I was excited and enthusiastic about email marketing automation and sure that Infusionsoft was going to save me time while resulting in an improved frequency and purpose in email marketing. Infusionsoft is seen as a leader in marketing automation and whilst the consensus seems to be that it is hard to get setup that the outcome is surely worth the concentrated effort.

I was sure that Infusionsoft was going to make it easier to keep in touch with clients, to send emails that were timely, thoughtful and specific to their requirements in that moment. Having listened to a number of interviews with Infusionsoft advocates and success stories I was even further convinced of its virtues. The prospect of creating a robust set of email sequences, decision points and triggers that would provide information to clients and prospects is a compelling vision.

The promise of streamlined email communication was everywhere; messages that are triggered when a date, click, read or action on an email occurs convinced me it would be worth the considerable cost of time and money to configure an Infusionsoft account.

A painful lesson was in front of me. That configuring an infusionsoft email marketing sequence was more complicated, confusing, time consuming and at times bewildering than I had imagined. Surely as someone who is using computers, email and websites every day I would figure it out within a short time?

I have a litany of disappointments in what would appear to be a premium product.

Here are some of the key frustrations I discovered in 2013 with Infusionsoft:

  1. email writing templates that are clumsy and difficult to structure
  2. the only browser the email campaign builder works in is Firefox
  3. the hierarchy of a sequence is created with uninspired grey and green icons
  4. the sequence editor doesn’t have a scroll bar to show more than one screen full of icons
  5. the flow of a sequence is haphazardly created on a grid that doesnt operate like a snap to grid
  6. arrows showing paths sometimes look like they are pointing in the wrong direction
  7. the process of triggering a sequence is confusing
  8. there are legacy elements in the interface that declare they will be gone soon but they seem like the would be useful
  9. every action results in a small delay and you are left wondering if you clicked on the button and thinking that you haven’t you click again only to find you are on another page and have left the editor
  10. typing an email frequently resulted in dropped letters and even words when any sort of pace in the typing speed was happening, not hundreds of words per minute, just reasonably paced typing even would skip letters so everything that I typed I would have to correct and revised and figure out which words were missing
  11. as part of the setup of our account we are promised a campaign would be made for us that we could use to communicate with our clients but it was so poorly written and terribly configured that I ended up deleting it in disgust.
  12. cancelling a subscription requires calling the infusionsoft office who are only available from 5pm to 11am Australian eastern standard time, and then I’m told i will have to wait a few days to be called back by my account manager…. I have an account manager? who is this person that I haven’t heard from since signing up?
  13. anytime i want to set a time delay on an action i have to calibrate the email to go out according to New York time USA and that gets quite complicated when you want something to go out on Monday morning Australian time and you are working out what time on sunday that would be, why can’t infusionsoft be localised to my timezone and that of the majority of my clients? I’m not in the USA and i don’t want to be stuck using the infusionsoft timezone.
  14. Infusionsoft seem to think that I would like to have a computer system make pre-recorded calls to my customers and that they would somehow be ok with that? Maybe consumers in the USA are used to it but I would dare say if I tried that one on Australian clients I would have a barrage of complaints the next day.
  15. Sending sms messages requires an addon and extra cost
  16. I’ve spent tens of hours in the Infusionsoft interface and I still get lost and find it confusing.
  17. I tried to delete some people from a subscription list only to then have infusionsoft decide I was trying to delete the entire database. That is probably when I should have given up this cursed software but I hung in there for a bit more punishment.

I’m sure there are other issues but I don’t want to dwell on them any longer.

Need I go on? Have I bored you with my complaints already?

The Infusionsoft system is probably marvellous if you are prepared to sink hundreds of hours into and you want to run webinars and have tech savvy customers and a need to send a deluge of emails but for the rest of us in the real business world that is hardly likely.

Enter ActiveCampaign, somewhat randomly, I cannot even remember how I found it now, I discovered ActiveCampaign and it was like a glorious breath a of fresh air. The interface made sense without resorting to the help guide, composing a campaign could be done easily in minutes. Email writing was close to the ease of gmail and the best bit, its something like 1/20th of the cost, and free if you are happy to have the ActiveCampaign button on the bottom of your emails.

I think I’ve figured out why Infusionsoft… confusionsoft.. provide so little videos, screenshots and walk throughs on their website. If anyone realised how terrible it was no one would sign up. ActiveCampaign on the other hand bares every detail in full view on their website, with good reason, it’s bloody brilliant and the interface is possibly even easier to navigate than mailchimp, one of the leading email marketing systems.

Enough said. If you would like to see a screen capture video of Infusionsoft and ActiveCampaign where I have a gripe about all the stupidity of Infusionsoft then check out the video below.

If you want to see how good infusion soft there is a video below that and you can read all about it here: www.activecampaign.com

Bye Bye Infusionsoft, I’m sorry that I could not love you like others have but we must part. I am sure you will continue to be successful and the bedrock of many businesses other than mine.

Why I can't stand Infusionsoft

Bask in the wonderful simplicity that is ActiveCampaign