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Is Infusionsoft Awful Or Does Jon Gales Just Hold A Grudge?
The problem with the internet and people that know how to manipulate it to get their way (like Jon Gales) is that they can build up a web page with a legitimate issue against a fine company like InfusionSoft to rectify a shortcoming.
If the world was fair, guys like Jon Gales would take the site / page down once the company addressed the issue. In the case of Jon Gales vs. InfusionSoft he has left the page up beyond its intended purpose.
Why?
I’m not sure.
Maybe out of spite.
Probably because it generates traffic to his blog.
So Jon Gales is now using this “awful InfusionSoft” to make a buck.
I hope he sleeps well at night while the employees and affiliates of InfusionSoft suffer from his two year old, formally-accurate, now incorrect and out-of-date, self-proclaimed rant.
So here’s my response to his outdated blog titled “InfusionSoft Is Awful.”
Keep in mind InfusionSoft has addressed 100% of Jon Gales’ original concerns.
In fact, many were in touch with him within days if not hours of him putting up his rant.
Additionally, they retained him to fly out to the InfusionSoft office in Gilbert, AZ to get his input on the API work and other changes he was requesting.
I have personally reached out to him asking him to either take down his rant or at least delete the old, no-longer-correct comments but he is interested in neither.
Thus, this post.
Furthermore, Jon Gales was wanting InfusionSoft to have more advanced API features than what they ever said they offered, so in many ways he was getting mad at Harley Davidson for not making a 4-wheel drive truck to tow his boat!
But they have sucked it up over the years, listened to Jon Gales whine and complain, implemented as many of the features as they could based on his requests, yet he still leaves his site up.
Boo Jon Gales.
Infusionsoft Is Not ERP to CRM Software
Here is where it all began around February 2009: (my comments in bold black)
A public service announcement for any prospective Infusionsoft buyers. It sucks. Sucks hard.
I mean, being a CRM firm (InfusionSoft never sold itself as a “CRM firm.” InfusionSoft helps small businesses and solopreneurs automate their sales and marketing processes. Sure, a type of CRM functionality is built into it but CRM’s are a dime a dozen. InfusionSoft is much more than a puny little CRM.) you’d at least think that customer service would be a strong point, but that’s one of their worst qualities.
(I first got certified as a reseller and consultant on InfusionSoft’s platform in the Fall of 2008, which is a good 4-6 months before Jon Gales’ post and he couldn’t be more off base.
Maybe a couple of tech support guys—being human—got irritated after Jon Gales (maybe) pushed them around / complained excessively over the phone but I have MARVELED at the way InfusionSoft offers free, unlimited tech support. I’ve yet to find another company besides InfusionSoft that offers this type of support. I know I don’t get it from Salesforce.com.)
If tech support reps openly lie, who knows what the sales guy will say? (See above. Do I know that none of the InfusionSoft people have ever told a lie? Nope. Can I say I know it is rare? Yes.)
Their API is one of the most difficult I’ve ever integrated with. To do almost anything requires an obscene number of distinct XML-RPC calls. (This is where Jon Gale’s complaint has some merit. However, InfusionSoft never billed themselves as the end-all, be-all platform for shopping carts-ERP-inventory control.
For example, to process a sale for a customer:
Check if contact exists, if so capture the contact ID, check if the given card already exists on the contact and if not validate the card and add the card (up to 4 calls)
If the contact didn’t exist, create the contact, validate the credit card and add the credit card to the contact (3 calls)
Create a blank order invoice, capture the invoice ID (this is also called the orderId in some methods, but it’s the same number)
Add a product to the invoice, to do this you already need the product code and some meta data (price, description, etc) which most likely means another API call
Charge the invoice. If you have a problem here, you’re in pretty shitty. The invoice still exists in the system, so when you present the error to the user (they gave you the wrong expiration date or something silly) you need to have your system skip all of the above steps and instead update the card so you can charge the existing invoice. Which you can’t do in the API, cards can only be added. So add it again and clutter up the back end with broken credit card numbers with no real way to tell which one is right.
After you integrate all this you’ll find out that some API requests then aren’t processed in real time, because that could “crash their system” (literally, that’s what the API guy told me). Instead it takes up to an hour. So your customer gets no receipt and can’t log into your website for up to an hour. Deal breaker.
Every integration I’ve done with them has a similar issue and their technical staff had no idea of really huge gaps in functionality. Another example, you can start a subscription in the API but cannot stop one. So to process cancellations you have to trigger an email to your support staff to log into Infusion Soft, look up the customer and manually cancel. And this is a company centered around business automation. There are tons of other complaints (terrible usability, out of date documentation, really slow, etc etc), but it’s the API that really grinds my gears. It’s as if they are actively trying to make sure that you can’t really integrate with them.
Anyway, I just heard they scored $8 million in VC last month to advertise their shitty platform, so I figured I’d tell my side of the story. If you are considering Infusion Soft for your business, run in the other direction.
Infusionsoft Improves Their API
Fast forward a couple of posts and Jon Gales says:
Update 4/14/10: As of today Infusionsoft is able to send email in real time through the API, which fixes one of my long standing issues with the API. Hurray. (The same APIEmailService.sendEmail() method is used, it just now works in real time instead of at maximum once per hour.)
(Note that Jon Gales says “Hurray,” which means in approximately two month’s time InfusionSoft took his feedback and made the changes he wanted even though it was not an area in which they specialized. Even to this day their API is not as advanced as others but FOR THEIR TARGET MARKET it is more than fine and the way it integrates with the tagging of clients/prospects and their follow-up sequences IT IS THE BOMB because it automates the most mundane, time-consuming tasks that overwhelm entrepreneurs and business owners, which is the entire purpose of InfusionSoft. If you have 10,000 SKUs go buy Oracle!)
So I’m calling all fans of InfusionSoft to leave a comment here to let the world know that InfusionSoft, like all tools, is great when used properly.
It’s not for everyone, especially those that the late, great Gary Halbert would call “shitweasels.”
But if you want to automate and grow your business, you need to take a long, hard, close look and sign up to demo InfusionSoft.
Click on any of the links here to start your free demo.
Infusionsoft Releases Their Marketplace
Update 6/10/14: It has been a couple of years since things got squared away with Jon Gales and the Infusionsoft API and his “Infusionsoft Sucks” thread. The Infusionsoft API has improved dramatically over the years and now you can see an entire ecosystem created around add-on products and applications to enhance your Infusionsoft application. See that at the Marketplace By Infusionsoft.
We’ve also created several Infusionsoft API products including File2Box, Whisper SMS as well as Fastspring and Pronto Forms integrations.
So anyone that tells you “Infusionsoft Sucks” probably has an axe to grind. Dig a little deeper into why they are saying that and if you have additional questions, just contact us and I’ll be happy to dive into the pros and cons of Infusionsoft with you.
If you need more help growing your sales, check out the following resources scattered around this site and a few others I operate, such as:
Now go sell something.