Ontraport vs Infusionsoft Review of Marketing Automation Software For Your Online Business

by Dave | activecampaign

Ontraport versus Infusionsoft.

In this video, I’m going to cover alternatives for the two pricing, I don’t want to basically show a couple things, you can do one simple like send an email. And another one would be more advanced like setting up a campaign. Now, this is a review of both Ontraport and a review of infusion soft. And what I want to point out is they’re very similar, you’re not going to find a lot of differences between the two.

And it kind of comes down to your needs versus what they offer. There can be some subtle differences in the way they do things. But they’re both can handle like e commerce.

They’re both marketing software tools to have automation emails, great CRM, if you will, all that stuff’s built in, kind of comes down to your preferences. And to start with, let’s look at alternatives. If there really are any.

Now on both Ontraport and Infusionsoft or what I would call all in one solution effectively do just about everything that you can possibly do. If I remember right Ontraport now has landing pages. I’m not 100%, sure and Infusionsoft does they both do email.

They both do ecommerce, there’s a lot of things they do and alternative that I can think of which is definitely older would be one shopping cart, I would not recommend going to that to them. Unless you’re already there. It becomes difficult to disconnect from a system once you’re in it.

And in my opinion, one shopping cart hasn’t really kept up with the times. Now the other approach is using kind of a best of breed. In other words, you find the absolute best solution for all the components and then you connect them together. So you might think that drip is a much better email solution and you might think Sam carts a better shopping cart.

Well, you can get those two to talk to each other a lot of times using a service like that happier to get them to talk to each other. So those are kind of alternatives. But if I had to do if had to say, How close are Ontraport versus Infusionsoft, they say they’re very close compared to any other thing out there.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at pricing did this not too long ago, really a comparison across the number of email service providers. But in here I’ve got both Infusionsoft and I’ve got Ontraport. So let me get those two And then let me get the number of contacts and we’re going to insert a chart. Well, let’s put it in the x axis.

Let’s do a and I’m going to scale it and a little bit differently so that we can read this a little bit easier. So here’s what Infusionsoft versus Ontraport look like. Now, compared to just straight up email providers, they’re definitely more expensive because they do more.

And if you’re anywhere less than say, I think it’s 500 contacts. Ontraport $79 and Infusionsoft think is $99. And the CG go over that drunk jumps up to 129 for Infusionsoft up to like 1500.

And then once you get over 1000 Ontraport, it becomes 147. So if you look, they kind of ping pong back and forth one’s a little bit higher. So here 147 versus 179 and then right at the 2800 mark 2700 2900. Prior on 2500, Infusionsoft 229 Ontraport 297.

And it looks like Infusionsoft gets up to their that same price above 5000, and then above 10,000 Ontraport 497. Now both of them definitely have higher plans.

But that’s all they show you. Once you get to a certain number, you need to call them or work something out. So if you go here, this is Ontraport pricing.

These are the prices they list per month up to $79 1000 contacts $147 up to 2500 contacts $297 up to 10000 contacts $497 up to 20000 contacts. And these guys don’t have I think, a starting package if you will, you don’t have to pay an upfront fee. I bring that up. Because Infusionsoft does have that now they’ve changed their pricing and their offer a bit they want to make it pretty darn straightforward.

They’re starting in $99 a month and one thing notice there’s a new user training for 299 So my understanding is that is included you have to pay that then you pay $99 a month so just keep that in mind but honestly over time that shouldn’t be the big thing that’s the important part to you if you’re making money this can be a very good investment for you but realize that there is some costs associated with getting started.

Now in my opinion Infusionsoft has actually changed quite right quite a bit over time on their pricing in their offering think they’re trying to go off a little bit different markets and they previously did. So that’s it for Ontraport versus Infusionsoft pricing. Next thing want to do is show you how to send an email. And each of them.

Actually, I’m logged into Infusionsoft account here. Here’s the dashboard, nothing fancy. You can add widgets change the layout. Here’s Ontraport, you know my opinion these two are kind of philosophically different.

Ontraport likes to look a little bit better. Infusionsoft not so concerned about that. But keep in mind you know, these are well established platform.

So it becomes difficult to make a lot of changes. So I said, the first thing I want to do is basically show you how to send out an email from each of these. And part of the reason I do that is to show you what the information looks like that you would find online when you want to do something.

Now here’s a information when you type in Infusionsoft how to send email. This is their knowledge base. And my opinion, Infusionsoft does a great job with their knowledge base.

It’s definitely cut and dry. But once you start to see it, you recognize how they explain things, in my opinion, makes it pretty darn straightforward. So here’s the instructions for sending an email with Infusionsoft For comparison, here’s the instructions how to send it with Ontraport, Ontraport tends not to stay up to date as much With their help content.

And as a result, sometimes it misses a little bit. But honestly, it’s pretty much right on when I’m looking for something in my opinion, simple like this. So not even going to read it.

I’m simply going to go in and actually see if I can figure it out. And I’ve done it before. So I’m pretty comfortable. But let’s go ahead and go to email and broadcasts click on Get Started.

And you can use a previous previously sent a draft or template you’ve created I’m simply going to use this one right here. Now who is this for, you can create a search right here. Or you can type something you already say this is kind of a nice feature.

This definitely works well. Subject line goes here, you can have this preview tax, which is actually a really nice feature to So for instance. If you’re on a phone and you open up an email from the came from Infusionsoft, you you as the Infusionsoft owner can control the message that shows up versus. For instance, Gmail sayings pulling the snippet from you this way, you can definitely make it so that you control that look, you also can merge in information, personal information, like first name, last name, type of stuff like that definitely can have an impact on your open rates, your click through rates, all that good stuff.

I’m not going to add anyone here and go down here, you can edit stuff, it’s basically a block, I call it a block editor, if you will, but easy enough to customize stuff and my opinion, they look fine.

You know, they definitely work I wouldn’t get this fancy with the layout, I might have a picture appear and you know, a block of text right here. And I wouldn’t have like an image followed by this. But you can certainly do all that kind of stuff.

What else is going to show you in here, color, the font all that can be changed. And probably one of the more important things do the review and send and when you do that, make sure you’re looking at the email both on the desktop top and on mobile. Unfortunately, they can look a lot different if you’re not careful. So is this the best email marketing software out there?

I’m just gonna say No, it isn’t. They do a great job. But it’s kinda have limited in what you can do here as an example, let’s say I send it to my whole list.

But I only want people that are tagged certain way to see certain contact content can’t really do that other email services, you can do stuff like that based on tags. But in general, it works. And it’s robust. They’re pretty particular about you keeping a clean email list.

So if you start getting a lot of complaints, they’re going to let you know and then require you to do something about it. So now let’s take a look at Ontraports email system. And if I go in here, how do I create an email I think a good contacts and I’m going to click this.

Okay, here we go. Now I’m going to click on email. So I can select a message is already been created, which is definitely a nice thing. Or you can create a new one.

So I’m just so there it is definitely a non a lot of customization allowed here in comparison to like Infusionsoft. It’s just basically going to show you the text that’s there. But that’s it. So pretty darn simple to do. Both of them actually.

Maybe the look and feel isn’t exactly what you want. But they’re both good email systems and they work the way they should. And now I want to create a campaign. And one thing I want to do is I want to send information to a different surface like I want to send it to Zapier, or I want to connect it to something else like a text messaging services, not going to do it.

But I’m going to show you what’s involved. And again, I’m going to defer to our friends at Google and type in stuff that’s appropriate. For instance, Infusionsoft. I’m typing in Infusionsoft HTTP POST. And I’ve got this result right here.

So they’re telling me exactly what to do. And Matter of fact, they’re showing me exactly what do and I’m going to go build a campaign that does that. And I don’t think I’m going to follow these instructions.

But they’re right there. Now, if you go to Ontraport, this is actually it says it’s up to date. But I’ll be honest, it looks a little bit out of date. Well, tell you what, let’s just dive right in and see what happens.

So inside here, I’m going to go to marketing campaign builder, I’m going to create my own campaign and I want to send information to somewhere else I’m going to call this let’s just call it web hook. And somehow I want to get started. So somebody how we can use goals to start this off. So somebody fills out a form they go to a landing page, they purchase product, they click a link all these things can trigger the start if you will.

So I’m just gonna say if there’s a tag applied I’ll dive right in and I could pick a tag but I want to point something out that’s kind of important. I think a big difference between the two notice it says customer tags and Scott this arrow and then temp know review the tagging structures has a category than the tag itself and I gotta tell you having a category is kind of a important thing. So let me just share I’m going to create a new tag and then I can put it into a category now.

Well, you might think well that’s kind of a waste Why do you need to do that? Well, guess what he ended up having thousands or 10s of thousands of tags probably given want to categorize.

Now you can accomplish that same thing by name your tags starting from generic to more specific as a way to categorize. Infusionsoft builds a sin in my opinion, rightly so. So I’m gonna go ahead and actually cancel that.

Let me just put in any tag. Whoops! I don’t want to name it. I just want to apply a tag.

So if a tag is applied, then I want to put them into a sequence. And I’m going to call this web hook sequence, and I draw from my just pull that arrow over connect the two. I then go in here by double clicking.

And notice these processes are here. Now I want to send an HTTP POST, click on that, you would put the URL in here. And for instance, in Zapier, it might be HTTPS, be or.com, whatever they give you when you’re creating these app.

And one thing you can do, and what’s nice is you can merge in information. And typically, you would do that here. So the contact ID, it would be sent over with the actual contact ID information, I can click the plus sign and might want to send over email and you can name whatever variables you want here. I’m going to click on see if I can click on merge go to most common, I want to put my email in there. Now I can I put my I could do something like this up here and click on merge again, and put email kind of the same ones that get one’s a post.

But what’s nice is I can basically send whatever information I want across to a web hook. And a lot of times one of the things with Infusionsoft is they don’t do everything. As much as you like to think they’re an all in one, they don’t do everything.

So sometimes you have to pay to bolt on an additional service. And in my opinion, it’s kind of one of the downsides Infusionsoft can get spend the if you have some very specific needs that they don’t do, there’s typically another service and outside service that you can connect your Infusionsoft account or a monthly fee that will do it. So just be aware of that.

So at this point, I’m kind of setup. I’m going to put everything out of draft mode, put it into ready, take it out of draft mode, go back, take and then publish it. And that’s a campaign.

Now, one thing I actually really like about this is I can have basically multiple entry points. So let’s just say there’s a web form. And unlike some of their services, which I’m not going to cover today, you don’t have to immediately go to that same direction.

What I could do something like this? I can send them you know, another let’s say these people, you know, I want to make sure they get confirmed before we do anything. And then I’m going to put something over here like send emails and inside there, I would set up sending emails.

So then I would drag this across, and then I can remerge us that is an very nice feature. That way, you don’t have to break up this automation or campaign into multiple campaigns. The downside there’s Be careful you can confuse yourself if you end up having a lot of moving parts elected, even relatively simple.

But in this case, I want to start this, you know, kind of two different ways if somebody has a tag applied, or if they submit a form. But if they submit a form, I want them to get an email confirmation if they have a tag applied and want to send information to web hook and then start doing stuff.

And I could also split up this automation and do something else. But this in my opinions, probably one of the best campaign builders. It’s kind of a drag drop and drag some more and then you just descend into each of the elements to do what it is you want to do.

Now let’s go look at Ontraport and we’re going to set up a campaign and I’m going to click on campaigns click new campaign and I’m going to try and set up a web hook so you know, they’re trying to make it easy for you because they give you some things that are already pre built or you can simply do what I did like an infusionsoft and click to get started. And I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I really like this down here or not.

You know, just it’s a way to zoom in on a certain section if you want and compared to Infusionsoft Ontraport goes top to bottom. So what do you want to do? Contact starts here added manually to the campaign buy something.

So let’s add a trigger. What do we want to trigger when the contacts created? I wanted to do a tag. So this is similar to what I showed in our Infusionsoft is when a tags apply. Now I need to select a tag. And you can have some conditions there.

Here are the conditions you know if they’re if contact is subscribed to sequence, and then you have to pick So in other words, are they already another sequence, that type of stuff? I’m not going to choose that. Click on done and you know, what can I knew this guy? Yeah, I can’t I kind of wanted to have.

Well, let’s just see what happens. What do we want to have happen? So earlier, we had a web hook, there’s the web.

All right, let’s send an email. So in other words, I’m not creating an email on the fly. I’m basically using one that’s already created on Infusionsoft.

You can create it on the fly. Let me go back over here. Add the destination URL, add the post send to data in my opinion, not so friendly. Send Email.

Now, even though I don’t know exactly what I’m doing here, the best thing you can do is test it out. So now I want to let’s say try and merge it right here. Let’s see if I can figure out how to merge there you go to I should be able to just drag it over here.

So I kind of I created something similar to what I did in Infusionsoft. This one to me, is not as as intuitive. It’s still certainly works. And part of the reason it’s not as intuitive. I just don’t use Ontraport nearly as much.

So you know, they both do convertible things. The price is very similar the functionality. What they do is right there, they’re both marketing automation tools. They both have kind of a CRM built in there. They do e commerce they both have landing pages.

That’s Ontraport versus Infusionsoft.