What They Won’t Tell You About Infusionsoft

As much as I love Infusionsoft, this is the tale of something that is three parts awesome and one part stupid. I guess you could say it’s stupid awesome.

As a consumer, that just ain’t fair when you’re trying to make a good business decision. So, here I am doing something about it.

I remember when I was shopping around for marketing automation software like Infusionsoft or ONTRAPORT. Those were the only two on my radar as the others were enterprise solutions that were way out of my budget ($1000/month+) or smaller brands that lacked the true automation that I wanted.

But what I didn’t know is if or how Infusionsoft was the best fit for my business. Back then, I wish I had the following resources to answer my questions and give me a snapshot of the use cases and results I could expect.

But I didn’t. I had to figure it out on my own. Now, I pass on my experience to you.

Now, open the windows and let in the fresh air… because this is a big decision that you’re making and I want to do my best to help and maybe even save you some cash.

It’s critical to know if Infusionsoft will fit your needs BEFORE you make the investment because the decision to jump in is as close to permanent as you can get in the software world. I say that because moving from one software service to the other is a royal nightmare and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, even my competitors.

So be sure to either watch a demo, get your custom self-serve recommendation, or after you’re done reading here have your questions answered personally before you invest in Infusionsoft, okay?.

There’s no free trial with Infusionsoft and it requires an upfront investment. No refunds on the upfront kickstart package either (see below).

Locked and loaded… here it is:

All About My Love-Hate Relationship with Infusionsoft

My personal curse is that I love marketing and automation and enjoy that side of the business so much that I don’t like to delegate it. I do it myself. That means I run everything that has to do with Infusionsoft myself. (read: I can be the bottle neck in my business sometimes).

I know Infusionsoft extremely well. I use it every single day. It manages my natural health supplement business beautifully and I’m good at bending it to fit my needs so that it bows to my marketing mind (in most cases, though nothing is perfect).

My marketing mind is a plague of sorts because I lay awake at night thinking about hair-brained marketing schemes and automation that:

• Runs seamlessly while I’m sleeping…
• Makes sales 24/7…
• Manages a remote sales team…
• Follows up automatically with personalized content that increases sales and makes customers happy…
• Adds unexpected value and goodwill for customers and team members

That said, I love it and I hate it, which means I love it about 74.2%… for the record. That’s actually a high number for any software I use.

There is NO perfect software solution. You’ll hear me say that once or twice. You always have to get used to something being not quite right. Workarounds.

I’m what I guess you’d call a power user, meaning I come up with stuff all the time that the top success coaches at Infusionsoft have never heard of and then we try and implement it… haha. Infusionsoft has been able to do “almost” everything I’ve wanted to.

With an especially critical piece of software that runs the guts of my supplement business, I really put it to the test and so should you… or having someone dress it up for you.

One of the campaigns I did in Infusionsoft was printed out and passed around as if it was a one-of-a-kind collector’s item. Weird, but awesome.

I need to tell you that I don’t have experience using every inch of Infusionsoft. There are some features that I don’t have much use for. I’ll tell you what those are as we go along.

Again, this is my take on Infusionsoft after lots of experience with it.

Sales Experience and Setup Process: What to Expect

Infusionsoft Sales Reps

You cannot visit Infusionsoft’s website and buy their software straight away. You have to talk to a sales rep. Errr.

That can be intimidating for some people. But the ideal client for Infusionsoft is a small business that’s used to a simple hands on sales process.

To buy Infusionsoft, you’ll have to call them up or register for a demo, etc. Then you’ll be contacted by a sales rep (you should only talk to my guy, hit me up below if you want an intro) to go through their pickings… one of those is a mandatory upfront kickstart package that I’ll talk about in a sec.

Luckily, because of Infusionsoft’s core values, they hire great people with integrity so your experience will probably be as good as mine was, but just realize they’re sales people and pushiness is pretty normal. They’re supposed to make sales.

As always, it’s their job to sell you the merits of using Infusionsoft so don’t expect them to be forthcoming when you ask the sales rep to compare Infusionsoft with it’s biggest competitors, like ONTRAPORT. That’s what this site is for. I dig into Infusionsoft vs. ONTRAPORT enough.

Have you already been in talks with their sales team? You may have been left to sort things out and get back with them… thinking about pulling the trigger but not quite sure.

So you’ve been given the details and are wanting to either save some cash (which I can help you with if you want) or talk to someone that isn’t biased to validate your choice, or get some more info.

Well, I hope this helps you regardless of why you’re here.

Monthly Rates and Start Up Costs

This part can be a deal breaker for some businesses who aren’t ready for Infusionsoft yet. There’s a substantial cost and there’s good reason for it. Yet still, Infusionsoft’s biggest competitors are five times the cost so Infusionsoft is actually budget friendly.

Monthly Rates: $199 − 599 (without our reader-only discounts)

IMPORTANT UPDATE ON PRICING: Those are the advertised rates on Infusionsoft’s website. Recently, Clate Mask the CEO, clamped down on the sales team’s ability to offer month-end and year-end discounts… and for good reason. No large software companies offer discounts and they shouldn’t either. No more steep discounts through Infusionsoft.com.

So where does that leave you? Well, you have a simple choice. There’s still a way to grab a discount. To help with startup costs and ongoing cash flow click here to check out better pricing I was able to get for you.

Infusionsoft changed up their pricing structure a bit ago. They’ve added a couple packages that fit different business needs. This is the first time I can remember that Infusionsoft has broken up the product into different packages and feature sets and limited the number of emails sent. That personally drives me nuts that they put a cap on emails but every automation platform has to do that nowadays because of how much data is stored about every email that is sent. It adds up really fast. And hardly anyone actually surpasses their email cap each month so it’s actually not a big deal for 95% of customers. But for the 5%?

If you take orders online, in order to get the full value out of Infusionsoft you need to have at least the Deluxe E-Commerce package which is $299 per month (less if bought with the discount here). That allows you to actually make money and take orders… run an affiliate program, etc.

Start Up Costs: $1,500 – $4,000 Kickstart

This is the part that makes any well meaning business person swallow hard. And for good reason.

Well, here again, old pal Seth comes to the rescue. You can see Infusionsoft’s kickstart packages here. But as you can imagine, that’s not the whole story.

Every new account must have a kickstart package which includes the crucial coaching and setup to not just get familiar with Infusionsoft but to be putting it to use for your business.

The team at Infusionsoft can actually teach you how to use the automation software and do your entire set up for you. That’s why the $4000.

NOTE: The kickstart package does not include your first month’s software subscription which is billed separately.

That said, they will not let you sign up without a kickstart package and don’t think you can be an exception. It is what it is. There is no way around the kickstart.

Why does Infusionsoft charge a kickstart fee? Because they want every customer to actually know how to use the software. That avoids attrition and creates loyal customers who actually benefit from the product (Yes, it’s shocking how many people buy software and never use it… don’t be that person).

Although it’s over budget for some businesses, I think that’s brilliant and has been a great reason why they have 23,000+ loyal customers and their retention rates are impeccable.

For me, I’m a quick learner and prefer to learn on my own, but even I had to bite the bullet (I didn’t have the discounts you can get either). Truth is though, I’m glad I did. It was worth it at the time (though things have changed) and the money that pours into my business while I sleep is worth it too.

Kickstart Coaching Sessions and Setup

First item of business after signing up for Infusionsoft is: don’t freak out.

This thing is a huge piece of software with all kinds of little nuances and it takes time to learn it and set up your business for automation. You must be prepared for that. Here’s a great training about automation and the best way to approach it.

NOTE: They just launched their campaign templates which is now built in to each app. You can plug and play dozens of premade campaigns for you and get help customizing them.

The coaching in the kickstart package is the one feature I think Infusionsoft does right in their sales process. Their intention is to not leave you to figure things out on your own. Which would cause overwhelm and abandonment.

It’s critical to get the training you need or you likely won’t be able to use Infusionsoft to it’s full extent and your resources will be flat wasted.

That said, I do think it’s a bit wonky that they charge you to learn the software you’re already paying for. I think they would sign on a ton more people if they didn’t charge for the coaching sessions but still made it mandatory that people take the coaching.

But they like the added benefit of the one on one coaching because it creates great retention. If it was me, it would be more efficient if they had group sessions for the basics and one on one sessions once you understand the software better.

Once you’re on board and you made it through the sales gauntlet, they’ll run you through their setup process and give access to new user webinars, and your customer coaching sessions that need to be used in the first few months.

It’s hands on training. You’ll be setting up your Infusionsoft app while going through the coaching. It happens simultaneously, which is by design. They take you through strategy sessions and brainstorming potential uses for your business, etc, and then help you put all that together in live campaigns.

Theses coaching sessions are GREAT for newcomers and for those who feel like they need help setting things up with someone looking over their shoulder as they start setting up their Infusionsoft app.

From experience, the average person will not be successful with Infusionsoft without these coaching sessions. Love ‘em or hate ‘em they are important.

But there’s one major problem. Infusionsoft, as they’ve grown, have cut the coaching session in half, twice. They used to be an hour, now they are 30 minutes. You used to get eight, now you get only four.

For most people, four sessions of thirty minutes just doesn’t feel like enough which is why they’ve added webinars and the campaign templates where you can “borrow” successful and useful campaigns and plug them right into your account. All you have to do is edit them.

If you are less than savvy and feel like you’ll be overwhelmed with the tech stuff, you can have them do it all for you which can actually save you time and money.

Advanced marketers. Because I’m an experienced marketer and wouldn’t need that much handholding, I had them set up a custom situation for me where I just set up appointments on an as-needed basis. I learn software quickly and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. Infusionsoft was no problem for me to learn quickly. There are a lot of tutorials and help docs if you’re the hands on kind of person.

Timeline for setup: 4 − 12 weeks (depending on needs).

Though getting started doesn’t take much more than a phone call, that’s just one step in the right direction… then the work starts.

For the average person with average computer skills and a business that they want to automate as much as possible, it’ll take from 4 to 12 weeks to get your head around things and implement automation to where your business really feels the full value of Infusionsoft… or any automation platform. It’s like a golden Walla Walla sweet onion with a bunch of layers.

You have to be committed to getting it done and implementing it before you jump in. If you’re not committed, then don’t bother. Find something else to tinker with.

There are ways to speed that up, you can hire Infusionsoft to do the work for you, or a consultant or attend InfusionCon or any other special implementation events that they put on every quarter….

If you have a time-bound event like a product launch you’re planning for be sure to give yourself at least 3 months for implementation or you’ll be disappointed and end up with a train wreck. I’d recommend 6 months.

I’m an advanced user, and for my purposes, it took me 6 weeks to carve out the time needed to dress up my health supplement business to the nines with Infusionsoft automation, reporting and API shenanigans.

It’s hard work, but glad I spent the time on it. I love the automation Infusionsoft offers for that particular business (Infusionsoft isn’t the answer for every business though, ONTRAPORT might fit your business better. Grab a custom recommendation here) or chat us up at the bottom of the page.

What I LOVE About Infusionsoft

The items below come with a disclaimer: it’s a big deal for me to love something. I don’t have a long list here but there is a list and that says a lot.

Most all of the features in Infusionsoft are just there, as expected. The way I see it, the software should do what it’s supposed to do and there’s nothing special about that.

But where an app over delivers is where I tend to love it. These are a few features that to me are awesome.

24/7 Chat. This has saved me more times than I can count. They do have someone there all night so those in other countries aren’t inconvenienced and those that don’t want to wait for 30 minutes to chat online with a customer service rep during the day can get quicker access in the middle of the night.

To me, this effort to be available when everyone else is sleeping goes a long way. I like it.

Worth mentioning that if you’re in the UK, they have people there for you during business hours.

The fancy new campaign builder. This feature is the mother load in Infusionsoft and it’s killer. When they launched it they thought they won the world.

If you think the campaign builder will be a big deal for you, like I did, you’ll want to schedule a demo to walk through it. It’s awesome.

This type of visual drag-and-drop drafting of campaigns was only previously available in enterprise solutions like Marketo, Eloqua and Hubspot ($1500/month+). This one feature could be reason enough to use Infusionsoft if it makes a difference to you.

The visual drag-and-drop campaign builder allows you to very quickly draw out mind map style funnels and automation tasks.

You set up a whole campaign (campaign means just a set of tasks to automate) and lay it all out visually. All you do is drag and drop then connect the dots and add your content, then publish.

Revolutionary (said with an Aussie accent).

The campaign builder literally does nothing to add to the functionality of the software itself but the advantage it adds in user friendliness is unmistakably awesome.

It makes drawing out sales funnels and autoresponders really easy once you get the hang of it. Luckily, the campaign builder is the most intuitive thing to learn in Infusionsoft which is a huge bonus.

If you’re really visual person and just can’t get your mind around an autoresponder that’s drawn out in the typical linear fashion then this one feature might make all the difference for you.

This was the keynote feature in Infusionsoft’s Spring 2012 release. That one feature was what made me give Infusionsoft another try (I used them a few years ago when the software should have been called Confusionsoft).

You’ll set up all your landing pages (only hosted by Infusionsoft) autoresponders and web forms in the campaign builder.

To get a glimpse of this thing just hang out in the support section of the website.

Navigation. You’d think that decent navigation should be a given, but compared to their earlier versions of the software, their new look is worlds better. Maybe if I hadn’t used their earlier version the navigation wouldn’t be a big deal but I just like it the way it is now.

Making your way around isn’t a big deal anymore. It looks good too. It only took a few minutes to get the hang of where everything is. There’s nothing hiding anymore.

A quick timesaver is a feature that lets you save favorites in your app navigation for pages that you visit often.

The set up process for ecommerce is a dream. They finally put everything you need all in one place so that you just roll through six step ecommerce setup and you’re good to start taking orders.

Email templates and editor. The email editor is meh at best. This of course is one of the most used features. I’ve never used crazy design heavy HTML emails so not sure this is something you’ll love too, but for my use I love how fast I can draw up and send out a broadcast email. (their email builder is NOT mobile friendly).

The email template system makes it two clicks to have an email ready to edit and send out. You can also create templates to use for later just as fast.

It does have Spam Assassin style email rating now, which is nice too. You are able to maintain many different from email address and reply-to email addresses.

Searching. Again, seems simple but the ability to search and save searches based on dozens of different criteria is great and fast. When you need to find contacts, orders, affiliates, tasks or anything else quickly, there’s a box at the top right that lets you have anything at your finger tips. That’s nice, but only one small piece.

What’s better is the built in ability to search for any contact or order, etc and save that search into a report. This functionality has saved me as I haven’t found anything that I couldn’t create reports for except for a couple fulfillment issues. Reporting isn’t at-a-glance easy in Infusionsoft but this feature has been awesome. I can always find what I need very quickly.

This makes the CRM side of Infusionsoft very intuitive and it’s easy for employees to learn how to manage contacts.

Data cleanup. Ever had a list with a bunch of duplicates and no way to clean them up? Well, Infusionsoft’s data clean up feature is awesome. It’s like a database scrubber on steroids. Makes for real easy management of a big list.

Fantastic community and events. Infusionsoft has an incredible community of users and developers. They have forums that are great for connecting and getting answers, especially great for developers.

Infusionsoft also has local meetups and groups where you can connect with other users to brainstorm and learn about how to use the software better. Those are extremely useful. Infusioncon (a big user conference) is epic. They bring in awesome speakers and have tons of break out sessions for whatever you need. They also have Infusion University where you can take basic and advanced courses. Last is implementation days where you come in to the Infusionsoft offices in Chandler, Arizona (by Phoenix) and get your stuff done with an expert walking you through it.

Nice move Infusionsoft. And now for the stuff you’ll never hear:

What I HATE About Infusionsoft

Disclaimer: when something really makes you mad or has cost you money you tend to not forget it. No software is perfect, but Infusionsoft really misses it on a few things. That said, as a human, I tend to remember the negative stuff pretty easily so there’s a lot more here to vent about.

This in no way means that Infusionsoft is a bust and a lousy piece of software these are just the things that really drive me nuts about it.

What I’ve heard from you as I’ve answered questions is that you appreciate the negative stuff more than the glowing reviews you always here.

So here we go, buckle up.

Customer Service. While I can’t say they’re horrible in this department, I’ve been disappointed so many times. As they’ve gotten bigger the quality has slipped and there’s no real personal touch as far as their customer service goes.

Best way to take care of support issues is over the phone (fastest), chat (be prepared to wait 30 minutes), or by support ticket (all your complicated questions have to wait for the senior techs which can take up to TWO DAYS to get answers).

For the most part, if you have a question, just call them. Otherwise it seems you’ll wait for a while. If you’re okay with that then this won’t be a big deal.

Reporting is meager at best. Though they launched better campaign reporting just recently, this isn’t what they’ll tell you upfront because in their mind their reporting is awesome. From a normal small business perspective, perhaps, but from a marketer’s perspective, that’s just not the case.

True, Infusionsoft has some powerful reporting built in as I’ve already mentioned, and I love that functionality, but for accurate reporting about how campaigns are doing, it’s far from ideal. Up until they launched the new campaign reporting, there wasn’t any way to get that data.

Only tough thing is that for any detailed and specific reports, you literally have to configure your own reports if you want any worthwhile data. It comes with a few default reports configured but they’re mostly overly simplified.

The dream of at-a-glance statistics for campaign performance is no longer just a dream, they’ve fixed that. Thank you Infusionsoft.

You are no longer in the dark about how your auto responder and drip campaign emails are doing. That means you finally have an idea if your campaign emails are getting opened, or clicked on, however we’re still in the dark a bit about if they’re making sales.

As for other at-a-glance stuff, they have a dashboard widget called the “Box-O-Stats” and the just added a few contact summary and sales summary widgets that can be configured to show you some stats but it’s very limited to the most simple calculations. That’s what I’m using currently to try and get a snapshot of how things are going and it works for the most part.

There are three big problems with the lack of thorough and comprehensive reporting:

• The most valuable reports don’t exist and have to be created. This is too much work for something that should be included by default. It’s inconvenient and creates a poor user experience. Plus, most people don’t know what reports are needed so why not configure the most critical ones?
• There is no such thing as “conversion reports” with real at-a-glance marketing data that matters which can be tracked to the email that created the sale. This is the most frustrating report that is missing. If you want this data, which you MUST have, you have to do your own math or buy third party apps that do it for you.
• There is no visual representation of the data. You have to figure out how to tie in the data via API to a business dashboard like Cyfe or Domo if you want to see all that data in a nice chart and have it all at your finger tips.
• FIXED!!! You now have an idea about which campaigns are working well but not so much if they are making sales and therefore is hard to optimize them fully still. That is an oversight they’ll hopefully fix soon.

Poor web analytics. Infusionsoft has “web analytics” now since the Spring 2012 release but they are so weak and I haven’t found them to be accurate. Definitely not reliable tracking data that can be used to determine crucial conversion rates, customer value and all that stuff that matters to determine marketing effectiveness.

One thing I get frustrated with is that you have to buy additional third party software for $49/month to really use Infusionsoft’s ability to track the lead sources. That is another massive oversight.

A critical piece of data that is nice to have is to know whether or not a contact has visited your site recently. Infusionsoft doesn’t track user visits.

No split testing. There is no easy way to split test anything with Infusionsoft… emails, landing pages, subject lines. Free solution is to create two versions of something or use tags to tell which version you send to a certain group of contacts (send one version to A – L and another to M − Z). Really? That complicated? Yep.

Best solution is to use a workaround called PlusThis. Great little plugin with lots of functionality that plugs holes in Infusionsoft.

Unless they fix this, real marketers are going to go elsewhere I’m afraid.

Price creep…. Your core monthly cost doesn’t tell the whole story. That’s rarely what you’ll be paying at the end of the day because a lot of the things you will need cost extra.

Why? Because the things I’ve mentioned above don’t exist in Infusionsoft but smart people have created third party software that does those things.

Especially since they received $57M of investment from Goldman Sachs. This kinda nickel and dime-ing (that’s what I call it but they have every reason to charge for those things) is likely to increase as they start acquiring complimentary software companies, like GroSocial.

• Need a membership site? Infusionsoft’s Customer Hub is awesome and turnkey but it costs extra.
• Need real analytics? That’s extra.
• Need better reports with charting? That’s extra.
• Need on demand post card follow up? That’s extra.
• Need text messaging capabilities? That’s extra too.

Though because there is such a huge community of developers, you can do almost anything you want, but many features that I think should be included in a core product cost extra because Infusionsoft doesn’t have that functionality and you’re left to pay a third party software company to provide the functionality. Those costs can add up and more than double your monthly if you decide you wanted that functionality. But it’s not necessary for the majority of people.

Getting a discount on your monthly will help.

In all seriousness, in the long run, the price doesn’t matter, convenience and time saving solutions do, which Infusionsoft and it’s marketplace of vendors are full of.

Once your business gets rolling on automation you’ll be saving more money and making more money so that the cost of the automation software becomes superfluous because the value it provides far overshadows any cost.

API nightmare. Though it’s gotten better and they are supposedly rebuilding it, this has cost me a lot of money. You probably will never need to mess with any API development so this is meaningless but just so you know, Infusionsoft’s API ain’t that great. It’s like the Fire Swamp from Princess Bride. There are only a couple dozen people in the world that know it well enough to cost effectively get stuff done quickly. The average API programmer is befuddled by it.

If you need API stuff done, let me know and I’ll set you up with someone that can get it done.

And don’t think you can hire some random developer to figure it out. You probably won’t want to spend months and thousands of dollars for their learning curve. I’ve seen the API baffle guys that have 15 years experience in API programming.

Truth is, Infusionsoft has grown over time to be way more than it was intended initially. What happens is that they keep building on top of a foundation that wasn’t meant to hold a house that big.

The result is that the API has been bootstrapped and adapted to fit the growing software.

The architecture of Infusionsoft is something they won’t want you to bring up in a sales conversation because there’s nothing good they can say about it other than they have really good programmers and they use Scrum to get things done. There’s no way to sugar coat it. The API is a nightmare.

There’s rumor that they are rebuilding the API which is good and bad. Bad because those like me who have spent thousands to develop some custom stuff are in jeopardy of that going away without notice. (Infusionsoft has a track record of doing things without notice). It’s a good thing because if they fixed the API the software could literally be a dream to work with.

NOTE: if you’re wanting to automate fulfillment via Infusionsoft API, You’re looking at a massive project that will probably take weeks, even months. I hacked a way around it if you’re curious just contact me.

Phantom misfires that cost sales. It’s happened several times that several customers have called in on the same day saying they can’t order for some reason. As you can imagine, that is a big deal. If they can’t order that means other people can’t order.

Granted, this has only happened a few times, but each time I call up Infusionsoft and go through the rounds to troubleshoot with their techs and because they couldn’t reproduce anything on their end, to them there’s nothing wrong…

Well, that cost me $1000s and there’s nothing wrong?

“I’m sorry sir, there’s just nothing we can do for you. We can’t reproduce the problem.” That’s true technically, but it’s no consolation as you can imagine.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if it didn’t jeopardize my trust that the software isn’t costing me money at some level and there’s nothing I can do about it. While some customers know us enough to give us a call and say that it’s not working, how many others just go away and never come back?

To be honest, I have very little confidence in the architecture of the software and it’s codebase… until it’s entirely reworked, especially the API. (I’m told they’re actually doing that now).

Again, for most people with the most common uses, this API conversation is meaningless, but to me, being a tech guy, I like my stuff to be solid.

Does Infusionsoft work? Of course it does.

Black listed Infusionmail.com. This doesn’t happen anywhere near as often as it used to but this is a big deal if you are a high volume email sender. Infusionsoft has all their email going out through the same domain, infusionmail.com.

If some idiot spams a bunch of people and infusionmail.com gets blacklisted one day, you’re screwed for that day and so is everyone else. If that is in the middle of a product launch or an important campaign, there’s nothing you can do. Luckily this rarely happens anymore.

It takes the Infusionsoft team a bit to fix things and while they’re fixing it, your delivery rates suffer… and any email your affiliates send out with your link in them can get junked as well.

Again, this doesn’t happen as much any more and all told, Infusionsoft is pretty dang good at delivering email nowadays. They’ve especially improved on email broadcasts. Their delivery rates rival everyone else’s except for when the domain gets blacklisted.

That probably won’t be a big deal for you but I have to mention it.

New “fancy” order forms aren’t fancy. This one I thought was a joke when I first heard about it. The Summer 2012 release included some new order forms that are actually decent looking. I was excited about it, until I talked to Infusionsoft about them.

Here’s the kicker… they’re not letting you host the new order forms on your site any more because they don’t trust us to run a secure site.

The old order forms, which you could use on your own domain, are now considered “legacy” software which will be phased out eventually.

What that means is that all orders have to be taken from *.infusionsoft.com. That sucks for conversion. It sucks for tracking. It sucks for branding. It sucks on just about every level I can think of except one… if you don’t have your own SSL or don’t want to deal with managing a secure website, then this isn’t a big deal at all. To me, it’s a big deal and it pisses me off.

Future Proofing: Is Infusionsoft a Good Long-term Solution?

Since switching to any other platform once you’ve built out your Infusionsoft app is a horrible nightmare of the worst kind, it’s important to ask if Infusionsoft is where you want to be long term.

If your business meets the profile I describe for ideal Infusionsoft customers then you can’t go wrong.

If you do have any questions as to whether Infusionsoft is a good fit, please drop me an email and let’s talk about it.

Beyond that there are a couple things that need mentioning that nobody is talking about…

Thing one. This one thing makes me the most nervous about Infusionsoft’s future:

They are quick to talk about the $54M they got from Goldman Sachs as if that’s a kiss from the business gods.

I don’t see that as such a good thing. In fact it makes me nervous. I hate it when companies sell out or get bought out.

The worst thing that can happen to a software company is to have to answer to investors that don’t care two spits about customer service. That tyrant-ish relationship effectively disconnects the company from the customer’s real needs and forces them to focus on one thing: growing revenue.

It’s a delicate task to cater to investors and have the customer’s best interest in mind at the same time. Few companies can do it effectively and since Infusionsoft has struggled with customer service already, that’s not a good sign. Not at all.

Do you think Goldman Sachs cares about you? Nope. They care about your money and how quickly it can jump into their pockets.

Thing two. Then there’s the temptation to grow too quickly now that you have a budget to do whatever you want… that could be a big problem if it’s not done methodically and systematically.

Quick growth means launching features before they’re ready to add revenue, buggy systems, new customer service reps that don’t know the software at all and frustrated customers.

This probably won’t effect your uses for Infusionsoft but here’s what I think is going to happen:

• They’ll start buying up more companies to fill ancillary needs… like GroSocial.
• They’ll try to bootstrap some solution to integrate them all.
• They’ll hire more people to cover the customer support needs that aren’t well trained and customer support will suffer.
• They’ll start adding features that don’t really matter while overlooking the things that do… all for the sake of adding more sexiness that is marketable to average every day mom and pop businesses who comprise a huge gigantic market (perfect example: though I love it the campaign builder adds no functionality, just sexiness).
• Rapid growth causes all kinds of internal growing pains.

Does this mean that Infusionsoft is dead in the water? Not by a long shot. Clate Mask and his team are good meaning dudes and smart and they are consulted and coached by the best. I know Clate personally. It could mean that they come out with some stuff you really like and I hope it means they make their software better.

I don’t think this hurts Infusionsoft’s long term viability as a solution for your business because Infusionsoft isn’t going anywhere. It’s growing rapidly. Infusionsoft works and it works well for almost everything that you’ll need and it’ll stay that way.

I’m sticking with Infusionsoft for my supplement business and I’m perfectly happy with that even though we’ve had a couple disagreements.

And hey… if we fired everyone we’ve ever had a disagreement with we’d be broke, alone, and homeless… so if Infusionsoft is your bus, jump on and stick with it. Go grab a demo.

Concluding Infusionsoft Remarks

Happiness. Infusionsoft contributes to my happiness every day… while every now and then we have a bad day or two but we kiss and make it better.

No software is perfect. No software can do everything you want exactly how you want it unless you build it yourself.

You just have to figure out how to use the resources available to get things done in a way that will work for your business.

Infusionsoft allows you to do that. It’s very flexible and can be bent to do a ton of stuff.

Does it work? Absolutely. It has increased my sales by at least 85% in the last few months alone.

It takes time to get things together. To learn it. To apply it and get things running smoothly but once you do, it’s amazing.

If your business fits the criteria, make a commitment and run with it and don’t look back.

Recommendation. Would I recommend Infusionsoft? Yes I would… and I do a lot. That said, I want it crystal clear that just as with ONTRAPORT, I will reserve the recommendation of Infusionsoft to only companies or individuals that I know would be a good fit.

Click here to find out if you and your business are a good fit for Infusionsoft OR chat me up using the chat box. Do it now.

It’s true, Infusionsoft could literally work for any business, but I don’t think it’s the best solution for certain types of businesses. I go through all the details here.

I’m sure you wouldn’t want to waste time and money on something that I knew wasn’t ideal.

Hopefully I make that clear because when I was shopping Infusionsoft and ONTRAPORT, there was nobody there to point me in the right direction. I had to experience the software for myself, waste time, and make mistakes in order to know if it fit my business or not.

I don’t want you to go through that.

As a marketing strategist and a productivity and business automation junkie, I won’t steer you wrong.

If you already know Infusionsoft is a fit for you and your business, Go grab a demo. Or message me below if you want to connect with my guy.

Features I’ve never used…

I’ve never used the sales pipeline and lead scoring functionality in Infusionsoft because my supplement business is not a B2B thing. I’ve heard really good things about it though.

I’ve just now started digging in to running an affiliate program with my supplement business. I’ve never heard a negative thing about the affiliate program that Infusionsoft has, it’s one of their strong points. Only issues is the rare blacklisting which rarely happens anymore.

I also stay away from using their shopping cart. It’s not a self hosted solution and therefore I don’t bother with it. I like to have full control of my shopping cart.

I literally use everything else to the nines.

Let me Scratch Your Itch. Seriously, I’m happy to help…