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.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Infusionsoft, Review

Infusionsoft Software API Overall Grade: B-

API means Application Programming Interface. Essentially it’s a “language” that lets two computers talk to each other.

Let’s say you have some custom system that you use to run your business. If your system could talk to Infusionsoft, but systems could work together to help your business run more efficiently.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, here is a list of ways you can use the Infusionsoft API (from Joe Manna of Infusionsoft). If you have questions about what you might do, please leave a comment below.

For now, I’m going to give you my review of the API. Here are the good things about it:

• It lets you solve a lot of problems that otherwise couldn’t be solved.
• It’s reliable. Once coded and setup, it works well.
• It give you a decent set of functions to query the available database tables and retrieve and update information.

But there are also some things that are incomplete or don’t work as well:

• It uses XMLRPC which is an older web services protocol. It works, but can be harder to use.
• There is a lot of data which you would like to get that isn’t accessible via the API.
  • For example, email statistics are available via the reporting interface, but not the API.
  • Infusionsoft is understandably protective of some data — Double Optins for example. If users could double optin via the API, that’s asking for abuse.
  • Still, for the most part, I think users should be able to retrieve their data.
• The API does not always seem to be a priority for Infusionsoft.  Additional functionality is promised, but then never happens. There are clear gaps in functionality that need to be addressed.
• Support for the API has declined lately. I think there has been some turnover and some key API knowledge left the company.

There is a PHP SDK that can help get a PHP programmer started. And, there are several websites that at least offer some documentation.

Overall, the API has a lot of possibility, but spotty implementation. I’m glad it’s there, but it could also be so much better!

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft API, Infusionsoft, Review

Infusionsoft Customer Support Overall Grade: C-

I split out Customer Support from Technical Support both because they are different, and because I have have very different experiences with them! (Here’s my review of Infusionsoft’s Technical Support).

Unlike Technical Support, Customer Support just doesn’t seem to be a priority for Infusionsoft. Here are some of the problems I know about:

• I have heard regular stories of people who can’t get Infusionsoft to stop charging their credit cards. Infusionsoft promises “no risk” or “money back,” but then it is sometimes a hassle for the consumer. I don’t have any reason to think this is an intentional policy.  After all, you can always just dispute the charges with your credit card company. My best guess is that Infusionsoft just isn’t paying enough attention to this issue.
• Customer Support systems are cobbled together and don’t work smoothly. I talked about the Fusebox in my Technical Support review. It is a good tool, but has some annoying quirks. For example, you create a technical support case, and their system sends you a status email. Great so far. But, click on the link in the email, and it denies you access — You aren’t logged in. The only thing is you can’t log in — There’s no login box! You have to log in to your Infusionsoft application, then click Help -> Take me to the Fusebox. Then, you have to go back to the email and click the link. It’s just annoying. It probably doesn’t work this way from inside Infusionsoft, or it would have been fixed.
• This seems to have gotten better lately, but in the past, updates to the software have sometimes caused various things to break. Usually not big things, and they usually get them fixed, but the problems can still waste a lot of time.
• Using a multitude of systems that aren’t well integrated together. Infusionsoft has just added their Ideas section into the Fusebox. This used to be on a separate site. The Fusebox version may end up being better. Still, it seems like there is an ongoing churn of separate systems that creates confusion about where you should go to get information. It doesn’t look like customer support was ever fully thought through.
• I don’t think Infusionsoft focuses enough on the customer’s experience. Throughout the application, there are functions that work one place and not in others. Or work differently in one place or another. Here’s an example. There’s an Email Batch Status report that shows results from a broadcast email. It shows you this nice pie chart. But, it’s not clear that you can click on the slices to get more information. Sometimes that is! Some slices behave differently than others. It’s just confusing and annoying.

Most of these things in isolation by themselves are small and easily managed. But in total, they make Infusionsoft less usable. I think Infusionsoft could easily improve in this area with a moderate bit of effort, and I don’t understand why they haven’t made it a priority.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Infusionsoft, Review

Infusionsoft Technical Support Overall Grade: B+

I almost rated technical support as an A-, but it seems like they have slipped a bit in recent months. Maybe it’s the pressure of rapid growth.

At any rate, most of the time technical support is very good. Infusionsoft is a complicated product, and I’m sure it is challenging to answer all the questions people must ask.

I appreciate that telephone support is available — A lot of companies aren’t even offering live human support any more. It’s available during working hours Monday – Friday, except that Infusionsoft closes early on Fridays.

I have consistently found that the support technicians are patient and have a genuine desire to help. And, I have been regularly surprised by some of the creative ideas and tricks I have learned in my support calls.

For more esoteric questions like specific API questions, it may take longer to get an answer, but even then, I think Infusionsoft does better than a lot of companies.

There is also the Fusebox which is like a souped up forum. It has articles on the product, a way to ask or answer questions, discussions, and ideas for improvement. If you ask a question, you are likely to get a response from an actual Infusionsoft employee, but you may also get information from a user or Infusionsoft consultant like me. The Fusebox could be easier to use, but it is a great way to get help when the support desk is closed.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Infusionsoft, Review

Infusionsoft Double Your Sales Promise Overall Grade: B+

Recently, their focus may have shifted. But, over the last year, Infusionsoft has talked a lot about their product being able to Double Your Sales. Is this true?

Actually, it is true for many small businesses. If your business fits into the following, you have a good chance to Double Your Sales with Infusionsoft:

• If you have revenues less than $1M. Obviously, it’s easier to grow your business from $200K to $400K than it is to go from $10M to $20M in a short time.
• If you have a good product or services and a clear, differentiated strategy. If you have a poor or “me too” product, then doing a better job of communication and follow-up still won’t help.
• If you are willing to spend your time and/or money to improve your marketing or follow-up. Sometimes, people allow themselves to believe that all they have to do is spend $200-300 with Infusionsoft and their sales will improve. Of course, this won’t happen by itself. It takes a real effort to realize the potential of Infusionsoft.
• You’re an established business and already have a list of customers. Startups can still benefit from Infusionsoft, but it’s going to take longer and cost more.

Infusionsoft has a famous case study where they were able to double sales in only 72 days — All About Spelling. This company had a good product, was established and had a contact list of almost 6,000 customers, and had revenues of  $200-300K when they started. The one thing that isn’t always pointed out is that Infusionsoft supplied some of their top people to provide consulting help. All About Spelling may have paid for some of the improvements to their website, but they didn’t pay for the top consulting help.

Doing better at attracting leads, building your contact list, and following-up will help any business, and Infusionsoft is very helpful in facilitating this process. Plus, Infusionsoft will help with your education-based marketing programs.

The key is to provide value to your prospects and customers. I know this is obvious, but I talk with people all the time who have the idea the technology like Infusionsoft is the secret. Infusionsoft is a good tool for many companies. But, you have to know your customer, provide value, and communicate clearly. At GreasedSkid, we help Infusionsoft clients accomplish exactly these goals.

So, why a B+ instead of a higher grade? Some of Infusionsoft’s marketing reinforces the idea that if you just buy the product, your sales will quickly double. As described above, it can. Just be prepared to do the needed work!

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft education-based marketing, Infusionsoft, Review

Infusionsoft Integrated CRM Overall Grade: A

The best thing about Infusionsoft is that it integrates together most of the tools you need to run your small business. If you or your employees regularly speak directly with customers, then having a good CRM system becomes invaluable.

Infusionsoft’s CRM has all the things most small businesses will ever need:

• An individual record for each contact
• The ability to associate contacts with companies
• Tracking of tasks and appointments
• Capture of contact history — Emails, phone calls, notes, purchases (If you use the Infusionsoft shopping cart), etc.
• Import contacts from other systems
• The ability to add custom information to each contact or company
• Calendar
• Send email directly from the CRM screen
• Opportunity management (With the $299 per month Deluxe version). Track specific sales opportunities through your sales pipeline.
• Billing and Invoicing  (With the $299 per month Deluxe version). Create orders and invoice clients.
• Integration with Outlook. You can use Outlook for many CRM functions and still have all the information stored and sync’ed with Infusionsoft

In my work with Infusionsoft users, I have not found any feature gaps or problems with the CRM functionality. There are other more flexible systems available, but they are also more expensive!

You can use the CRM for your support team or your sales team.

The only time I would say Infusionsoft’s CRM is not a good fit if you have a large number of users. Beyond the 2-5 users that come with their packages, each user adds another $59 per month. If you have more than 25 support or sales users, you’ve probably outgrown Infusionsoft.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft CRM, Infusionsoft, Review

Infusionsoft Email Marketing Overall Grade:  A-

4-8-2011 Update: In the last few months, Infusionsoft has added some new features, so I am upgrading Email Marketing from a B+ to an A-.

Email marketing is one of the best features of Infusionsoft. They do a good job with deliverability, and have all the common functions you need to execute effective email marketing campaigns.

The pricing is competitive, too. For 25,000 emails per month, MailChimp charges $250 (1-cent per message is a typical cost). But, that’s just for sending the email messages. Infusionsoft gives you the whole product (CRM and everything else) for $199 — And that includes 25,000 emails per month.

Why an B+ instead of an A+?

• They stick a message at the bottom of each message that says “Delivered by Infusionsoft.” They’ve been talking about letting you pay extra to get rid of this, but that doesn’t seem reasonable to me.
• The messages come from Bounce@Infusionsoft.com. You can’t change this. More on this problem …
• Most of the reports you’ll want are available, but they could be easier to use.  More on this …
  Also, there’s no real support for split-testing messages. Supposedly, this is in the works …
  You can’t access the email statistics via the API
• The base product doesn’t offer email spam scoring so you can check for messages that are likely to get trapped by spam filters. 4-8-2011 There is now built-in spam scoring. However, in some limited tests I did, it may not be that sensitive (It scores most message a 0, meaning no spam. I had to try very hard to create a spammy message that would register above 0!)
  
• You can’t easily have an HTML page that mirrors the content of the message. So, you can’t do a “Click to see this in your browser” link. 4-8-2011 There is now an Email merge code (~HostedEmail.Link~) that will insert this into your messages: “3 Key Areas <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:”Cambria Math”; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-alt:Calibri; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:”"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} –> Having trouble viewing this email? Click here .“

For many small businesses, these are mostly annoyances. Improving your follow-up and communication with customers can be very valuable — Even if it isn’t perfectly branded and smooth.

Infusionsoft Email Marketing probably isn’t a good fit for you if:

• You spend a lot of time and energy on your brand and customer experience, and you want your messages “just so.”
• You are an analytics wizard and you want to know everything about email deliverability, email metrics, etc.

There are a couple of other nice features that I should mention:

• There’s a plugin for Outlook that lets you integrate Outlook with Infusionsoft. You can even use Outlook to send email through Infusionsoft! It’s only available for Outlook, though. This really helps if you are using the CRM features in Infusionsoft.
• You can include trackable links in a message. You can use this to trigger Automation and Segmentation events.
• You can setup sequences of emails that happen according to various rules. For example, you can setup a sequence that goes out every 4 days after someone completes an opt-in form on your website.

Here are a couple of other articles from Greased Skid:

• Infusionsoft is Great for Email and Follow-up
• Infusionsoft Outlook Integration
• eMail Deliverability Reports in Infusionsoft

If I missed anything, or you disagree, please leave a comment. If you want to see an example of an Infusionsoft Email, complete the form at:

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft eMail Marketing, Infusionsoft, Review

I am an Infusionsoft consultant (CMAC), and I work with a lot of Infusionsoft customers. If I hated Infusionsoft, I wouldn’t be in this business! It’s got it’s strengths and weaknesses, and since I work with it every day, I’m going to try and help you decide if it’s a good fit for you.

Since I may work with you in the future, I want to paint a realistic picture of where it’s good and who it will work for. It’s not good for me to have to tell clients “No, Infusionsoft can’t do that.”

In case you don’t know, Infusionsoft is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Email Marketing product. It gives you a database to store all your customers, and makes it easy to send follow-up email messages to them. Since most businesses don’t do a good job of following up, this can really boost your business.

Their system is specifically targeted at small businesses. The typical starting price is $200 or $300 per month (At the higher price, you get more contacts and features). This price includes 2 users, so if you have more than two salespeople who will use the system, you’ll need to add additional users at $59 per month. Infusionsoft is not recommended for companies with more than 25 users!

Infusionsoft is very aggressive with it’s sales and marketing. I understand their desire to sell their product, but I think it would be better if they were more consultative in their sales approach. The sales people seem to say “Yes” to almost any question regarding the capabilities of the system. I think their sales and marketing aggressiveness is the number one reason for Infusionsoft complaints.

So, I’m going to try to help with a balanced review of their features and service. I’m going to go through each of these in the next several days, and if a link isn’t active, please check back.

And, if you are or become an Infusionsoft user, please Contact Us when you need some help!

Comments are always welcome here, so if you have a specific question, please leave a comment.

Infusionsoft Features

• Email Marketing Grade: A-
  4-8-2011 Since I originally wrote this review, Infusionsoft has upgraded the product, so I increased their Email Marketing grade from B+ to A-.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Grade: A
• Smart Automation & Multimedia Marketing Grade: A+
• Shopping Cart Grade: D
• Affiliate Module Grade: C-
• Double Your Sales Promise Grade: B+

Infusionsoft Technology and Support

• Technical Support Grade: B+
• Customer Support Grade: C-
• Software API Grade: B-
• Overall Architecture Grade: C

I hope this information helps you make a wise choice for your business. As you can see, Infusions0ft does some things very well, but you have to make sure the gaps don’t get in the way of your business.

Clarke Bishop Infusionsoft Infusionsoft, Review