Amazing Automation, Open API
Updated December 01, 2020

Amazing Automation, Open API

Nicholas Kouvatsos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Standard

Overall Satisfaction with Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)

We use Keap (Infusionsoft) across our entire business. It's used to manage our customers, their orders, notes on the customers, automate marketing campaigns to the customers, including e-mail, text message, direct mail, telemarketing, webinars, live event confirmation, manage their subscription programs and more. We also process all of our online and offline orders using our website integrated with Infusionsoft's API.
  • Marketing automation. I have not found another software or service that can compare in the complete automation of a marketing campaign. There is nothing I can't do by either utilizing Infusionsoft's built in marketing, or using the API connections to integrate with 3rd parties.
  • Infusionsoft's API gives access to nearly every table in Infusionsoft's database that I would ever need to edit, giving me the ability to integrate with nearly any other system.
  • E-mail. Although they have an excellent, easy-to-use e-mail builder, inbox deliverability is suspect. Although my messages always arrive, they often arrive in the spam folder if I'm mailing to a large number of people on my list at once. Automated e-mails that are part of a campaign generally make it to the inbox, because they're being sent to only a handful of people who have reached that step of the campaign on that day. But we are forced to use a 3rd party e-mail provider, whose sole service is to send e-mail, to send our large e-mail blasts. Luckily, Infusionsoft's campaign builder makes it easy to integrate with any 3rd party service provider, so we're still able to automate large blasts.
  • Size. Infusionsoft is built for small businesses. They're not shy about admitting they focus on small business, sometimes ignoring the needs of medium to large businesses. I find that we may be starting to outgrow Infusionsoft in some areas, which scares me, because I don't think I'll be able to find a comparable solution to meet our needs.
  • API Throttling. This goes back to Infusionsoft focusing on small businesses. Infusionsoft has throttling on their API limiting any one business to a bank of 10,000 API calls, which recovers at a rate of 2 API calls per second. This forces developers to program efficiently to minimize API calls, which sometimes requires inefficient coding to pull out as much data as one can in one call instead of making several smaller calls for significantly less data. For example, I may need a list of Contacts and their addresses that purchased a certain product yesterday. *Normally*, I would make a call to the table that stores items ordered and gather the Order Id's that match the product on that date. This may return say 10 orders. That's one API call. Then, I'd go to the order table and make a call for each Order ID to get the Contact Id's. That's 10 more API calls. Then I'd go to the Contacts table and make a call for each Contact ID to get the name and address. That's another 10 API calls, for a total of 21 calls giving me just the minimal data I need. In Infusionsoft world, we need to think differently. *Instead*, I'd make the same initial call to the order items table. Then I'd make a single call to the order table to pull all of the orders that came in on that date, which may be 500+ orders. So only one additional call to the API instead of 10, but I'm receiving much more data than I need. Then I compare that data on my end to the data I already pulled to get my 10 order IDs. I do a single call to the Contact table for all the contacts that were created yesterday, which may be 800+, and maybe 6 of my 10 contact ID's will have been created on that date (because it was their first order), but then I still have to make 4 additional calls for the repeat customers that weren't created on the same date as their order date. So I've brought my API calls down from 21 calls to 6 calls, but I'm now working with 800+ contact records, 500+ order records, and 10 order item records, instead of 10 of each. Some developers have resorted to backing up all the tables they can daily, to a cached database to stay under the API limits, which cannot be increased, even if you're willing to pay more. And then, even with conservative API calling, some business needs will outgrow the limits.
  • We have many automated marketing funnels built in Infusionsoft for various campaigns and tasks. One campaign we've built, though, is solely responsible for just under $2 million in revenue in 2017. The campaign is completely automated. There is no input required from the marketing department. E-mails are sent automatically, fulfillment lists for products and direct mail marketing pieces are sent to fulfillment houses automatically, our telemarking dialer system is loaded automatically, text messages are sent automatically, and customer are automatically removed from sequences and put into other sequences based on their actions, such as purchasing a product or requesting to be removed from the marketing list.
Other platforms have some basic automation abilities, but they really seam to focus on simplicity and ease of use. Unfortunately, when software solutions go that route, they tend to skip on some of the functionality and customizability. Keap (Infusionsoft), has earned a reputation of being confusing, and I think that's because it does so much. If you don't need all of that ability to customize and integrate, then one of the simpler platforms may work well. But if you have complex campaigns and automation you want to do, and you want to integrate with many other platforms, it's worth it to take the time to learn Keap.
Infusionsoft is well suited for any company that will actually use its features. It does a lot, and has a steep learning curve, but its abundance of features are only good if you're going to use them. Its price is very manageable for any company doing at least a few thousand dollars a month in business. It can be tough to swallow, though for smaller startups where the few hundred dollar cost could wipe out all the profit.

Keap Feature Ratings

Task management
7
Billing and invoicing management
8
Reporting
8

Keap Resources and Customization

Keap Support

Keap's tier 1 support is pretty well educated on what most basic users would need to know and would likely struggle with. Getting support beyond that is more difficult, and your issue likely would not be addressed until several software releases later unless it was a major breaking issues for many accounts. If you have a question Tier 1 can't help you with, you're probably better off hitting the online communities for assistance.

Using Keap

I personally have no problem using the software, because I've used it (or versions of it) since 2007. So I know it pretty well inside and out. But I recognize a newcomer may struggle with it in the beginning. But they've made large strides in onboarding new users and getting new companies set up with walkthrough tutorials and wizards.