Let me start by saying this post is NOT one on bashing Ontraport (Office Autopilot) to praise Infusionsoft.
They are both solid platforms that will do what you need them to do if you know how to unlock them to get more for your money and marketing.
There are some core differences in the feature sets but I’ll save that for a more hands-on review of both. This post is focused on the events that led me to jump ship (for now) from Ontraport/Office Autopilot to Infusionsoft.
What is Ontraport?
To keep it simple…Ontraport is Office Autopilot 3.0. The name change exemplifies their biggest product upgrade since their initial launch.
As I write this Office Autopilot is version 2.4 and Ontraport is version 3.0. Same team built it just changed the name and added features.
That being said they are two separate platforms. Different workflows and even a different API. So I will refer to my experience with them both separately throughout this post.
Quick History
I’m no rookie to Office Autopilot. I’ve been managing accounts for clients for years. It’s how I learned my way around the platform and was exposed to the power of it.
So I am not speaking from the standpoint of someone who tried it for a couple days, couldn’t figure it out, and left. I’ve used Office Autopilot extensively and have been able to do something very impressive things with it.
For the record I absolutely love the Office Autopilot/Ontraport team and have the highest form of respect for Landon Ray.
Unfortunately, what I recently experienced and foresee in the near future raises HEAVY concerns for me.
Office Autopilot vs. Infusionsoft: The Great Debate
To understand the history between Office Autopilot and Infusionsoft you have to travel back a couple years. A time before Infusionsoft’s most recent upgrade to their platform.
At that time Infusionsoft’s interface was not only difficult to navigate (earning the name “Confusionsoft”) but it was also very buggy. This led to a LOT of frustrated customers who:
- Couldn’t figure the platform out
- Couldn’t get it to work once they figured it out due to the bugs
Since Office Autopilot was the same price point ($297/mo) and had no sign up fee (Infusionsoft charges a required start up training fee of $2,000 called KickStarter) it made a lot of sense to switch over to the competition. Not to mention Office Autopilot’s platform was targeted more towards online entrepreneurs like speakers, coaches, consultants, and authors; while Infusionsoft was primarily targeting brick and mortar small business owners.
Fast forward to now and the story is a bit different. Entrepreneurs like Jermaine Griggs, who used Infusionsoft to grow his online business to over $1 million, proved what Infusionsoft was truly capable of with the right expertise. Infusionsoft also updated their interface to be more user-friendly and added a Campaign Builder (which is truly revolutionary). In doing so, however, they also frustrated a lot of customers and lost quite a few because…
Upgrading platforms is NEVER a smooth process. Especially when you have 1,000s of users whose business success depends on your software.
However, I’m sure Infusionsoft is happy they made the update and finally worked out the bugs because the platform is more stable and flexible now than it has ever been.
Which brings me back to Office Autopilot. I see the same thing in the future when Office Autopilot forces everybody to update to Ontraport. Lots of bugs, lost of frustration, and lots of customers jumping ship. I hope I’m wrong (I really do), but something is telling me it’s gonna be a long road forward for Office Autopilot/Ontraport.
Is Ontraport Ready?
Short answer…no. Absolutely not. But that’s no surprise. Landon Ray himself, who frequents the FB user community, stated they are fixing 100s of issues weekly to get Ontraport up to standards.
And it was those bugs that ultimately drove me to jump ship.
Here are a few bugs that I experienced when I upgraded to Ontraport:
Wrong time zone
Upon upgrading, it automatically set my time zone to Africa. The only way I caught it was by subscribing to my own sequences and experiencing my emails going out at the wrong time. A call to support fixed it immediately. I had to call support since there were no US timezones in my profile panel to choose from to fix it myself.
Display errors
Simple processes like applying tags worked functionally but didn’t display correctly. When you viewed a contact’s record the tags wouldn’t appear. Giving you the impression that it wasn’t applied.
A call to support helped verify it was a bug that would be fixed when you cleared your cache and cookies and restarted your browser.
I did both with no luck. Fortunately, a couple days later they added a prompt within the user interface that prompted me to refresh my browser to download the latest software and it worked like a charm.
Random Tracking Performance
One of my favorite features of Ontraport is the ability to track your subscriber’s web page visits then trigger responses based on the pages they visit (really powerful stuff). Unfortunately, it just didn’t work consistently.
When users filled out my web form Ontraport would track some and not others. So some contacts would have that data in their contact record while others wouldn’t even though they both filled out the same form on the same page.
Zaps Be Gone
I love Zapier. Their recent addition of Office Autopilot to their apps was a godsend to most in the Ontraport community. It allowed you to extend Office Autopilot’s limited integration with 3rd party apps to over 250 apps.
Unfortunately, with the API switch (Office Autopilot and Ontraport both have different APIs) Zapier has taken down the integration until they can get it stable again. So if you had existing zaps they stayed in place. If not, the integration is gone until Zapier figures out how to support both APIs or just Ontraport.
Customer Support, or lack thereof
Office Autopilot has always had amazing support. Ontraport not so much. However, there is a reason behind it.
Since releasing Ontraport, Landon has been expanding his team like crazy to support the efforts. This is a sign of growth. Unfortunately, these new employees are the ones answering the support line.
So for people like me, a bit more advanced, there was no help they could offer me. In fact, very few of them knew their way around the platform themselves. Often resulting in them creating a support ticket for my issue to be resolved via email instead of right on the phone.
This was extremely frustrating because you just can’t get the immediate help and resolution you need. Unless you know the workaround…
One way to get a more experienced rep in the phone is to request one. I met the entire team last year at Ontrapalooza so I know who to ask for if I really need something fixed. All the older employees are absolute rock stars, it’s just unfortunate you have to jump through the hoops for some quality support.
User Interface
This is another highly frustrating area of Ontraport. They updated the UI to look a lot more clean, which it does. They’ve also improved their workflows so it’s easier than ever to get your sequences built out (I love it).
However, it’s filled with data that is hard to read due to multiple UI issues.
The biggest being that the columns in the data grid are not resizable and don’t automatically expand horizontally. Leaving you with data that is cut off by the limited width of the columns.
The interface is also filled with icons that are too small to see and understand what they mean or do.
These were some of the most prominent issues I experienced when upgrading to Ontraport 3.0. The team is aware of them all and working on fixes as I type.
However, it’s just gonna take a lot of time to fix them all and that’s what concerned me the most and made me contemplate if I wanted to take my business on this long road trip with them.
How to fix Ontraport
There is a way to immediately fix ALL the bugs I mentioned. Downgrade back to Office Autopilot 2.4. OAP 2.4 is battle tested and works like a champ. So you do have that option available to you. You won’t get the enhancements of Ontraport, but you’ll be running on a proven platform.
However, since there is no downgrade path, you will need to export your data from Ontraport and import it which can be a major pain.
And that’s where my trepidation lies. I see Office Autopilot/Ontraport embarking on the same upgrade journey Infusionsoft just went through. The bugs and frustrated customers that will ultimately result in a more polished product. I’m just not sure how long it will take them to get it right.
Why I Chose Infusionsoft
Infusionsoft has come a long way. From a technology side as well as sales reps. I’ve always hated how pushy their sales reps were and strongly disliked mandating thousands dollars worth of training just to sign up for the platform.
I’ve been managing Infusionsoft accounts for a lot of clients lately that has enabled me to bypass the start-up fee and get some true experience with the product.
Needless to say I’ve learned the interface pretty quickly and am extremely comfortable using it. My experience with Infusionsoft has been really good.
There are still some things that are just ridiculously hard to figure out (like creating a double opt-in link that forwards subscribers to a custom “Success Page”), but a bit of searching on the internet provided the exact solution I was looking for.
Infusionsoft has native integrations with a LOT of 3rd party software and services like PlusThis and Zapier to extend its functionality even more.
Needless to say Infusionsoft’s platform is very stable, flexible, and reliable. Which made me wonder…
“Why am I not using it for my business? Especially with the recurring bugs and issues I’ve been experiencing with Ontraport”
The only answer I could come up with, besides my personal love for the entire Ontraport team, was:
- Infusionsoft’s KickStarter fee for someone as experienced as myself
- The drastic learning curve (which I went through fairly quickly)
Those were the only objections I had since I know both tools intimately. Now I probably wouldn’t have even asked myself the question if I wasn’t running into roadblocks with Ontraport and I didn’t have any personal experience with Infusionsoft.
Since I had both the discussion became purely about money.
I contacted Infusionsoft to talk possibilities and spoke with a rep who was an absolute joy to work with (his name is Chad). I won’t disclose numbers but he was able to “minimize” my KickStarter fee tremendously and give me a monthly rate lower than any other platform on the market.
So I jumped ship and decided to wait it out with Ontraport. I will still be posting tutorials on how to do things in both Office Autopilot and Ontraport, but will be using Infusionsoft in my personal business.
Remember, no software is perfect. There will always be bugs and issues you will have to work through. So deciding to go with Infusionsoft or Ontraport will always boil down to what works for you in your business and what you’re willing to put up with and work through.
If you’ve had a similar experience with any of the items listed for either platform please let me know in the comments. If you agree or disagree, those comments are welcomed as well.
75 comments
RC
I once called Infusionsoft some names I regret. Now that they have the buildable templates—I’m eager to switch back. Ontraport has become my nemesis—I’m swapping to Leadpages for Landing Pages (seriously….its a whole new world over here) and will be reactivating my Infusionsoft. It’s WORTH the figuring out—just to know its FUNCTIONING.
My Main Issues with Ontraport:
-Always rolling out new versions…without fixing the one they’ve got
-SUPPORT: I’ve been told I can’t do things multiple times, only to figure them out my damn self—I’ve been kept in loops for days on waiting for API approvals without expediting, I not-so-jokingly like to tell my peers I know more than Ontraport about their own system.
-NEEDS BABYSITTING: Nothing like scheduling that email (you know..AUTOMATING) only to come back and, oh—it didn’t send. This happens frequently enough to make me very uneasy. Once, I sent an email to myself—which I never received, yet the email had stats…LOL. What don’t I know?
-DESIGN IS GREAT ON SCREEN: Dont ever send without testing the email…and mobile. Shit LOVES to change. Then, spend hours trying to get their design builder idiosyncrasies (text that won’t center, colors that don’t change) to actually work for you.
-STRICT POLICIES YET NOT STELLAR SERVICE: Every time you import contacts, you’ll be threatened with account deletion if you spam these new people or don’t meet some standard. Which I wouldn’t mind, if I actually felt the platform gave me value. It’s like..you don’t trust me? I DON’T TRUST YOU ONTRAPORT! Just something annoying about it. We once got picked for list review and they couldn’t approve our list for 3 weeks. Yeah…that event we were promoting…it came and went. We found workarounds (another platform). Even when API does go through, I’ve failed to get it to function with both Leadquizzes + Leadpages. Infusionsoft has been fine.
-SHOPIFY INTEGRATION: Now I’m just complaining; but you can’t integrate with Shopify (IE customer orders, they get added or tagged in Ontraport) and I can’t recommend you try the app (Fuzed) they say can make it happen. They never got back to me when only 10 products would load—until they finally reached out: “It’s setup right”. Thanks, dudes. Get Infusionsoft and Revenue Conduit app an save yourself manual imports for eternity.
Sorry if this turned into a big vent fest—I just want to spare you from the pain this $2000+ annual service has been for us.
Chris L. Davis
Lol…no worries RC, I’ve heard a lot of those same sentiments from users. I think it’s time for cloud software service providers to take a bit more pride in their product and respect the development required to product a solid offering.
I will be updating this post shortly with my new thoughts on not just Infusionsoft and Ontraport, but ActiveCampaign as well.
I still think Ontraport’s workflow is easier than Infusionsoft’s. You don’t need to exit out of as many screens to get things done as you do with Infusionsoft. Although IS has a visual builder a lot of their processes are very much linear and require a lot of in and out of settings.
Jumping/migrating to another platform always poses its challenges but it sounds like you’ve weighed yours pretty accurately so I hope all goes well!
Mark
When was this article published? It sounds like the big concern here was primarily for those who would need to do the conversion from OAP to Ontraport. From the comments it looks like this article was published in 2014 or so, thus many of the kinks should have been worked out by now. My friends who use them say they have a solid support team with good response to resolving tech glitches.
For someone starting out who is not using OAP (no upgrade hassles), and who does not want to use Infusionsoft due to their Mormon ownership & refusal to accept clients with modern, progressive values (clients Ontraport will accept), would you still recommend against Ontraport? Are you actually (and still, in late 2016) recommending no one at all should use Ontraport? Hope to hear a clarification. Thank you! 🙂
Chris L. Davis
Mark,
This post was written a while back when Office Autopilot had just changed their name to Ontraport. Since then it has become a lot more stable.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that is NOT Infusionsoft, Ontraport is your only option.
Most of the people I know satisfied with Ontraport’s support are certified so they get access to a higher level of reps than regular accounts. So make sure you know someone who is certified.
Jim Hart
Hey Chris,
I was wondering. When you made the switch, it sounds like you kept Ontraport for now. What about recurring payments? I’ve got clients that pay me monthly fees through Ontraport – which is automated with Stripe. Any suggestions on how I would switch them over seamlessly? Is there a way to do this through the back-end with Stripe or no?
Thanks!
Jim
Chris L. Davis
Hey Jim…migrating payment processors is really tricky. It all depends on of the payment plan exists in Stripe or not. If you’ve used Ontraport to handle the recurring payments there’s a good chance that the plans do NOT exist in Stripe.
Are you thinking of moving to Infusionsoft?
Chris
Jim Hart
I have two businesses – I used Ontraport for one and Infusionsoft for the other. I am having the same experience you had with Ontraport, so I’m transitioning that business to clickfunnels and adding my personal clients to infusionsoft for back-end systems stuff, like I’m doing with the other business that is currently on infusionsoft. I had hoped that Ontraport would be able to replace infusionsoft for both businesses – but it is just too buggy.
It looks like I will need to either keep my OP account open for now, or ask all my clients on recurring payments to switch and fill out a new payment form with clickfunnels.
Chris L. Davis
Unfortunately that’s the best bet…having them fill out a ClickFunnels form to get them on the new payment system.
Have you looked at or tried Activecampaign?
Greg
What other options are out there other than Ontraport and Infusionsoft?
Chris L. Davis
It truly depends @disqus_mSsyNJGOVz:disqus.
Assuming you’re not trying to move up market to an enterprise solution I would recommend looking into ActiveCampaign.
Craig
Hey Chris,
Quick question… I am looking to leave Ontraport as well, but do you know how you can export your email lists from Ontraport? I emailed support and they said that this would be a good “feature request”. I own the list and imported a big part of it in the first place, but they should have some export feature, otherwise they would be kind of holding my list hostage:-).
Chris L. Davis
Hey @disqus_ycwuC8FDKm:disqus ! You should be able to. I see an option in my account under Contacts when you select them all there is an option to “Export”. Is that what you mean?
AS48
Just came across this article, and having gone through conversion from OAP to OP with a client, I can say that as of this date, OP is still buggy as heck.
The “metrics” they claim their dashboard provides are always inaccurate – sometimes wildly so.
Email messages, forms and sequences created in OAP may have made the conversion to OP – or not. It’s hit or miss. You don’t know if one of your items made the conversion until you try to open it and find an error message.
There is no notification of downtime or updates to the system that may affect users’ ability to use the system during specific hours of the day or night. When working late at night in my time zone, I have often had *saved work* go missing after saving it and returning to it later, or the “processing” icon appears and just sits there for upwards of 20 minutes – and then the icon vanishes – and so does my work, leaving me with a blank screen.
My client’s affiliate center is often down or certain features within the center do not work properly – and it’s always an OP issue causing the problem. How can a company know for certain that they are treating their affiliates fairly when they can’t get accurate information from the affiliate center because OP keeps having problems?
The support team is almost clueless about things that should be basic knowledge, and I’ve been put on hold on the phone for over 30 minutes, and then found out the support person forgot about me and went to lunch. The same thing happens with the online chat support. They are so busy that they can’t keep up with support requests, so some requests go unanswered to the point that the user gives up.
My client is moving to another platform. It may not be as comprehensive as OP, but for certain, it will be less trouble. OP has some things it does very, very well – but there is definitely room for improvement in many areas. For my client, the expense of the system coupled with the problems it creates is just becoming too much.
Chris L. Davis
Yeah @disqus_hv2OELiR23:disqus I understand, unfortunately. Instead of really fine tuning their product offering and making it more stable they just continue to add more on top of it.
With the creation of OntraPages as a standalone product It makes me concerned they are spreading themselves too thin (as if they already weren’t thin enough).
Would love to hear about which platform you choose and how the migration works out for you.
AS48
Thanks, Chris.
Had another “interesting” experience with OP’s support today. I asked a simple question – if there was a way to export all the images we had loaded into OP for use in our emails. I was told there was no way to do that – but then received a follow up email from the rep I chatted with, saying my request was resolved, and giving me a link to a completely unrelated support document. Almost as though the rep were trying to avoid having an unresolved support issue on their record, so they gave me a “resolved” status and a link to something – anything – so they could mark it as resolved. Very odd.
Chris L. Davis
Ouch.
I would love to defend Ontraport but these same types of stories keep resurfacing. I have some colleagues that swear by it and just tough it out through all the bugs and glitches.
I tried to but just couldn’t.
Annabel Tory
Hey Chris! Thanks for all the awesome info regarding Infusionsoft vs. Ontraport..such a tough call! I’m hoping you might be able to guide me in the right direction…
I’m definitely leaning towards Infusionsoft based on multiple reviews, phone calls and the overall features, but with little experience in the field beyond thorough research into these and many other platforms, I can’t deny that I’m intimidated by the complexity and learning curve of Infusionsoft (and the expensive “training” which by the sounds of it isn’t all that helpful).
That said, I guess Ontraport would require just as much time and work to get the hang of? You also mentioned that Infusionsoft is stronger in the e-commerce and CRM department, whereas Ontraport takes the cake for e-mail marketing and automation? Is that really still the case?? Can you expand on that? Thank you so much!!!
Best,
Annabel
Annie Finch
I just left Infusionsoft for Ontraport–and i am SO GlAD i did! Infusionsoft did have more people working customer support, but otherwise i am finding ontraport so much more simple, beautiful, and easy/fun/intuitive to use. Infusionsoft was awful. wierd and confusing to do the simplest things. After 2 years i still never felt comfortable with it. I think it’s a brain structure difference.
Chris L. Davis
Hey @ann@anniefinch:disqus! So glad to hear a different perspective and experience. This post is a bit dated and in need of an update definitely. However, I still run into a lot of stability issues with Ontraport as well as third party integrations. But I’m glad you’r having fun with it and it’s working for you.
At the end of the day it’s all about using the tool that gets your business results. Truly happy for you.
Chris L. Davis
Hey @annabeltory:disqus! It’s tough to gauge how well the tool will work without actual field experience (as you mentioned). However, I will say your intimidation on the complexity of Infusionsoft is warranted. Although I’ve had great success with it I will be the first to admit that it is overly complicated.
Regarding eCommerce Infusionsoft wins from a capability standpoint. You can sell single products or offer an entire shopping cart with a complete storefront that allows you to sell multiple products at once. Ontraport only allows single product checkout.
Regarding CRM…Infusionsoft again. This one is arguable because if you know Ontraport well enough you can essential use it as a decent CRM but I’ve never found it pleasing to do so. I will also admit I’m not the heaviest CRM user since I primarily focus on the marketing automation.
Where Ontraport does win is their workflow. Setting up your campaigns can be accomplished in Ontraport with much less clicks than in Infusionsoft. The app loads a lot faster than Infusionsoft as well.
One thing to note…Ontraport’s 3rd party integrations are lacking. To date they still have not worked out their api issues with Zapier to allow a full integration. So if you are using some 3rd party apps you’d like to integrate with your marketing automation platform Ontraport will not offer much. Where Infusionsoft has a full integration with Zapier to make up for whatever apps they don’t directly integrate with.
Lastly, regarding marketing automation…both tools are pretty powerful but Infusionsoft is a lot more visual. This may or may not make a big difference if you map out all of your campaigns in flow charts first (which I always recommend doing) then build them in the tool. Regardless, Infusionsoft’s campaign builder is a lot easier to follow visually than Ontraport’s text based campaigns.
With all that being said the biggest determining factor will be your marketing needs. Depending on exactly what you need to do with your marketing will dictate which tool is best to use.
Jason
WHAT DATE was this article written??? (It matters)
Chris L. Davis
Hey Jason this post is about a year old. However, if you browse through the comments you’ll find we’ve been discussing it up until about 2 weeks ago so everything is very recent. Anything specific you’re looking for?
Alexandre Felix
Hi Chris, last week Ontraport made an upgrade. What do you think about that vs your post evaluation?
Chris L. Davis
Hey Alex…that’s a great question!
I really like the move Ontraport pulled off and think it was really smart. A lower starter plan and Ontrapages get people to start using their software with less financial friction with hopes to reel them in as they become more successful.
Here’s my biggest problem…they are drawing all these new leads into a system that is still buggy. None of the updates actually fix the bugginess of Ontraport. What’s unbelievable to me is that they still have not developed a real integration for Zapier (which would go a long way).
Personally I’m torn. I understand the move they made from a strategic marketing perspective but at the same time it makes me feel like they will be spreading themselves thinner with more products to support and ultimately leaving not enough attention to solidifying the Ontraport platform.
Did you have any initial thoughts yet?
JustMe2013
Ontraport KILLED our business with an unplanned upgrade for which they provided zero notice. They then, I am not kidding, tried to charge us for fix the problems they made. And, of course, tried to suggest that the problems coincidentally started on the same day as the upgrade but not, of course, because of the upgrade.
Oh, and they did the EXACT same thing to one of our top clients that, our bad, we had referred to Ontraport.
Ontraport was, once, an interesting platform but now you should only get Ontraport if you are looking for interesting ways to waste money, receive abuse from a customer service department and go out of business.
Chris L. Davis
Ouch! Yeah the migration to Ontraport was VERY rough and showed a lot of lack in expertise on their part. I think SASS companies often overlook the importance of customer service. Especially when you’re making a major move as they did.
Your experience with customer service in times of dire need can make or break your relationship with a company forever. Unfortunately it appears that Ontraport has learned that the hard way.
I’m curious…what platform did you migrate to?
JustMe2013
Infusionsoft. And it is a DREAM compared to Ontraport or OAP for a number of reasons. The learning curve is a bit steeper.. but the reward is worth it.
Chris L. Davis
Nice. Glad you found a tool that works well for your business!
MaryJaksch
I’ve immediately struck a bit of a problem on Infusionsoft. It seems to be built for people who run just one business. I have 3 blogs and 4 different products… I’m not sure how this is going to work.
Chris L. Davis
Hey @MaryJaksch:disqus…looks like there needs to be some strategy mapping for your products. I’m assuming none of them relate to each other?
If your blogs are not separate business entities themselves and all reside under you primary business name you shouldn’t have a problem at all. The only thing you will need to keep in mind is that the footer for every email will need to display the name of your business instead of the specific blog.
Does that help?
MaryJaksch
I’ve just signed up with Infusionsoft and will be leaving Ontraport because it does not support sales funnels. I asked one of the support staff about sales funnels, and she had to google the term….!
Although Ontraport is a bit easier to work with than Office Autopilot, I still think it’s one of the most user-unfriendly systems I’ve encountered.
I look forward to learning how to drive Infusionsoft so that I can build out my sales funnels with more ease.
Chris L. Davis
That’s great @MaryJaksch:disqus! It’s really unfortunate for Ontraport. I really loved their Office Autopilot platform and in many ways am still hoping they figure it all out.
Words of advice for Infusionsoft…be patient. It takes the average user, in my experience, about a full year to truly “master” it. The good thing is you can make money while you’re mastering it by keeping things simple and focusing on one funnel at a time. But no matter how tech savvy your are, there’s a lot to grasp in Infusionsoft.
Please keep me updated and let me know if I can help you in any way!
MaryJaksch
Thanks for your lovely offer of help 🙂
Tariehk
Hey Chris,
I know you said you still use Ontraport for your clients. Are there still a lot of bugs or are things more stable? Do you think Infusion is still a better choice?
Chris Davis
Hey Tariehk…I have not gone back to Ontraport (still nervous). I hear the platform is stabilizing now that they are forcing all accounts over to Ontraport.
I can’t say Infusionsoft is better in all cases. It really depends on the needs of the business owner. I will say that Infusionsoft has a lot more 3rd party support and app integrations than Ontraport.
Does that help?
Feel free to ask any more questions…
angie beale
I have experienced so much inconsistency in Ontraport that I have no choice but to leave. I have stuck it out for over a year – introduced my clients onto Ontraport ( silly me). Even a simple task like sending an email – isn’t consistently received by the recipient – and the latest attempt even caused a government system to crash as the email couldn’t be opened or exited. When you are marketing on behalf of clients – stability is the number 1 issue when you delivering emails to their client base. I wish Ontraport had held off releasing their product until the testing phase had been completed properly – it has cost me money, clients and much pain over the last year. I think guinea pigs should be treated better !! And to deliver a product into a new country with an incorrect date format ( took months to resolve) and currency begs an answer. Not a happy user but I will be trying other platforms mentioned in this email thread .
Chris Davis
Angie…my sentiments exactly! I know that no software is without its flaws but the beta version of Ontraport was so bad that it made it practically impossible to stay with them. Couple that with the level of support I received and it made it very hard to stick with them even though I wanted to.
What platform did you end up migrating to?
Doug Terpening
Chris,
Thanks a ton for the article and your follow-up comments.
Because of this article, I was going to go with Active Campaign. Yet, I am wondering how hard it will be to integrate with other systems, like Wishlist or shopping carts.
Do you know how hard it is to keep track of who has bought a product within Active Campaign? And how hard it is to get it to talk to other systems?
Doug T
Chris Davis
Hey Doug!
Not sure of other shopping carts and membership plugins. I have successfully integrated it with MemberMouse. And it’s native Zapier integration allows those who are a bit more creative and tech savvy to extend the platforms it can integrate with.
There are built-in web analytics so you could essentially tag customers who land on your product thank you page after they purchase. Other than that you could use Zapier to integrate it with Stripe or PayPal.
Hope that helps…
Frank
My reason for dumping InfusionSoft was very simple: The sales rep lied. I was promised that as part of the $2,000 fee, they would set up all of my existing order forms to work with Infusion. Total lie. The $2k was for “training” which was a joke – it started off with someone who appeared to know very little asking me what my dreams are. WTF?
I tried contacting support, various people in the company, etc., to make them do good on their promise to build the order forms. No go.
After that I went through two of their “certified” contractors. The first took my money and did nothing and stopped responding to calls and emails. I had to dispute the charge to get my money back. The second “certified” person had no idea what he was doing and could never get the forms to work.
Finally I asked my go-to programmer and it turns out he knows Infusion. He got the forms set up very quickly at no additional cost to the monthly retainer I already pay him. Then he informed me that Infusion has (or at least at the time) no true 1-click upsell. It had to be set up server-side as a workaround which then brings up PCI and security issues sending card #’s multiple times.
Long story short I cancelled and signed up with OAP which my guy is setting up now.
Chris Davis
Hey Frank…thanks for commenting!
Unfortunately I have experienced all of what you have written to be true. The “Infusionsoft Experience” really depends on you finding a solid implementer because their in-house Kickstarter is pretty much geared to show you how to do it which is practically impossible to expect anybody new to Infusionsoft to retain any portion of what was taught.
I wish you luck with Ontraport. If you can get a hold of a legacy Office Autopilot account you will be VERY satisfied with your decision. I’m still in question about the stability of Ontraport and would love to hear if it ends up working well and stable for you.
Albert
Hi Chris,
Good luck with your migration!. Do you think that infusiont is better than Ontraport for most SME? In which case you would recommend Ontraport?
Chris Davis
Hey Albert…thanks for commenting. It really depends on your small business needs. Ontraport is better at marketing automation and email marketing than Infusionsoft.
Infusionsoft is better at CRM and E-Commerce than Ontraport. So depending on which are more important for your business would ultimately determine which tool you should be looking to use. Let me know if I can help you with any more specific questions!
Glenn
Hi Chris, great balanced article covering a whole range of challenges.
Have you had much feedback at all on the difficulties Ontraport are facing with migrating current clients across to 3.0 from AutoPilot?
We can’t get much of an answer from anyone regarding when, and the new version is a big part of what we need going forward in our business.
I think your points made on support knowledge give us a clear picture into what has been happening behind the scenes for us.
We got told it was coming for a long time, then in the last week of August we got contacted and told we would be migrated next week. Then nothing.
On following up, they said they had some script to write for a migration of our account which they say is large (20,000 subscribers). But we are never given any time frame.
Then around a month later after several follow ups by me, I had an email saying we have just been migrated :-). Then a follow up email about 15 mins later saying sorry, made a mistake – not us.
Then we were being migrated 2 weeks ago – nothing.
So we are now 9 weeks since the week we were supposed to be migrated and all we get is “I’ve passed this on to my Director”, and “thanks for your patience” type responses.
I fear some significant issues here are brewing, so am looking at all my options elsewhere now as well.
The way I see it, continuing to pay full price for an old version of the software approaching nearly 3 months since a migration date is starting to stretch the friendship a bit.
I’m really understanding of the challenges and issues faced with complex technology like we are talking – but we have nothing to indicate we are even getting close to migration.
Made worse by no reaching out what so ever from Ontraport regarding this. We’re driving all of it to get information.
Made worse by getting an email this week proposing we apply for a ‘mastermind’ type program to grow our business with Ontraport – how about we start with migrating your current clients (us approaching 3 years) to your current version, was my response.
Been really happy with Ontraport up till the last 3 or 4 months, so this is really disappointing.
Interested if you have heard any similar issues??
Thanks
Chris Davis
Hey Glenn…thanks for commenting!
I very good friend of mine and Ontraport “expert” just went through the migration. When I asked him how it went this was is reply…
“it was rough.”
When I asked if he got everything smoothed out, he said…
“Getting there”
These were his replies after a month of migrating from Office Autopilot. I say this to give you a good idea of what you have to look forward to when you do finally migrate.
I still think Ontraport is a good product and just hope they work out all of their bugs before they go launching new ones (which it appears that they are getting ready to launch quite a few new updates). Hang in there if you can.
Glenn
Hey Chris, well a few weeks later after a bit of a debacle really – we were migrated across.
And to be honest, no idea why I bothered. Really not sure what I was expecting, but the hype I guess got me thinking this was going to be a dramatic improvement.
Pretty underwhelmed really. We think it is slower and clumsier to work within.
In all honesty, I think they have gone backwards in usability.
And at around $400 USD month with our email volume – way overpriced for what the performance of the CRM and support is providing.
If I had my way, and it could be done, I’d go back to the previous version and sit there while I gently sort our shift to a new CRM – Get Response is looking pretty good in our initial testing.
And to top it off, we have encountered some pretty dramatic deliverability issues that I am now told apply to email addresses of @live @hotmail @yahoo which have all been restricting send amounts over time periods – huge issue for us with timely responses needed and crucial to our results.
We saw a big dip in open rates immediately.
This is very concerning and is pushing us to run as quick as we are safely able away from Ontraport.
After 2+ years, a real disappointment and unfortunately I think people are going to have a lot of trouble with Ontraport for a good time come…
Chris Davis
Yeah they’re still trying to figure it all out over there at Ontraport.
It may make sense for you to check out ActiveCampaign. I have a few automation buddies that have migrated over from Ontraport and really enjoy it. I personally use it as well.
Lia
Thank you for your response, Chris! I had another glitch today that tech support had to bump to development because he couldn’t explain why it happened. I’ll tell you … I’m getting REALLY nervous about investing in pulling more people into the top of the funnel when the funnel itself is so buggy … ugh.
Chris Davis
Lia I’ll admit…that would make me nervous as well. From my experience certain app configurations can be more issue prone than others.
Meaning…depending on who setup your app and how they set it up you may experience more bugs than normal. This can be said for any marketing automation platform, but I’ve seen it be more of the case when it comes to Infusionsoft.
Mind sharing what the bug is/was?…
Lia
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this post. I signed up for Infusionsoft about a year ago, which was probably premature given where I was at my business at the time. But I’ve dug in, built some terrific systems, and am loving the results I’m seeing … sort of. I’ve recently hit enough bugs and roadblocks to cause me to google “infusionsoft versus ontraport.”
My question for you is two-fold: a) I’ve had almost a half dozen glitches/bugs happen recently that, when I spoke with support, they simply couldn’t explain and chalked it up to an anomaly. One or two I’d agree, but three, four, five … that starts to freak me out. And b) do you have a way you measure basic campaign metrics? Once I spent months building out a full sequence, I was shocked and really disappointed to find that I couldn’t actually track the open rate/click through rate of individual e-mails within the sequence. Aren’t I paying an arm and a leg for Infusionsoft to allow me to automate SMARTLY? How can I do that without metrics?
I appreciate your solid review above, and look forward to hearing your thoughts …
Thanks,
Lia
Grant
Hi Lia, I have spent a lot of time looking at both systems and I know there are some higher level operators out there who can make the magic happen in these programs. For example, there is a guy who does amazing Dashboards (reports) in Ontraport, I’d ask around, most will tell you it can do everything you want but you really need someone who knows their stuff, not someone who has been ‘certified’ for six months. Only problem is you have to pay them to do it so it is up to you if it is worth it. FYI Ontraport have a basic dashboard now.
Chris Davis
Hey Grant…that’s where I’ve found most people get lost. Finding the “experts” who can unlock the platforms correctly. For instance, you say “I’d ask around”…for most entrepreneurs they have no clue where to start or whom to ask.
Then when they find a specialist there is normally a large fee that comes from hiring them to do something that they fell should be native in an app they are paying top dollar from.
It’s an issue I continue to see across the board and am trying to identify a solution to it myself.
Chris Davis
Hey Lia! Thanks for your comment.
There have been a LOT of bugs with this Infusionsoft Spring update.
To answer your questions…
a) I feel like I’m running into more and more as the days go on. However, most of them I can mitigate without tech support since I know my way around the app pretty well. The ones that have no explanation are the most frustrating.
b) Reporting is the WORST feature of Infusionsoft. As important as reporting is I am constantly amazed that this feature is constantly overlooked. However, you can view the performance of individual emails sent within a sequence. Under Marketing -> Reports select the Report Title “Email Broadcasts”. Where it says “sent by” select “System” and it will pull up every email that was automatically sent within a campaign.
Let me know if that helps.
Suzanne Kendrick
Thanks so much for the post Chris and to everybody else for their good points.. I have done a similar journey. Started with Infusionsoft. My clients and me all found it too much, too difficult. Just too annoying. 2 years on and I am now looking for a sales and marketing automation product for my own business. We teach an introduction to Sales and Marketing Automation ://theconnector.co.nz/courses/lead-on/ but now we are big enough to chose a product for ourselves. Rather than dive in to Ontraport and learn the hard way this post has had me take another look at Infusionsoft. Thanks again
Chris Davis
You’re very welcome Suzanne! I’m glad the post could provide some guidance. What I’ve found really helps is to have all of your funnels mapped out in their current state. That way you can have a more educated conversation or comparison regarding picking the right tool.
Some tools work great for others but if they don’t have your specific need (or marketing strategy) you won’t get the same results.
Let me know if I can provide you with any additional guidance along the way!
Grant
Hi, interesting thoughts. I trialled Ontraport 3.0 when it just launched which was unfortunate for me. As an inexperienced newbie I found some bugs which I didn’t realise until a few days later which was very frustrating. The other disappointment was the lack of available support – it was there but their knowledge was limited – all in all a lot of work for the price, especially when I had wasted time with the glitches. To be fair this was right at the start of the launch, hopefully things have changed. I looked at Infusionsoft but it seemed overly complex and there was a lot of negative comment about it. However, if they are open to negotiating it might be worth reviewing.
Chris Davis
Hey Grant…thanks for posting!
I think eventually Ontraport will get all their bugs ironed out.
You are correct about Infusionsoft…it is overly complex. However, if you know someone who understands how to “unlock” it then it is worth its weight in gold. Especially if you are open to not use it just to send emails but to essentially automate your entire business. When that takes place correctly operating your business becomes a masterful work of art.
As of July 2014 I am now a Certified Partner and have the ability to get you setup with Infusionsoft. However, I don’t usually recommend people look into Infusionsoft unless you are already generating revenues in your business and want to build a system that will amplify those revenues via automation.
Would love to hear more about your business and automation needs. You can reply here or visit my contact page (or jump on my email list). Either one will get you access to me (some faster than others).
Geert
I can confirm there are many problems over at ontraport. I just migrated my account and have huge problems.
My biggest problem is hotmail/outlook deliverability.
When E-mails were send through the old system they came from [email protected]. This worked fine. Now after the migration everything is send via @ontramail.com. Upon looking in my stats I could see I had a 0% open rate for hotmail/oulook ever since the migration, while just until the day before it was above 50%. Upon sending a test to some of my test-hotmail addresses I could confirm everything went straight to junk.
That’s a huge problem and I’m now thinking about moving to infusionsoft as well. I can’t believe ontraport even dares to make changes like these without warning us, giving us a choice etc. I was told “nothing will change”, well… a lot did.
Don’t get me started on the fact that NONE of my rules were working after the migration. I had to manually update them etc…and again, wasn’t warned, had to find this out the hard and my own way.
That hotmail thing though, that’s big. The reputation of the IP they use remains above 95% in senderscore, so my guess is it’s the ‘from’ address change they used.
I asked if I could be migrated back to the way things were. That of course wasn’t possible….So I might have to migrate myself out of ontraport then. I’m sad….I loved them, I had my entire business set up around them…
Chris Davis
Geert…I feel your pain. Hotmail is one of the hardest inboxes to land in. However, changing the “from” address is more than likely the culprit (as you pointed out) since their reputation from OAP clearly did not transfer over.
I think eventually they will get things right, but I think it will be at least 2015 until we can use the words “reliable” and “Ontraport” in the same sentence.
Let me know if there’s anyway I can help you…
Geert
almost 2 months later, let me give a little update on the situation. Some of my problems remain, the new ontraport is still buggy at times. I’m still having problems with hotmail.
But there support is great…incredibly great. I see comments that claim otherwise and that’s why I want to stress that in my case, I’m talking to educated support people who know when they don’t know enough and then send it through to a higher level of support. They don’t dismiss you. Even those higher level people communicate like friends that don’t leave you standing in the rain. They keep searching and keep trying to find a solution.
And I appreciate that.
I am nevertheless about to start a test journey with Infusionsoft (for ‘getting into the hotmail inbox reasons only!). But there, over at infusionsoft, I’ve asked to be contacted 3 days ago to get started…and still didn’t hear ANYTHING from a rep or anyone. Ontraport has in the mean time answered my questions AND proposed solutions twice a day….not a great start for infusionsoft!
Chris Davis
Bad start indeed Geert. Normally Infusionsoft is pretty quick with their response time to get accounts set up. Let me know if you want me to help you get started quicker.
BTW…I’ve been seeing some really good results lately with hotmail accounts and Infusionsoft.
Honestly, it sounds like Ontraport is doing all you need. I wouldn’t push trying Infusionsoft too much right now since you don’t really have any issues (besides occasional bugs) with Ontraport.
I’m just glad things are working better for you!
Pam
As a very long-time and expert Infusionsoft user, I just have to add that it is most definitely anything but stable. Every “upgrade” breaks crucial functionality — and we are almost NEVER warned about what’s broken. Much of the instability is hard to discover unless you manually monitor the progress of individual customers. Good luck with it, though. When it works, it’s great. It just doesn’t work …
Chris Davis
Thanks for stopping by Pam!
I am aware of their issues as well. No software is perfect and when it comes down to the alternatives on the market I stand by Infusionsoft. What are you currently using for your marketing automation?
Tim Anderson
Hi Chris, thanks for the post. Can you share how your experience with Infusionsoft has been now that you’ve been using it for a while? Still happy about the switch?
Appreciate it.
Tim
Chris L. Davis
Hey Tim! I am still happy with the switch. The platform is very stable, which is one of the main reasons why I switched.
It’s not without it’s flaws, however. There are still somethings that are simply harder to do in Infusionsoft that you’ll have to learn how it’s done and just live with the process.
One major difference I’ve noticed is that every button click feels heavy. There’s a LOT of data crunching and loading going on with every click in the interface and it shows. I mention this because when I jump back into my OAP/Ontraport accounts (I still manage for clients) it seems lightening fast.
Hope that helps. Would be more than happy to answer any specific questions you have as well 😉
Lewis
Chris, thanks for the post and telling your experiences with Ontraport. I have been using Infusionsoft for about a year now and thinking to switch to Ontraport.
I have been working in IT field for over 20 years, used hundreds of different apps and software and I am also wordpress developer. I am not affiliated with any of the company mentioned here. I just want to give my honest opinion to help other small business owners make a better decision.
Here are reasons why I am thinking to switch from Infusionsoft to Ontraport;
1. Infusionsoft is very slow and has very bad cumbersome interface. Simple things take too long. At your post you said “… One major difference I’ve noticed is that every Infusionsoft button click feels heavy.”. You will feel it every day and every minute and you start hating to use it. That time it will reduce your productivity a lot.
2. It is complex. You have to spend a lot of time to learn how to use it. And it is difficult to teach somebody at your office (your admin or sales) that they can login and help you.
3. Support Ticket System is terrible. It takes a week to get a reply to a support email It is very difficult to use their ticketing system. Most of the time you will get automated emails that really does not make sense with your case.
4. Mobile app is terrible and useless.
5. Email Templates : terrible, bloated, not responsive.
6. Reports are limited. For example you do not get a list who visited your web site. You have to look each contact if they visited your web site. Not practical at all. I think this is really important missing feature.
7. Web Profile tracking does not work accurately.
8. Campaign builder if-then statements are limited and you have to create them.
9. Infusionsoft does not keep up with the speed of the technology. They are very slow adapting and fixing things. System needs a big overhaul as far as user interface, features, speed, etc.
These are my true experiences and unbiased opinion. Hope it helps other small business owners to make a better decision.
Chris Davis
Hey Lewis thanks for commenting! I actually agree with most of what you mention. Here’s how I see it:
1. I am honestly not expecting things to speed up any time soon, lol.
2. VERY hard to teach someone in your office. However, VERY powerful once mastered. The truth is you just need to teach someone maintenance not necessarily implementation. Expecting admins or sales reps to learn it quickly is unrealistic (not saying you are). At the same time most business owners don’t need complex campaigns to become profitable with Infusionsoft. So it really depends on how much you’re trying to teach your admin or sales person. I personally believe admins and sales reps should be trained on how to use the parts of the system that effect their job. No implementation or campaign building.
3. I’ve never experienced this since I’m a Certified Partner. Beforehand I rarely used support (never really had to).
4. Mobile app is for contact management only. It was never meant to be a mobile version of Infusionsoft. I use it to apply tags to contact records to move them along my campaigns while I’m away from my computer. If you build your campaigns with that in mind your perspective on how to use the app changes immediately.
5. Non-responsive yes. Terrible…you could argue that. Once you figure out how the builder works you can pull off pretty much any design you can think of. Again…it’s not easy or straightforward though.
6. Agreed! Reports continue to be a major oversight for Infusionsoft. As important as they are to a business I can’t believe it’s taken this long for them to address it.
7. Lol…yeah it’s pretty useless. I never even look at it really since I cannot trigger automation off of it.
8. Correct again! However, once you understand how the logic works (not a true if-then) there are many ways to execute your logic correctly. Especially with the use of tags and blank campaigns.
9. Slow to adapt…yes. However, they are the only platform that has the add-on support and community that is continually growing. PlusThis is a prime example of extending the flexibility of Infusionsoft and not depending on them to update regularly.
As I mentioned…no platform is perfect. And the more you work with a platform the more you find wrong. However, I have found that if you really know your way around Infusionsoft and set it up correctly; you will not experience most issues/errors most people do.
Ontraport is a solid platform, but I have a feeling once you port over you may run into an entirely different set of issues. At that point you will be faced with the decision to jump ship again, lol. Nothing against you…I’ve just seen it happen far to often.
My advice would be to determine what you need from your marketing automation platform. Then pick the best tool that suites those needs and tough it out through all the bugs and difficulties. No platform will ever work flawlessly so you are going to have to find workarounds no matter which platform you choose.
Just a matter of “picking your poison” so to speak.
Thanks again Lewis!
Lewis
Thanks for your reply Chris. Number 1 problem is deal breaker for me;
“1. Infusionsoft is very slow and has very bad cumbersome interface. Simple things take too long. At your post you said “… One major difference I’ve noticed is that every Infusionsoft button click feels heavy.”. You will feel it every day and every minute and you start hating to use it. That time it will reduce your productivity a lot.”
I can guarantee you, if you start hating the software for some reason, you will not use it !!
I have started using Active Campaign and really like it a lot so far. you can see free trial details at (link removed)
take care,
Lewis
Chris Davis
Hey Lewis!
I would like the speed to improve but it’s just not a deal breaker for me. I’m in Infusionsoft at least 4-5 hours a day and it’s something that I have just learned to deal with.
I also have heard of, and use, ActiveCampaign. They have a really solid platform and I have been thinking about doing a review of their platform as I have been using it without flaw lately.
Landon Ray
Well, this is heartbreaking to read, Chris. I’m sorry we’ve lost your confidence.
It’s true that we have had some initial issues during the release of our brand-new platform. Not only was it a GIANT new code-base, but the whole thing has also been launched on brand-new (and totally awesome) infrastructure. So, as you can imagine, there are a million moving parts and, predictably, some broke.
That said, we’re moving through these issues at a blazing pace and as of this writing have NO outstanding critical issues in our queue (we categorize bugs as critical, major or minor.) Of course, more will turn up as the system is more heavily used, but we’ll quickly squash those too. (Right now it’s just 8 weeks old and in production use by only a small fraction of our clients.)
In addition, we’ve already realized some amazing benefits of the new system. As an example, take the column-resizing issue you mentioned in this article: in 2.4, that would have been just about impossible to fix on the hundreds of screens where those columns are used. In 3.0, we created a very elegant solution and implemented it SYSTEMWIDE in two days. (Actually, just a couple hours, but our release process takes a day.)
The platform that we’ve just released is dramatically better in 100 ways than our previous platform, and will allow us to innovate at a far, far faster pace and produce more stable and scalable software into the future.
While I completely understand (and am sorry for!) your frustration, I predict that we’ll get through these early issues quickly. I hope you’ll keep an eye on what we’re doing, because we’ve got some big plans for the coming months.
Maybe, if we’re really good, we’ll even win back your business and your trust. 🙂
Best of luck to you,
Landon
Chris Davis
Wow…thanks for stopping by Landon (for those of you that may not know he is the CEO of Ontraport).
Let me first say that I believe every word you wrote. I also understand the process of migrating to a new code-base. I have no doubt in my mind that Ontraport will be leaps ahead of Office Autopilot.
In fact, since I’ve published this post you’ve already fixed the column display error. You guys are definitely moving at light speed.
I will definitely be keeping an eye out for the flexibility the new code-base offers as well as updating the blog to keep readers “in-the-know”.
Thanks again Landon!
chuck freyer
I have read this site today in depth and the wonderful posts below! Amazing really. If I may honestly comment (I am a newbie and haven’t yet used either Platform but reading your blog is my decision maker).
I “feeeeeel” after an indepth reading : OntraPort wins. My feelings could be wrong and hence I seek out your input – all readers. My reasonings for Ontraport:
– although it appears they had bugs over the year, by now – Oct 2014 , it appears that Ontraport have fixed many of the “major” problems that would dissuade someone from getting it! Even the CEO above states that.
Am I wrong ?
– it also appears that Ontraport have accelerated past Infusionsoft in the context of “pleasure to use, ease to use, does the job, want to use it more, support interaction if/when there are problems”. I’ve listed a lot here: but the most important is “the job”. Does it or does it not “do the job”.
From my readings on your blog: it appears it (now) does “the job”. Also it appears “So does Infusionsoft get the job done” BUT because they have “heavy buttons” – it appears that Ontraport is the winner.
– I also feel that the fact you got certified by Infusionsoft – with respect – is biasing your judgment below your conscious awareness (I am a student of neuroscience). I could be wrong about that too. This will be hard to prove but by making you aware of this- would be interested in your side of thoughts – because – you did state that you would flip back to Ontraport if/once they had fixed the bugs. But…. if you are “certified” by Infusionsoft then I do not “Feel” that you will make the flip back even if Ontraport are a better option. You have too much invested monetarily and psychologically. Just my 2 cent!
– those that complained about Ontraport (other than you): it appears have found their way back to Ontraport ?
Would love to get your views readers.
It could be BOTH software are “comparable” as equal – at the end of the day, and that if one is better, then its just preference – like PEPSI and COKE ? If this is the case, please tell me that too so we know the objective truth (distinguished from subjective truth/feelings)
Chris Davis
Hey Chuck! Thanks for your reply.
This post was actually written before I was Infusionsoft certified. So one would assume after my certification I would be more heavily persuaded towards Infusionsoft. It’s not the case…
What I’ve found is that the two platforms really are different and serve different needs. They both will get the job done (even with their bugs) it just depends on what that job is.
Infusionsoft offers a strong CRM and an eCommerce storefront. If those aren’t things that you need in your business then Ontraport will probably be the best tool. Ontraport really shines with in the area of marketing automation.
Overall, they both have bugs and will continue to have bugs. I don’t love either of the platforms but have learned to use and work with both. I will say this, however…Ontraport is SUUUUUPER easy to use and get started with. I can’t stress that enough since with Infusionsoft you need to be quite a “ninja” to get the full power out of it.
Just to make matters worse…there’s a platform called ActiveCampaign that offers 95% of the marketing automation that Ontraport does for about 10% of the cost.
Chuck…whichever decision you make just understand every platform is going to have its bugs and shortcomings. Assess your needs and pick the best platform to meet those needs and don’t look back!
Diana
Chris,
This was a fantastic string… I too had been on the fence for some time and still am. The truth is I purchased Infusionsoft from another person as it is fully assumable and took over the payments. It’s the full maximized program and a great buy however without the training I’ve been challenged to get it up to speed as i’m not a programmer and it’s created some challenges in my forward progression.
That said, I’m looking to sell my Infusionsoft – just like I purchased it – and am happy to provide the package information it includes if anyone is interested in it as I just need to find another solution to get started. I am willing to let it go for a low rate and assume the $199.00 per month that is paid directly to IS as the contract is assumed. There are no fees to transfer it. I saw your post that you would be interested if you didn’t have to pay the huge upfront fee? Let me know if there is an interest?
Chris Davis
Hey Diana…thanks for commenting!
I truly understand your frustration. The truth about Infusionsoft is you either A) need to be a ninja or B) you need to know a ninja to truly unlock it’s real potential. Add in the fact that the required KickStarter often leaves people more confused than clear (unless you purchase it through a solid Infusionsoft Certified Partner).
Have you tried Ontraport before?