Infusionsoft Overall Architecture Review
March 23rd, 2010
Infusionsoft Architecture Overall Grade: C
The overall technical architecture might not be part of a normal review, but it affects a lot of things and I think it may matter to a lot of users!
The good things about the architecture:
- Infusionsoft is written in Java and JSP. Java is known for being one of the most reliable, enterprise-grade server languages.
- In my experience, Infusionsoft has very good up time.
- Infusionsoft is very good about communicating outages and updates.
The not so good things, and why I graded Infusionsoft as a C:
- The application does not seem to be structured that well. I know this from digging around in the internals and using the API. Some pieces of data are just hard to get to.
- As a result of the gaps in the way the application is structured, it is hard for Infusionsoft to provide access via the API. This limits what you can do with Infusionsoft.
- Some things are just plain wrong. For example, when someone places an order, the Shipping address is stored as address-2 in the Contact record. The information should be stored as part of the order. Let’s say a customer buys a product and sends it as a gift to someone. Then, later on buys another product and sends it to someone else. The first customers information is overwritten and lost forever. Supposedly, Infusionsoft is working on fixing this. But, the fact that it could get into the product shows there are some gaps in their thinking and process.
- Updates end up causing too many things to break. Even with the best designed applications, an update can cause something to break. However, this happens too often with Infusionsoft. They seem to work hard to solve any problems, but the problems can still hurt users.
- I think the lack of good structure is slowing their progress on adding new features and improving the product.
If you are a typical Infusionsoft user, most of this may not affect you that much. I have personally been the CEO of a software company, and we made many of the same mistakes. That’s why I can see the problem clearly! Still, it does limit the capability of Infusionsoft and affects how much you want to rely on their software.
I am forced to spend an extra $10,000 a year on special coding to make infusionsoft work with my web site. Infusionsoft is VERY LACKING in what it can do.
If I had it to do all over again, I would not be using infusionsoft. But now, with a huge database it is too hard to transfer to something else. So, I’m stuck.