Are you searching for an effective solution for automating your email and sales processes? Services like Ontraport (previously known as Office Autopilot) and Infusionsoft, can help streamline your marketing with their automation tools. In fact, these two specific services are currently the best business automation tools for small business.

Both systems offer great benefits to all your sales and marketing operations and are competing for recognition as the best sales and marketing system. Both Ontraport and Infusionsoft automation tools include support for CRM, marketing and e-commerce.

Disclosure: This content may contain a few affiliate links, which means if you click on them, I will get a commission (without any extra cost to you).

The need of tools for automating business processes

Ontraport and Infusionsoft are web-based solutions that are developed to simplify everyday tasks for business owners, reduce stress and save you time. These solutions handle the growth of sales and help you get better organized.

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By automating your email and sales processes you will be able to maintain an effective workflow and achieve your business goals. This is the main function of both Ontraport and Infusionsoft automation systems.

These systems provide an opportunity to use web forms to capture leads, manage data, view and automate sales and conversion reports, and manage customers and leads. Both Ontraport and Infusionsoft automation tools help in building campaigns, sharing social content and tracking customer results.

They also allow building and managing relationships, qualifying leads and automating overall workflow. While being similar to one another, Ontraport and Infusionsoft automation tools also have many differences. We’ll try to go deeper and review the differences in detail so that you can choose the best tool for your needs.

What do you get with Ontraport automation tools?

For starters, Ontraport offers easy setup, a free orientation process, dedicated tech support, as well as easy management of tasks such as automation, emails and navigation. It provides built-in WordPress integration with no additional cost for landing pages, order forms, tracking, and membership sites. Ontraport also makes split testing really easy.

Email hosting is one of the main aspects in which Ontraport shines. It offers using your own IP address, thereby not being affected by other users. It also offers free voicemail auto responder messages. To make things even easier, it has a cool drag and drop editor for on-demand CRM postcards which can be integrated with any autoresponder.

Ontraport allows self-hosting with a customizable web form. It is also very flexible in terms of options and features for shipping, fulfillment, and SKU upsells and downsells. You can use customized domain names for customized landing pages, emails and postcards.

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Basically, Ontraport is a good choice for entrepreneurs and small business owners that need to do high volume email. It offers good support to people who are not very familiar with online marketing. However, if you are planning to expand your business, you will have to switch to another automating system. Ontraport is not ideal for medium and large sized businesses.

On the negative side, there is no drag and drop email creator which makes the formatting a little difficult. Auto responders are linear so you’ll have to spend some time planning to create conditional statements. There is also no way to manage duplicated contacts.

Ontraport has good customer service, but you have to call during working hours since they do not offer 24/7 technical support. They also have a good online community, but lack developer forums. Their shipping and fulfillment features, while quite decent, cannot be compared to those of Infusionsoft.

Another essential drawback is the lack of a shopping cart – you will need to invest in one as separate cost from a separate service. Ontraport also has a weak marketplace in terms of apps and plugins that utilize its API. The best side to it, is it includes many features such as forms, personal domain names, split testing, and voice mail.

Ontraport is not recommended for B2B businesses. It is also not suitable for large product stores that need an add-to-cart button and need to do serious e-commerce.

What do you get with Infusionsoft automation tools?

Compared to Ontraport, Infusionsoft comes from a larger company with a much longer history in the trade. This makes it more mature as a software solution and as a service. It is more robust and offers stronger CRM. Infusionsoft automation tools are an excellent solution for B2B businesses. Just as Ontraport, Infusionsoft has both benefits and downsides.

The benefits of using Infusionsoft automation tools include automated sales tasks, simplified sales activities, viewing and managing sales and conversion reports, importing data and management. It also offers opportunities for segmenting customers, qualifying and distributing leads and capturing leads with web forms.

As a marketing automation tool, Infusionsoft allows sharing content on social media and measuring results with automated reports, as well as creating smart campaigns for building relationships. It makes it really easy to search and remove duplicate contacts from your CRM database.

Infusionsoft automation tools add to your professionalism by helping you create attractive emails, following-up with smart auto responders and getting more personal with behavioral triggers. You can easily broadcast both text and HTML emails by using their drag and drop builder.

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For your e-commerce needs Infusionsoft offers creating a fully featured shopping cart which Ontraport does not offer. You can easily create electronic order forms, manage your inventory, offer payment plans, trigger post-purchase follow-ups and sell more with discounts, trials and upsells. The visual campaign builder is something that Infusionsoft excels in.

Infusionsoft also has a large marketplace for apps and plugins for better functionality in managing forms, upsells and downsells, forms, fulfillment and web analytics. It is also a leader in terms of community support. Beside the online forums and hosting regular meetings for sharing knowledge, they host major events such as Infusioncon.

With Infusionsoft you will get a 24/7 customer service that can be reached on the phone and through online live chat. You can also get into the great kick start coaching program, but it comes at an additional cost.

Here are some downsides to this service. The email hosting is done from one IP address for multiple clients. Unlike with Ontraport, you can not have your own dedicated IP. This means that if another user gets on the blacklist it results in all users being rejected. Infusionsoft has 24/7 email monitoring which helps in quickly resolving issues, but it may cause some down-time.

The API is a little difficult to work with if you don’t have some technical experience. Split testing is also a little more difficult compared with Ontraport. Landing pages are hosted on the Infusionsoft server and they have a more limited drag and drop feature.

Bottom line is, Infusionsoft automation tools are great for companies with a complex structure, with a goal for expansion in size and function.  Infusionsoft is not recommended for business owners that get easily overwhelmed or confused by technology.

 

One Comment

  1. Shane Barker says:

    Hey Diana….thanks for the clarification! I really appreciate it. I’ll look into this. 😉

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