Ontraport vs Infusionsoft

March 22, 2016

Ontraport vs Infusionsoft In 2016

Years ago I was asked to do a comparison of Office Autopilot vs Infusionsoft (now Ontraport vs Infusionsoft).

Back then I created this page by comparing what Ontraport said they offered on their own site and by contacting them directly for demos and via chat to get their recommendations directly from the “horse’s mouth.”

But that wasn’t enough so in order to really give it to you straight I plopped down a couple thousand bucks and spent a week at the Ontraport headquarters in Santa Barbara to get certified on their platform.

What follows is a compilation of what I created:

  • Originally in 2013

  • Update following my Nov 2014 certification in Ontraport

  •  March 2016 after speaking at Ontrapalooza 2015 and attending ICON 2016 .

Stay tuned for additional updates and feature comparisons moving forward.

Culture / Personality:

This may sound like a weird place to start but when you are choosing an all-in-one platform to automate your entire business you better like the people you are about to give hundreds of dollars a month to for many years to come.

I can (now) speak from personal experience that the culture and desire at both Ontraport and Infusionsoft is to help business owners grow and succeed, but their approaches are different.

While Infusionsoft has gone the venture funding route and has raised over $109 million to grow, Ontraport is totally boot-strapped. Their are pros and cons to both.

With the VC approach you can grow faster, but fast growth is not synonymous with quality. Sure, Infusionsoft has nearly 800 employees now (as of 03/22/16) and their sales are through the roof, but they slowed down their pace of innovation and has let the competition catch up.

At ICON16 Infusionsoft mentioned their next generation platform, but admitted it wouldn’t be released until sometime in 2017. While it looks promising, it’s still a long ways off. 

Ontraport, on the other hand, has around 92 employees and must be more cautious about their growth since they fund it from their revenue. The downside with this approach is that they have more bugs in their software and the user interface (UI) is much less elegant than Infusionsoft’s because Ontraport just doesn’t have the manpower to get to “everything” right away.

But both platforms have more bugs than they should. I think it’s the nature of the beast when your goal is to automate so many aspects of your sales and marketing. This is part of the reason Infusionsoft has released so few new features in 2013 and 2014. They made it a priority to stabilize the platform before rolling out fancy new features. But in my humble opinion, they need to bring to market some new features in 2015 or run the risk of getting lapped by some able-bodied competition rising up in the marketplace today.

Having now met the CEO and founder of Ontraport, Landon Ray, I can say he has a lot in common with Clate Mask, the CEO of Infusionsoft. Both appear to be the same age (early 40s) and have a strong entrepreneurial drive. One big difference, though, is that while Clate Mask has been with Infusionsoft for a while, he is not a founder of the company. He was brought in early on by co-founder and Senior VP of Product Strategy, Scott Martineau, to help them grow, whereas Landon Ray is the one that started piecing together the components that became Ontraport.

While it’s not a huge difference, it is a difference. Ontraport is Landon Ray’s baby and he is steering that company. Infusionsoft is much bigger and is more heavily influenced by boards and investors.

Back in 2014 I rated Ontraport vs Infusionsoft as a tie on Culture & Personality. However, after hanging out with the Ontraport peeps at Traffic & Conversion 2016 in San Diego and getting a bit of a weird vibe at ICON16 (and seeing an alarming number of longtime / key personnel leave Infusionsoft over the last six months) I think Ontraport now gets the nod on Culture & Personality.

Ontraport has that energetic, underdog eye of the tiger whereas Infusionsoft seems a bit punch drunk as of late, and I get it. While they are still a big company with a good story and software that helps entrepreneurs, they’re no longer the high-flying darling they once were. They’re more of the incumbent that got complacent and now they’re reorganizing and trying to rediscover the passion and energy they once had.

Since 2009 I have attended Infusionsoft’s annual conference, now known as ICON (formerly Infusioncon), as well all of their Partner conferences held for their certified partners since November 2012. I’ve also participated in most of the Infusionsoft Implementation Accelerations they’ve invited me to participate in, their Customer Success Tours and more.

Now that I’m certified in Ontraport and have attended their annual Ontrapalooza and am working more closely with them on similar client launches I can say that Ontraport is an offering entrepreneurs, speakers, and coaches must look at for their sales and marketing automation platform.

Ontraport vs Infusionsoft CRM

Let’s now jump into another (maybe) weird feature/functionality of this Ontraport vs Infusionsoft review, the CRM.

There are great misnomers out there in the entrepreneurial world (am I the only one that has a hard time spelling that word?) that Infusionsoft is just

  • an online marketer platform.

  • for internet marketers.

  • for people selling digital products or membership sites or virtual content.

Fact: Somewhere just north of 50% of new Infusionsoft clients for more than a year are traditional brick and mortar companies that are looking for/needing and/or leaving a traditional CRM tool.

You read that right. Despite the proliferation of the internet and smartphones and social media, people still like to speak with and actually meet with a sales person before they spend their hard-earned, highly-taxed money.

Office Autopilot vs Infusionsoft CRM contact importing.

Ontraport vs Infusionsoft.

Infusionsoft has a powerful CRM component.

From an avid Ontraport user/reseller:

This whole selling-online-in-your-pajamas-while-working-four-hours-a-week-while-virtual-assistants-in-far-away-lands-toil-for-seven-cents-an-hour-developing-killer-products-that-sell-out-faster-than-iPhone-releases-and-deposit-funds-in-offshore-bank-accounts story may sell some books and e-courses and make those authors rich, but it’s not reality for the vast majority of entrepreneurs in the world today.

When you sell products or services that cost a few bucks, you are usually involved in what’s known as a “complex sale,” which means it requires multiple conversations and/or meetings with more than one person. When that happens you need to…

  • track Opportunities,

  • coordinate with internal staff and external partners or contractors,

  • assign resources,

  • update quotes,

  • respond to RFPs and RFQs

  • and generally keep an eye on these big deals that take more than a cute 5-minute Jing video posted on YouTube to close.

Infusionsoft’s CRM is fully-integrated with every other component so you can add a New Contact or Company or Referral Partner, track Visitors, create and track Opportunity Stages, set Triggers to automate your follow-up as Prospects move to different Opportunity Stages, generate quotes and invoices, send “Buy Now” links right from the Opportunity, collect payment, show communication history, Notes and more all from inside your Infusionsoft application.

You can then run Reports on all of the above, including Custom Fields you created to personalize your workflow.

After using – and still consulting on – Salesforce.com since 2004, I have to say Infusionsoft has some room to improve the GUI and workflow and Reports of the CRM piece compared to Salesforce. But being a static CRM, a.k.a. “Rolodex in the sky” is ALL Salesforce does, so they better be good at it. (If Salesforce only did email marketing, ecommerce, affiliate marketing, sales and marketing automation, web forms, landing pages, list segmentation and unlimited free support and let me pay monthly instead of one, honking-big annual lump sum I would DEFINITELY SWITCH to them.)

However, since Salesforce does nothing else and since Ontraport doesn’t offer a CRM I’ll give Infusionsoft a “relative A-” and I’ll give Ontraport a “relative B”.

I say “relative” for both because anything compared to nothing is infinitely better. However, in absolute terms, if you ONLY wanted a CRM with no automation, no triggers, no workflow, etc. (in other words, you wanted to be chained to your desk), neither Ontraport nor Infusionsoft’s CRM would be ideal.

I give Ontraport a “B-” because tracking and managing Pipelines via Opportunity Stages is important if you have a sales team and/or you are making a “complex sale,” meaning you are selling to more than one person and it takes more than one meeting to make the sale.

While both are solid, functional, searchable and actionable with room for Notes, Tasks, History, Contact Info, Custom Fields and more, their CRMs function more as “necessary evils” to store contact information so their automation can work their magic. (And automation is the name of the game, so both Ontraport and Infusionsoft got that right!)

Both Ontraport and Infusionsoft limit the number of Custom Fields you can add and both CRMs are Contact-centric, whereas most CRMs are Company-centric. It’s not a huge deal, but it is a different approach that may take a day or so to get used to.

Along those same lines, adding Companies to the Infusionsoft CRM is “cludgy” (to use a technical term) and while you can add Contacts to a Company record to show who all works there, you cannot add a hierarchy or subsidiary companies like you can (in the much-more-expensive) Salesforce CRM.

Ontraport vs Infusionsoft Ecommerce

While Infusionsoft does offer a shopping cart / storefront, it is somewhat basic and can only be configured for one storefront. While that doesn’t sound like a big deal, if you are a typical entrepreneur and have your fingers in multiple pies and are selling multiple products and programs under various entities/brands, you would have to buy separate installations of Infusionsoft at $299 to $379/mo or just offer custom Order Forms with limited functionality to your customers.

That being said, after using Infusionsoft since 2008, I’ve rarely sent people to my store front. 99% of the time I direct people to a Buy Now link that takes them right to the checkout page or a custom order form. (I’ll do over half a million in gross revenue in 2014 while working from home with no full time employees so I guess this model can work.)

And Infusionsoft readily admits that they are not providing you with an “Amazon-type” shopping cart. It’s built for small businesses with limited products and categories and it is more than adequate for those types of businesses.

So if you have a simple, online-only business where you sell a handful of standalone products as either a one-time sale and/or adding a subscription to it, Ontraport is a solid choice. However, if you are running any other type of business where you take orders over the phone and/or want to offer your customers more online buying options, you need to see if Infusionsoft’s shopping cart will meet your needs, which it may or may not.

That’s why both Ontraport and Infusionsoft integrate with other shopping cart options such as WooCommerce, UltraCart, 1ShoppingCart, Magento, etc.

We have done integrations with all of those shopping carts so please contact me to discuss which is best for you if you.

For apples-to-apples Ecommerce abilities I’ll give Infusionsoft an “A-” and give Ontraport a “B+” since Infusionsoft has a shopping cart and Ontraport does not.  

However, if you only sell a handful of products and aren’t trying to become the next Amazon, Ontraports order forms and Ecommerce is easy to setup, easy to use, is mobile responsive and for those reasons I’ll give them an A+.  

Also, Infusionsoft has put little effort or energy into their Ecommerce platform in years and have expressely stated it will not be a focus of theirs for the foreseeable future. 

That is why I work with other developers to bring you the best recommendations for connectors, plugins, and API integrations to help you get the exact configuration you need to grow your business without growing staff.

Ontraport vs Infusionsoft Support

Infusionsoft Support is open weekends via live chat.

Infusionsoft Chat Support Is Open 24/5 But Not Weekends.

Ontraport offers solid support. I’m impressed with both their weekday phone hours and the fact they offer even limited phone support on the weekends, which are:

  • Monday thru Thursday – 6:00am – 12:00am PST (Infusionsoft, please take note of later phone support!)

  • Friday – 6:00am – 9:00pm PST (Infusionsoft, please take note of later phone support!)

  • Saturday & Sunday – 9:00am – 9:00pm PST. (Infusionsoft, please take note of weekend phone support!)

  • Ontraport also offers chat support during the same hours as phone support.

Infusionsoft support offers:

  • Phone: Monday thru Friday – 7:00am – 5:00 pm Arizona (I call as early as 6:00 AM and reach support so I think Infusionsoft is ramping up their support hours and will be officially expanding them soon.)

  • Chat: Mostly 24/7 but they seem to get flooded from time to time and go offline.

I’ll give Ontraport support an “A” because they have better phone support as well as chat. (I’d give them an A+ if they had 24/7 chat.) I’ll give Infusionsoft support an “A” because they have 24/7 chat. (I’d give them an “A+” if they offered greater hours of phone support.

However, compared to fat cats like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics who charge extra for support, Infusionsoft and Ontraport are Rock Stars in the area of support.

Having chat support is a dream for me. I use it all the time. It sometimes takes a little longer during peak hours for Infusionsoft to answer the chat support but when I don’t have a life-or-death question I can open the chat window, post my question, get the answer when they get to it and move on.

Ontraport vs Infusionsoft Pricing

To compare avocados to avocados (apples are too simple) let’s look at Infusionsoft’s “Complete” package and Office Autopilot’s “Pro.”

  • Contacts & Emails Per Month*

    • *After a decade of looking at the numbers, the Contacts & Emails Infusionsoft offers meets the needs of the vast majority of new clients. You can add additional contacts and emails quite affordably, especially if you tell me up front, before you order. So if you have a big need for Contacts or more Emails just let me know.

  • Cost

    • Monthly

      • Infusionsoft “Complete” – $379/mo. 250% more users but less Contacts and 50% less Emails. 

      • Infusionsoft “Deluxe E-Commerce” (most like Ontraport) – $299/mo. Double the number of users with less Contacts (5,000) and a lot less emails per month (25,000.)

    • Ontraport “Pro” – $297/mo. Two users but a ton of Contacts – 25,000 – and Emails – 100,000 per month.  

  • Setup^

    • Infusionsoft – $1,999 – My team of Infusionsoft Consultants and I spend more time helping new users create and/or document a sales and marketing process as we do showing them how to use the Infusionsoft software during the Kickstart. That type of marketing, sales, technology and business advice, support and assistance is not free and one does not develop it cheaply. (When you order Infusionsoft through me I add in a couple of extra hours of setup and support. You also get to participate in my weekly “Infusionsoft Mastermind” call at no extra charge so that’s 4 hours of extra, live, free support and Infusionsoft training the very first month alone.)

    • Ontraport – $0 Setup – Includes two hours of private setup and support at no charge! If you are a die-hard do-it-your-selfer and like to change your own oil, mow your own grass, clean your own kitchen and hand wash your own car, having nobody help you get started and not being charged for nobody helping you get started is a good deal.

    • ^Churn (as of June 4, 2015)

      • Among Ontraport users, 91% of users who successfully complete their 2-hour setup keep their application past the 90-day money back guarantee period (but not enough take advantage of that setup).

      • Maybe it’s because new users of Infusionsoft feel foolish walking away from a $1,999 Kickstart fee. But I know without a doubt, that getting expert, private assistance to learn and utilize the software to realize a fast ROI is why people stick with Infusionsoft over Ontraport. This whole “sales and marketing automation” is a big shift for most clients. There’s no shame in admitting you need a little help to make the switch and you really do get what you pay for when it comes to sales and marketing assistance.

      • By requiring an up-front investment and a commitment from you to dive in and automate your business, I feel like Infusionsoft is doing you a favor. We all focus on whatever we invest our hard-earned dollars into.

Who gets the nod on pricing? 

  • If money is tight and don’t need a full-blown CRM or a more robust shopping cart, Ontraport is great.

  • If you need to send a ton of emails and just need the email sequence automation, Ontraport is great.

  • If you need a CRM and don’t want to juggle and pay for an email marketing tool and a CRM, Infusionsoft is great.

  • If you need professional coaching and assistance to transition from your current platform(s) into your new sales and marketing automation engine, Infusionsoft is great.

Overall it has to be Ontraport. Not only do they now have their Basic edition for smaller businesses or new entrepreneurs, they also have a non-profit pricing model as well as overall higher limits on emails, contacts and even users when you take into consideration that you can have multiple concurrent logins simultaneously in your Ontraport account.

How To Decide Ontraport vs Infusionsoft

I pay not-a-little-bit of money for continuing education, mastermind memberships and private consulting for myself. Motivated, dedicated entrepreneurs know the power of leveraging the brains, experience and motivation of experts.

That being said, not all Ontraport or Infusionsoft Consultants are created equally, so choose wisely how and from whom you purchase your application. My team consists of multiple Infusionsoft Certified Consultants, a former Infusionsoft Success Coach that now does the initial training and setup for new clients, two API developers for advanced integration and “supercharging” your Infusionsoft application, two copywriters, two WordPress website developers, two graphics designers and an assistant.

When you order your Ontraport or Infusionsoft application through me you will have access to my entire team as needed. I cover strategy and mapping your best course of action, Phly does the initial training to help you accelerate down the path we created together, Daniel steps in for “Ninja tricks” and API coding if needed, Hugo will create new banner ads, logos and/or graphics as needed and I’ll assist with scripts, website, landing page and/or email content creation as part of your normal $999 to $2,999 setup.

We can then support you on a retainer for as long as you desire to make sure you are growing as quickly as possible.

 We have been using databases and CRMs since the mid-90’s. I’ve used Salesforce since 2004 and was certified at Dell to help them deploy it to their 3,000 North American sales staff in 2007 to 2008. I’ve used marketing automation software since 2006.

So feel free to contact me if you still have questions on which to buy: Ontraport vs Infusionsoft, and I’ll help you make the best decision for you and your business.