A Great Alternative to Full-Fledged Automation Software

Autopilot is a great solution if you're looking for something to automate a sequence of emails. I wouldn't consider it a replacement for full-fledged marketing automation software... yet, but it's a fantastic tool for email automation. Just keep in mind that there are a few hiccups that you'll potentially need to navigate such as email SpamAssassin errors (always use mail-tester.com to check your emails) and CRM sync issues.

Pros

It seems to me that Autopilot does only one thing - but it does that one thing REALLY well. I tested Autopilot briefly for a few weeks as an alternative to the drip program functionality in our Marketing Automation software. I was extremely impressed with how easy it is to build a drip program (called a "Journey" within Autopilot), as well as with the breadth of logic and functionality offered. Autopilot really sets itself apart with some amazing - seriously amazing - integrations and functionality that our Automation platform doesn't offer, such as sending SMS text messages or physical postcards.

I really like that Autopilot offers in-app chat support, and that you generally don't need to wait longer than 5 minutes to get someone to help you out.

Cons

During the few weeks I tested Autopilot, I found a few issues that prevented me from really continuing to use the software for my use-case. The integration with Salesforce was clunky and un-intuitive, and most concerningly, it seemed that when the platform saw leads that already existed in Salesforce, it would stop them from progressing through the drip program. This was a real frustration, and I ended up just disconnecting Autopilot from the CRM in order to finish my test.

Another concern we had was that after testing the emails I had configured using mail-tester.com, there was an error identified that could only be resolved by getting a dedicated IP address - something which adds a significant additional monthly cost to the cost of the program.

Improving on improvement

The cost per additional mobile app user is a bit annoying, but when we run the numbers, it still makes it a good investment to have most of our employees on the app.

Pros

I love the fact that it tracks my whole business from lead generation (that helps me fill in routes based on a map) to setting up the contract (with recurring services and pre-scheduled packages) to crew management (with photo uploads and clock-in/clock-out of jobs and contacting customers) to invoicing (which can be automatic) to receiving payment (even by credit card on the mobile app!). Keeping records on paper and trying to run schedules for weekly, bi-weekly and tri-weekly services would be a nightmare! This really is an AutoPilot software. It is a complete solution that tracks everything which allows it to be the ultimate solution for reporting. I can look at sales close ratios, revenue per lead source, job completion times against budgeted hours, past-due invoices and so much more! I have worked with the system from Property Maintenance Technician to Sales Rep to General Manager and have not been disappointed.

Cons

Their asset management portion is in its beginning stages and is not incredibly useful at the moment, but they continue to build on their system and I suspect that they will soon have a robust equipment and vehicle management system.

Marketing Automation on Steroids

Pros

Autopilot is a marketers dream tool. You can create a 'journey' for almost any task, from sending out an email newsletter to creating an advanced nurture journey based on segmentation, rules, lead owners, default and custom fields, website actions and much, much more. If you use tools such as Salesforce and Segment then you can get even more out of the tool with less work, but I personally don't use either and I still get a huge ROI on the product. They also just updated the email building tool which was a very welcome update.

Cons

It would be great if the tool worked with other CRM's than just Salesforce. Some of the actions and triggers, particularly when it comes to API triggers are quite limited so some improvements with that would be great. The price can get quite high with large numbers of contacts and the business plan selected (A/B testing, API triggers and more). I would also like to see an end-user subscription management feature added so that I can fully move away from other email tools (i.e. MailChimp) whilst being compliant with the likes of GDPR.

Incredible Value. Make use of the templates. Explore the possibilities.

As a founder of a software startup, our team needed a solution to routinely engage our users/customers with information to help them with their on-boarding experience. Autopilot was the perfect fit! We had a lot of fun building the journeys and experimenting with what worked (and didn't work) for our team. Their templates gave us some great starting points, and helped us to open up our minds with ways to engage with our users in ways that we hadn't thought of. Of course, those same principals could easily be applied to outbound marketing campaigns with complex engagement logic, which we haven't started to implement as this time. Overall, we are very satisfied with Autopilot!

Pros

- Slack Integration
- Segment Integration
- Easy to build complex logic, visually
- Dashboard to keep track of latest events
- Many journey and email templates to get you started
- Built-in email open/link tracking is helpful to find your engaged users
- Good support
- Great blog with ideas of how others use Autopilot
- They are continuing to develop cool new features
- User idea voting for features not yet developed

Cons

- Ability to access email / Slack templates seems inefficient (need to dig into the journey to find them)
- With all of the capabilities that Autopilot offers, you can easily have your custom contact lists get out of hand - remember to KISS so that others on your team can pick up where you left off

Great for automating Marketing requirements

Very good. Customer service is incredible, so I feel like any issues or objectives I want to hit are fully supported by the team. I hope this only improves as they grow and doesn't become watered down.

Pros

You can plan multiple campaigns visually and then share the boards (completed with annotations) with the client. This means everyone is on the same page and understands how the campaign will proceed. The customer support is also second to none - really good. It's also very visual - as someone who gets easily distracted and bored easily, being able to visualise campaigns in a physical way really helps.

Cons

The reporting in the email side of things could be better. Mailchimp, for example, provides decent reporting with easy actions (like automatic re-send to non-openers' - AP requires you do smart segmenting (which is actually better in the long term), but the mental journey to sort this out would be impossible without the customer support (so it isn't an issue).

Great Tool For Those Looking For Ultimate Flexibility

We have integrated every data point from our site to custom Autoplit fields and then uses custom segments and journeys to automate our email sequences, Google ad Audiences, and Hubspot lead assignment. The price is great for small companies looking for flexibility without having to dish out the money for Pardot etc..

Pros

If your creative and are or have access to developers you can make Autopilot handle just about anything you want. Unlike Pardot, Marketo and other marketing automation systems, Autopilot has allowed me to create, send, and sync customer data across platforms.

If it exists you can connect and send data to it - just maybe not right out of the box.

Cons

Where Autopilot excels at creating amazing journeys and automation, its reporting and contact management isn't quite as robust.

A Huge Breath of Fresh Air

Autopilot allows us affordable access to tremendous marketing automation potential from one-off email bursts to complicated journeys that follow our prospects through the entire funnel. After more than a year of searching for a program that could integrate with our website, Facebook, Salesforce and Twilio and do so affordably, Autopilot has been an unbelievable value. The program has occasional rough edges, especially in terms of designing and editing audience segments for journeys, and producing emails, but it's the best combination of ease-of-use, breadth of capabilities and affordability I've found in this space. Would strongly recommend to cash-strapped small organizations with a limited contact base.

Pros

Affordability for a small contact list
Ease of use
Visual Journey Builder
Salesforce integration
Features for price

Cons

Limits in contact segmentation
Limits in triggers for actions
Email editing suite can be a little basic

The beginning of a long romance with mailing system you won't see coming

Pros

Being a non-developer in developer-heavy environment, I greatly value products that allow you to set up stuff in graphic editor. While it was not so easy at first, once I worked with it for a while I find it intuitive, smart, and allowing you to quickly get to what you need. It also allows you to set up complicated journeys relatively easy!

Cons

If you won't have a colleague to show you the ropes, it may be challenging to start using. The pricing is rather steep and pays off only if you want to heavily personalize your journeys - if you are looking for bulk simple solutions, then the pricing is suboptimal.

Flexible tool for email campaigns

Pros

I really like how easy it is to set campaign, even the one where you want to use multiple conditions along the road. You just don't need any tech knowledge to set it up. It integrates great with Pipedrive so you can automatically remove contacts from your email campaign. Big kudos for Reporting section.

Cons

Deliverability of emails - we've compared it with other players on the market and with big campaigns it is an issue.

A must have app for your business

Autopilot is one of those apps that you spend many hours trying to find on Google, something that takes away the hard work in your business, and automates the important stuff. The support provided is world class and with the constant innovation offered, you can expect great things in the future from Autopilot. I'm a massive fan!

Pros

Easy to use, affordable to everyone, and world class support.

Cons

I really can't find a fault in the service Autopilot delivers, if they add any additional features the only thing I would suggest is they beef up the CRM functions. But as a service offered, its the best!

One of the best marketing automation tools

We are using Autopilot for marketing automations to onboard our new trial users. It has worked pretty well for our use case.

Pros

Its a very easy to use solution and has a robust feature set. Their journey creator is flawless and even a non-techinical person can use it with ease.

The have very robust APIs and you can confirgure autopilot pretty easily with their APIs.

Cons

It would be great we can use our custom mail server to send the mails, like Mailgun or SendGrid.

Easy to set up, powerful software

Well worth the money

Pros

Thanks to the integration with Segment, Autopilot was very easy to integrate using our existing triggers. Set up was also smooth and out of all of the marketing automation tools, Autopilot has the best onboarding and set up experience. Their unique ui/ux make it very easy to set up campaigns that not only include email and SMS triggers, but unique integrations with companies such as Lob that let you programmatically send postcards.

Cons

There is room for improvement with people/user tracking. Currently we're using GoSquared to fill in the gaps.

Lead Nurturing Finally More Visual with Autopilot

Pros

I really like the canvas that you can lay out the shapes and organize and plan lead nurture sequences. In my experience with lead nurture campaigns in other software, it is usually complicated with drop-down menus, hard to find email templates, etc. With Autopilot and the canvas structure, it is much easier for me to see what sequence I have set up and the timing of it all.

Cons

The biggest issue I have with Autopilot is that it doesn't have an RSS feed that we can tie into our company blog. We have had issues with MailChimp at times and wish Autopilot offered an RSS feed feature we could use as an alternative.