Category Archives for "Infusionsoft"

Thinking about buying Infusionsoft? This deep dive Infusionsoft review will give you all the information to make the right decision.

My goal in writing this full, honest review of Infusionsoft is to help you decide if it’s right for your business. This review covers everything from the company culture to the features of the actual software.

At the end of this Infusionsoft review, you’ll see what types of businesses I recommend that should buy Infusionsoft and which businesses should avoid it. If you don’t want to go through the whole article, you might start there.

I’ve been using Infusionsoft for more than 7 years. First as an employee at a business that used it, then as an employee of Infusionsoft directly and now as an Infusionsoft Certified Partner. During that time I’ve seen how hundreds of businesses implement it and which businesses fit best (and which ones don’t).

I see a lot of business buy Infusionsoft that shouldn’t have and I see a lot of businesses that try to glue other systems together when they should have just purchased Infusionsoft in the first place and saved themselves a headache.

And I get it. Making the decision can be stressful.

Infusionsoft isn’t a small investment.

For many, it’s the single biggest software expense for their business. This Infusionsoft Review is written to help you make a better decision for your business and I hope you find it useful.

This is an in-depth and lengthy article. Use the following links to skip below:

I get this question a lot and… it depends (sorry I can’t give you a definitive answer…yet). Keep reading to find out more.

What I can say is this:

Infusionsoft is first and foremost a MARKETERS tool (that also happens to have a pretty good CRM and ecommerce module). If you’re looking to up your marketing and sales game and willing to put in the time and effort to launch awesome marketing campaigns or automate prices of your business, then Infusionsoft is hands down worth it.

It’s one of the most elegant marketing tools available to small businesses right now and if implemented correctly can yield massive ROI.

Still interested? I’ll break it all down in the Infusionsoft review below.

Before jumping into the nitty-gritty and talking about Infusionsoft (the software), I think it’s worth talking about Infusionsoft (the business behind the software).

Before I throw my money at any large investment, I like to know what’s going on behind the scenes, sort of like getting to know the in-laws before you get married.

Having worked at Infusionsoft for 2 years, I can say without hesitation that the c-level leadership team takes culture and core values very seriously, even if some of the managers do not. In fact, you’d often hear core values recited in casual conversations (sometimes jokingly) all the way up to company-wide meetings. When I was hired in 2012, it was required that we memorize and recite them during our onboarding process. This may very well be the same today.

You can find Infusionsoft’s core values below. These have stayed mostly the same in the last 10 years (which is ancient in the software world).

We Genuinely Care
We Own It
We Learn Always
We Build Trust
We Check Ego
We Dream Big
We Win Together

One thing you’ll notice between their core values and their stated purpose (to help small businesses succeed) is that they have a relentless focus on small business. Other marketing SaaS businesses will often go ‘upstream’ to service larger businesses because of the increased revenue and stable customer base, but Infusionsoft has planted their flag as a software for small business and as far as I can tell, they don’t plan on changing that anytime soon.

Here’s a quick video to get a feel for what it’s like within the walls of the company.

Now, it’s not all roses at Infusionsoft. All small businesses go through growing pains and Infusionsoft is not immune. Take a look at their Glass Door review and you’ll find that there are plenty of employees who felt that their particular manager didn’t live up to the core values Infusionsoft preaches or that the business is headed in the wrong direction.

Infusionsoft’s positioning has changed over the years, but there was a time when Infusionsoft marketed itself as an all-in-one sales and marketing tool for small business. You’ll likely find a variation of this throughout their sales and marketing material today.

I’ve gone into detail about the individual features of the software below, but let me briefly explain why the all-in-one solution is both their biggest advantage and at the same time biggest disadvantage in the small business marketing technology marketplace.

Advantages of the all-in-one solution

First, all-in-one refers to the fact that Infusionsoft gives small businesses the ability to do email marketing, marketing automation, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and ecommerce in one solution.

This is a huge advantage for small businesses who need all of these features in one solution without having to worry about integrating multiple softwares or custom coding their own solutions. The fact that a prospect can stay in the system and be ‘converted’ to a customer while keeping all the existing information about them as a prospect for future marketing campaigns is ultra helpful.

At the end of the day, when you have one database that manages all your prospect and customer information, you’re going to avoid the headaches of duplicate entry or integrations that don’t work properly.

The other advantage of an all-in-one system is that you can do all your marketing AND sales activity within the same system. For example, if a salesperson needs information about which marketing campaigns a particular prospect has received, he can do so pretty easily because it’s all integrated into one system.

Disadvantages of the all-in-one-solution

I mentioned earlier that this was also a disadvantage of the software. Because Infusionsoft has to dedicate development and product management resources to marketing automation, CRM and ecommerce, the offerings and feature-set in each of these is starting to feel diluted.

Many smaller and more nimble marketing technology businesses are focusing on just one of the main features of Infusionsoft (either marketing automation, sales automation, CRM or ecommerce) and attacking Infusionsoft from the bottom and pulling away customers.

They’re succeeding at this because they focus on their core and dedicate resources to integrations, which allow other software that serve the same customers to fill in gaps.

For example, you might have a landing page tool dedicated to building the world’s most amazing landing pages and then an integration into a CRM tool that focuses only on CRM. Each business focuses on its core and relies on integrations to automatically pass data from one application to the next.

Does the all-in-one solution make sense for your business?

When it comes to deciding on whether Infusionsoft is the right tool for your business, this will certainly be a large part of your decision: Do I buy several tools and piece them together with integrations, or do I buy one tool that does all (or most) of the functionality I’m looking for.

Infusionsoft has a big online presence and amazing (and aggressive) sales & marketing teams. As such, I’ve seen many people buy Infusionsoft because they figured it was going to fix their marketing problem.

If you’re considering Infusionsoft, you MUST think of it as a tool and not a solution. In other words, Infusionsoft is a world-class grand piano, but you still need a composer (or at least someone who knows what they’re doing) to make beautiful music come out, otherwise, it sounds like my two-year-old banging on every key he can reach.

So where exactly does Infusionsoft fit into your marketing strategy?

While Infusionsoft makes a great lead nurturing tool, it’s not really built for your top of funnel marketing efforts. In other words, Infusionsoft won’t fix an awareness or interest problem. I made this video to show you how you can best utilize Infusionsoft for your marketing strategy and wherein the marketing funnel it will fit.

It used to be that you had to speak with someone to sign up for Infusionsoft. Today, you can test things out by signing up for a free trial on their website.

If you’re looking to save money and work with an industry expert, you’ll find more value by going directly to an Infusionsoft reseller (referred to as Infusionsoft Certified Partner), who can recommend best ways your industry is using Infusionsoft and can likely get you a better deal than what you’ll find on the website.

Click here to speak with someone on my team if you’re interested in saving money on Infusionsoft.

Infusionsoft's pricing is based on the features you want and the amount of contacts/users you need. The base package starts at $99/month for the minimum limit of 500 contacts and 1 user (excluding sales automation and e-commerce). From there it starts going up based on the number contacts and features you want. For a full breakdown of the Infusionsoft pricing, take a look at this article: Infusionsoft Pricing: Everything You Need to Know

• Do you need a CRM? ← This comes with every package
• Do you need marketing automation? ← This comes with every package
• Do you need sales automation (for sales teams)? 
• Do you need e-commerce? 
• How many contacts, emails sent, and users do you need?

There’s something to note about pricing, which is that I’ve found Infusionsoft’s pricing scales much better than many competitors. Many other marketing automation tools will start charging a premium once you get passed about 25,000 contacts, while Infusionsoft’s pricing increases more consistently. 

While competition is heating up, Infusionsoft is still the market leader for small business marketing automation. If you take the time to implement it correctly, you won’t need to worry about the monthly price tag because it’s a question of Return On Investment.

Also, when you look at Infusionsoft’s competitors, you’ll realize that each of them requires other integrations (shopping carts, CRM, etc) that start adding to your monthly expense (not to mention the time involved with creating and maintaining the integrations when something goes wrong). 

Infusionsoft used to force businesses to pay several thousand dollars to get started with their software. Today, you can get started for a small kickstart fee or even no fee if you go the free/trial limited version of Infusionsoft. 

Side note: if your business can’t afford the kickstart, you might not be a great fit for the software. See below about who I recommend Infusionsoft is and is not for. If you’re not ready for it there are other ‘smaller fish’ out there you can use until your business has matured.

Again, if you sign up with a partner, they can likely get you a better deal and one that is specific to your industry. If you do sign up with Infusionsoft directly, they’ll pair you with a consultant (either in-house or outsourced) to go through their onboarding kickstart process.

The Infusionsoft onboarding and kickstart process is centered around a methodology Infusionsoft calls the Small Business Success Method (SBSM). The goal of the kickstart process is to help you get up and running with Infusionsoft in as little as time possible, so your consultant will likely assess your needs, assign action items and then get to work building a few campaigns.

In the video below, you’ll see all the features of Infusionsoft laid out by function (CRM, Marketing Automation and ecommerce). It’s fairly long, but if you want the nitty, gritty details outside of just this Infusionsoft review, it’s worth checking out.

Infusionsoft Contact Relationship Manager (CRM)

Within the Infusionsoft CRM, you’ll find 2 main sections, Contacts and Opportunities (Opportunites are only available if you have the sales automation features).

Contacts

Contact records are able to be viewed and edited by users in your system who have the correct permissions to view the contact. The contact record can contain up to 100 custom fields and holds all the data related to a contact, including contact details, tags, notes, email history and other useful information. Below you’ll see a typical search result for an individual contact and the Campaigns Tab for the contact shows which automation sequence they are currently in.

Opportunities

Opportunity records are built specifically with the salesperson in mind. They contain data like close date, budget, follow up date and other relevant information for a salesperson.

Tags

Tags are where a lot of the power of Infusionsoft can be found. Tags let you get very granular in who you’d like to segment within your database. The beauty of tags with an all-in-one solution is that tags can be automatically applied or removed from contacts as they move through your marketing and sales.

Typical examples of tags: Prospect, Customer, Referral Partner, Past Client, etc.

Here’s an example of a contact record with several tags that show you quite a bit of information about a prospect.

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring lets you set up system-side rules to determine if a contact is ‘hot or not’. The system must be set up by the user and you’ll need to create a strategy around this, but if you have a sales team, this can be very helpful in helping identify hot prospects by their engagement.

You can also automate campaigns when a certain score is reached. For example, you might have a task created for a salesperson to call someone when they reach 5 flames.

Dashboard

Infusionsoft’s dashboard is pretty robust. It allows you to create saved searches and reports and display them the way you would like. The main issue I have with it, is that it lacks any sort of visual reports. Everything is number based, so it’s hard to see trending information or other helpful visuals.

Here’s a typical example of a dashboard.

Ecommerce

The fact that you can sell through Infusionsoft is awesome! What isn’t awesome? Infusionsoft’s ecommerce module. Strange, right?

It’s certainly functional and with a little know how you can definitely make it work for most situations, but it’s definitely not a robust ecommerce solution.

While Infusionsoft has a shopping cart, I would never use it over something like a WooCommerce or Shopify (and there are 3rd party integrations for these two tools).

The Infusionsoft order forms, on the other hand are sufficient (see an example below). An order form is simply as it sounds. Order forms do not contain an ‘add to cart’ button, rather, they are pages that allow you to accept payments for a particular product or group of products. This can be helpful when you sell a small number of specific products or services or when you are wanting to drive prospects to a specific purchase. Some great examples of this would be selling a membership, or event registrations, or even running flash sales and sending prospect to a low cost “tripwire” product.

The beauty of this is that you’re able to use the automation features of Infusionsoft to kick off campaigns and do some really cool things that can be customize based on the individual product purchased.

It’s worth mentioning that Infusionsoft also has a basic quoting and invoicing system as well. It’s not as robust as many other solutions out there, but if you have basic needs, it can definitely be useful.

Lastly, one of the more useful features of the ecommerce module is that you can run subscriptions directly in Infusionsoft. This is helpful if you sell access to memberships on a weekly, monthly or even annual basis. The subscription module is run through Infusionsoft, so you can update next billing dates, offer credits and even automate based on credit card expiration dates or payment failures.

This can be really helpful if you run a robust membership program and you want to automate granting or removing access based on successful and/or failed auto charges.

Infusionsoft Campaign Builder

This is easily the most useful and loved feature of Infusionsoft. If you’re going to buy Infusionsoft, it’s because of this feature.

The campaign builder is a flowchart tool that lets you visually design your marketing campaigns based on goals your prospects and customers are taking. For example, you might have a goal for them to first fill out a form on your site. When they do this, you want to send them a few emails and encourage them to purchase a low-dollar product shortly after.

In this example, you would have a webform goal leading into a few automated emails and then a purchase action goal and would look something like this:

This is a VERY simplified version of what’s possible with this tool, but the main thing to remember is that you have the ability to automate from the following triggers:

• Webform is submitted
• Product is purchased
• Link in an email is clicked
• Tag is applied
• Webpage on your site is viewed (by an existing contact in the CRM)
• Quote is viewed or accepted
• Prospect reaches a certain flame score
• Internal user completes a task or a note

And when any one of those triggers fires off, you can have Infusionsoft automate any of the following:

• Send an email
• Create a note or task
• Apply a tag
• Assign the contact to an owner
• Integrate with a 3rd party (send a text message, letter, thank you card, etc)
• Create a fulfillment list

This is by far the most useful tool in Infusionsoft and perhaps one of the most useful tools for digital marketers.

I won’t say Infusionsoft was the first to build a tool like this, but it was the first to bring it to small businesses (as far as I know). Since it’s release in 2012, there have been at least half a dozen other tools in the market that have tried to replicate this tool and take market share. 

Below you’ll find what I love about the software and the ecosystem.  

1. The Infusionsoft Campaign Builder is a marketer’s best friend

I’ve used several knock-off versions of Infusionsoft’s campaign builder and as of this writing, Infusionsoft is still my favorite to use. It’s completely drag-and-drop, which allows you to set up your flow in a way that makes sense to you and your business. Most other tools are very rigid when it comes to setting up flows.

I love the the campaign builder is ‘goal oriented’, which encourages me to think less about what cool automation I can run, and more about what I’m trying to get my prospects and customers to do. This type of thinking is critical when you’re using complex tools to map things out.

2. The all-in-one solution makes it easy to quickly launch campaigns

I went into more detail above about  the advantages and disadvantage of Infusionsoft being an all-in-one system, but for my business and what I use it for, the all-in-one solution lets me launch campaigns quickly and then manage my contacts easily in one location.

I’ve found that as soon as I introduce an integration, my time to launch anything drastically increases due to the time involved with setting up integrations, testing, and then monitoring to make sure that it’s working properly. The fact that Infusionsoft has most everything I need to launch a campaign makes it easy to launch.

3. Account summary and order information in the marketing tool I’m already using

Using Infusionsoft I can see all accounts, orders, subscriptions and any other data related to the contact’s financial history easily within the contact record.

This makes it easy for me and my team to see what’s going on with a contact’s orders and account summary. In addition, I can quickly take care of administrative actions because the information is within the reach of a few clicks.

Plus, this data is ultra useful when crafting targeted marketing campaigns. Instead of having to dig out information about which products have been purchased in one system and then marketing in antoher system, I have everything in one place.

4. Easy to track referral partners

Okay, I’ll admit that the referral tracking module in Infusionsoft isn’t the best, but it’s so nice to have it all integrated into my CRM and order forms.

I use the referral partner system to automatically track who has referred whom. As I work leads through my sales process, I use this feature to automatically update referral partners on the status of their referral with occasional emails. This makes the referral partner more likely to continue referring and I think it’s respectful to let referral partners know what’s going on with their trusted lead.

5. Beautiful Segmentation

I recently tried to send an email to multiple lists from a client’s MailChimp account and was amazed at how difficult this seemingly simple task was. In fact, it was near impossible without creating new lists or copying contacts from one to the other.

Infusionsoft, on the other hand, makes this a breeze. If you want to send to all your lists (tags), it’s super simple. If you want to send to one list, but exclude people that could be part of another list, again it’s super easy.

You can even go as far as segmenting people by how much money they’ve spent with you when the last time they engaged with an email (opened or clicked), what their lead score is, or when the last time they were added to a list or purchased something. I can’t recall a recent experience where I couldn’t find the exact list I was looking for.

What’s more is that you can automate the segmentation process in the campaign builder. A great example is if you ask your prospects what their biggest challenge is when they opt into your list, you now have the ability to automatically send them to different campaigns based on their answers.

6. Amazing 3rd Party Add-ons and Plugins

Infusionsoft is a leader in the marketing automation space, due in major part to the ecosystem that surrounds it. By ecosystem, I mean the products and services that exist to enhance the Infusionsoft experience. Some of the plugins and add-ons that have been created to extend the functionality of Infusionsoft blow my mind. Here is a list of my favorite:

• PlusThis/MyFusionHelper – These two tools allow you to do some really cool integrations and automatons that you simply can’t do with Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft will get you 80% of the way there, but if you geek out and want the other 20%, these tools are certainly worth looking at.
• Zapier – I honestly believe every online business should have a Zapier account. For $20/month you can do some really cool integrations and automate so many things. Zapier is easily one of my favorite tools for any business.
• Graphly – Below you’ll find a few things I don’t like about Infusionsoft. Reporting is one of them. This tool lets you create beautiful reports that pull directly from your Infusionsoft data.
• FixYourFunnel – This one has a funny name, but the functionality is really cool. This one lets you automate SMS conversations and then puts the contact details into Infusionsoft automatically. This one is worth checking out if you currently or are looking at doing SMS marketing. (Plus the free FunnelBot options that allow you to do a great deal other useful functions.)
• Memberium – Memberium is a plugin that lets you integrate your WordPress website with Infusionsoft to make your website a full-featured membership site. There are a lot plugins that do this, but connecting it with Infusionsoft lets you extend the functionality and do some really cool automation that you couldn’t do without a backend tool like Infusionsoft running the tagging and order processing.
• Gmail Sidebar – I use G Suite for my business and my guess is you do too. G Suite makes it easy to set up email, calendars, and other useful business tools for a very competitive price. The sidebar lets you pull contacts from within Gmail and tag, add notes or even create new contacts without having to open Infusionsoft.

Spiffy and ConvertFlow also get an honorable mention, but I only recommend those ones in select cases.

There are a lot of other really helpful tools in the marketplace and probably a dozen more I’ve never tried, but these are my favorite plugins.

7. A Very Helpful Community

Infusionsoft has a very tight-knit partner and customer community. Infusionsoft used to hold annual conferences called ICON, but have since decieded to stop hosting these events in favor of smaller events closer to customers. Infusionsoft also has helpful events and online communities.

Being an Infusionsoft customer makes it easy to connect with other small businesses like yours. Throughout the world, you’ll find user groups of other Infusionsoft users looking to bounce around ideas and offer help. Here’s a map of the current user group locations:

In addition to physical meet ups, Infusionsoft has an unofficial user group online facilitated through a Facebook group. If you’re considering purchasing Infusionsoft, it’s worth popping in and taking a look at the different conversations happening there. Here are a few screenshots from conversations that happen daily:

This Infusionsoft review wouldn’t be complete without a list of things that drive me a little crazy. And I’ll bet if you’ve been doing your research, the term “Confusionsoft” has popped up a time or two. Personally, I think the term comes from a lack of strategy around marketing automation in a business. Any software is confusing if you don’t know what you want to do with it.

That said, there are certainly things Infusionsoft can do better and I’ve outlined my personal wishlist here:

1. Visual Reporting for the Dashboard and Campaign Builder

Right now, you can look at a few stats in the campaign builder, but it only reaches back 24 hours or 30 days. The current solution seems half-baked and Infusionsoft could certainly do a better job at letting me know how my campaigns are performing.

2. Ditch the features no one uses

I get that when you have to build a world class CRM, marketing automation tool and ecommerce tool, your development team is stretched thin, which is why I think Infusionsoft should ditch some of its features and focus on the core.

Here are my suggestions:

• Ditch the shopping cart. It’s useless and there are so many other better solutions available. Instead, focus on  making order forms and the other features in the ecommerce module (like billing triggers) more useful, easy to use/build and beautiful.
• Ditch the company records. More often than not, these bring about more confusion and headache than any good they provide. You can’t even do basic reporting on contacts/company records.
• Ditch the visitor records and improve the website tracking capabilities and UI. For example, it would be amazing to see a clean timeline of website visits along with emails opened, etc
• Ditch MyDay and improve the dashboard widgets. MyDay started out as a good idea, but it was executed poorly. Plus, it’s a feature that most Infusionsoft users don’t need. What every Infusionsoft user DOES need is a better dashboard with more visuals and actionable reports.
• Ditch the calendar. I can’t even open the calendar without getting ultra frustrated. If you’re going to include a calendar, then at least make it sync with Outlook or Gmail. My guess is less than 3% of Infusionsoft users actually use it.

3. Update the CRM UI/UX

In all honestly, the CRM UI/UX is okay. It isn’t horrible, but for the most part it takes way too many clicks to do basic things within the CRM. Adding a note to a contact for example, can take 3-4 clicks. I know it sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but those clicks add up.

It’s not just notes though. Adding tags, tasks, etc is a similar experience. What’s more is the current full contact record layout is outdated and not customizable. It would be great to move tabs and fields so that you see a more relevant picture of your contacts.  

Related to the CRM is a poor opportunity management UI. Getting sales reps excited to use the opportunity module to track their prospects and sales inside Infusionsoft is difficult because it’s really clunky and hasn’t been updated in years.

Lastly, I’d love to see a clean timeline of all interactions with my contacts. For example, the emails they’ve recently received and opened, the notes that were applied, the web pages they visited, social media links recently shared, etc. Right now most of that data is in there, but it’s scattered throughout 3 or 4 different tabs.

UPDATE: Infusionsoft released 'New Infusionsoft' in March 2018. This is a re-skin to make to make the software a little more intuitive. The broadcast builder and the campaign builder are still the same, but managing contacts, tasks, deals (previously opportunities) and lists has been simplified. 

Unfortunately, the new release means core features of Infusionsoft are still missing. While they work to build those in, I'll continue to use 'Classic Infusionsoft'

4. Tell me who my contacts are

Data augmentation is nothing new. Using APIs and other public information, it’s easy to pull in a contact’s headshot and social information. It would be SO useful if Infusionsoft made a little more effort to pull in these details so I could get a clearer picture of who my contacts were and where they’re coming from.

To be fair, Infusionsoft has started to apply timezones to contacts when they opt in based on IP address, which is helpful for sending email at right time. This is a small start, but they should have also included city, state/region and country which is also generally available via IP lookup.

Either way, it’s a good start and I hope this trend continues.

5. Fix website tracking and analytics

Infusionsoft has one of the most useful reports for lead source ROI tracking that I’ve ever seen. It allows you to find ROI for marketing efforts based on marketing costs and revenue generated per lead source.

Unfortunately, the web tracking tool to automatically grab a contact’s lead source and run automation needs a lot of work. I’ll often find 2-3 different lead sources in my CRM for popular lead sources like Facebook or Google because the tracking code tracks mobile referrals different than desktop referrals along with some other strange anomalies.

This wouldn't be a complete Infusionsoft review, without talking about their support. Honestly, Infusionsoft support is hit or miss. Like most support, it depends on who you get on the other line. Fortunately, Infusionsoft does their best to hire people who fit their culture and core values.

You’ll likely get better responses during US time zone business hours because you’re more likely to get a representative who’s physically “in the building” and can ask questions to other employees if they don’t know the answer themselves.

When I worked at Infusionsoft, they outsourced support to 3rd parties when they needed a release valve. While these 3rd parties were trained and did their best, they were not in the building with the full support of other Infusionsoft employees around them and so the support was obviously subpar. This has likely gotten worse as they’ve introduced 24/7 chat support.

It’s also worth noting that support times are getting longer. I’ve heard up to 20 minutes or more when there was a large-scale outage recently.

However, if you get the right person who’s in the building, you’ll likely find they’re pleasant to work with and can guide you through the issues you’re seeing. Here’s a recent post from someone else’s experience:

In this Infusionsoft review, I’ve given my full and honest assessment, but I realize my review might be biased. So below you’ll find direct links to other independent review sites.

The following Infusionsoft reviews come from 3rd party software review sites that allow users to vote on software that they use. Not all of the users are verified, but I think you’ll get a lot of helpful information reading more on these sites. I think it's worth noting that since I've published this article, these reviews continue to get better - it forces me to keep updating this article 🙂

GetApp: 4.07 / 5 Stars

Check out the full review and comments here.

G2Crowd: 3.8 / 5 Stars

Check out the full review and comments here.

Capterra: 4 / 5 Stars

Check out the full review and comments here.

The small business marketing automation market is getting VERY competitive. Overall, it’s been a good thing for users like you and me because it means that we're getting new improvements and aggressive pricing.

This Infusionsoft review won’t go into the feature-by-feature comparison, but I do want to point out a few core differences that you should know about if you’re considering some of the other tools. Depending on your situation, the following tools might be worth comparing.

Infusionsoft vs Hubspot

The first thing you’ll notice when looking at Hubspot is the difference in price (more than 2x the cost depending on features and contacts). Hubspot’s core difference is their approach to inbound marketing, which I’m a fan of. They do a great job at providing a website/blog platform on top of their marketing automation tool, which makes building integrated landing pages a breeze. Currently, Infusionsoft does not offer a blog/website platform, but most businesses using Infusionsoft rely on WordPress.

Hubspot has also recently offered a CRM tool to complete their marketing suite.

You might consider Hubspot over Infusionsoft if you:

• Want a full marketing suite
• Have a larger team and budget
• Focus on content marketing

Overall, Hubspot is fairly easy to use and understand, but I like the flexibility of WordPress as my website platform given all the expertise and plugin availability.

In addition, I think Infusionsoft’s visual campaign builder is more intuitive for the way I build campaigns.

Get a feature by feature breakdown from GetApp.com.

Infusionsoft vs ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign has made some really good progress in the last 2 years. The addition of their CRM and visual campaign builder combined with their aggressive pricing make ActiveCampaign a really solid choice.

ActiveCampaign does NOT have an e-commerce module. If you accept payments online, you’ll need to find a third party provider and integrate it into ActiveCampaign, usually via Zapier. It does have a basic CRM and pretty good campaign builder.

You might consider ActiveCampaign over Infusionsoft if you:

• Are just getting started and have a smaller budget
• Don’t accept online payments via shopping carts or order forms (ie Real Estate, Law Firm, Etc)
• Only need a basic CRM
• Are okay with occasional clunkiness

ActiveCampaign is a great choice and I’m excited for what it has to offer, but it’s campaign builder is still lacking and can be tricky to use sometimes (for example, it’s REALLY difficult to time your steps around a specific date or dates in the contact record). The app feels like my Grandma’s house (which has 3 major add-ons to the original floor plan). Sure, it gets the job done, but sometimes it’s a bit tricky to figure out where I’m going.

Get a feature by feature breakdown from GetApp.com.

Infusionsoft vs Ontraport

Feature for feature, Ontraport is the closest competitor to Infusionsoft. In fact, similar to Infusionsoft, they also market themselves as an “All in one” solution. Their pricing is on par with Infusionsoft and like Infusionsoft they have a good community and support.

The major difference between Ontraport and Infusionsoft is the way you build campaigns. While Ontraport’s campaign builder is easy to use and gets the job done, it works by adding text-based rules one under another. My personal preference is to build campaigns in a visual way (like Infusionsoft or ActiveCampaign).

You should consider Ontraport over Infusionsoft if you:

• Need an all-in-one solution
• Run an online business
• Only need basic marketing automation
• Don’t like visual marketing campaign builders

Here are my recommendations for businesses that should seriously look at Infusionsoft as a CRM and marketing automation solution for their organization. Take a look here as well to see a few Infusionsoft case studies of different businesses successfully using Infusionsoft. 

You should consider Infusionsoft if…

• Your business is doing at least $150,000 in revenue and can afford the high startup (Kickstart) and monthly fee.
• You have a current list of at least 1,000 engaged contacts.
• You or someone on your team has a basic understanding of digital marketing
• Your business has a good focus and strategy around lead generation (marketing automation doesn’t really work without leads filling the funnels).
• You sell information products like ebooks, access to membership sites, etc. Infusionsoft can do really cool things to help with conversions and automation. This group would include course creators, authors and influencers.
• You sell one-on-one services and would like to automate more in the marketing or fulfillment process (ie law firms, real estate agents, consultants, etc)

None of these will disqualify you by any means because I’ve seen exceptions to every single bullet point above, but use them as a guide to your own business when making your final decision.

Here are a few examples of successful businesses I’ve seen using Infusionsoft:

• Course and membership site creators
• Real estate firms
• Law firms
• Small colleges
• Dog poop scoopers
• Travel agencies
• Fitness
• Dental offices
• Marketing and advertising agencies
• Franchises
• Manufacturing
• Pool builders
• Painter
• Music instructors

Below are my recommendations for businesses that should generally avoid Infusionsoft. Like I mentioned above, there are exceptions to every rule. If you’re wondering whether Infusionsoft makes sense for your situation, please get in touch here.

You should avoid Infusionsoft if…

• You sell to corporate clients (B2B) and heavily rely on company records to link contacts. Infusionsoft has this feature built in, but it’s not great. It will certainly work and give you basic functionality, but it’s not the best.
• Your business is a startup or strapped for cash.
• You’ve never really done any online marketing or are not willing to learn about digital marketing best practices.
• You don’t like investing time in learning new software or processes.
• Your business has more than 40 employees. However, I’ve seen business units within large corporations use it with their small teams.
• Your business has a complex CRM structure with advanced record linking. Infusionsoft doesn’t have the ability to create new record types (custom objects).

If you decide that Infusionsoft is the tool for your business, then I’m excited for you. Congratulations! Here are a few recommendations for getting the most out of your investment.

Have an Infusionsoft champion on your team

Whether it’s you or a marketing manager/assistant, you need to make sure that someone is willing to own Infusionsoft or it will sit and collect cobwebs.

Continue Learning

When people say Infusionsoft is confusing or hard, it’s likely because they don’t have a digital marketing strategy in place. They spin their wheels trying to make Infusionsoft execute on a poor strategy or use it in such a basic way that they might as well buy a basic auto-responder. Please don’t fall into that trap.

To get the most out of Infusionsoft, you should be consistently learning the latest best practices and trends in online marketing (or hire a consultant to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you).

I personally recommend Monkeypod Marketing and their Infusionsoft courses, which are very affordable and well worth investment if you’re considering Infusionsoft.

Purchase Infusionsoft through a Certified Partner who will take the time to understand your business

Buying Infusionsoft directly through their sales reps isn’t bad, but you’ll likely overpay and get paired with a consultant who’s looking to get you a campaign up and running, even if it’s not the greatest fit for your business.

Click here if you’d like to speak with a trusted reseller.

I can clearly recall a conversation I had in 2013 (when I was still an employee of Infusionsoft) with a business that had been using Infusionsoft for several years. They had purchased a second instance of Infusionsoft for a related side-business.

I recall the conversation well because I remember looking at the financial reports in their Infusionsoft application and realized this small business was processing more revenue through their one tiny Infusionsoft app than Infusionsoft the company was making. (In case you’re wondering, it was several million dollars a month).

It seems so logical today, but at the time it blew my mind that even small businesses can start small and then scale up and continue to see benefits with the software.

If you’ve been looking for a solid marketing and CRM tool, you’ve likely found out by now that there’s no such thing as the perfect software that meets all of your needs. While there’s still a lot to be desired, I’m still confident that Infusionsoft offers a powerful feature set for its price. Something you won’t easily find in other software.

My goal in writing this Infusionsoft review is to lay it all out for you, including the ugly stuff. If you found it useful, please share with anyone you know who’s in the market using the links below:

Disclosure: We are an affiliate for some of the products recommended in this Infusionsoft review, but only products we love. If you purchase those items through our links we will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through our link. In fact, we oftentimes are able to negotiate a lower rate (or bonuses) not available elsewhere.

Note: The Infusionsoft pricing updated on May 9th, 2018. Below you'll find all the information about what it really costs to get started.

Some of the information found here can be found on the Infusionsoft Pricing Page but you'll also find a lot of other things to keep in mind like add-ons, consultants and how you can save some money when buying Infusionsoft. 

What is Infusionsoft?

Infusionsoft is a CRM and marketing automation tool built specifically for small businesses who utilize life-cycle marketing: attract, sell and wow.

Below you’ll find Infusionsoft’s framework for how they recommend small businesses market themselves using their software.

Just about every business can benefit by applying this framework, but using Infusionsoft’s specific features for CRM (Contact Relationship Management), marketing automation and e-commerce make it easy to manage the whole process with less software.

If you’re looking for an in-depth review of Infusionsoft to find out whether it’s the right tool for your business, check out our Ultimate Infusionsoft Review, which goes into all the features and use cases of the software.

Infusionsoft is the marketing automation tool of choice for over 30,000 small businesses. Here's why:

1. It’s a market leader in providing big business features at a price small business can afford.
2. It's extremely comprehensive (includes CRM, automation, e-commerce, sales pipelines, email, landing pages, and bunch of other great features).
3. Infusionsoft has an active and helpful community of plugins, certified partners and customers.

At Blick Digital, we make no secret about it — we're big fans of Infusionsoft. We’ve used it to help our business grow and we’ve helped dozens of others implement it too.

Infusionsoft Pricing: How much does Infusionsoft cost?

Ok, so you get the idea, Infusionsoft is pretty great. But, no matter how wonderful a tool is, pricing is always a factor. For that reason, we're breaking down the different plans, so you understand what the Infusionsoft pricing will be for your business.

Infusionsoft’s core software includes 1 user, CRM (Contact Relationship Management) and marketing automation on a sliding price scale based on the number of contacts. The more contacts you have in your database, the more money you’ll pay. This is helpful because Infusionsoft is invested in you growing your business. You only pay more when your business grows.

I’ve included all the Infusionsoft pricing details in the following 3 sections and have numbered them as such. First you’ll choose how many contacts you need form the Infusionsoft pricing table (not optional), then you’ll choose your add-ons (optional) and then you’ll choose to add more users (optional).

The following table breaks down exactly what you’ll pay for the core software.

1. Infusionsoft Pricing Table

Note: The pricing in this table may or may not be your final pricing. Keep reading below to see what your Infusionsoft pricing will be when you add more users or modules.

Once you purchase your base from the table above, you can add the following options (but they’re not required). Purchasing the base gets you a CRM and robust marketing automation for one user.

2. Additional modules - $59/month

You can choose to ‘upgrade’ your software with additional modules that extend the functionality of Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft currently has two additional add-on modules for different types of businesses.

The first is an e-commerce module, which will allow you to process orders online through a basic shopping cart or order form experience. In and of itself, this may not seem worth the $59/month until you realize that all the transaction history and data will be stored in the CRM against a contact’s record and you can also trigger automation campaigns based on buying behavior of your customers because it’s paired with the marketing automation.

Infusionsoft doesn’t have a robust shopping cart, but if you have a handful of digital products, it works amazingly well. Check out our Infusionsoft review for more information about this.

The second add-on module is a sales pipeline. This module is helpful if your business has a sales team or process where your prospects need to speak with someone before they make a purchase. This module allows you to track the progress of your prospects through a series of sales stages.

What’s helpful is that similar to the e-commerce add-on, you can automate based on certain sales activities because it’s tied into the marketing automation and CRM base product.

Both of these add-on features come with their own set of reporting so you can track what’s going on with your sales and sales team performance.

3. Additional Users - $29/month

The base price listed in the table above includes your first user. That means you only get one login for your Infusionsoft account. Additional user licenses can be purchased for $29/month per user.

I know what you’re thinking; My team can just share a single login.

The answer here is while you technically could share a single login, you’d be missing out on some features of Infusionsoft that can be really helpful.

For example:

• Infusionsoft has a permissions section, which means you can lock down certain features for your users. For example, some users (like your marketing manager) might only need access to the marketing side, while others (your sales reps) would only have access to the sales part of the software.
• Users can be ‘owners’ of individual contacts within the system. This can be helpful if you have a sales team and you want to track and/or restrict access for users to view only the contacts that they own. This feature also allows automated emails and other communications to be dynamic, or to look like they come from the sales person individually rather than a generic or automated message from the company.

Infusionsoft Pricing for Onboarding and Getting Started

Infusionsoft also requires an up-front kickstart. This means they’ll partner you with an Infusionsoft expert to analyze your business needs and discuss how you’ll want to use Infusionsoft for your business. These generally include 3-4 calls with their team or an Infusionsoft Certified Partner.

Currently the cost for this required kickstart is $299.

It’s worth noting that just a few years ago, Infusionsoft required a $5,000 up-front fee for this kickstart and on-boarding process. And as little as a year ago, it was $2,000. Infusionsoft is working hard to make their software available to smaller businesses who couldn’t afford the heavy upfront costs that used to be in place.

Note: If you sign up with a partner, they can likely get you a better deal and one that is specific to your industry. If you do sign up with Infusionsoft directly, they’ll pair you with a consultant (either in-house or outsourced) to go through their onboarding kickstart process.

The Infusionsoft onboarding and kickstart process is centered around a methodology Infusionsoft calls the Small Business Success Method (SBSM). The goal of the kickstart process is to help you get up and running with Infusionsoft in as little time possible so your consultant will likely assess your needs, assign action items and then get to work building a few campaigns.

Infusionsoft Pricing Example

Here’s a quick example to show you how the pricing I’ve described above would work. Let’s say I’m a business consultant who sells a high-ticket coaching and membership program.

First, I realize that I have almost 4,000 contacts that I’ll be importing from my old system. Looking at the pricing table, I decide that I’ll want to purchase the 5,000 contact version for $229/month.

Second, I look at their add-ons and realize that I want to be able to store and charge my client’s credit cards within Infusionsoft for my ongoing membership program. For this feature, I’ll need to add the e-commerce tool for an additional $59/month. I might use the opportunity pipeline for my salesperson, but I’ll pass for now and see how things go. I can decide to add it later.

Third, I’ll want to give my salesperson and my assistant their own (but limited) access, so I add two more users at $29/month each.

In total, I have the base product at 5,000 contacts ($229/month) and I’ve added the e-commerce ($59/month) and 2 extra users ($58/month). This brings the total cost to $346/month.

In addition to the monthly pricing, I realize I’ll need to pay the up-front kickstart at $299.

That comes out to $645 my first month and $346/month thereafter.

Note: This is retail pricing and Infusionsoft offers discounts from time to time. You might also find better pricing by speaking with the Blick Digital team. Also check out the section below for my recommended hacks on saving money when buying Infusionsoft.

The Question That Matters: Will I See A Positive ROI?

Because the lifetime value of a client is more than $6,000 in my business, I realize that I’ll need just one additional sale every 2 months to make Infusionsoft worth it for me. I also realize that I’m going to automate and streamline my business using automation and so I’ll be able to take on even more new clients than I was able to before.

For me, Infusionsoft is a great choice and fit because I’ll be able to make more money while also saving time.

Infusionsoft Pricing for Additional Services

Infusionsoft Plugins

It’s worth noting that sometimes Infusionsoft by itself won’t give you the exact features or results you’re looking for without some additional 3rd party plugins. The beauty of Infusionsoft is that it has an open API, which simply means 3rd parties can build plugins and integrations to extend its functionality for your specific needs.

For example, you may want to add some of the following features to Infusionsoft that it doesn’t include natively:

• Deep membership site integration
• Full SMS and voice
• Auto-dialers
• Deep visual analytics and reporting
• Video tracking
• Event management
• Webinar integrations

Infusionsoft has one of the largest 3rd party integration communities I’ve seen for small business software. This alone can make it worth investing in Infusionsoft over some of its competitors.

Add-ons for Infusionsoft will vary in pricing, but the ones I consistently recommend to my clients cost between $20 and $70 per month.

For a full list of Integration partners and tools, check out the Infusionsoft marketplace.

Infusionsoft Consultants and Additional Training

You should also consider that your Infusionsoft pricing budget will increase if you want to enlist the help of an Infusionsoft consultant. If you’re new to automation and/or CRM, a consultant can help you map out the process of attracting new leads, selling to prospects and wowing customers (see the diagram at the top of this page). They can also help you execute on your plan.

Many consultants in the Infusionsoft space have specific offerings that might help your type of business get faster results. Usually this means additional sales through improved marketing, saved time through automation or simply better organization for your team by using a centralized system.

If you like the idea of learning and doing it all yourself or keeping it in-house, you can also check out some online courses. My favorite comes from Monkeypod Marketing, who specialize in Infusionsoft training.

How to Pay Less for Infusionsoft (shhh, don’t share these hacks!)

1. Purge Your Contact Lists

As previously mentioned, Infusionsoft’s pricing is designed to scale with the size of your business. Before you begin with Infusionsoft, simply purge your lists of inactive and duplicate contacts. This might help get you below the next pricing threshold.

2. Sign an annual contract

Infusionsoft has recently introduced an annual contract. You pay monthly, but agree to pay and use the software for at least 12 full months. This can usually get  you a better deal, but not always. I’ve found some instances where this saves money in the short term, but ends up costing money in the long-run. Make sure to do the math on this one.

3. Buy Infusionsoft at the end of the month or quarter

This isn’t a guarantee, but sometimes Infusionsoft offers discounts at the end of the month or quarter. Salespeople looking to fill their quota will often work with you to give you a better deal when you’re ready to pull the trigger at the end of their quota period.

4. Pass On The Sales Pipeline Module

The sales pipeline module that I mentioned earlier in the article is a great feature of Infusionsoft. It allows your sales team to track sales through the stages of the sales process. I personally use it in my business to track deals, so I know the value.

However, the regular CRM can be modified to act similar to the Sales Pipeline module. This isn’t always recommended, but if budget is a concern, this would be something worth exploring.

5. Work With an Infusionsoft Certified Partner

This is a little secret most businesses don't know about. If you choose to sign up for Infusionsoft through an Infusionsoft Certified Partner, you can likely get a better deal and work with someone specific to your industry. Click the button below to get in touch with Blick Digital to see if you can save money on Infusionsoft.

Next Steps and Recommendations

If you’ve made this far and you’re thinking Infusionsoft is a tool that can help your business grow, you’ll want to speak with someone who can analyze your unique business case.

Click the button below to get in touch with someone from the Blick Digital team and we’d be happy to make sure it’s the right fit for your business and that you’re getting the best price.

Be sure to check out our Ultimate Infusionsoft Review to see the types of businesses we recommend that use Infusionsoft and those that should avoid it.

Conclusion

Once you’ve analyzed your long-term goals and determined which package you need, get in touch with our team to make sure you’re getting the best offer.

Every businesses needs to make their own decision about investing in Infusionsoft. Remember you’re not just investing in a software, but in a new way of doing business (automation can forever change the way you do things).

Infusionsoft’s stated mission is to help small businesses succeed. At the end of the day, this is what drew me to Infusionsoft; their intense focus on helping entrepreneurs and businesses thrive.

Did I miss something? Leave a comment below if you have any questions I didn’t address in this article.