Item: Ontraport
Rating: 1
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Ontraport (Office AutoPilot) drives our entire CRM system. We have a list of about 3000 people. We make use of date and step sequences. We use tags, list segmentation, sales, tasks, site tracking, pages and affiliates through the system. We use the smart-form in all 3 flavors - HTML, straight JavaScript and embedded javascript. I can confidently say that we use well over 95% of the features available in the system.

Pros and Cons

Email deliver rates are fast and high.
Tracking open and click-rates is good.
Support is readily available by chat and phone

Does not work with Chrome - cannot even log in
Took them 7 days to fix a security certificate error - all eCommerce activity gave "unsecured or untrusted site" warnings, and it took HOURS to convince them how and where the problem was on their side, including video-capture of a detailed reproduction ruling out other issues. They just did not get the importance of SSL.
Charges made through their system do not send your product "description" through to your payment gateway. (confirmed deficiency with tech support)
The system supports adding/removing tags in one step. DON'T DO IT. Tags get lost. Add the new tag, wait 5 minutes until confirmed, then delete the old tag.
System cannot count. Never delete a step from a step-sequence; everything gets hopelessly thrown out of whack and re-creating the sequence is the only solution.
System lacks significant filtering abilities. No "and", "or" or parenthetical groupings available.
You can filter on "does not contain" for tags, but cannot do the same for sequences. Reason: it hurts their server's performance, so they don't make this feature available to users. You need to do a 3-step work-around that rapidly goes out of date.
No way to rename tags. You have to add a new one, copy over, wait, then delete the first one.
No DESCRIPTION for any tags you create. So you better think them through up front, since renaming is not available, and you can otherwise forget which one was used for what, when, or why. No way to even see how many contacts are using a given tag at a glance. You have to create a filter for each and every tag just to check.

Return on Investment

It is way more useful than managing things by hand.
The more we use it, the more costly it becomes to replace with something more functional
Hours of lost productivity. I've reported and documented on average, one bug every 3 weeks for 7 months already.

Alternatives Considered

I have used AWebber, Digital Access pass, MailChimp, and Constant Contact. Ontraport is a more feature-rich product, but I assess that their lack of attention to detail, poor usability, low quality, and missing the underlying purpose of their customer's usage of the product are going to hurt them. I use many other tools that integrate with CRM systems. Office AutoPilot is regrettably NOT one of the CRM's that most of my other tools integrate with.

Likelihood to Renew

My client was already using Ontraport and had a decent investment in the tool. As soon as we turn around the revenue situation with my client's products, we will be ditching OAP immediately, despite the significant re-implementation cost we are going to face moving to a new system. I am part of a high-end, professional marketing group, and the overwhelming sentiment with these other professionals is that one should run away from this as fast as humanly possible. I thought their words were just ungrounded opinion, and I deeply regret that I did not heed them more closely before sinking still more time and effort into OAP.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need a simple system with just a few products, sequences or flows, it's not too hard to learn. If you are doing anything serious with enterprise-wide implications, I would not recommend this product at all.

Products Replaced

Support Rating

The techs are reasonably savvy, highly courteous and want to do right by their customers. Unfortunately, the product they are supporting is so deeply flawed that there's only so much they can do when your legitimate business requirements are simply not supported.

Ontraport Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Good followup Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Quick Initial Response	Slow Resolution Escalation required Need to explain problems multiple times

Bug Resolution

Yes - One of the nine bugs I reported was resolved. I used to manage a QA team... I know what bugs are, and can differentiate between a bug and a feature request. These are bugs... no way that the product should not support these "basic" features, such as sending the product description to your payment gateway.

Exceptional Examples of Ontraport Support

There were at least two times when I simply could not figure out HOW to accomplish something that should be far easier than the UI made it. For supported features that are simply obscured by bad UI, the support team is knowledgeable enough to guide users through the byzantine structures needed to accomplish your goal.

Contraport - A burdensome tool to enflame your team to revolution

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with ONTRAPORT