Keap (formerly Infusionsoft) is one of the market leaders when it comes to CRM software, with over 25,000 businesses choosing them for their all-in-one CRM, sales, and marketing automation platform.
Despite this, Infusionsoft isn’t for everyone and every business. Which is what this article is all about. In our quest to find the very best alternatives to Infusionsoft we came across some awesome platforms that each offer something a little different.
At a glance: The Best InfusionSoft Alternatives
Infusionsoft has been working hard to corner the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) market for small businesses, and while larger businesses might prefer to go with something like SalesForce, it’s hard to argue with Infusion’s growth numbers. In 2015, they boasted an average 24 percent increase in customer retention and 28 hours saved each month.
It’s got all the basic features you could ask for from any other service: contact and lead management, social media, email tracking, reporting, a mobile app. But it builds on top of them with features focused specifically on growth.
They’ve got automatic lead capture and manual tagging, plus analytics. Along with automating marketing emails, their platform includes a coordinated sales workflow, and–in a strong move–e-commerce capability, allowing you to create a storefront complete with payment platform.
However, like with all software decisions, the question of whether to go with Infusion or one of its close competitors ultimately depends on the needs of your business. The service definitely has drawbacks.
Other CRM services might be more cost-effective, more customizable, or more open to third-party integrations. Infusion has also taken flack for requiring a one-time fee for onboarding training, which they recently reduced under pressure from $1,999 to $299.
Want to grow your small or medium-sized business with CRM, but want to look beyond Infusion? We’ve gathered eleven strong Infusionsoft alternatives, with pros, cons, pricing, and more to help you make your decision.
Top 11 Alternatives & Competitors to Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)
1. HubSpot
Hubspot offers two platforms, its flagship product for marketing and a newly-developed platform for sales.
Their service has an “all-in-one” focus: they want to be the Costco of customer relations, incorporating everything from social media and SEO to mailing list management to landing pages to analytics.
This might seem obvious, given how many CRMs have popped up with the explicit mission of combining marketing and sales in one place, but most of those were following HubSpot’s lead.
Just from this list, you can see the massive appeal of HubSpot’s product, which explains why it’s risen to compete with the juggernaut of Salesforce just five years after being launched. Its secret weapon, being free when many of its competitors cost hundreds a month, has proven strong indeed.
Given these points, though, when wouldn’t you want to use it? With its ease of use and free option, HubSpot could be called the Wix of combined sales-CRM services, and like Wix, it’s not for business owners with ambitious needs.
HubSpot doesn’t scale well. If you need a lot of features, it might not be enough. And if you run a business that doesn’t involve a lot of sales data–say if you have only one client, don’t sell online, or don’t have the time or inclination to do a lot of inbound marketing–it’ll prove too much.
Who is it for?
Anybody who wants to try out this sometimes-intimidating SaaS sector for free.
- Offers a free service that can be supplemented with purchased tools
- Integrates well with other programs, including Google apps
- Focus on ease of use
- Easy-to-search contact info database
- Shared platform for marketing and sales
- Robust customer support
- Basic service with fewer features
- Doesn’t scale well to large companies
- Limited customization
- Smaller user base than the biggest competitor, Salesforce
Pricing (per month)
- Free Forms, contact activity for last 7 days, company insights, team email
- Starter ($50): Removes HubSpot branding, ads email marketing
- Professional ($800): Adds blog content creation, landing pages, marketing automation
- Enterprise ($3200): Adds custom event triggers
Free trial? No, but free service is unlimited.
Read our complete HubSpot review
2. Ontraport
Content is the word for Ontraport, which understands that no amount of sharp automation can substitute for emails people actually want to read.
Because of that, their line of features looks more like a blogging platform like Wix, Weebly, or WordPress.org, with an array of content management choices you can use to build up your emails and landing pages.
From there, Ontraport branches out into a full business marketing automation suite that leverages the potential of its unified marketing-sales platform. OntraPort is often the Go-To alternative to Infusionsoft due to its pricing, shorter learning curve and easy to follow set up.
The service aims to make personalized content easy by helping you sort your leads into segments based on demographics and engagement. From there you can take that funnel directly to sales without missing a beat, ensuring every sales rep is showing every customer just what they want to see to build a stronger relationship. Its CRM also does a good job of keeping a full team of users in sync.
Its list of integrations is also impressive, including pay gates and e-commerce stores. Ontraport also doesn’t stop at just hosting other services–if you’re selling online, it’s got native features to make that seamless, including order forms and upselling pathways.
Who is it for?
Businesses looking to grow quickly, whatever size they are now and those leaving Infusionsoft and wanting something cheaper and more user-friendly.
- Content-focused automation pipeline lets you be sure you’re putting your best foot forward for customers
- Sales and marketing on a unified platform
- E-commerce integration
- Tracks high-quality leads for you
- No setup fees
- No free plan (though a longer free trial than most)
- Difficult-to-read reporting dashboard
- Text-based campaign builder might not appeal to visually-minded users
Pricing (per month)
Each of these includes unlimited emails.
- Basic ($79): 1,000 contacts, 1 user
- Plus ($147): 2,500 contacts, 2 users, setup services
- Pro ($297): 10,000 contacts, 3 users, postmaster consultation
- Enterprise ($497): 20,000 contacts, 5 users, account management
Free trial? 90 days
Read our complete HubSpot review
3. SendPulse
SendPulse is a versatile marketing automation platform that aims to streamline the entire sales and marketing journey while facilitating business scalability. Its multifaceted approach encompasses various tools and services tailored to enhance engagement and drive growth.
Among its products, SendPulse provides bulk email and SMS services, streamlined sales pipeline automation, and transactional email capabilities. Additionally, it boasts a comprehensive array of chatbot builders for popular messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp. The platform also supports web push notifications, website creation, live chat functionality, CRM integration, and online course development through its Learning Management System (LMS).
Regardless of the chosen service, SendPulse maintains its core features: an intuitive interface, drag-and-drop builders for easy customization, seamless integration among services, and robust automation capabilities. Users can effortlessly orchestrate automated sales pipelines, maximizing efficiency in their marketing endeavors.
The online course builder within SendPulse enables seamless integration of marketing and sales tools, facilitating student engagement and revenue generation for educators. Moreover, SendPulse’s mobile accessibility ensures marketers and educators can manage campaigns and interactions on-the-go.
The platform’s primary goal is to optimize workflows for marketers and business owners, driving company growth through streamlined processes and personalized messaging. SendPulse empowers users to build and segment audiences, manage all activities from a unified platform, analyze performance metrics, and make data-driven decisions.
In essence, SendPulse offers a comprehensive suite of marketing solutions aimed at enhancing efficiency and effectiveness across various stages of the sales funnel. Whether through email campaigns, chatbots, or online courses, SendPulse equips businesses with the tools needed to thrive in the digital landscape.
Who is it for?
Small to Enterprise level businesses who are looking for a CRM system for marketing and sales with pricing that works for everyone.
- Automated emails based on conditional logic
- Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Telegram, and WhatsApp chatbot builder
- Collect and verify email addresses, saving you time and money
- Powerful SMS campaigns with over 1000 operators in 200 countries
- Can be a bit of a learning curve, especially in email campaign creation
- Pricing structure can be confusing, especially if combining multiple product options
Pricing (per month)
All of these come with unlimited email sends.
- Free Accounts for 5 users
- Basic ($37): Up to 10 users
- Standard ($110): Up to 10 users
- Pro ($168): Up to 20 users
- Enterprise ($268): Up to 50 users
Free trial? 14 days
4. Drip
Continuing the theme of services focusing doing one thing as well as they can, here we’ve got an email marketing powerhouse.
Other services on this list aim to help you grow your business by personally nurturing customer relationships from initial leads, but Drip takes it to another level of detail: it’ll give you reports on every action a customer takes.
Need to know what pages they visit? How long they stay there? What they buy, and what they look at before they buy it? How long they get your emails before unsubscribing? Whether they read the reviews? There’s hardly anything Drip won’t tell you.
It’s an analytical depth that rivals SharpSpring’s vaunted after-click reports. But (as the name might suggest) it’s more than just a firehose of information.
Drip’s email automation function allows personalized messages to be sent to customers at every stage of the process, and different messages to go to leads with different tags and scores. You can set this up to happen without needing to enter any input yourself.
So, for example, you could have different emails sent at particular trigger times not just to businesses and individuals, but to businesses who clicked through your website, businesses who opted in on the first click, leads who visit often but don’t turn into customers, and so on.
Drip Even offers a visual interface on all this, for the graphic learners out there.
Rounding out the experience are two extra perks: full API integration from third parties, and–as their landing page–a website that shows all reviews, not just those for 4 and 5 stars.
Who is it for?
Businesses of any size who already have their sales and marketing workflow figured out, but want a more efficient way to save labor hours on email.
- Email marketing focus allows a specific function to be executed in exquisite detail
- Graphic interface helps interaction with complex processes
- Full suite of CRM options including lead tagging
- API integration
- Free option for very small campaigns (<100 contacts)
- Slow response times from customer support
- Email visual editor doesn’t support templates or themes
- A high learning curve for onboarding
Pricing (per month)
All of these come with unlimited email sends.
- Free Accounts for first 100 subscribers
- Basic ($49): Up to 2,500 subscribers
- Pro ($99): Up to 5,000 subscribers
- Enterprise (contact sales): Unlimited subscribers
Free trial? 14 days
5. ReallySimpleSystems
RSS was founded in 2004 by John Paterson, former CEO of Zeus Tech and COO of SystemUnion. In 2006 the company launched its marketing module.
Initially having campaign management, and in 2012 adding email marketing which was later even upgraded to offer an alternative to third-party integrations like MailChimp and Constant Contact.
Like the name says the system is simple to use, so it’s perfect for someone who’s a first time user.
Since it’s UK based it’s important to note that it’s GDPR/HIPAA compliant. With it being Cloud-based there’s no need for you to have a trained on-site IT team.
Who’s it for?
This CRM is specifically designed with small and midsize businesses in mind. That’s not to say that bigger organizations can’t use it. With its many features like contact management, pipeline management, sales quotations, campaign management, email marketing, marketing automation, even robust organizations can get a satisfactory service.
- Affordable
- Simple to use
- Offers great customer support
- Big integration potential
- Offers a free plan for two users
- No mobile app
- No social media Integration
- No lead scoring
Pricing (per month)
Starter $14 user/month
- Unlimited contacts
- 1,000 company records
- 1GB document storage
- Email and online support
Professional $30 user/month
- 5,000 company records
- 5 GB document storage
- Unlimited contacts
- Email, online and phone support
Enterprise $46 user/month
- Unlimited company records
- Unlimited document storage
- Unlimited contacts
- Email, online and phone support
Free trial? 14 days with a possible extension period
6. Wishpond
Wishpond began as a platform to host contests on social media. When its creators wanted to automate a marketing campaign for their own product, they couldn’t find a service they liked, so they built their own. In a few years, marketing automation eclipsed the contest platform their primary product.
Wishpond is a solid alternative if your goal is to turn website visitors into viable leads. Their watchwords are creativity and growth, and to demonstrate their commitment, they’re constantly expanding the features on offer.
The 2017 release allowed for graphics and pop-ups on a sliding scale of visibility to entice website visitors to opt into customer-focused marketing–basically, it lets you decide how intrusive you want your opt-in to be, from a small banner to a page-covering ad.
Their email marketing campaign editor focuses on creating a visually enticing final product. “Lead generation” is as simple as getting people to click. Wishpond also has a “done for you” service to build your campaign, with prices discussed following a demo. Also, they do still actually offer those social media contests, just with a lot of other stuff bundled in.
Who is it for?
Website owners who want to grow their mailing lists, nurture client relationships, or rack up views on a page, but don’t have the financial clout to pay for a larger-scale service.
- Affordable compared to the competition
- Mobile-responsive landing pages and contests
- Broad integration potential
- Focus on ease-of-use and continually rolling out new features
- Not an all-in-one platform
- Page builder and editor can be slow
- Doesn’t track ROI
- Lead caps on plans are absolute
Pricing (per month)
- Basic ($75): “For solopreneurs and beginner marketers starting to grow their business.” Caps at 1,000 leads.
- Pro ($149): “For more experienced marketing teams looking to run complete campaigns.” Caps at 2,500 leads.
- Growth ($299): “For established marketing teams and agencies looking to automate campaigns at scale.” Caps at 10,000 leads.
Free trial? 14 days
7. Hatchbuck
Hatchbuck is a CRM that focuses on the small and nimble. Its brand story is similar to Wishpond’s, but suffice to say it’s now one of the foremost alternatives to both that service and InfusionSoft.
In the competition between these services, the winner is you, the consumer, as SaaS like Hatchbuck, Wishpond, and Infusion forgo trying to peel large enterprises away from Salesforce and instead present competitive features to the small business owner.
Hatchbuck, like Wishpond, was founded because its creator wanted to use it. Its array of intuitive tools is tailor-made for mobile entrepreneurs. You’ll find everything you need in here: email marketing automation, capture forms, lead databases, integrations–Google for calendar, WordPress for your landing page, etc.
At its heart, though, Hatchbuck is a CRM, which means it’s dedicated above all to simplifying marketing and sales into a single platform, along with providing support at no additional cost. It comes with all the metrics and analytics your sales team might need to make that work.
Who is it for?
Small to midsize businesses that want a CRM with marketing automation tools rather than an automator they can integrate with a CRM. Like Wishpond, this is best for a company that might not operate on multiple continents but recognizes the potential of a dedicated customer relationship platform.
- Captures and records leads intuitively for reference, easy categorization, and tracking
- Effective information display
- Features and automation focus on keeping a small team updated and in sync
- Simple but versatile tools
- Sales integration
- Design options are limited
- No mobile app or responsive pages
- No native social media functions
Pricing (per month)
Each of these plans is paid out semi-annually and includes a free “Quick Start Pro” onboarding package.
- Small Biz ($99): 2 users, 1,500 contacts, 7,500 emails /mon
- Team ($199): 5 users, 5,000 contacts, 25,000 emails /mon
- Professional ($299): 10 users, 15,000 contacts, 75,000 emails /mon
- Enterprise ($399): Unlimited users, 25,000 contacts, unlimited emails
Free trial? No, but an optional free live demo.
8. Nutshell
As a CRM, Nutshell has put a lot of work into building a user-friendly frontend, reasoning that all the astounding features in the world aren’t going to grow your business if your sales team doesn’t understand or engage with them. The result is software that scores high on affordability and presents a graceful learning curve.
Using their service, it’s clear they get that even a qualified sales professional with years of experience might never have used anything like this before. Nutshell’s features are designed toward easily becoming core to a company’s operations.
Its contact database can be imported from an Excel spreadsheet. Its dashboard syncs with Google Calendar–in fact, it syncs well with the whole Google suite. Once a sales rep is in the database, they can see the full history of a lead just by clicking on the name.
Don’t take this to imply that Nutshell is a stripped-down discount system. Its reports, summaries, forecasts, and analytics are as strong as any on the market.
Where it does run into trouble is scaling and exporting, as users have reported trouble with migrating away from Nutshell, plus sluggishness when over 1,000 contacts are placed in the database.
Who is it for?
Business owners comfortable with the current size of their enterprises, who need to put their sales teams on the same page without spending thousands on onboarding.
- User-friendly dashboard
- A single database can replace a business’s worth of spreadsheets
- Integrates with most other useful services including Google suite
- Allows automation of sales workflow
- A wide variety of reports available
- Highly affordable if you have a relatively small team
- Doesn’t scale well to growing businesses
- Can be difficult to migrate away from
Pricing (per month)
- Starter ($19/user): “Simple, powerful, no-frills CRM.”
- Pro ($35/user): “CRM and sales automation.”
- Pro Plus: (contact sales): “Platinum guidance, support, and training.”
Free trial? 14 days
9. Eloqua
Eloqua was acquired by Oracle in 2012, which now offers its automation service on its own or integrated with the rest of their CRM.
Like Wishpond, Drip, and many others, Eloqua is a SaaS platform for customer relations that promises to increase sales by improving a firm’s understanding of its sales base.
Like Wishpond and Ontraport, it offers users control over the design of their campaign emails and landing pages. And like Ontraport, it integrates easily with other CRM, event, social media, content, and digital ad programs.
So what sets Eloqua apart from its competitors? Sherrie Mersdorf of NewBrand says that while some subjectively prefer its “spaghetti monster” organizational interface, what really makes Eloqua worth a look is its library of apps. Pound for pound, it just offers more options.
Its increased cost reflects that increased functionality. Furthermore, a lot of fairly critical stuff, like broad reporting, is only present in upgraded versions of Marketo, while Eloqua offers them in its base plan.
One last feature to touch in is form data, and the ability to link forms to fields in spreadsheets, making Eloqua the better choice for anyone who learned databases through Microsoft Access.
Who is it for?
Experts suggest Oracle’s Eloqua is most ideal for large businesses, but a unified platform can be a benefit to a business of any size. In the end, if you’ve got a large enough marketing-sales snarl to be considering a CRM at all, it won’t do you any good to reject a popular service out of hand because it’s “not for” your size of business.
- Strong app library accessed through the Oracle store, including their Social Suite for social media marketing
- Shared marketing and sales database
- Shared interface for all graphic projects like emails and landing pages
- Lead scoring technology allows multiple models to be run by a single company in different markets
- Closed-loop reporting to nurture leads
- SmartStart addresses previously steep learning curve
- Another divisive interface
- More expensive than its competitors
- Does not integrate with Google Ads
Pricing (per month)
Like Marketo, Eloqua’s plans scale depending on the number of leads in the database. Each listed price is the price for fewer than 10,000 leads in the database.
- Marketer ($2,000): 10 marketing users, almost all functions
- Team ($4,000): 50 marketing users, all functions except cloud priority and sandbox test environment
- Enterprise (contact sales): Unlimited users, all functions
Free trial? Up to 3,500 hours for up to 30 days.
10. ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign started as a campaign manager but has begun to distinguish itself in the automation space.
Their philosophy is that, as long as people are still using email to manage their online existence (which doesn’t show any signs of slowing down), email campaigns should be personal, responsive, and distinct from spam.
They work to keep the picture of customer data clear and readable, so you can send fewer emails to accomplish better results.
ActiveCampaign also allows you to work across other channels, like texting and pinging your customers on social media.
They boast some nifty upgrades that let users share email designs with other users and allow marketing actions to be triggered by data changes made within ActiveCampaign, such as if new data is logged in a lead’s contact form (Congratulations on the move, Steve, here’s what we offer in Portland!).
They even offer their own Chrome extension that allows sales reps to automate workflows with their lead family specifically, and tracks when emails are opened.
To increase its versatility, ActiveCampaign integrates with top e-commerce platforms WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Shopify, and allows data to be shared from those platforms to the ActiveCampaign database.
Who is it for?
Businesses of any size whose top priority is that campaign data be presented in a clean, usable form. It’s also a fantastic budget option.
- Extremely fair pricing compared to alternatives
- All plans include unlimited sending
- Automate sales, marketing, and productivity from the same platform
- CRM allows campaign customization for different products and services
- E-commerce integration shares data
- Not a basic solution – the number of features can take a while to grasp
- Only truly worthwhile for complex automation
- No free plan
Pricing (per month)
These prices scale based on the number of contacts in your database. Each increases at 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 75,000, and 100,000.
- Lite (starts $17): Email marketing, newsletters, marketing automation, 3 users
- Plus (starts $49): Contact scoring, sales automation, e-commerce integrations, 25 users
- Professional (starts $129): Site messaging, 50 users
- Enterprise (starts $229): Dedicated account rep, unlimited users
Free trial? 14 days
Read our complete ActiveCampaign review
11. SharpSpring
SharpSpring is a powerful cloud-based marketing platform that’s working in the same space as Wishpond and Hatchbuck. In a crowded field, Sharpspring distinguishes itself by a laser focus on user tracking, flexibility, and landing pages, essentially becoming a higher-end Drip.
Its price and feature availability sets it in a you-get-what-you-pay-for bracket above Wishpond but slightly below Cadillac services like Eloqua, Salesforce, and Marketo.
What do you get with your SharpSpring subscription?
Behavior-based automation, a choice between using their native or integrating a third party’s, a popular user interface, and a range of “after-click” tracking analytics that structure automated campaigns around a broad list of user behaviors. It even tracks phone calls alongside emails.
SharpSpring is also notable for working hard to integrate with almost anything, including everyone else’s CRMs.
The major point of controversy around SharpSpring has to do with its customer service, which is not always well-reviewed by users. Some aspects of the software are not intuitive without help from customer service, which gets mixed reception for responsiveness.
Who is it for? Businesses who want to ground all their marketing decisions in customer behavior.
SharpSpring also makes a point of pitching their subscription directly to marketing agencies, with agency-specific plans and features–so if marketing is your service, they’re worth a look.
- Straightforward user interface
- Excellent value for the price
- Well-suited for both agencies and their clients
- A robust set of customer behavior reports and analytics
- Some features are less intuitive than the main interface
- Customer support receives mixed reviews
Pricing (per month)
Every one of these plans comes with unlimited users and support, but limited contacts.
- $450: 1,500 contacts
- $650: 10,000 contacts
- $875: 20,000 contacts
- Agency plan: Contact sales
- Enterprise plan: Contact sales
Free trial? No, but they will conduct a live demo for your company.
So Which Infusionsoft Alternative Should You Choose?
If you’ve decided Infusion isn’t for you, where you go next depends 100% on the needs of your business.
- A small business intending to remain small, go with Nutshell or ReallySimpleSystems
- If you’re a small business looking to grow, try Wishpond, HubSpot, ReallySimpleSystems or Hatchbuck.
- If you want to cut the clutter and focus on the email, Ontraport and Drip are for you.
- If what you need is a flexible platform for integration, try Eloqua, ActiveCampaign, or SharpSpring.
Note: We may receive a commission on purchases made through links on this page. This does not affect the price you pay or the suggestions we make.
Tags: Marketing Automation, Reviews, Software
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