Powerful and flexible engine for a tech-savvy business

Infusionsoft by Keap (AKA the "classic Infusionsoft") has been on top of the small business automation marketplace for years, and for good reason. In the right hands, it's a perfect marriage of automation + CRM. Its strengths are best-in-class, and it is refreshingly light on gimmick features that claim to fulfill a business need without offering real capability. That said, there are some noteworthy holes in functionality. Caveat: the power comes with a substantial learning curve, and you *do* need to learn the software well to use it effectively. Campaign builder has many quirks, there are multiple ways to accomplish any result, and the number of settings is astonishing. Infusionsoft's own (paid + mandatory) onboarding at the time we started using it was insufficient. Fortunately, its history means there are many good Certified Partners and tons of free blogs, videos, and other resources to guide your implementation. I recommend having at least one person on your team who can take on the role of Infusionsoft expert and take responsibility for configuring, organizing, and maintaining the app. For a solopreneur whose time is better spent doing the business, or a small organization that's just beginning to figure out its digital processes, IS is likely to be too overpowered and cumbersome. (FWIW, we started with IS too early ourselves. We've grown into it and are now very happy, but the first couple years were frustrating.)

Pros

The campaign builder is an unmatched canvas for automating almost any business process imaginable. It doesn't restrict you to a single workflow paradigm, so you have the freedom to design systems to match your business AND organize them how you want. I love the options of using tags, custom fields, notes, and API goals for storing data on the contact record, segmenting contacts, or automating based on that info/event. Plus, all of this feeds a reporting system that can track any aspect of a business's growth and health (with some configuration). The extensive API and HTTP post automation supercharge all of this with custom development or addon tools.

The new responsive email builder is extremely user-friendly, and has a nice assortment of premade templates, as well as letting you build a library of your own custom templates.

Lastly, the Infusionsoft community is deep and extremely knowledgeable. Practically any question you have, you can find an answer to. Infusionsoft's own support is solid and generally satisfactory, but the breadth of experience available from other users is an incredible resource.

Cons

Over the past year, a lot of development resources were directed toward the creation of the new, entry-level Keap product, so Infusionsoft has gotten a bit dusty. Reportedly this has changed now that Keap is launched, and Infusionsoft development is once again getting its fair share of attention. This means, however, that there are a number of modern marketing functions that IS cannot handle natively. Examples are Facebook custom audience syncing, SMS messaging, website event tracking (unlike Drip, for instance, there is no JavaScript API that can be used to trigger automations inside IS as a result of a contact's activity on a webpage). Web forms and order forms are dated. Tracking online orders made through 3rd party shopping carts is complicated and frustrating. Reporting, though *immensely* capable, is hampered by the lack of built-in charts or graphs. Stripe is not natively supported as a payment processor.

At some point, it becomes essential to start using "satellite" helper tools, like PlusThis or MyFusionHelper, to address some of Infusionsoft's shortcomings, manage data more effectively, build graphic reports, or create custom automations. This adds to the baseline cost.

Gave me my life back

It was worth all the time and effort it took to set up. I've generated over a million dollars as a stay at home mom of seven children thanks to Infusionsoft and the power of automation. Now I make good money while I tend to my family. I set my own hours. I love what I do. With my campaigns in place, I can build an email, send a broadcast, and watch the system do the rest while I go enjoy my life. Thank you!

Pros

There are so many ways to engage my subscribers. I use what works for me. I know I'm not using all the features, but it's nice to know there is no limit to all the ways I can increase my revenue. I've just made it a practice to try a feature, fine tune it, and then integrate another feature... and my income grows. Super powerful! And because Infusionsoft has established itself so well in the marketplace, there are so many partner apps available across so many different kinds of platforms, which help me understand, reach, and serve my audience even better.

Cons

I am not a fan of the new landing pages. I think they're supposed to be a friendlier interface but instead they feel more limiting.

I am also disappointed in the quality of tech support, especially chat. I can't fault the employees - I've spent thousands of hours in the software over the last 10 years, so most of the time it feels like I have to wait for them to catch up to what I know before I can finally get an answer to my question. Phone support is usually better.

I also wish I could go into my Email Builder (Previously Sent) and more quickly find an old email from which to build a new one. It takes too long to load the visual thumbnails, and the search option never works. It appears to only search previous emails whose thumbnails have already loaded. All the others seem to be ignored.

OH! My biggest peeve is with chat support. It's maddening how long it takes for the rep to get underway. "Hi, thank you for contacting Infusionsoft Support today. My name is ___. I hope you're doing well today." I don't have time to be chatty, so I go straight to the question. I wait for a reply, but then they greet me again. If I'm feeling patient I'll greet them back. If not, I'll ask the question again. I wait for a reply, and they tell me something like they'll do their best to assist me. I wait for an answer, and then they repeat my question and ask if that's right. PLEASE teach the rep to REFLECT the customer's chattiness. If I'm being brief, be brief. If I'm chatty, be chatty.

Diverge Performance Therapy Review

The biggest problems Infusionsoft has solved for me has been easily tracking and managing all new leads coming into my business, as well as giving me an easy way to stay in touch with and market to everyone on my email list. It's also allowed me to build out nurture systems to automatically send out emails and communications to new leads who haven't quite made the decision to book with me. The best part is all of this is working for me 24/7 behind the scenes without any work on my part now, so it allows me to focus my time on growing my business and working with my clients.

Pros

Infusionsoft has been invaluable for the growth of my business. As a one man show currently running a cash based physical therapy practice, the biggest struggle I had prior to Infusionsoft was organizing and tracking all of my new leads, and implementing an easily trackable and repeated follow-up system. With Infusionsoft, I'm now able to tag and track every single lead that inquires about my services from the initial touch point all the way up to becoming a paying client. It's taken the stress out of managing new leads and follow-ups and has given me the freedom to focus on my clients. Not only that, but I've also been able to create campaigns that target patients after they're done working with me in addition to easily sending out broadcast emails weekly, which allows me to easily stay in touch with all the people that I've worked with. This helps me to stay top of mind so that when something does pop-up, or a friend of theirs has a need, I'm the first person they think of. In short. Infusionsoft has been invaluable for the growth of my business and I'd highly recommend it to any small business who is serious about growing.

Cons

The only con to speak of would be the learning curve. Luckily, I had some professional training to start my Infusionsoft experience, otherwise learning the ins and outs of the system would have been a little overwhelming. That said, it's completely worth investing the time to learn because once you've learned the system, it makes the day to day operations of running your business SO much easier.

InfusionSoft - Great CRM software

The overall experience has been quite enlightening on how process flows are vital to making your business function correctly. My application is primarily used as a lead management system and not all our employees use InfusionSoft, which meant I had to integrate InfusionSoft with Google Sheets which makes it easier for my sales team to acquire data to leads as they come in. Most of my time is spent in campaign builder and I am currently overhauling our current lead process and I keep learning new things everyday on how to program logic to suit our business needs.

Pros

What I like most about InfusionSoft is the functionality and its endless possibilities. The Campaign Builder has an easy to use interface with limitless possibilities that can be constructed to suit your unique business needs. With a great email builder as well to create those beautiful calls to action that will surely ignite your leads' desire to buy whatever you are selling. I specifically manage the database of leads and users and find it to be quite user friendly, InfusionSoft will warn you about an increase in bad email addresses, allowing you enough time to clean it up before it affects your business badly. Another great aspect is the help provided by agents via the Chat facility, you can chat live with an InfusionSoft assistant to help you with any problems you might have. I find it extremely helpful in times when I am unsure of what to do.

Cons

While I do have high praise for the campaign builder and its limitless possibilities, this can also be a problem as when I first started using the software; I didn't know what was what. There is basic training available, but I don't feel it adequately explains the possibilities of what can be done. To fully unlock the potential of InfusionSoft, some additional training will be required.

We were a loyal IS customer for 10 years until...

Product is fine, but management, support and client service leaves a lot to be desired.

Pros

The product itself is very useful and good. While there are no "perfect" automation apps on the market that fulfill all our requirements, IS did a relatively good job of it.
They've been pushing lots of regular updates which is good, but doesn't make up for what I'll describe in the Cons section.

Cons

Many other automation apps have built-in features that are very useful, but Infusionsoft requires a LOT of 3rd party apps (which adds on a lot of costs for a small business) to do a lot of things other apps have out of the box. As mentioned, I understand no app on the market is 100% perfect and the other apps have their own deficiencies.
The worst part of Infusionsoft is not the product itself (the product is relatively good) but it's the entire management and customer support that is problematic.

Often times, chat support (while friendly & quick), is not very familiar with the IS product. Often times, it's the we the customers who know more than they do.

Finally, as mentioned, we were with IS for 10yrs and then they decided to raise our price by 400% giving us only 30 days notice via email (and a poorly written one). This has caused a furor amongst long-time clients & resulted in a large exodus of long-time clients. Apparently the new management didn't really care, despite many of thus believed we were grand-fathered into our original plans.

All in all, many of us felt it was poorly handled by management and that's why we left them after ten years, despite the pain of migrating to a new platform.

They are trying to expand globally but IS is still not really setup to work internationally. We were probably one of the first companies in Asia to use them and they completely ignored our feedback or even show any interest us when we attended a live seminar with them.

For the smart marketer

Providing consistency over the 1-2 year period our customers work with us. Better handling of leads, turning them in to better conversions Automating mundane tasks like letters, cards, packages, etc. Generating referrals in a consistent trackable manner. Warming leads more effectively Combining online and offline interactions Notifications of important milestones in the sales and fulfillment process

Pros

Customizability is my favorite part of Infusionsoft. It is very powerful to be able to have it do exactly what you have dreamed up. It seems pretty simplistic at first, but when you get into it, you start to realize that the possibilities are endless of what you can accomplish and do with it. For me the CRM and Campaign builder are doing automated tasks for me that would take our team hours to accomplish, and catching our sales and fulfillment process at critical time points to make sure our patient experience is the best it can be.

I really love and use campaign builder . . . a lot. You can make campaigns do whatever you want AND make them start to perform based on the interaction that your customers have with the campaigns. That is very powerful and one of the big differentiators IS has from other software I have found.

I've used IS for about 4 years now and I'm building new things every week to help reduce the tasks I do and my employees do.

I also love the community. Going to ICON (the conference that infusionsoft puts on) was one of the best experiences I have had as a business owner. It was amazing to see thousands of small business owners making things happen and helping each other.

Infusionsoft really does live by its tag line "We help Small Businesses Succeed."

Cons

There is work involved. I'm not really trying to be facetious. So many times we want a silver bullet that makes everything as easy as wasting 6 hours on your friends facebook feeds. In life in general, it's not easy to customize anything, but when it is finally tailored right to what your business needs, it is very powerful. Infusionsoft isn't a few clicks here and there and over with, but if it were, it wouldn't be the powerful machine it is. So you have to be willing to invest in harnessing it to your wagon and making it work for you. That investment can potentially involve you or your staff learning how to use it, and/or hiring third party companies who help you get it doing what you want it to do. As long as you go into it knowing that there is tremendous benefit from both of these investments, your business will be influenced for the better.

Infusionsoft has a lot of things that are cookie cutter easy, but I think of it more like a cookie cutter maker than some software that does one or two things well and leaves businesses lacking in functionality or customizability. Learning the skills I have gained in Infusionsoft have totally transformed the way I think about marketing to my patients and everyone around me.

Great tool but not without issues

For the price and what it does, we have yet to find a better solution. I believe in the product but wish they would work harder on fixing current problems rather than rolling out new tools. It does take some time learning the ropes but there are lots of great tools, webinars, and people willing to help. It's a great community. (Big shout out to MonkeyPod Marketing and Greg Jenkins)

Pros

I like being able to set up campaigns that run the full year making sure the customer is kept in the loop. With proper tags I can see that things are running smoothly.

Cons

1) Support. If you are in the US I am sure that support is much better but being 9 hrs ahead of the IS HQ I am usually stuck with the total waste of time 'Chat Support'. Two years ago support would have gotten 5 of 5, today I would give it one star at best.

2) The platform is about 5 years behind the times. Powerful but the look, usability, and feel are dated. If they don't get on this in the next year or two I would expect serious competition to start circling.

3) They remove useful tools, replace with simplicity, and then pat themselves on the back for their own awesomeness. I can write a book about the lack of flexibility in the new (1 year) email builder that was stripped of most of the designing strengths. When they added the ability underline text 4 months in (seriously) they cheered themselves to no end. How email builder was rolled out without the ability to underline is a headscratcher and I am never going to stop complaining about the removal of the HTML snippet.

***Sorry, it's always easier to remember what you don't like than what you do.

What's So Automated About Infusionsoft?

I have researched CRMs and Marketing Software for the past several years. As a REALTOR, the company software had changed multiple times, leaving my personal system outdated, which prompted me to see if it was time to invest and make a commitment to something I would know nothing about until I jump in with two feet and my pocketbook. So I did. I reviewed and tested a multitude of software and found many that I liked but none quite suited for the money vs. the features vs. my unique business needs. Hatchbuck, DaPulse, and 17 Hats are a few I can remember and recommend to varying degrees but each fell short of my specific needs and desired growth. And while several appeared cheaper at the onset, when estimating cost after growth (which would be the "long term") I realized paying a little more now for a consistent pricing may well be the best option. My group has 4-5 users and looking at 5,000 contacts - which need sorted and categorized and updated. So although I may not be concerned about limits on number of emails sent monthly - I did need to cap my user costs and contact costs hoping to grown to about 35,000 contacts. I spoke with all the professionals and most just didn't know what to do and each thought one was as good as another based on personal experience.

Pros

I tried many brands, however, each time I got a great email, an immediate response, a beautiful landing page I continued to see the name Infusionsoft. The research and features were outstanding. As I began looking at those at the higher level of business, which I wanted to obtain, I saw most, in a variety of industries, had chosen Infusionsoft. I was surprised when surveying the target group of Infusionsoft Users, they each were optimistic about their future commitment to continue their relationship. So I jumped in! I am confident it will be an investment of time, money and frustration of efforts - but I look forward to building system, upon a system and automating many general tasks and information sharing.

Cons

The investment was a minor con - but the prices have become more in line with the value as my years of investigation and research continued. The biggest con is the education investment and the delayed gratification of understanding this will be a process. My optimism has been a bit dampened with the realization I may not easily, understand trigger relationships and process. Additionally, my "initial payment" for training although friendly has been less than sufficient, and less than simple to establish a confidence that I can get it done in a year. However, I still believe I will be with the system for a long period of time, and patience and bridled expectations will become the new norm.

Customer Service or Sales CRMs

Looking at most CRMs the database aspect is pretty much the same from one to another. What I have found is that most are slightly better setup for sales than for customer service. Without diminishing the importance of sales (we all need them, all the time) we are a customer service-based company and follow many qualitative data points of customer satisfaction and comments. We use them to keep track of current service levels and to anticipate the needs of our clients. InfusionSoft has been very good at helping us identify these data and prepare them for analysis. SalesForce is not as friendly to helping us find and use them. I take nothing away from SalesForce and a robust sales program for medium and large operations, however small to medium businesses that are driven by customer service more than sales will find that InfusionSoft is more tho their liking. As for the value, both are reasonable in terms of ROI, but InfusionSoft is less costly and has a much softer, more relaxed sales team. After sale, InfusionSoft is outstanding in helping capture complex, less obvious data about our clients. InfusionSoft represents the concierge service level that so many businesses are trying to develop and maintain with their customer base.

Pros

The people of InfusionSoft know how to help customize their software to whatever you want to follow, no matter how unconventional it is. They work hard at through free of cost assistance to leverage their program to the clients benefit.

They have a large and deep community of users that help enrich the users' experience.

Cons

Its integration is less ubiquitous than that of SalesForce, but is growing constantly.