the options and pros and cons. Cos I get very tangled in my understanding.
For example, is Infusionsoft something that is used with Mail Chimp or is that completely separate and overlapping or a competing product?
Cheers Sarah
Hey Sarah,
I have a mind map that covers a broad overview of the different parts of a tech system for a business that’s looking to sell information products like home study programs. I’ll send it to you via email.
It doesn’t cover pros and cons of different choices, but it does give a high level overview of how all the pieces fit together. Perhaps it will satisfy some part of what you’re trying to understand.
As for the other part, with wrapping your mind around all the pros and cons of the dozens of choices for apps, I’m working on a book that will address that in depth 🙂
Keep an eye out for an email in a moment!
~Forest
Thanks very much Forest. Great map – and I like the expedition approach… right down my alley as an Adventure Coach 🙂
Glad you enjoyed the map!
Cheers!
I was a little surprised to see that you’ve mentioned that $300 for a service like Infusionsoft is expensive. I have been considering HubSpot for a while, which for my business’s size amounts to $1800/month plus a $2000 start up fee. To me, Infusionsoft is INCREDIBLY cheaper, and it’s really making me lean towards them. HubSport certainly has a few more features, but I’m curious if you have any experience with them and have any idea if it’s worth the extra money.
Hey Josh,
well, “expensive” is a relative term, eh? Most people that I talk to about infusionsoft feel that it’s expensive for them at $300/mo with a $2,000 start up fee, so when I say that it’s on the expensive side, that’s what I’m referring to.
When people feel that Infusionsoft is too expensive, they usually end up going a route with their software that costs them a few hundred dollars in one time payments, plus a handful of low monthly fees, like $24/mo per app.
Compared to that route, Infusionsoft is expensive. Compared to HubSpot, Infusionsoft is cheap. So I think it really depends on your perspective and what you’re comparing it’s price to.
I have never used HubSpot personally, so I can’t say anything about it as an option. I did have a client who was using Hubspot and who ran into many limitations of their platform where he couldn’t create what he wanted to create around selling an online program. He ended up choosing Infusionsoft, Kajabi, and WordPress to get the functionality he needed.
Hope this helps a bit!
Cheers,
Forest
Forest – great article and thanks for sharing. Question – do you know of any actual project management programs (i.e. basecamp) that integrate with IS? I have a client I’m working with that uses IS religiously and loves it – however we’re starting to work on projects for some of his clients and need a PM software. Thanks!
Hey Matt, glad you enjoyed the article! Unfortunately, I don’t know of any way to integrate a project management app with IS, and I don’t see any third party options in the infusionsoft marketplace for this either.
So, you’ll have to use a project management app separately from IS. I’d recommend Basecamp or Asana for starters, though there other good ones with more robust features sets if you need them, like Bitrix24.
Hope this helps!
All the best,
Forest
I must ask if you know of any competitors…? Are they really the only game in town? Reading your article the cons seem to outweigh the pros given a lack of more specific pros. Love what you’re doing. Seems you have not reviewed any alternative. Perhaps you could mention or elaborate more where the product will pay for itself and thereby justify the expense, especially given that iContact & HootSuite seem to also be required. And if you get the full-tilt boogie, with CRM & Ecomm, it’s $400/mo.
Also, just found this claim: “Office Autopilot Costs 2 x’s More Than PWC, but Has 1/2 as Many Tools”. Could you please comment on this, you seem to be a lone voice in the woods!
PWC has a good feature set, for sure. I don’t have any experience working with their app, but I’ve heard a few people say they like it a lot. To get a similar feature set between PWC and ONtraport, you’d be paying $199/mo for PWC, and there are things that Ontraport does that PWC doesn’t…and vice versa.
The best thing to do in this situation is to create a spreadsheet for yourself to compare features and list out the pros and cons of each that you discover.
I’d contact ontraport and get a guided tour of their app so you can see it in action and ask questions…then do the same with PWC.
It’ll take some time, but the research will pay off in the end.
Hope this helps 🙂
Cheers,
Forest
Hi Teresa,
if you’d like to check out infusionsoft’s main competitor, check out Ontraport, which is the same app as Office Autopilot. Ontraport is still $297/mo, but doesn’t come with a required $2,000 training fee like infusionsoft does.
Infusionsoft is $297/mo as well, for their Plus package, which is what most people use. You don’t also need icontact if you use infusionsoft, since icontact is an email marketing program, and that’s a large portion of what infusionsoft does.
Hootsuite is still necessary if you want to automate the publishing of social media updates to all your networks at once. Infusionsoft allows you to send updates of your email newsletters to your networks, and it has a few other social media features, but it doesn’t do what Hootsuite does.
Apps like infusionsoft and ontraport pay for themselves through the amount of time they can save you, as well as allowing you to put different, more effect marketing tactics in place because of the automation and list segmenting they allow you to do.
With apps at this price, it’s usually best to already have a product and an audience who’s either ready to buy something from you, or has already been buying from you. Some people recommend waiting until you have at least 500 people on your email list before you commit to spending $300/mo on an all in one app like this.
I went the other route and started off with infusionsoft from the get go with Tech Husband, but that’s partly because I already knew how to use it from my previous business, which made it the fastest route for me to get up and running.
Hope this helps a bit!
Cheers,
Forest
Hi Forest,
Love the information you have provided, thank you!
With your experience, as someone has mentioned earlier, is this “too big” of a program for a realtor? She is solo and looking for a program that can collect potential client/client information (and very specifics as to birthdays anniversaries etc. so that she can send cards, emails, and so forth) send out marketing emails. She needs a website overhaul, better SEO, the ability to use social media more efficiently and a CRM package all in one. E-commerce is not necessary.
I have also read that Infusionsoft is a monster learn, I am her assistant and am the one that would be running her program. She is not computer savvy and I don’t want to recommend a product that she will not be able to use herself.
Thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
All the best,
Tannis
Hi Tannis,
if you’re not going to use the ecommerce aspect of infusionsoft, you’d be paying for a good portion of the app that you wouldn’t ever use.
It should satisfy your realtor friend’s other needs though, in terms of collecting client information and allowing her to send out marketing emails to her list. It has some social media features in it, but it’s not built to allow you to manage broadcasting out social media updates for everything. I’d recommend using Hootsuite for that.
Infusionsoft does take a while to learn, but their required training package pairs you with a trainer that shows you the ropes, and their phone support is really good.
If the cost isn’t an issue, and you don’t mind learning infusionsoft, it’s a powerful program that could fulfill her needs well.
For comparison, you may also want to check out Ontraport/Office AutoPilot, which is one of Infusionsoft’s main competitors.
Hope this helps a bit!
Cheers,
Forest
Hi Forest
Many thanks for your informative article which I found with a Google search. It has given me a lot of food for thought and im grateful for your suggestions of other systems to consider
Thanks Again
Paul
You bet, Paul. Glad you found some help here.
All the best,
Forest
Hi Forest, thanks for the review and updates on your original post.
I am looking into Infusionsoft for my small computer consulting company. I am not sure if Infusionsoft is “too much” for us. We are looking for a online platform to organize our business.
We need the ability to create custom check list templates that we can attach to customers (sometimes numerous times). For example, we have a check list of tasks that we perform when setting up a new computer for a customer or a list of tasks that we perform while at a customer site for a maintenance visit. Needs to be simple list with ability to “check off” each task as it is done. Also need ability to attach same checklist multiple times for the same customer if we do the same job numerous times for the same customer. It does NOT have to be a project or completed list with due dates or milestones. Just a list with check boxes so we can keep track of the things needed to be done and things already accomplished. Needs to be saved in the customer’s history so we can refer back to it if needed. Sometimes we are setting up multiple computers at once and have to bounce around. It has been hard to keep track of what we have completed already. My Infusionsoft sales person mentioned this may work in the Opportunity Manager. Here is an example of one of our task lists.
– Data transfer from old computer
– Software Update
– Microsoft Office Updated
– Flash Updated/Installed
– Java Updated/InstalledMail Updated
– iPhoto Updated
– Repair Permissions
– Repair Disk
– Disk Warrior
– TeamViewer Installed
Google Calendar and Contact sync. We use Apple’s Calendar and Contacts apps on our computers, iPhones and iPad. We need to have a true two way sync between our CRM and these devices. If we enter or change an appointment on our iPhone, we would like it to automatically sync to Infusionsoft. Other CRM systems we have tested claim to do this, but in practice we had to go to the Google Calendar website and press a button to have the data sync into the CRM. Our iPhone would sync to the Google Calendar website automatically, but not into the CRM without the manual click of a button in Google Calendar.
We need an easy way to record various pieces of information about our customers and their computers? For example, in another CRM we are testing we are creating custom fields for contact records to record various specs on each of their computers. Right now there are 20 custom fields for each computer. Some customers have 3,4,5,6 computers. Custom fields like we are using now is not optimal. It is very manual to create, we have to create each set of 20 fields manually and they take up a lot of screen space. Is there a way to have this information readily available, but not showing all the time? Can we create one set of fields and easily duplicate? Can we use various types of fields (i.e. Text boxes, drop downs, check boxes, dates)
There are other things we would like too, but the above are the most important at this point. Down the road we would like to move away from Constant Contact that we just started using for a newsletter, automated emails to advertise the various services we offer and maybe some sort of monthly subscription for phone and remote tech support.
Is Infusionsoft a good fit for these needs? Too much? Other solutions that are better?
Thanks for your time!
Tom
Hi Tom,
given the complexity of your needs, I’d need to spend some time assessing it all and looking at what can be done with Infusionsoft to see if other solutions might be a better fit. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to do that right now. Sorry about that!
I think you best bet is to spend some more time with an Infusionsoft sales person or tech support person to see what they say in terms of what’s possible with the needs you have.
My hunch though, is that Infusionsoft won’t be a good fit. It sounds like you need a pretty flexible, powerful CRM with lots of availability for custom fields and calendar sycning. Infusionsoft isn’t very robust when it comes to the CRM side of things.
You may also need to integrate a robust project management system with your CRM to accomplish what you need to accomplish.
Hope this helps a bit. If I come up with any good combinations of apps that I think would work, I’ll respond to this comment with further info.
Good luck with it all!
~Forest
I’m moving to Infusionsoft to get my shopping cart + email marketing all in one place – I use DAP on my membership site – do you have any experience of integrating DAP + Infusionsoft?
thanks
Hi Wendy,
I’ve never integrated Infusionsoft with DAP before, but I know it can be done.
Did you find this help article on the DAP site yet? If not, here it is…it’s about how to set up the integration between the two: http://www.digitalaccesspass.com/doc/infusionsoft-integration/
Hope that helps a bit, and best of luck with the transition to Infusionsoft!
Hi Forest,
I was wondering if there’s any risk with using Infusionsoft for our mailing lists. As in, I believe I heard if you wanted to move your list from one compay’s autoresponder to another, your list has to opt-in all over again to regulations. Have you heard of this situation, and do you think there would be any problems moving an aweber list to infusionsoft?
Hey John,
going from Aweber to Infusionsoft won’t be a problem. It’s the other way around where the problem arises that you’ve heard about. Aweber requires lists to have people on them that have double opted-in, and if you can’t prove that they’ve been double opted-in, Aweber require you to send out an email to your newly imported list, asking them to opt-in again. That typically reduces people’s lists by about 50% of their original size.
Infusionsoft doesn’t have this requirement, at least not that I’m aware of (they may have recently changed something around this that I haven’t been aware of, but I don’t think they have.) So, you’ll be able to import a .csv list from Aweber into infusionsoft and you’ll be able to send emails to them.
They’ll only be single opted-in within infusionsoft though, which means emails to them will be routed through slightly less secure email paths, which means you may have more emails showing up in people’s spam filters.
But talk with Infusionsoft about this before deciding on going with them. There may be a way for you to show proof that your whole list has double opted in through aweber, and they may be able to mark all your imported list as being double opted-in after you import them.
Hope this helps!
Forest
Hi,
has your opinion of creating new email changed? ive not signed up with infusionsoft yet but it seems to be very easy to create new campaigns as well as email using drag and drop. im more worried about leaning how to use such a large and compliacted system as well as the high kick starter fee.
Hi Ben,
Their drag and drop email editor is better than the old classic email editor, but they still don’t have any nice looking html email templates to create good looking emails (like Aweber and Mailchimp have.)
But…I don’t think that’s such a big deal, since plaintext, non-pretty emails tend to get opened and read more than highly customized, pretty (graphically) html email templates.
The new campaign builder in Infusionsoft is interesting. I’m not a huge fan of it yet, but some people love the visual interface that allows you to see the workflow of campaigns.
And yes, there is a steep learning curve with Infusionsoft, and a steep financial entrance for the required training package.
If you’re in the market for this type of app but don’t like the idea of that expensive training package, check out Office Auto Pilot/Ontraport. It’s $300/mo with no required training package. The feature sets are very similar, and OAP can do some things that Infusionsoft can’t do. It’s worth checking out 🙂
Hope this helps!
Forest
We just starting using confusionsoft in our company and the main complaint is the automatic payment plan cannot really be edited to suit our needs as you can only set a specific amount and the payments are based on number of days whereas most of our clients want to pay on a specific day of the month. therefore it won’t jibe as some months have 31 days. Plus once you set any kind of payment plan then want to delete the payment plan you can’t – you can only delete the entire order!
Hey JB,
I hear you. There are a few frustrating things like that in different areas of Infusionsoft. Hopefully, if they hear from enough users about these things, they’ll be able to fix them in the near future, given that they just got $45 million in investment funding, which is leading to them growing their 800 employee company to even more folks.
Hope you can find some kind of a workaround for the inflexibility around the subscription billing set up.
All the best,
Forest
So would it be better to wait a year?
Hi Teresa,
no, Infusionsoft has gone through a major upgrade since I wrote this post, and their user interface has gotten better. It’s still not great, but it’s a lot better.
I’d call up infusionsoft and get a tour of it as well as part of your research. And keep in mind that Infusionsoft has a “haggling culture” still in place, or they did as of a few months ago. You can often negotiate the monthly price, and often can get a lower required training package fee. It depends on which salesman you speak with and what time of the month/quarter it is.
Cheers 🙂
Forest
Forest – this review has been tremendously helpful – thank you for the thought, insight and great communication.
We are seriously considering Infusion Soft for a client who is looking to launch a book in the next year, host webinars, workshops and retreats and eager to grow her list. We think Infusion Soft is the best option, but I appreciate the suggestion to check out Office Auto Pilot (I will do that right now!)
We are in the midst of a website redesign using WordPress. We don’t think we will go the route of monthly membership site, but perhaps with people who are taking a webinar, we will want to offer them exclusive access to stuff online, so great to know Infusion Soft plays well with WordPress.
My clients site is currently yippeeindex.com (soon to be discoveryouryippee.com) just to give you a feel for what we are trying to do.
This long winded comment is just to say Thank You for this great review and for your thoughtful comments above from people like me.
Glad to be of some help, Heidi!
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment.
All the best to you with the findyouryippee.com project!
~Forest
This is a small bone to pick with Infusionsoft, but definitely worth mentioning. Their editing functionality has some serious flaws. Biggest one to gripe about right now is the lack of an undo feature. REALLY? This is about 15 years behind the times. Infusionsoft, for the price you charge per month, you should at least have a serial UNDO feature. (Tech support said they could recover the lost information for a fee. FOR A FEE? Get real.)
Infusionsoft customers should be asking relentlessly for this simple and basic editing feature.
Thanks Forest .. it sounds like PWC is a new company if I’m not mistaken
Hello Forest,
have you heard of PWC-Premium Web Cart?? it seems to be the competition for infusion soft and office auto pilot .. I was just wondering if you have heard of this software??
Office Auto Pilot sounds good and PWC sounds good as well, just wondering if you can setup a Paypal recurring subscription in their system unlike infusion soft ..
Hey Tony,
I’ve heard of PWC, but haven’t had a chance to check it out myself. I’ve heard several people mention that they love it, but I don’t know enough about it yet to make any comments about it.
I’m not sure if you were asking about doing recurring payments with Paypal with Office Auto Pilot/Ontraport, or if you were asking if PWC could do that, but with OAP/Ontraport, you can do recurring subscriptions with Paypal as long as you have Paypal Payflow Pro or a Paypal Pro account (the later of which used to be called “Website Payments Pro.”)
It looks like you can also to recurring payments with Paypal within PWC too, so with either option, you’d be able to do that.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Forest
I have a hyperlocal print advertising company that is now also offering local online advertising products. Is infusionsoft right for me, or is another competitor a better fit?
Hi David,
It’s hard to say without knowing more about what you’re selling exactly and what your plans are for your business moving forward.
What are the local online advertising products that you mentioned? Infusionsoft is most often used by people who are looking to build up an email list and automate many aspects of their business, from sending out autoresponders, to their affiliate tracking system, to selling access to an online program or other information products that are delivered online in a member’s area.
You can definitely use it to sell other products, even physical products, or services, but a good way to tell if it’s right for you would be to ask yourself if you want to use direct email marketing campaigns and content marketing as a way to promote your business and build your email list of prospects. If so, then Infusionsoft may be a good fit for you.
If the answer to that question is yes, then I’d recommend setting up an appointment to get a tour of infusionsoft from them so you can see what it does, and if you go that route, I’d also recommend checking out their main competitor right now, which is Office Autopilot.
Hope this helps!
~Forest
very thoughtful answer. thank you.
Hi Forest,
Thanks for the review. Since you posted it almost exactly a year ago, are there any updates you know of, especially regarding Mac compatibility? I am constantly amazed (and frustrated) at how many products still are either not available for Mac at all (e.g. Act! CRM) or have Mac versions but lack major components, as you mentioned above regarding e-mail templates. My small business is ready for a CRM system so I’m on the market. Do you know of any additional changes that have been made?
Thanks!
Hi Laura,
Infusionsoft has gone through a major upgrade since I wrote this original post, but it is still lacking in the nice looking html email template department.
I’ve gotten used to it and over the past year have been leaning more towards using very simple, uncluttered, minimal html email templates, and those can be created easily enough in Infusionsoft.
I’m not sure about the current status of the availability of the email templates I mentioned in this post for Mac users, but everything else about Infusionsoft is compatible with macs. I run two online businesses with Infusionsoft and all we have are macs for both businesses.
If you’re in the market for an all in one solution like Infusionsoft, it would be good to check out Office Auto Pilot too, which is the main competitor to Infusionsoft. I haven’t used OAP for a live business yet, but I have heard many people love it, and I’ve heard of several people who have moved from Infusionsoft to OAP as well.
Hope this helps a bit!
Cheers,
Forest
Been looking at IS and will check out Office Auto Pilot.Wondered too what your thoughts are about Adobe’s Business Catalyst?
Thanks so much for your Review of IS. Ann
Hi Ann,
I haven’t used Business Catalyst yet, so I’m not sure if you’d be able to do things like create a membership area of your site and deliver an online program. It doesn’t have those features built in, and I’m not sure it can integrate with other apps, like Kajabi, that do have that functionality.
BC looks like a promising platform, but seems to be missing a few key elements, at least if you’re going to sell an online program in a member’s only site.
Hope this helps a bit 🙂
Forest
Hey, thanks for the reviews! Now that it has been a year, have they figured it out to start to do automatic renewals through pay pal yet? Or is that something you still have to do manually month to month?
Thanks!
Hey Ryan. Glad you’re enjoying the reviews. About a month ago I heard that Paypal has finally agreed to work with Infusionsoft to get the recurring payments via paypal to work via Infusionsoft.
You still can’t do this with Infusionsoft, but there is at least hope that this will change in the next few months.
What we do for my wife’s business, which is also running on Infusionsoft, when someone wants to sign up for a program using a payment plan option through paypal, we send them a paypal subscription link, meaning, we set up a subscription in paypal and we send them a link to pay it with paypal. That sets up a recurring subscription in Paypal and it’s entirely outside of Infusionsoft.
This creates manual set up work to give access to the online program, but at least people can do a recurring subscription via paypal.
Cheers 🙂
Hi Forest! Funnily enough I was searching for this answer on google and you came up on the top of google (well, about 3 down from top). I have signed up for Infusionsoft a few weeks ago and it seems that the only way to integrate IF shopping cart with Kajabi is to use their legacy system. It seems really odd, as I understand IF is going to phase out their legacy system. Can you tell me if this is correct, that I have to use their ‘old’ system to integrate with Kajabi. Thanks for your help 😉
Hey Tora!
Fun that you found your way here through a google search!
So, yes…for now, in order to integrate Infusionsoft and Kajabi, you need to use a couple bits of Infusionsoft that are “legacy” features.
You’d still be using the new version of Infusionsoft, because it’s the only version they offer, but there are a couple areas inside of infusionsoft that have some old features from the previous version of infusionsoft that you need to use in order to connect it with kajabi.
And yes, IS is going to be phasing out those legacy features within the next year, I believe, but I’m sure that Kajabi is going to be updating their integration path to be able to use the newer features in Infusionsoft for integration with Kajabi, instead of the legacy features.
I need to ask them about their plans around this for my own business, so thanks for the reminder.
I’ll let you know what I find out. 🙂
See you in skype!
cheers,
~Forest
Thanks Forest – I was googling how to do various things on Infusionsoft and your page was third in the Google ranking!
I’ve just switched over so there’s a lot to learn for me!
Hi Denise! Glad to know my site showed up in 3rd for some infusionsoft queries 🙂 Hope the switch to Infusionsoft is going well. The new interface is much better than the old one, which what I was talking about in this post.
I’m going to have a good deal of infusionsoft training videos in the Web Tech Genius course I’m about to launch, which will make things quite a bit easier for folks starting out with it.
At any rate, thanks for saying hi!
Cheerio,
Forest